The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

tol lve Sy Ly AN APA ARIS SRA ST dT WABASH RO EN EM RE ER i AR AN 7H15 LITTLE PIGGY weeny OUY, oul oul All THE way Home Dismissal Hasty Durham Region is not without its warts. In fact, it is fair to say that all the regional systems of government imposed by Queens Park in the past decade or so in Ontario, have laboured under constant criticism, both from within and without. Durham is a convenient whipping boy for politician and public alike. It gets blamed for high taxes, duplication of services, and is generally viewed with suspicion as a costly level of govern- ment remote from the people who pay the bills. In Scugog, Brock and Uxbridge Townships, there remains today after six years of Regional govern- ment, resentment among many of the people. voted down a recommendation from a special committee of coun- cillors which called for a study to be carried out to show the implications of Scugog, Brock and Ux- Last week, Durham council bridge getting out of Durham Region. It is for precisely this reason that the council last week should have endorsed that recommendation to broader tax base. costs? initiate the study to show clearly what Scugog, for example, has paid into Durham, and what benefits this Township has derived from being part of it. Water works, expanded sewer treatment facili- ties, road reconstruction are™some of the hard services that have gone into place in this Township since the formation of the Region. It is not likely that these projects could have been done so extensively and so quickly if Scugog were not a part of the larger municipality with the Scugog contributes about five per cent of the Region's annual operating budget (in 1980, about $850,000). What is the total value of the services that have gone into this Township because of the Region? That is a question that should be answered. If people are upset about regionalization because of the cost, then why not prepare a study to show that on balance, the benefits have been worth more than the As the Mayor of Uxbridge said last week, such a study just might show once and for all, that it has been to the distinct advantage of communities like -Scugog; Brock and Uxbridge Townships to have been part of Durham, and to continue to do so. While the council last week voted not to proceed with any further studies of the implications of separating Durham on a north-south basis, one major area of concern was not even addressed by the committee in its recommendations. Namely, the fact that property owners in a community like Port Perry or Uxbridge, appear to be getting far more in the way of Regional services than their neighbours living in the rural areas outside these communities. There appears to be a substantial inequity here because a property owner in the rural area pays the same tax as the owner of a property of similar value in the built-up communities. In short, a property owner in Port Perry probably does not have much to complain about regional services, but one living on Scugog Island, or in old Reach or Cartwright Townships may have cause to complain when it comes to services. QUEBEC SEPARATION What are you going to do if the voters of Quebec say, "wee, wee, wee, wee" all the way home? Are you going to pack everything into a covered wagon and head west, the only refuge any more for Anglo-phones? Are you going to grow a beard, obtain some false papers, and slip across the Quebec border some dark night, to fight in the underground? Or are you going to sit on your duff, go right on.trying to take care of your own life, and let the. politicians sort out the whole sordid scene? I would venture that 93 per cent of English speaking Canadians will choose the third of the above alternatives. Certainly I will. I have no intention of fleeing into the right-wing arms of Alberta, or the moderately left-wing arms of Saskat chewan, or the materialistic arms of B.C. or Ontario, or the salty, slow embrance of the Maritimes. Or even the hearty bear-hug of the Yukon. I'm gonna stay home and cultivate my own garden. It may be all weeds, but that doesn't give me the right to point and scorn to the wrecked cars and dirty gravel that make up my neighbour's yard. You may have noticed that I have not addressed myself to the topic of Quebec separation in the last couple of years, except for my opening salvo, which said, more or less, "Let them go....no big deal." I cited historical parallels: Britain backing gracefully out of India, Ceylon, Burma, and a dozen others; the French being badly burned in Indo-China and North Africa, when they tried to hold on by force; the Americans trying to fight ideas with napalm and bombs in an ill-conceived and ill-fated war in Viet Nam. And I still feel the same way. If a majority of the people of Quebec think they would be happy if they kissed the rest of the family goodbye, then let's return the kiss, throw in a hug, and let them go. No names. No recriminations. Just a gentle severing of the ties, which, after all, are only a little over a hundred years old, a mere flyspeck in the history books. There's been a great deal of bewilder- ment and belated sentimentality over the ~ possibility among English speaking Cana- dians. There's been a lot of sloppy soul- searching that resembles nothing so much as a rotten mother whining, after her kids turn rotten, "What have I done? I always meant the best for them." "What do they want? Why do they want out?" are the pitiful cries of the complacent Anglo majority. I know why they want out, or many of them do. They have managed to retain their pride of race under two hundred years of subservience and second-class citizenship. Why did the Irish want out of the British Empire? Why did the Indo-Chinese want out from under the benevolent rule of France? Why did the Phillipines, and now the Canal Zone, want to kick out the Yanks? Yep/ Many, many French-Canadians volunteered and served loyally and gallant- ly, in World War II. Know what they were called, almost invariably? Frenchy! With condescension. I was at a "bilingual" newspaper convention a couple of decades ago, in Quebec. The announcements were made first in English. Then, when they were repeated in French, the mainly English- speaking editors were all babbling away, drowning out the French. This is the sort of thing that creates fury among proud people. Quebec is one of the most vibrant and lively societies in the western world. Its residents have kicked out the iron paterna- lism of the Church, exposed and scorned its corrupt politicians. It has produced more in art and music and writing, proportionately, than all the rest of Canada, in the past & decades. It has also sent wise men, and a few fools, to Ottawa. Rene Levesque is no Idi Amin, a buffoon leading clowns. The province has vast national resources. Its "leaders are no jumped-up, parochial politi- cians, but intelligent, far-seeing, opportunis- ® tic maybe, but tough, practical men, and women. You can't toss all that aside with a few sentimental platitudes about one-coun- try. On the other hand, many, many Quebe- cois don't want to leave the family. I'm more worried about Quebec being torn in two than about Canada breaking asunder. Two years ago, on a bus tour, in France, a lady from Montreal who spoke little English, told me vehemently, "I no Pequis- te. Rene Levesque que win, I go Ottawa. Take my business." Again, it's like a family. We've all been brought up, including the people of Quebec, to the idea that we are one, that we stretch from sea to sea, that we are "different" from the Yanks and the Brits, and the French. . In a family, some are willing to see one go. '""He's a bum, a drunk. She's a trollop, a tramp." But at the least sign of reform or a change of heart or habits, the outsider is welcomed back, smothered with kisses. so may it be this time. a