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EE --------TY J : 4 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday. January 6, 1987 : --- -- Editorial Comments ~~ What Next? ~~ Our Water? in its effort to push forward to some kind of free trade agreement with the United States, the Canadian government last week struck a deal that may prove detrimental to the softwood forest products in- _ dustry in this colntry. oo : : Under the terms of the deal, the Canadian government will on January 8 impose a 15 per cent export tax on lumber shipments to, the, United States. This will replace a 15 per cent duty charge by the Americans that was to take efféct on January 1. Representatives df the Canadian forest products and logging in- dustry were very quick to jump all over the arrangement, noting that the 15 per cent export tax will just about wipe out the profits of the _ entire industry for a year. : The industry fears that thousands of jobs in the logging and wood products sector will be lost because the export tax will hurt sales south of the border... arses Sess I That's the short term. More odious, some critics pointed out that the .deal is an outright invasion by the Americans of Canadian - sovereignty. The Americans are telling the Canadian government what to tax, how much to tax, and where and how the revenue generated by that tax can be spent. Under the agreement, the $600 million generated by the tax cannot be spent to assist the logging and wood" products companies who are going to be hurt the most by it. The money, apparently, cannot even be used for reforestration projects. In effect; the Canadian lumber industry will have to cough up some $600 million in export taxes and not one penny of this money, can be used to help those companies when they fall (as they will) into the financial boon-docks. It's a double whammy against an extremely important resource industry in Canada, an industry that provides thousands of jobs to Canadians and in many communities is the only industry. When the jobs disappear, the communities will disappear as well. Of course, the American lumber industry, with its powerful lob- by in Washington, will benefit when our industry suffers. If this agreement is one of the building blocks towards free trade between the two countries, we shudder to think of what the next block might be. ho . I, -The Americans have long cast their eyes on the vast resources of fresh water in the lakes-and rivers north of the 49th parallel. Will our so-called free trade negotiators put that water on the bargaining table? ree The way things have been going in this remarkably one-sided series of negotiations towards free trade, don't bet against it. - ~ Suckered, Again! A lot of bleeding hearts are going to jump on the anti-Hockey bandwagon, in the wake of a full scale brawl between the Canadian and Soviet Junior teams at the World Championships in | -.. - Czechoslovakia on Sunday afternoon. = = I Already, some people close to Junior and amateur hockey in this country are calling it a "'black eye" for Canada, and it will be a costly .. setback for our relations with the international hockey world. Let's remember a few things. Prior to the second period brawl, the Norwegian referee had "overlooked" many flagrant fouls on both ~~ sides. When the benches cleared, the ref and his European linesmen (Turn to page 6) Port Perry STAR 235 QUEEN STREET - PORT PERRY, ONTARIO Phone 985.7383 P.O. Box90 LOB INO J. PETER HVIDSTEN Publisher Advertising Manager i Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario: Community Newspaper Association "Published evesy Tuesday by the . Ce. Port Perry Star Co LY Port-Perry Ontario - J.B. McCLELLAND ) Editor Authorized as second class mail by the Post Ottice Department Ottawa. and for cash payment of ppstage in cash CATHY OLLIFFE News & Features Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 DIAN COm Cle Sow, Subscription Rate In Canada $15.00 per year Elsewhere $45 00 per year. Single Copy 35° - * Oo (> 42005 2310 0m SCOPYRIGHT -- All tayout and composition of advertisements produced by the adver tring department of the Port Perry Star Company Limited are protected under copyright and may not be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher EE .-™-- ~ exception. Ld Chatte rio by Cathy Olliffe THE DREADED 57 One of these days, KAPOW, right in the kisser. .- } =, One of these days I'm going te smack some hapless driver upside the head. One of these days ~ It happened again this morning,.on the way to work, as it does every morning, without I was cruising. along Highway 7A, just ap- proaching the curve at the-intersection of 7A and Regional Road 57, doing just a titch more than the speed limit recommends. The curve is banked and built for relatively high speeds, and there's nothing more satisfying, than taking the curve full steam ahead, without slowing, on a dry day, pretending you're rallying round the final curve of the Indy 500. It's a good curve, and it would be a great curve if only it didn't intersect with 57. ~ You ¢an bet your life savings that if there is a car on 57 waiting to pull onto 7A, it will pull out in front of you, doing, oh, 20 km an hour, with a man wearing a hat at the wheel. Almost invariably, it will be a man wearing a hat, although this morning it was a young woman in a fancy sports car. Yesterday morning, however, it was indeed an elderly man wearing a hat driving a beige station wagon with phony wood trim. Why these people pull out in front of you, when you're doing 80 k plus, is beyond me. Usually, there is nobody behind me on the curve, and a wait of about five seconds would be enough for the be- | hatted driver to pull out on to 7A without cutting someone off. » But they don't wait. They never wait. They just pull out, right in front of me, forcing my foot down hard on the brakes. Not too long ago, when my hubby.was driv- ing and I was a mere passenger, a pick-up truck being driven by some young buck, pulled out in "front of us and then proceeded to stop dead in the middle of the lane in order to pick-up a hitch-hiker. There was another car coming in the other direction so we couldn't swerve around the twit. Instead, Doug slammed on the brakes and miss- ed 'crashing into the truck by mere inches. Good thing we had our seat belts on. I'm really hoping some of these people, who irlsist on endangering other people's lives; will read this column, and will think twice about pull- ing in front of someone at the:intersection. 'And I'm really hoping one or more of these people will phone or write to explain why it is'they do this. Is it because you're in a hurry? And if you're in such a hurry, why do you slow down to a crawl once you're on 7A? And why on earth can't you wait for a few seconds until the road is clear before you pull out? I'm fed right up with the way these people drive; and one of these days, I swear, I'm going to wind up doing'a tango wi th some driver's back bumper. I'll make sure I'm driving a big car or -a truck at the time, and I think I'll push them all the way into Port Perry. At this point, you're probably thinking to ~ yourself, "Is this all Cathy Olliffe can write about? Can't she possibly write a column without criticiz- ing someone else's driving?" . Well you're right. I can't. Not while I'm fit to be tied about traffic. I mean, isn't it awful? It just seems like you can't drive anywhere these days without some bonehead pulling some crazy stunt that puts your life and liberty in jeopardy. What's worse, with all the crackdown on im- paired drivers, nobody's drinking and driving and these people are SOBER. They have no excuse to drive the way they do other than sheer stupidity. No wonder the Star has so many pictures of accidents. Why, all you have to do is carry a camera around and sooner or later you're bound to come across a fender bender. Hopefully, some day soon, the public will come down on stupid drivers-just as hard as they have on impaired drivers. Hopefully, the law will crack down on these nutcases and make stupid moves a criminal offense. For the first stupid move, drivers can lose their license for 24 hours, For the second stupid move, they can go to jail for two weeks. For.the third, they lose their license for life. For the fourth ---- how about death by firing squad? . Yes, I can see it-now. Spot checks being set up around the country with police officers check- ing for stupid drivers. Instead of carrying an ALERT machine, they can carry D.1.Q. (Driver's Intelligence Quotients). The test would consist of a series of questions designed to spot stupid drivers. Those questions could include the following: ~ (1.) When attempting to pull onto Highway 7A from Regional Road 57, do you: (a) wait until the way is clear, pull out and ' merge with highway traffic? (b) wait until a westbound car is seconds 'away and then pull directly in front of it, sléwing | down as you do so? (¢) wear a hat? (d) let your two year old kid take over the wheel? . : (e) get a brain transplant from an idiot? The answer is (a). If you chose any of the other answers, you have failed the D.1.Q. test and are a menace to your fellow drivers. And if you failed the test, do a favour to the rest of the world and immediately turn ip your car keys. -- ! dl