6- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday January 19, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Guest Columnist Liberals need to think before taking action Ted Chudleigh, Halton MPP ou can read Premier McGuinty like a dime store novel. You've been through it once before so the plot lines are predictable. Ted Chudleigh And so when our premier announced with great fanfare that he was going to fulfill an election promise -- I was not taken aback. It was inevitable that he would arrange for a promise to be kept, in order to counter the gravest error of his first term. And after living through the first term of Liberal government, it was equally inevitable that the quickie legislation required to keep that promise would be embarrassingly ill-considered. And so it is with Family Day. Establishing a holiday to provide a welcome ray of light in that dreary midwinter stretch from New Year's Day to Easter has been annual fodder for many a watercooler conversation. However, like safe sushi regulations, pit bull bans, and protecting Ontarians from unpasteurized dairy products, Ontario's road to hell is paved with the Liberals' feel-good intentions. As well intentioned as they are, the Liberals don't think their ideas through. So the $2 billion that Family Day will cost business and government in wages and lost productivity was forgotten in the rush to legislate a snow day. We've read this novel before. Now union workers are fighting with their employers to have Family Day added to their holiday packages rather than reassigned from among existing days off. Small businesses are trying to cope with the cost. Family Day, like The Family Guy, isn't quite what the unsuspecting observer believes it to be. Far from a universal holiday, Family Day is going to end up celebrated in as many ways as there are working arrangements. The McGuinty Liberals have done this before. They tried to regulate sushi to be more like fish sticks. They banned pit bulls without having any way to identify pit bulls other than 'you'll know one when you see it'. They tried to unleash the dairy policy on unsuspecting Camembert. And so it is likely that the McGuinty Liberals will ignore all the holes in Family Day, avoid all the unpleasantness of having to revisit the idea and simply plough ahead allowing Family Day to be whatever anyone wants it to be. Someday all these internal contradictions will catch up to our premier. I can see it now, on the third Monday of some future February, Dalton, fearful because his guard dog ate a bit of Brie, will take the aggressive looking pooch to a vet who is working alone while his staff sleep in on Family Day. Then after waiting for the vet for six hours, Mr. McGuinty will have to send the dog to a re-education camp and he won't be able to get the sushi his family wanted for dinner. Then, maybe he'll realize that his ill-considered ideas create more problems than they solve. 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No, I wasn't all that upset when the dispute transformed last Sunday's Golden Globe ceremony into an anticlimactic press conference, and I'm not all that disturbed the same fickle fate likely awaits the 80th Academy Awards on Feb. 24. Suffice to say, I'm not a huge fan of award shows, and anything that keeps Joan Rivers off the airwaves has inherent mental-health benefits. But I'm telling you, I'm mightily missing my regular shows, some of which have already been pushed into premature hiatus on account of script shortages, and others that have, but a meagre episode or two left before they run out, leaving me high and dry. Regular readers of this column know just how much I like to watch television it's how I relax, it's my Pablum, my pacifier. So, imagine my dismay, my distress -- my pain when, for instance, I go to watch Chuck on Mondays nights, but there is no new Chuck. There isn't even an old Chuck. There's just crappy old movies that I've seen a million times, or dumb replacement shows that aren't worth watching, or even stupider reality shows that make me want to upchuck even as I pine for some new Chuck. All of which leaves me with limited entertainment options. My wife and I have been going out to see a ton of movies, but sooner or later the writers' strike will start affecting movie production, too. Further, I've been watching more hockey than usual, but how many nights of your life Andy Juniper can you waste watching the Leafs lose? Last week I got so desperate, I watched some brand-new homegrown Canadian shows created by the CBC (my tax dollars hard at work), in particular jPod and Sophie. I won't say these shows are bad. Because they're beyond bad. So, I'm left with reading. But after a day spent staring at a computer, I can only read for so long. About all that's left for me to do is hope for the hopeless: that is, an end to this labour stalemate. In case you're not in the know: the strike, which began on Nov. 5, pits the resolute Writers' Guild of America (East and West) against the robust Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. No big shock, the main issue is cash. The more than 12,000 scribes who script TV shows, movies, talk show monologues and such want a share of "new media" (content written for or accessed via cell phones, the Internet, etc.), and a greater share of DVD residuals (last year this market generated close to $5 billion!). At least, the writers want more than the paltry 0.3 per cent share of the home video revenue they fought for and received in the 1988 strike that lasted 154 days and cost the industry an estimated $500 million. According to NBC Nightly News, the current strike has already cost the industry $1 billion, and it's painfully apparent both sides are girding for a marathon fight. As a writer, and a guy who will fight for what's fair, I have to back the writers on this baby. They are being seriously abused. However, as is the case in so many strikes, it's fast reaching the point where both sides are too busy playing stupid to realize that they are taking turns shooting the golden goose. Meantime I'm left laughing at the Leafs, the best comedy currently on television. Actually, if the strike continues, the Leafs may be the only comedy left on TV. Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajuniper@strangledeggs.com.