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Every provincial treasurer plays certain games in presenting a budget. It‘s an inevitable part of the process of putting your best foot forward. Some would simply call it good public relations. If kept within bounds, it adds a certain zest and challenge to all concerned, including the opposition. But sometimes it gets out of bounds, and this year was one of those occasions. John White got involved in ‘one numbers game which deserves to be more fully exposed than has been the case over the intervening For obvious reasons the government was anxious to respond to the public‘s growing concern over the inadequacy of housing policies and to leave the imâ€" pression that it is tackling this problem with greater Thus, we were told in the budget that in 1973 Ontario will be investing $269.9 million in public housing, compared with $137.2 million in 1972; $134.9 million in 1971; and $94.3 million in 1970. On occasion a small, but necesgsary, improvement in municipal service to the community gets lost in the shuffle of bureaucratic red tape. This happens more particularly when two levels of government are involved. Human nature, being what it is, it is a very necessary prohibition. Lately we have been favored by a spate of books reminding us of our kinship with the animal creation. Scratch the skin of civilization, it has been Some months ago Metro Licensing commission, which is responsible for the licensing of over 80 business occupations and the supervision of these occupations as they relate to service to the public, recommended that television repairmen be licensed. To have this authority the comâ€" mission needed the approval of the Ontario Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. At sunset of the third day, near the village of Igendja, we moved along an island setâ€"in the middle of the wide river. On a sandbank to out left, four hippopotamuses and their young plodded along in our same direction. Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase Reverence for Life struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is inâ€" complete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us. . The seed of Dr. Schweitzer‘s philosophy lay in this Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Originally the words meant: Thou shalt do not murder. It forbade vindictive aggression resulting in the death of the victim. _ ¢ With growing shortgages and skyâ€"rocketting prices in the housing field, a greatly expanded program makes sense. A massive attack on the housing shorâ€" tage should be the centreâ€"piece of any social and economic strategy. Social, because no other policy can do more to relieve the hardship suffered by those living in subâ€"standard housing or paying exorbitant rent; and economic, because a massive housing program could do more than anything else to create jobs in large numbers. In these words the late Dr. Albert Schweitzer recorded for posterity the flashing insight that gave him his ethical principle: Reverence for Life. He wrote about it in several of his books. But, above all, he lived it out as a doctor in Lambarene on the banks of the River Ogawe in Equatorial West Africa. said, and underneath you will find the primitive savage. It‘s clear that we need to create more jobs. The treasurer himself predicts that this year‘s average unemployment will be 4.4 percent, so we‘re still far from the government‘s target of 3 percent for full employment. _ White bolstered his efforts at creating the apâ€" propriate image with impressive figures of what is Reverence for life Playing the game happening in the government capital investment program. During the last four years capital investment in education has dropped from 60 percent to 25 percent of total investment. The shift to the fields of housing and urban development has been such that it now represents 41 percent, the largest share. And it was at this point that the treasurer clinched his case with the figure of $269.9 million for capital investment in housing this year. So much for the public image. What are the facts? For anyone who has been lulled into sharing with housing minister Allan Grossman a certain smugness over our housing achievements, a remnder that housing starts in the OHC rentâ€"gearedâ€"toâ€"income program dropped from 11,430 in 1971 to 6,012 in 1972. Then, bobbing up here and there in the budget statement was an illusive $144 in the soâ€"called North Pickering Suspense Account. This $144 million, it was explained, is the money set aside by the government to expropriate land for Cedarwood, the North Pickering development near the proposed new airport. And every government spokesman hastens to add that this development will go ahead whether or not the airport survives opposition pressures. In summing up his budget statement, the treasurer explained: ‘"We have provided this full amount in our estimates but our net costs could be substantially lower if a satisfactory agreement of CMHC participation can be reached." He then went on to suggest that Ontario‘s public debt will be reduced by between $100 and $200 million in 1973â€"4, largely because of the "unutilized portion of the $144 million in the North Pickering Suspense Account." _ But quite apart from the fact that the $144 million will produce no housing in 1973, it is likely that most of it will not be spent at all. The commission, according to the rules of procedure, asked Metro legislation comâ€" mittee to endorse this request. The Metro committee agreed and sent it to Metro executive committee, which, in turn, sent it on to Metro Council. The council, without much fanfare, approved making an apâ€" plication to the province for permission to have the licensing commission license television repairmen. The province, burâ€" dened with many problems, has unâ€" doubtedly given this request a low priority. government. This Sixth Commandment forbidding murder is not repressive. It is a necessary restraint upon our dorâ€" mant urge to be aggressive. We all, at some time or another in our lives, have had intimations of the power and destructiveness of such an urge. Who has not, at some time or another been choked, with murderous feelings or mentally blacked out with the impulse to lash out and destroy? For most of us such feelings are only momentary. And it is wise counsel which says: Count ten. For by that time the feelings have simmered down and the balance of sanity has been restored. This statement finds ample vindication at the present time when the fragile skin of civilization is being punctured in so many places by the heavings of primitive forces. Violence, assault and murder abound. In the light of what is happening all around us a reassessment of this commandment and the others which follow it is long overdue. I was interested to read what Rabbi Plaut wrote about the human aggressive impulse in the Globe and Mail last week. With his leave, I quote: "I‘m glad that someone of Dr. Berkowitz‘ stature disagrees with such unlovely results of what he calls ventilationism. Turning the tables on his predecessors, he claims that holding in is better than letting out. You may vent your rage now, he says, but you and others will pay the bill later. It will come in more, not less, aggression, for violence, if it is often enough expressed, encourages violence as a normal habit. Smashed tea pots may lead to smashed heads. The Nazis were not pacified by merely singing their bloodthirsty songs; when the joy of violent behavior was given its full goâ€"ahead, the songs became ugly reality." But what happens when a society chooses to ignore these basic guidelines to human behavior? In brief, society becomes bestial. Get with it When the provincial treasurer wants to present the public image of restraint in expenditures, he uses the $144 million to reduce the public debt. When he wants to bolster the image of the province investing large capital amounts for home construction, he adds the $144 million. But it‘s the same $144 million‘! Some might, with reason, call it an exercise in duplicity. The truth is, of course, that if the $144 million goes into reducing the public debt then the muchâ€"heralded $269.9 million for housing will be cut to $125.9 million, a drop from last year‘s $137.2 million. So much for the government‘s assurance of a greatly expanded housing program. .A But the provincial treasurer‘s game doesn‘t end there. If the $144 million is applied to the public debt, our net debt isn‘t, in fact, going to be reduced by $100 to $200 million, as he has contended. A glance at the budgetary tables reveals that this year‘s net debt will rise from $2,778 million, or $343 per capita, to $2,991 million, or $371 per capita. < The explanation is really quite cute. The provincial treasurer‘s image of frugality is predicated on the government‘s present intention not to do any public borrowing this year. But while he won‘t be going to the bond market, he plans soâ€"called nonâ€"public financing, to the tune of $915 million. Yes, just a shade under a billion dollars! It may be internal, but if all becomes a obligation on the province, part of the net debt. * Budgetting certainly offers great scope for gamesmanship, if you can get away with it. There is strong advocacy these days, particularly in church quarters, for the abolition of the death penalty for murder. Many of the arguments are based on this commandment. But that is surely to turn the comâ€" mandment on its head. To retain the death penalty is to reinforce this commandment: to remove it would be to weaken it. So you see even the psychologists are having second thoughts. No one would want to take another person‘s life lightly. It is possible for a murder to have been comâ€" mitted on impulse. I know that sometimes it is next to impossible to prove beyond any shadow of doubt who is culpable. And I recognize the force that lies behind the argument that if a man commits murder, it is often as much the fault of society as the individual. But allowances can be made, in law, for these and other such modifying factors. The law itself should stand. Only in that way can men be impressed beforehand with a sense of the irreplaceable value of human life. Such an impression, providing it goes deep enough, can be a powerful restraint on impluse. It will be borrowed, not in the open market, but inâ€" ternally from the Canada Pension Fund, the Teachers‘ Superannuation Fund, the Municipal Employees Pension Fund, etc. It‘s a little thing, as things go, but one that would be much appreciated by citizens who want to be sure that the person repairing their television set knows what he is doing and will charge a reasonalbe fee. bruise the mind: You shall not only beat out the breath; you shall not crush the spirit. Jesus, in giving his own comment on this Comâ€" mandment (Matthew 5:21â€"26 â€" You have heard that it has been said by them of old time . . . but I say to you . . . ) did not abrogate it. He intensified and enlarged it. He said, in effect: You shall not only inflict no physical injury; you shall not inflict any psychological injury: You shall not only not bruise the body; you shall not repairmen is to provide a satisfactory standard of service, to make sure that the repairmen are qualified in their job and to give the public a chance, when they have a complaint, to voice it to a government body. In what he said he did not deny the old law. He fulfilled it. He brought out its true spirit, which as Schâ€" weitzer so clearly saw, is Reverence for Life. The purpose The province should get with it. < Theâ€"Times, Thursday, July 19,1073â€"Page 7 1/ [« licensing television