1999 Columns

"From the Left" opinion columns which appear every second Tuesday in The Guelph Tribune, a weekly newspaper published by Fairway Press (a division of Southam Inc.) These columns appeared in 1999.

Sometimes it looks as if Clark Griswald is alive and well and living in Guelph. For those of you who don’t get ready for Christmas by renting old videos, he’s the beleaguered father in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. He quite proudly blankets his house with about fifty million lights. Were he doing it today, he would have icicle lights hanging right to the ground. Driving around Guelph these days, you can be blinded by the things. I have a couple of strands clipped to the railing on our front porch, a modest and discreet way of marking the season without launching a full frontal assault on Guelph Hydro’s resources. But some places around town have really gone to town with their lights. Garish is a word that comes to mind. Maybe they’re all trying to outdo each other. Maybe they’re taking their cue from Oscar Wilde. He’s the one who said nothing succeeds like excess. I just wish they’d scale it back a notch or two.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve quit smoking over the last 35 years. I may even do it again. What these several decades of experience have shown me is that smoking only bothers you when you are breathing. At all other times, it seems to have no ill effects. I was quite pleased to see that city council stuck to its decision to ban smoking in restaurants and bars. Bar owners are understandably upset about a potential loss of business, but they’ll survive. Smoking patrons will be emotionally torn when the urge to drink conflicts with the urge to smoke, but we’ll also survive. We can always go out to the sidewalk and shiver over a smoke between beers. The people I’m happy for are the those who work in the bars. They have nowhere to go to get away from the clouds of smoke. Every Monday night, after coming home from darts, I almost gag at the smell when I pull off my t-shirt. That’s one night a week. These workers have to put up with it night after night. Now they won’t.

The Chretien government has pledged millions of dollars to fight homelessness. The big cities, to which most of the homeless gravitate, will be able to provide more shelter beds. There will be an increase in street patrols to bring around cups of hot soup as they check to make sure the people huddled in cardboard boxes haven’t frozen to death. But a national program to build affordable housing? The federal government got out of that fifteen years ago, shifting the responsibility to the provinces. Our provincial government got out of it in 1995. They claimed private enterprise would do the job more efficiently. Of course, it didn’t. Homelessness is now a bigger problem than ever. This latest announcement gives money to the organizations that help homeless people, but it does nothing to end homelessness. Is this the best we can hope for this Christmas? To pretend we can take the misery out of living on the street? Maybe next year the government can really splurge and give every homeless person a strand of icicle lights to brighten their lives.

Enough of this crankiness. It’s the holiday season, and Canadian children all have good reason to cheer. Way back in the Mulroney years, we made a solemn pledge to end child poverty by the year 2000. What with statutory holidays and all, that leaves just eight days until all those poor kids are living the life of Reilly. If that doesn’t put you into the spirit, what will?

What is the World Trade Organization, and why are all those people mad at it? These questions wouldn’t have started many animated conversations a week or two ago. Last week’s “battle in Seattle” got a lot of us thinking about this obscure, secretive collection of bureaucrats. To understand what the WTO is all about, think back to another time they made a big splash in this country’s newspapers. The federal government had legislation helping Canadian magazines stand up to competition from the those coming up from the States. The Americans complained, the dispute ended up at the WTO, and our government was forced to change its legislation. Our sovereignty took a thrashing, while Time and Sports Illustrated magazines increased their profits.

There have been other cases in which the WTO has struck down our laws when they interfered with the interests of multinational corporations. The Ethyl Corporation received a $20 million settlement and we lost an environmental regulation preventing the use of a toxic gasoline additive. New Zealand is complaining about our dairy subsidies. Brazil is complaining about what they consider to be subsidies to aeroplanes made by DeHavilland. Decisions on all these matters are made by people living and working in Geneva. If we enact a law to protect our national interest, they can declare it to be in violation of an international trade agreement. These people were not elected by us, they are not accountable to us, yet they have the power do incredible damage to our standard of living, our way of life and the health of our environment.

They couldn’t accomplish everything they wanted at their Seattle conference, and have now retreated behind closed doors in Geneva. From there, they will try to repair whatever damage was done to them, and proceed anew with their plans to make the world an even safer place for struggling corporations like Nike, Monsanto, Nestlé’s and the rest.

The tens of thousands of activists who showed up in Seattle represented environmental and human rights organizations, labour unions, anti-poverty groups. Those of us who belong to one or another of these have no voice in the daily deliberations of the WTO. The only way for us to be heard was through the protests that shut down the first day of the conference and slowed down the rest of it. We all realize that trade must take place between the countries of the world. But it has to be fair and responsible trade. The WTO is not interested in this. It is dealing with the globalization of multi-national companies, and setting up a structure in which they can freely move their money and goods wherever they can maximize profits. When they set the rules, global competition can only be a race to the bottom. Standards in the developed world edge downward to meet the lack of standards in most third world countries. The corporate response to low wage zones in the third world has always been to demand lower wages and benefits here.

The protesters in Seattle argued for the opposite point of view. Global trade should be used as a tool to raise standards around the world. To start, child labour should be abolished throughout the world and trade sanctions should be imposed on any country that continues to allow it. Worker health and safety standards must be rigidly enforced everywhere. Wherever they operate, corporations should be forced to implement environmental protection measures. If the WTO won’t take the world in this direction, and it won’t, it should be abolished and replaced with a new structure that will rein in corporate greed and enforce trade rules that put people first.

It didn’t take long for Mike Harris to come to the defense of Ralph Klein. The premier of Alberta raised a fuss across the country last week by announcing his plan to extend the reach of privately owned hospitals. If he gets his way, private facilities will be allowed to perform major surgeries that require patients to stay overnight. Until now, private clinics were restricted to day surgery procedures and laboratory tests. Allan Rock, the federal Minister of Health, immediately declared that he would defend the Canada Health Act and our public health care system. He didn’t say exactly how he would do this, and it would have been difficult for him to do so. The federal government, after all, bears a huge part of the responsibility for allowing health care to slide into the crisis it now faces. In his ineffective response, Rock told Klein to put more provincial money into health care.

When you want to get into an fight, it doesn’t make sense to start by focusing attention on the biggest hole in your armour. Rock did, and Harris took dead aim at it. He immediately fired off a letter to the Prime Minister accusing him of cutting health care funding "by more than $4.2 billion annually" over the last five years. Of course, our premier is right. His motive in sending the letter, though, was to urge the feds to get off Klein’s case. If Ralph’s response to this lack of funding is to open the door to private health care, Mike thinks, we should just leave him alone and see how it turns out. You can bet your bedpan that the Ontario government will be keeping a close eye on how this fight develops. If Klein wins, Harris won’t be far behind. In fact, recent reports indicate that Harris is already planning to fund private schools and wants to bring in privately owned universities.

These Tory politicians are hovering like vultures over the limp body of our social programs. The federal government has been starving them for years, and now provincial governments are waiting to feast on the corpses. There is one piece to this puzzle that the privateers are not paying attention to, though. That is the will of the people to see our health care and education systems restored to full strength. Klein tried twice before to undermine the health care system in Alberta, and both times he was soundly rebuffed by an outraged public. Let’s hope this will not turn out to be a case of third time lucky.

Private hospitals will be a wedge driven into the crack in the system that was opened by federal cuts to transfer payments. We do not yet have a two tiered health care system similar to the one existing south of our border, with a separate level of care for people with the money to buy it. There are several privately owned clinics and medical laboratories already operating in Guelph, all providing services covered by OHIP. If Klein proves that the Canada Health Act allows for them to be transformed into hospital facilities, I am sure that some will be happy to expand and fill whatever space they are allowed. Even if they don’t, there are a lot of American health care companies waiting anxiously for an opportunity to extend their reach into our country.

Allan Rock’s empty platitudes will not save public health care. He needs to act quickly and amend the Canada Health Act to remove any loopholes Klein has uncovered. The best way to avoid sliding backwards is to stay away from slippery slopes.

We measure our history in terms of wars. They are the bookmarks that help us position things in time. The two decades between the world wars. Just enough time to produce a new crop of twenty-year olds to replace the generation that was decimated in the first one. Then send them off to kill and be killed. The post-war baby boom. The Spanish Civil War. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Seven Day War. The Gulf War. Kosovo. Chechnya. All milestones on the road through the bloodiest century since the dawn of time. Every year at this time we wear a poppy and remember the men and women who have fought and died in these wars. When will we stop remembering? Never, I hope. When will we start learning from it? Not yet, apparently.

Last month, an American academic, Joseph Jockel, released a paper claiming that Canada should immediately begin raising its defence budget by as much as $1.5 billion to upgrade our army's equipment. The defence minister, Art Eggleton, responded by saying he has already asked for more money in the next budget. We have children starving in this country, we have growing poverty, we have seriously underfunded health care and education systems. Even still, the politicians and generals who send our sons and daughters off to the battle fields want more money for fancier tanks, higher tech helicopters and more efficient guns and rocket launchers. It would be better to give our schools the money, and send the soldiers door to door selling chocolate bars to raise the money they think they need.

Jockel said that if these billions are not spent, "the (Canadian) army becomes a peacekeeping force, albeit a robust peacekeeping force." On the other hand, he said, if "the air force gets its fighters and the navy keeps its ships, it remains a combat force." Well excuse us, professor, but most Canadians don't want our military to be a hostile combat force. We want it to be a robust peacekeeping force. This was our well respected role around the world for decades, until the Mulroney government got us involved as participants in the Gulf War, and then Chretien sent us over to Kosovo.

The Canadian military has many problems that are far more serious than the state of its equipment. Not the least of these is the shoddy housing and poor pay doled out to the enlisted men and women. It is so bad that some military families are forced to get their groceries from food banks. There is also a complete lack of integrity at the leadership level. Scandal after scandal is covered up by generals who refuse to accept the responsibility that goes with their positions. Although the Somalia affair received the most publicity, there have been others. Most recently, we had the spectacles of shredded medical records for soldiers who got sick after chemical exposures in Croatia and the use of untested anthrax vaccines on soldiers. The soldier who blew the whistle on the affair has been court-martialed. The officers who ordered the vaccinations are still at their desks.

It is a filthy mess in there, and all the new tanks in the world won't clean it up. We should think about this when we wear our poppies. When we remember those who fought and died for us, also think of those who will fight and die. There has to be a better way to resolve conflict. We have got to build a world in which soldiers are not needed, in which tanks are obsolete. To remember is to end all war.

An east end bar, a downtown theatre and a west end gym. Put the three together, and we get a measure of the extent to which a community should collectively support individual leisure time activities. The east end bar sits inside the Legion Hall on York Road. It was just given a one year property tax holiday by the city. The downtown theatre is in the River Run Centre, a municipal facility that has operated in the face of stiff opposition from the day it began. It's future viability is being questioned by politicians who don't believe the city has any business running a performing arts centre. The west end gym will be part of the new recreation centre at the corner of Paisley and Imperial. After the city spends $21 million building it, our local Y wants to take it over, rather than expand their own facility or build themselves a new one.

The city should not have given the Legion a tax break. The biggest reason, in my mind, is that it refuses to allow part of our community into the club room. Sikh war veterans cannot enter this bar unless they violate their beliefs and remove their turbans. A few years ago, individual branches were given the freedom to set their own policy on this issue. The McCrae branch decided that a turban is no different from a baseball cap. If they don't change their minds, they shouldn't get public money.

The River Run Centre was built for those of us who believe there is not enough sax and violins in the downtown core. Those who don't know their brass from their oboe continue to snipe at it from the sidelines. It plays an important role in the cultural life of our city and deserves public support and subsidy. It would be nice to see it turn a profit, but it is not essential that it does so. Much the same is true of the west end recreation centre. It boggles the mind to think the city would spend all that money building a turnkey operation for the YM-YWCA. We shouldn't have to buy a Y membership, or spill our financial woes onto the table in hopes of getting a subsidy from them, in order to exercise in a gym we already paid for. Both facilities should be operated by the city with unionized municipal workers providing the services.

We all share an interest in improving the general health and fitness of the people in our community. Generations ago, Canadians decided that the provision of good health care is an essential function of government. This has become an expensive proposition because the focus of health care has always been on curing and caring for the sick. It is much more efficient to on prevent as much of the illness as possible. Of course, many modern diseases have occupational and environmental causes. To prevent these, we need to prevent exposure to the toxic chemicals that make our 20th century world go round. It is also true that there is a definite link between fitness and health. Publicly owned recreation and fitness centres, affordable and accessible to all, are a crucial component of an illness prevention program. This does not mean heavy duty workouts and a nation of body builders. Even mild and medium intensity aerobics can do wonders for hypertension and stress. It may not be the solution for everyone, but it is a service governments should provide. The city should not enter into any agreement that erects a barrier to full participation in the west end recreation complex.

I often think that of all the things I should be thankful for, being alive ought to top the list. Usually, this is accompanied by the smart remark that if I had known I'd last this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. As I write this, though, I am thinking of the trucks that are multiplying and filling the highways. I've been driving in and out of Toronto for a little over eight years now. Some of my work duties take me into other distant parts of the province. I put around 50,000 kilometres a year onto my car, and try to make peace with the environment in other ways. Composting, rain barrels, no chemicals on the lawn, no littering. Things like that, I hope, may compensate for the fossil fuels I burn relentlessly in my quest to bring increased health and safety to the workers and workplaces of Ontario. When my marks are drawn up on the ecological balance sheet, I want them to be on the positive side of the ledger. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the desire to leave this world in a fit condition for my kids, nieces, and nephews to grow old in. They are one of the big reasons I should be thankful for being alive. They are a treat to have around.

This was brought home with a bang this evening as I sat at the side of the 401 waiting for an OPP cruiser to arrive. The bang was produced by a Ford Windstar smacking the rear end of my little Neon. It had been hit in the rear by a huge flatbed truck carrying enormous cement beams. In the stop and go of life in the centre lane of the 401, I stopped behind the car in front of me. The van stopped behind the car in front of it, which was me. The truck was still going when it tried to occupy the same bit of road as the van. It caved in the rear end of the Windstar and shoved it forward into my four-wheeled bank loan. The truck was left spouting steam and radiator fluid all over the pavement. No one was hurt and my car doesn't appear to be damaged much. But from the look of the van, had the truck been moving five miles an hour faster when it hit, the poor man and woman in it could have been killed. Had the van been in front of me, and I behind it, I likely wouldn't be writing this tonight. Which is why I am thinking that being alive is considerably better than the alternative.

In all my years of driving, I've seen lots of collisions and snarled up traffic, but was never an unhappy participant. Until now. What I've noticed over the years is that the more they widen the roads, the more traffic appears to fill them up again. Since the rail system was cut back in the Mulroney years, more goods are being hauled on trucks. Since funding for public transportation was cut back, more passenger cars are being used. It is a foolish way to move people, goods and services around a country as large as ours, and one of these days - sooner rather than later - we are going to have to find a better way of doing it. We can't keep peering out of this hand basket and wondering where we are going. But that's material for another column. Right now, it's Thanksgiving, and I am giving thanks.

Rumours of the impending demise of the New Democratic Party received a firm blow last week. Now that the election in Manitoba is over, the NDP holds government in three western provinces and the Yukon and the official opposition in Nova Scotia. The real question is not whether the NDP will survive. Of course it will. The hot debate nowadays is on the direction the NDP should take. Should it follow the "third way" charted by Tony Blair and the British Labour Party? Should it reclaim its place as the voice of working people, farmers, the unemployed, the poor and the dispossessed? Most of the political commentators who gleefully stood at the cemetery gates waiting for the hearse to carry in the Party's dissolute corpse are now urging it onto this third way. Where they couldn't strike a fatal wound with malicious commentary, they now try to do so with kind advice.

The logic behind their arguments appears to be rather compelling to some of the people who lead the Party at its various levels, and those employed to guide them on policy development. Tony Blair led the British Labour Party away from labour, into the centre, and won an election. In Saskatchewan, Roy Romanow has long been an advocate of the rightward shift, and he won an election, albeit with a tight minority. Gary Doer portrayed himself as a fiscal conservative and won a majority in Manitoba. Glen Clark fought for British Columbia fishery workers and tried to stop American nuclear testing in Nanoose Bay. He was hounded from office by a media that smelled blood. It's easy. Move towards the political centre, or even slightly right of centre, and your future will be bright. Bob Rae is never mentioned, because he muddies up the logic. He was elected in 1990 on a good platform that included public auto insurance. He abandoned it in his rightward drift, and was turfed out in 1995 in the wake of his anti-labour social contract.

There is another forgotten part of the argument. In Britain, for longer than I've been alive, the Labour and Conservative Parties have been the only game in town. The same is generally true in BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Party names may be different, but the result is usually the same. When the electorate wants to put one out, they bring in the other. The point is that while policy is an important part of defining a Party, it is a smaller part of electability.

The federal NDP should remember this as it goes through the unnecessary anguish of trying to reposition itself closer to the centre of Canadian politics. It is not the British Labour Party. It does not have a historical tradition as the alternate governing Party. Drifting towards the right will not be the cure for what ails it. There are already enough Parties competing on that ground. The Canadian business community, large and small, have their fair share of friends and spokespeople in Parliament. They don't need any more, and won't change their voting patterns just because the NDP is flirting with them. The NDP has to reaffirm its commitment to the workers, the unemployed, the poor and dispossessed. These are the people who will lose a political voice if the New Democrats don't stand foursquare on their side. Who else will speak in Parliament for the environment, peace, disarmament and human rights if the NDP doesn't? Politics is about building social movements, empowering people, and keeping important issues on the public agenda. It's good to win elections whenever possible, but winning isn't everything. More important is how we play the game.

One of these days a biographer will delve into Mike Harris' early years and uncover why he hates teachers so much. He is still trying to pick needless fights with them. At issue now is his plan to force teachers to take competency tests. On the face of it, this has the innocent ring of most carefully crafted public relations exercises. We all want children to get the best education possible. Incompetent teachers get in the way of this goal, so root them out. Sounds fine. The trouble is that the problems in our education system are much too complex to allow for such an easy solution.

Harris, one of Ontario's most anti-intellectual premiers ever, made a successful career by presenting simplistic answers to complicated questions. What he's not telling us is that teachers, like other workers, are constantly subjected to performance reviews by their employers. Having been one himself, Harris knows from first hand experience that school boards have effective procedures to deal with incompetent teachers. The new Minister of Education, Janet Ecker, is still unable to say exactly what form the proposed competency tests will take. She said they will not be "pencil and paper" tests, but couldn't say what they will be. She says she wants to consult with teachers and other stakeholders before any decision is finalized. This is good news. Previous experiences with the Harris government showed they were unwilling to consult with the people affected by their decisions. I hope they don't just talk. The government must also listen, and take into account the implications of their agenda on the people involved. Stakeholders usually have extensive knowledge to bring to the table.

Such is the case with teacher testing. The union representing public high school teachers researched how it has worked in other jurisdictions. A complete report will be made public in a couple of months, but preliminary findings have been released. The researchers found that "in every case where a jurisdiction initiated teacher testing, the instrument was simply a knowledge-based test. In almost every instance, the tests have been abandoned because they failed to produce any significant evidence that linked their results to teacher effectiveness." As union president Earl Manners said, "no single test in the world can tell parents what their child has learned, how well they have learned it and how well they can apply their learning to the real world. At the same time, no single test will determine the capabilities, strengths and excellence of individual teachers."

If the government really wants competent teachers, it must reverse the school board amalgamations and restore local, democratic control to the system. It must also restore full funding to public education and allow teachers, during working hours, to attend training programs to keep themselves up to speed on new instructional methods and changes to the curriculum. The students who began grade nine last week will be the first to complete a new four-year high school program. With the cancellation of the OAC year, the school curriculum was redrafted. The Ministry of Education set new learning objectives for grades nine and ten. The problem is that the new material was not completed on time, and teachers have not been supplied with the material they need to teach it. Teachers would never ask a student to write a test on material not taught. How can we expect hem to deliver a curriculum they have not yet been given? We tell our children that learning is a life-long process. We must use the same philosophy when developing competent teachers.

Every year about 30,000 people arrive in Canada claiming refugee status. Just under half the claims are accepted, which means that most of them are tossed back out. Despite this, the brain trust running the Reform Party continues to believe that Canada is being taken advantage of. They want us to think the country is being flooded with illegal immigrants and fraudulent refugees. Recently, two ships carrying Chinese citizens were seized off the coast of British Columbia, putting the Reformists into a frenzy. They stepped up their campaign to tighten our immigration policy and called for the immediate deportation of all the people on board the two ships. In a press release, Leon Benoit, their parliamentary immigration critic, said we need to make it "more expedient to deport illegal immigrants."

With deep thinkers like this in charge, it is no wonder Reform's support in opinion polls is dropping like a stone. I believe most Canadians were left with a bad taste in their mouths after seeing how badly the Chinese migrants were treated. When the reality of what we saw on television is compared to the callous utterances of the Reformists, the conclusion to draw is that our refugee policy is already tough enough, thank you very much. Children, including an eight-year-old girl, were forcibly separated from their parents. Dozens of children, including some 12-year-old girls, were strip searched by police officers. They have been transported to and from court in handcuffs. Of the 137 passengers on one ship, 57 were quickly declared ineligible to claim refugee status. They are now under a deportation order. How anyone in their ideologically right mind can portray this as being soft on illegal immigrants is beyond me.

Then again, they only get their collective knickers in a knot when the claimants come from places like China or India. A few years ago, the ruckus was all about some Sikhs who landed off the shore of Nova Scotia. Then, as now, the bigots among us raised a clamour about people jumping the queue and taking advantage of our liberal good nature. All the fuss is just a smokescreen designed to confuse the issue and hide the fact that many Reformists are upset by the changing nature of immigrants and refugees. The flow is no longer composed predominantly of nice Western European families, or people running away from the Soviet bloc. So it has to be stopped, and incidents such as the British Columbia boat seizures are used as ammunition to achieve this goal.

In fact, we have procedures in place to handle situations such as this. Immigrants have to go through a rigorous application process designed to keep out the poor and needy and open the door for entrepreneurs. The applications have to be filed from outside the country. The passengers on those boats did exactly what all other refugee claimants do. They arrived at our border and asked for safe haven. Once this happens, a chain of events is set in motion. Stories and backgrounds are checked. Some people will stay and some will not. It happens 30,000 times a year, 82 times a day. It is no big deal. The people who own and operate the ships should be treated the same as any other smuggler. They should be charged and, if convicted, jailed. The passengers on the ships should be treated the same as any other refugee. Fairly, and with dignity. They should not be strip searched, handcuffed, separated from family members or otherwise humiliated. And the experience should not be blown out of proportion to serve some bigoted political agenda.

Mike Harris emerged from the Premiers' Conference last week looking for all the world like the cat that pretended to eat the canary. He went down to Quebec City determined to convince the rest of Canada to adopt his tax cutting program and he came home declaring that he had been successful. What else would he say? He understands that in the world of politics, perceptions are more important than realities. He needed to create the perception that he has placed tax cuts on the federal agenda in order to disguise the reality that he had failed miserably to do so. In fact, he had two other premiers - Ralph Klein and Lucien Bouchard - on side when he went in to the meeting and only those two when he came out. The ten other provincial and territorial leaders, representing all three major political parties, spoke against tax cuts and wanted increased federal transfer payments for social programs. Being a congenial crowd, and realizing that the federal government doesn't really care what they think, the premiers adopted a final statement asking for both. Less taxes and more spending.

The reality behind these positions is not hard to see. Most provinces depend on federal taxes. Provincial income taxes are tied to the federal rate. A federal reduction results in an automatic drop in provincial revenue and they simply can't afford it. Their ability to sustain their social obligations has already been undermined by reductions in federal transfer payments. They know that less taxes to Ottawa means less cash flow for themselves. They need a strong central government with the power to collect and distribute the money needed to guarantee that all Canadians enjoy the same standard of health care and other benefits. For Harris, Bouchard and Klein, a strong central government is exactly what they don't want. Bouchard would like to see federal taxation in Quebec reduced to zero. For their part, Harris and Klein view Ottawa as an obstacle to their goal of privatizing health care facilities.

The fact of the matter is that the call for tax cuts is a smokescreen. It has nothing to do with creating jobs or strengthening the economy. If the Ontario economy is recovering to any extent, it is doing so because the North American economy in general is on an upswing. Capitalist economies, based on market forces and cut throat competition, do this. They go through boom and bust cycles. Just as the NDP government didn't cause the recession of the early nineties, but did suffer the consequences of it, the Tories didn't cause the recovery of the late nineties. It is worth noting that while Harris was promoting tax reduction as a one size fits all economic solution, there was a high profile protest against poverty and homelessness in Toronto. While corporations are doing well and their highly paid executives are enjoying lower taxes, people continue to suffer.

This is what Harris' economic program is all about. He as much as admitted it in Quebec City when he coupled his demand for lower taxes with a call for smaller government. A smaller and weaker central government cannot control either social programs or corporations. In his first term, Harris removed most of the labour relations, environmental and other regulations that occasionally forced companies to consider the social consequences of business decisions. He also did as much as he could to weaken our education and health care systems. Now he wants to ensure that no future government, either federal or provincial, can undo the damage he has done. To their credit, most of the other premiers didn't go along with him.

Another election, another example of why we need electoral reform. It happens all the time. Last week, Nova Scotia Conservatives won over 55 per cent of available seats with less than 40 per cent of the popular vote. The New Democrats took second place, winning 23 per cent of the seats with 30 per cent of the vote, and the Liberals came away with 21 percent of the seats with only a tenth of a per cent fewer votes than the NDP. This experience mirrors just about every election ever held in our country, either federally or provincially. I can't think of any case where a Party won a majority government with a majority vote. As a result, no government ever reflects the preference of the people it is supposed to represent.

The cause of this contradiction between what the people want and what they get is our "first past the post" parliamentary system. A simple plurality wins the day. This means that in every Riding, the candidate who receives the most votes wins. It doesn't need to be a majority, which is 50 per cent plus one of the total votes cast. The political parties themselves elect their leaders under a system in which a majority vote is required. This usually results in a series of run off elections with the low vote getter dropping off the ballot. One solution to the skewed results we always get in our elections would be to transfer a modified version of this system to the public arena. France conducts run off votes in presidential elections. A series of run off elections in ridings across the country or province would be both expensive and time consuming. Some countries such as Australia, the Republic of Ireland, and Malta get around this by having voters declare their preferences on the ballot. Instead of a single X for a single candidate, they mark their first choice, second choice, third choice and so on. If no one gets a clear majority of first choice votes, the last place candidate is removed. All first choice ballots for that person are then reassigned to the second choice. This continues until a winner is eventually declared.

An obvious flaw in this voting method is that the result is still heavily weighted in favour of the established parties. There is little opportunity for small fish to survive in the same pond as the big ones. A significant number of Canadians support what are generally, and somewhat derisively, referred to as "fringe parties." With a system of proportional representation, these people would have the opportunity to have their views represented in the legislatures of the country. There are several variations of proportional representation, but in general, any party receiving a minimum threshold of support, usually around two or three per cent, is guaranteed an equivalent amount of seats in the legislature. Under one formula, there are twice as many members elected as there are electoral districts. Voters in each riding elect a candidate as we do now, plus declare a Party preference. An equal number of members are then selected from lists provided in advance by the Parties. In both Nova Scotia and Ontario, this formula would have produced minority governments more reflective of the popular vote. The last Ontario election would also have given one or two seats each to the Green Party and the Family Coalition Party. That would have been a much fairer outcome than the one we got. Some of the most productive governments we have ever had were minorities. With proportional representation, we could have this all the time.

Who should have priority when it comes to parking on residential streets? Should it be the people who live there, or customers of area businesses? This question was placed before the city's planning, works and environment committee last week, and the committee answered in favour of the residents. They decided to put a two-hour parking limit on McTague St., confounding plans of staff and customers of Woolwich St. businesses to use the street as a free parking lot. Considering the way the problem was laid out, this was the only outcome the committee could have reached. It is not quite as simple as this, though. There is a much deeper issue involved than a squabble between residents and businesses. It is time we started to challenge the accepted belief that people can use their cars whenever they please and park as close to their destination as physically possible. This is not the case anymore. We don't have room for such luxuries, and we don't have the resources to sustain this way of life. We have to look at the environmental consequences of the things we do. When going downtown, leave your car at home. Take a bus or take a walk. You'll feel better, and mother earth will thank you for it.

Another issue at the heart of this problem is traffic calming. People living in the downtown core have as much right as anyone to enjoy peace and quiet without having cars roaring up and down the street, looking for a short cut to somewhere else or hunting for a convenient parking spot. This is as much a problem on Alice and Alma streets as it is on McTague. We have to control our dependency on automobiles, and get out of the habit of letting the needs of drivers prevail over those of communities. To do this, city council needs to get away from dealing with problems as they arise and develop a comprehensive transit plan. If they don't, the city will choke on its own growth.

The other side of this coin is the price of gasoline. Most people want to pay as little as possible when filling up. Of course, we also want to pay as little as possible when buying milk, renting a video or getting any of the other things we think we need. I should admit that on a normal working day I drive a hundred klicks in and another hundred back out. There are piles more miles added as part of getting my job done. Despite all this, I believe gasoline should be priced high enough to discourage the casual use of cars in favour of more sensible ways of moving around. Like most people, I was annoyed when the price jumped overnight by ten cents a litre. This is because the jump was all for the benefit of oil companies. The government would be afraid to put another ten cent tax on gas. Previous ones have fallen because of such a tax hike. Yet they are equally afraid to challenge the oil companies when they bump up the price. We can't have it both ways. We can't have cheap gas and a healthy environment. Taxes at the pump should be set high enough to pay for highways and other consequences of driving. At the same time, we cannot have an unregulated oil industry. Price increases initiated by them should be justified ahead of time to a public regulatory authority.

Parking and driving, crowded roads and clean air, are all part of the same problem. It's not between residents and businesses. It's a matter of our today and our children's tomorrow.

In Canada, we have devised a smoothly working division of responsibility between several layers of government. When things go the way they should, our school board makes decisions about what happens in the classroom. This leaves city council free to look after municipal issues such as whether or not citizens can buy a bottle of single malt on Sundays. The provincial government concentrates on ensuring that newly constructed overpasses have the correct number of entrance and exit lanes while the feds study the implications of scrapping the Canadian dollar in favour of the American version. As a rule, this works well, and Canadians happily hand over the taxes needed to keep it all going.

Every once in a while, though, one government throws a spanner into the works by overstepping its bounds. A couple of weeks ago, city council did this by endorsing a resolution calling for the return of prayers to the classrooms of the public school system. The reasoning behind this is that violence has increased in schools since bible readings and other prayers were dropped. I am not terribly agitated by the fact that council has stepped outside its jurisdiction. In the past, I have celebrated every time a city declared itself a nuclear weapons free zone, for example. Such a declaration had no legal effect, but it did allow councilors to make a political point. That's what they've done this time. The unfortunate thing is that on the school prayer issue, there is absolutely no logical basis for their position. Nuclear weapons did make the world unsafe, and we were right to fight against them. School prayers will not make the classrooms any less violent.

Schools were always violent places. I attended Catholic schools in England where teachers eagerly watched for opportunities to take time out from catechism class to whack students with bamboo canes. I had the opportunity to spend one year in a Montreal area high school under the tutelage of Christian Brothers. They scorned the use of canes, finding their fists much more effective. I vividly remember one time when I made what I though to be a hilariously witty wise crack in the middle of a geometry class, only to be rewarded with a stunning crack to the side of my head. Those brothers all claimed to be Christians, and they insisted that we all said our daily prayers.

Teachers are not allowed to be as abusive today as they were back then, and it is a constant goal to reduce whatever levels of violence still exist. Bringing back the Lord's Prayer, however, will not get us any closer to that goal. If anything, it will get us further away from it. Just think of all the wars fought over the centuries that were rooted in religion. From the Crusades to Kosovo we have had Christians fighting Muslims, Muslims fighting Jews, Hindus fighting Sikhs, Catholics fighting Protestants. Through it all, they kept up their prayers as they went to their churches, synagogues and mosques.

Levels of violence only decrease when there is an increase in tolerance for other beliefs, other forms of spirituality. Our public schools are not just attended by children from Christian families. There are students from all the religions of the world, as well as some who practice no religion at all. Each and every one of them has the right to feel at home in the classroom, and the right not to have someone else's beliefs take priority over their own. It is tragic that the majority of our city councilors don't understand this.

Sometime soon, city council should devise a plan for controlling traffic as it flows through the various parts of Guelph. Then it should stick to it. At the moment, it appears to be a somewhat hit and miss affair. It is, at best, inconsistent. Recent examples to consider are the widening of Woolwich St. from Speedvale to Woodlawn and the cloverleaf intersection at the Wellington St. exit from the Hanlon. It is too late now to do anything about the Hanlon extravaganza, but this project embodies all the worst things about road design and traffic control. The Woolwich St. widening, on the other hand, gives councilors lots of opportunity to ensure that the city grows in an orderly and "people friendly" way.

I don't see any reason at all to widen Woolwich St. It is already four lanes, two in each direction. There is no reason for any street within the boundaries of any city to be any wider. Council appears to have recognized this with their decision a couple of weeks ago to add this section of Woolwich to the list included in their official plan for a greenway system within the city. This is a system that considers the need to provide links between streets based on visual, historical and ecological principles, as well as the needs of pedestrians and cyclists. In a unanimous vote, the councilors recognized that the problem with Woolwich St. is one of design, not width. This long stretch of street provides access to some residences, but is mostly dominated by Riverside Park and a concentration of businesses. Its final design should complement the scenic and restful nature of the park and provide smooth access to the businesses and homes along the way.

Smooth access does not mean speedy access. This was the mistake the city made at the west end of Wellington St., and one which the inclusion of Woolwich St. into the official greenway plan should allow us to avoid. The secret to controlling traffic flow is not to make it easier for cars to move quickly from one part of the city to another. It has been shown in case after case that this approach only results in more cars using the roads, and street congestion is never eased. The intersection of Wellington St. and the Hanlon has long been the scene of many collisions as drivers push the limits set by the traffic lights. With an overpass, the problems caused by impatient motorists will only be shifted a little bit eastward to Edinburgh Rd. Then the pressure will be on city council to widen the street and move the problem down to the corner of Gordon St. The root of this problem is that the Hanlon was a poorly designed mistake right from the moment it was conceived. A bad situation is being made worse as a result of poor planning and a wrong-headed approach to controlling traffic flow.

This does not need to happen on Woolwich St. We can take an example from the widening of the Gordon St. hill where the character of the neighbourhood did not suffer, although a number of fine old trees did. One lane in each direction, with turning lanes in the middle and bicycle lanes at the edges can keep cars moving efficiently and safely. Trees, shrubs and grass boulevards should be used to break up the unrelenting stretch of pavement on the west side of Woolwich from the plaza to the beer store. With a little bit of thoughtful planning, this rather garish stretch of road could easily be turned into a reasonably pleasant place to do business.

After a hard fought election campaign, we should always take time to congratulate the winner, and to thank all the candidates who competed for our affection. I would like to do that now. Until the last minute, I was reading the writing on the wall and loudly predicting that Brenda Elliott would be defeated. I must have been looking at the wrong wall. Last Thursday, more than half the voters charged out from behind her wall and mugged the Liberals and the NDP, both of whom had run much higher profile and energetic campaigns.

In the months leading up to the election, and all the way through it, there was a lot of talk around the province about "strategic voting." This was the idea that people opposed to the Harris government should vote for the candidate with the best chance of defeating a Tory incumbent. At times, this sounded like a good idea. The trouble is that it wasn't. Here in Guelph, both the Liberals and NDP had good reasons to see themselves as the logical choice for strategic voters. Recover Ontario, a provincial organization set up for this purpose, endorsed Bruce Abel as the one to vote for. But when their lawn signs arrived, they were in the hands of local nurses who were boosting Wayne Hyland's campaign. There was a lot of anguish in both camps as potential supporters sat back, looking for the signs to prove either Abel or Hyland was winning and that they could safely park their votes in the appropriate spot. In the end, though, it didn't make any difference. Every Liberal supporter in town could have voted for Abel. Elliott would still have won. She ran an almost invisible campaign and cruised to victory on Mike Harris' coat tails. Harris himself was riding on an economic recovery originating outside Ontario. Tory candidates just happened to be hanging out in the right place at the right time.

Strategic voting turned out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, a diversion that produced results in just two or three ridings. It can only work if the leaders of the political parties involved want to make it work. Hampton's people and McGuinty's people would have to get together over drinks and carve up the ridings with Tory incumbents. They'd have to agree that one Party would run in these, and the other would run in those. Lacking such a formal arrangement, we have a strategy without a plan. A fine looking cart, but no horse to pull it. The trouble is that if the plan could be hatched, democracy would be weakened. Either the Liberal or the NDP riding association would be told to stand aside, that it's right to nominate a candidate had been usurped by the higher ups. We would effectively have a two Party system in a multi-Party environment. In the long run, we would all suffer as a result.

What we really need is a system of proportional representation under a formula that allocates legislative seats according to the percentage of popular vote received in an election. This is the prevailing practice in the majority of democratic countries around the world. Our "first past the post" parliamentary system consistently produces majority governments that are not supported by the majority of the people. The Liberals benefited from it in 1987, the NDP in 1990, and the Conservatives in 1995 and 1999. The flip side of the coin is that all three have also been burned by it at one time or another. Maybe the time has come to do something about it.

The Ontario Reformatories released Son of the Common Sense Devolution last week and now all the pieces are in place for an election. The parties have built their platforms. Candidates are nominated. The only thing we need is for Harris to name the date. Then we can begin the happy process of replacing this government with one more in tune with the real needs of Ontarians. Their "Blueprint for Ontario" continues their assault on workers, the unemployed and the poor. They will reward their wealthy friends by cutting income taxes by another 20 per cent while slashing government spending by a further billion dollars. They will crack down even harder on welfare recipients. In one of the more bizarre campaign promises we've seen in a long time, they intend to charge rent for time spent in provincial jails. How long will it take until we are overrun by a horde of thugs applying for welfare after they've been evicted from the slammer for non-payment of their rent?

Were it not for the damage they've done, the Tory program would be laughable. Unfortunately, we've seen the damage caused by the first round of tax cuts. Homelessness is on the rise, poverty is deepening, and municipalities are starved for the money they need to provide the services we need. Municipal taxes and fees have gone up as a direct consequence of provincial irresponsibility. Our education system is in a shambles, and hospitals across the province are being shut down at an alarming rate. There has never been another government in the history of Ontario that has caused so much damage for no reason other than to line the pockets of its friends.

The time has come to stop them in their tracks, and next month we'll get the chance to do it. In Guelph, we will replace Brenda Elliott. Reliable rumours around town indicate that even the Tories can read this writing on the wall. They know their goose is cooked, and local conservatives are hoping for a minority government so they can have another shot at victory in a year or two. If public opinion polls are any indication, they may get their wish. Two weeks ago, an Angus Reid poll had the Liberals ahead. Last week, a National Post poll had the Tories narrowly ahead. Both showed increasing support for the NDP. Angus Reid had them up one point to 15 per cent, the Post had them up another three points to 18 per cent. In previous elections, Liberal support always slipped during the campaign while NDP support grew. This will happen again this year.

The public's perception of the NDP and its leader went up dramatically in the wake of the Toronto transit strike. Mike Harris and his Minister of Labour were set to prolong the dispute for at least a week while imposing a settlement that neither side really wanted. The Liberal leader supported Harris, and attacked the NDP for not bowing down to the government's bullying. Meanwhile, Howard Hampton called both sides into his office and facilitated a settlement acceptable to everyone. He took a very difficult situation and acted in the way the Premier should have done. Except that Harris lacks the ability to solve problems. He only knows how to create them.

There will be a couple of other columns between now and the election in which we can discuss local alternatives to Brenda Elliott. Before we go any further though, our ever cautious editor wants Mike and me to declare our own loyalties. Sadly, I'm out of room. Can I keep you guessing for a couple of weeks?

On Thursday of this week, people around the world hold special events to mark Earth Day. On Wednesday of next week, we commemorate the National Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. As we learn more about the causes of occupational diseases, the two events become increasingly linked. In the past few decades, thousands of new chemicals were developed for use in the manufacturing of everyday consumer products. The vast majority were never tested for their health effects on the workers who would turn them into automobile dashboards, vinyl window blinds, crease-resistant clothes or any of the other modern conveniences we take for granted. It wasn't until the workers began suffering from a wide variety of cancers, often twenty or more years after exposure, that questions began to be asked. Mortality studies on workers identified all but one of the carcinogens commonly found in our society. The one exception is cigarette smoke.

The dramatic proliferation of hazardous products and by-products is killing people. The deaths are not just in workplaces. They are also being suffered by people in communities around them. The toxins used to manufacture goods do not stay inside the plant gates. They seep into the ground, drift into the air, leech into the water systems. It has reached the point where the World Health Organization now estimates that 90 per cent of all cancers are environmentally induced, and most have industrial origins. Last year, the National Cancer Institute reported a 30 per cent increase in cancer over the past decade and predicts an even more dramatic increase over the next decade. Cancer is now the number one killer of men and women between the ages of 45 and 65.

Next week, on the Day of Mourning, we remember the men and women who fell victim to this horrible disease through workplace exposure. We should also remember their family members, the children who contracted leukemia, the spouses who were exposed to carcinogens brought home inside the bodies of their loved ones, or on their clothes. We have to dedicate ourselves to finding safe substitutes for the poisons we are forced to inhale every day at work.

This week, on Earth Day, we commit to creating a cleaner environment. This must go beyond the traditional platitudes about reducing and reusing and recycling. It is something we should learn to live by each and every day of our lives. It makes no sense to have recycled yard waste waiting at the curbside while a tanker truck is parked there spraying chemicals all over the lawn. We don't need to spray away the insects and weeds and other little things that bother us.

Research reported recently in New Scientist magazine found that Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has risen by 73 per cent in the US since 1973, is probably caused by several commonly used crop sprays. Target, manufactured by the Swiss firm Novartis, and Round-Up, produced by Monsanto, are mentioned as the most commonly used herbicides. In a bizarre twist, Monsanto has also developed a genetically modified strain of soya beans resistant to the chemicals in Round-Up, allegedly so they can kill the weeds without bothering the beans. The trouble is that eating them affects your immune system. But then, Monsanto's pharmaceutical arm will be happy to supply the drugs to fix that.

There are only three things that people absolutely need to live: food, water and air. We have managed to poison all three in our desperate pursuit of a higher standard of living. It is time to get off this treadmill. Stop poisoning our workers, and stop spraying our lawns.

Sometimes, it appears as though the world has lost touch with reality, that values have become skewed. Last week, they arrested a man in New Jersey and charged him with messing up corporate e-mail systems. He is accused of creating and distributing a computer virus that generated multiple copies of a message and automatically sent it to the first 50 names in a recipient's address book. If convicted, he could be sentenced to as much as 40 years in prison, plus a fine of almost half a million US dollars. Granted, what he did caused a major inconvenience to corporate computer networks, but it's not as though he'd killed someone. If he had, he'd probably be looking at something closer to 20 years, and no fine. Unless, of course, he did his killing under orders from his government. For that, he'd get a medal.

There are a lot of medals to be won over in Serbia these days. The United States and other NATO countries have been raining terror on the people of that sorry country for two weeks now, and there is no end in sight. Not even Easter could halt the bombing. Smart bombs, as the military loves to call them, blow up police headquarters and shake up a hospital maternity ward. Our newspapers show pictures of Belgrade in flames, and the fire is supposed to warm our hearts. All the while, we listen to the steady drone of military spokespeople, government defense ministers and other masters of doublespeak. They all sing the same tune as they smugly revel in the colossal might and firepower of the combined NATO countries. The killing, they say, is part of a humanitarian mission. They level buildings, blow up bridges and scorch the earth so they can save the country from terrorists. People are fleeing the war zone in the hundreds of thousands. NATO says they are fleeing the Serbian army. The Serbs say they are fleeing NATO bombs. The truth is probably a little bit of both.

It is a nasty business, and Canada should not be involved. Our armed forces built up a lot of credibility around the world as peacekeepers. Under the Mulroney and Chretien governments, this ability to act for peace has been badly compromised. First by the Gulf war, then by a repeat Iraq attack, and now by sending Canadian bomber pilots over Belgrade. They have fallen into a pattern of slavishly following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. They are not the world's policemen. It is not for them to choose who will govern Iraq, Serbia or any other country. That is something for the people themselves to decide.

If their intentions are truly humanitarian, the NATO governments would be spending their money on aid projects rather than on missiles. A couple of MacDonald's franchises and some Celine Dion records would sap the Serbian will to resist much more quickly than the bombs and missiles which just seem to solidify it. This wouldn't be a lot more humanitarian, but fewer people would die as a result. But that's not what it's all about. The carnage in Serbia is about pride, and saving face. The Serbian government will not allow the Albanians in Kosovo to gain their independence. The American government will not allow the Serbians to defy their orders. So people die.

David Smith created a computer virus because he could. NATO is bombing Serbia because it can. David Smith is a villain. NATO is humanitarian. Given a choice, I'll take the computer virus. But in a world turned upside down, none of us get to make these choices.

Tuition fees at Ontario universities have risen 71 per cent in the last five years. Statistics Canada says that our province now has the second highest undergraduate arts tuition rate in Canada - an average $3,564 this year. When you add the cost of books and other living expenses to this, the result is staggering. The cost of a university education is exceeding most people's ability to pay. According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average cost for an eight-month school year, for a full-time student attending a post-secondary institution is estimated at $16,000. The average debt load is $25,000 for a four-year undergraduate degree.

It doesn't take an economics major to figure out that these costs are resulting in overwhelming debt loads for the individual students and their families. In fact, those who take out a student loan are now taking much longer than ever to repay their debt. In 1986, 40 per cent of graduates repaid their loans within two years, while only 17 per cent of 1995 graduates could do so. The situation is harder for women than it is for men. Their debt load is $1,000 higher while their incomes after graduation are about $3,700 less. About 20 per cent of women claim to have difficulty repaying these loans, compared with 15 per cent of men.

A woman in Ottawa has taken her debt load to court, claiming that recent amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act discriminate against young people. I don't think it is generally a good idea to fight what are essentially political issues in the courts. These challenges don't often win, and they tie up a lot of time, money and energy arguing legal points. It is obviously unfair to set different rules for student indebtedness than for other business or personal debts, but going to court is not the answer. Some lawyers will win, but students won't.

The real problem is that debt loads shouldn't be so high in the first place. Right off the top, the GST ought not be charged on books and magazines. Whether it is a compulsory text book or a Danielle Steele novel bought at the corner store, there should not be a tax on literacy. This was one of many Liberal Red Book promises from the 1993 election that died on the vine after the election. Removing the GST from books would be a symbolic gesture towards reducing student debt.

Reductions in federal transfer payments to the provinces have had a much deeper effect on the cost of post-secondary education. Since the early 1980s, federal governments have attacked the deficit by abrogating their central role in protecting and financing social programs. It is not a coincidence that in the same period, tuition fees rose a whopping 115 per cent while average family income rose only 1 per cent after adjusting for inflation. As we move more deeply into the electronic age, our futures are tied more and more to the general level of knowledge of the members of our community. This doesn't just mean technical knowledge. The humanities, our knowledge of history, culture, literature and other arts play a crucial role in ensuring that scientific knowledge is used for our benefit. Government funding for post secondary education is an affirmation of the future of our country.

Restoration of full funding will have other benefits as well. It will mean that graduates can begin contributing productively much sooner, instead of being enslaved to the chartered banks for up to ten years. It will also help the university get out of the gravel pit and shopping mall businesses.

There is going to be a provincial election in the early summer. Almost all the indications are in place, and the only thing we don't know yet is the exact day for it. Some predictions are for early June, to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the dark day in 1995 when the Harris Reformatories were first elected. Others are predicting an election call next month for a vote in mid-May. Whenever it comes, it is going to be a quick, down and dirty battle for the future of Ontario.

A public opinion poll released a couple of weeks ago indicates that Ontario voters are split almost evenly between the Conservatives and the Liberals, with the NDP in third place. At the same time, the most important issues identified in the poll were health care and education, the same two issues on which almost 60 per cent of Ontarians disapprove of the government's performance. The outcome of this election will depend entirely on how the vote splits up between the Liberals and the NDP.

For about six months now, there has been a lot of talk about "strategic voting" in the next election. This is the idea that if we can just predict which Party in any given Riding has the best chance of beating a Tory incumbent, we should bite the bullet and support it. In some Ridings, this would mean Liberals voting for the NDP, and in others it means NDP supporters voting Liberal. This is the sort of idea that sounds fine on an emotional level, but breaks down in practice. In the final result, we would allow a polling company to make up our minds for us. We would support whomever the polls have in the lead, and the whole thing would become circular, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Strategic voting would only work if the two opposition Parties could get together and not run competing candidates in selected Ridings. This isn't likely to happen in our lifetime.

It certainly isn't happening in Guelph. If it were, the Liberals wouldn't be planning a nomination meeting. The NDP have had a candidate in the field since last summer who has all the credentials to be able to defeat Brenda Elliott. He is a retired teacher, and many of his former students are now voters. He is well respected by the teachers' unions that will play a key role in the campaign, and by other community organizations in town. He has strong positions on health care, education, jobs, the environment and labour law. He recognizes the many good things accomplished while the NDP held the government, and is not blind to the tragic mistakes it made, such as the disastrous Social Contract. But the Liberals continue to search among themselves for a third candidate to put up against Bruce Abel and Brenda Elliott. It is obvious that for them, strategic voting is nothing more or less than a campaign ploy, code language for "vote Liberal."

Indications are that the Liberals will finally make their minds up about a candidate later in March. This could give them less than a month to get ready for an election call. The Conservatives were shown to be weakened and divided when my colleague to the right almost charged off into a mini coup d'etat. Regardless of what happens in the rest of the province, the Conservatives could easily lose in Guelph. The Liberals are staggering along in a sea of indecisiveness. This leaves only one option remaining for an effective and very strategic vote.

Eugene Debs has been dead a year longer than I've been alive. If he were still around, the American union leader would take a look at us, shake his head, and say "I told you so." During one of the railway strikes early in this century, Debs said that if a man steals a loaf of bread, he'll be put in jail; if he steals a railway, he'll be put in the Senate. The larger the theft, the bigger the political reward.

Ever since Paul Martin returned a bit of what he's taken from us over the years, he's been praised for saving our health care. To listen to the pundits and commentators out there, we should all fall to our knees, thank him profusely, and elect him Prime Minister at our earliest opportunity. Instead of doing this, I think we should cut through the hype generated by last week's federal budget, and look at the facts. We should also look at the budget in the context of the "social union" deal that was reached a couple of weeks earlier.

In the past four years, Martin has taken more than $22 billion out of the provincial transfer payments that fund health care. He now says he will give back $11.5 billion over the next five years. At the same time, he brought in tax relief estimated to give Conrad Black an extra $8,000 a year while someone earning $40,000 a year gets $115. And he did nothing to reverse what is, in reality, the grossest tax grab in Canadian history, the only one applauded by the right wing "tax fighters." This is the billions of dollars taken from the EI surplus and placed into general revenue instead of being returned to the unemployed Canadians it was designed to help.

Needless to say, Mike Harris is very happy with this budget. It further entrenches his drive to reduce the taxes paid by upper income earners, and it reinforces his view that fewer social programs make for a stronger community. The provinces have been trying for a long time to weaken the federal government's ability to control the delivery of social programs. Ottawa had the ability to introduce new programs, and to ensure common standards between the provinces. Program delivery is a provincial responsibility. With the "social union" agreement, Ottawa effectively caved in to provincial pressure and gave away a lot of its power in this arrangement.

One of the forgotten Liberal promises during the last election was to expand our health care system to cover home care and pharmacare. Now they couldn't do it if they wanted to. Under the social union, they can't introduce any new federal programs without the agreement of at least six provinces. This sets the threshold at an impassable level, one which would have denied us the Canada Pension Plan, Unemployment Insurance and the Canada Health Act.

The crisis in health care has been deepening for past two decades. The social union agreement could make it worse. Martin's budget will not fix it. Harris will not reopen any of the hospitals he closed, and the crowded emergency waiting rooms will not suddenly empty out. The private clinics that provide a second health care tier to those with enough money will not go away because of this budget. Our only solution is for governments to stop giving tax breaks to wealthy Canadians, and to force corporations to pay their fair share of the burden. Then we will be able to restore the full funding that will end this crisis once and for all.

The wheels of the greeting card industry are lubricated by a host of "special occasions" upon which we are urged to send messages to the people we care about. One of these is coming up this weekend. Valentine's Day. It is quickly followed by Heritage Day, a relatively new event upon which we think about the traditions and institutions that define us as a nation. The close proximity of these occasions could lead us to consider that the defining characteristic of late 20th century Canadians is consumerism. Concepts like citizenship and democracy, which get in the way of paying down the debt, have been shuffled into the background.

In the spirit of the times then, I am happy to send, figuratively speaking, a potted plant to some of the people who are bucking this trend and trying to lead us back to these lost values. At the same time, a jug of weed killer will go to those people who have planted themselves in the cracks in the path towards a more humane society. They sometimes cause us to stumble and bruise our knees, but they can't turn us away from our goal.

A nice geranium goes out to all the people who raised our awareness about the negative effects big box shopping centres will have on our city. They explained the issue well, they lobbied city council and staff, and they clearly won the fight for public opinion. All of us in Guelph should thank them for their tenacity and admire their organizational ability. Unfortunately, a quietly effective lobby went on behind the scenes, away from public view. The big bucks behind the big boxes convinced some councilors to change their votes. So the jug of weed killer has to go to Norm Jary and Gary Walton. They both stunned council and the visitors' gallery by reversing themselves without any explanation whatsoever.

I think I'll also send a rhododendron each to Maggie Laidlaw and Wayne Hyland. They have both been waiting in the wings for months now, anxious to get the Liberal nomination for the next election. The other two Parties have their candidates out pressing the flesh and generally building profiles. Laidlaw and Hyland would like to do the same. No wonder they are annoyed at the riding association executive for delaying the nomination meeting! The jug of weed killer in this case has to go to those executive movers and shakers. They shouldn't deprive their membership of the chance to choose a candidate just because they don't like the choices in front of them, and are trying to convince someone like Tim Mau to join the race. This shabby treatment of Laidlaw and Hyland is equal to the treatment citizens have come to expect from Liberal governments.

Finally, I'll send a hydrangea bush up to the beleaguered folk in Wiarton who tried to make the best of a bad situation. In a comedy of errors that could have rivaled Monty Python's dead parrot sketch, they replaced Wiarton Willie's decomposing corpse with a more photogenic specimen acquired from the local taxidermist. The jug of weed killer is for the Toronto reporters who tried to turn small town fun into a big city scandal. They were so desperate to manufacture their own little Williegate they forgot the purpose of Groundhog Day is no more, nor less, than bringing a little lightness into the middle of winter, and some tourists to their town. If they can't take a joke, they should just stay home. At least Wiarton didn't need to call out the army to clear its snow.

As is the case with any organization, the Guelph Police Force has had its good moments and its bad ones. I have criticized one of its poorer performances in these pages before. I would still like to see it issue a public apology to the seven women who were subjected to a humiliating and unnecessary strip search after the big protest rally at the Holiday Inn. At the same time, I have seen how well they operate in times of crisis. There are times when we need to have them close by, and they have shown that they can be compassionate, efficient and helpful. There was a time, last summer, when my family needed their help, and they were there, and we thanked them. Rather than express my criticisms publicly and my thanks privately, I'll thank them again now.

The point is that good or bad, they are our police force. The chief of police is hired locally, through the Police Service Board and is accountable to us through the Board's reports to city council. All the police staff, civilian and uniformed, are similarly hired locally and are accountable to the community. Community organizations can ask for a liaison officer to work with them and help iron out problems before they grow out of proportion. They are implementing a neighbourhood policing strategy for Guelph.

The provincial government is pressuring cities of our size to give up this local control of the police force, and contract out the service to the Ontario Provincial Police. A few of the city councilors are behaving as if this is a good idea. They want to spend money on an expensive costing process to find out if it will be cheaper to bring in the OPP and run the show under a Detachment Commander who reports to provincial headquarters in Orillia. Eight of the 12 sitting councilors stated publicly during the last election campaign that they would vote against transferring policing to the province, even if it was shown to be cheaper. Only two, Dan Schnurr and Phil Cumming, said they would be in favour of doing this. Of course, Schnurr and Cumming have shown many times that they don't care what damage they do to the city as long as they can save themselves a couple of tax bucks.

So why would councilors waste money on a costing process that will make no difference? If they are committed to keeping local control of the police force, they should stand up and say so. They should stop this meaningless debate that does nothing but create uncertainty, confusion and division within the police force itself. This is especially so when we consider that the cost of our police force, $128.00 per capita this year, is still well below the 1996 provincial average of $139.

Other cities comparable in size to ours have already dealt with this problem. Kingston chose not to get involved with the cost analysis. Barrie, right next door to the new OPP head office, kept their own police force even though the OPP bid came in lower. The same was true of Timmins. They found there were either hidden costs not disclosed by the OPP, or provincial control would provide fewer officers and civilian staff. Our councilors should learn from, and accept, the experience of these other cities.

They debate this issue again on February 1. Give your ward councilors a call, and tell them we don't need a costing analysis for a proposal that is a non-starter to begin with.

"From the Left"

The 1999 Guelph Tribune columns

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