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Home My WebLink AboutClinton News Record, 2014-09-17, Page 44 News Record • Wednesday, September 17, 2014 www.clintonnewsrecord.com NowsCl Record PUBLISHED WEEKLY — EST. 1860 53 Albert St. P.O. Box 39 Clinton ON NOM 1L0 (519) 482-3443 www.clintonnewsrecord.com SUN MEDIA A Quebecor Media Company MARIE DAVID Sun Media Group Publisher Grey Bruce Huron Division 519-364-2001 or 519-372-4301 NEIL CLIFFORD Publisher neil.clifford@sunmedia.ca MAX BICKFORD Advertising Manager max.bickford@sunmedia.ca TARA OSTNER Reporter clinton.reporter@sunmedia.ca DAWN JOHNSTON Sales Representative clinton.ads@sunmedia.ca SUBSCRIPTION RATES 1 YEAR $50.00 (47.62+2.38 GST) 2YEAR $95.00 (90.48+4.52 GST) SENIORS 60 WEEKS $50.00 (47.62+2.38 GST) 120 WEEKS $95.00 (90.48+4.52 GST) Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a Typographical error, the advertising space occupied by the erroneous Rem together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged but that balance of advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. In the event of a typographic error advertising goods or services ata wrong price, goods or services may not be sold. Ad- vertising is merely an offerto sell, and may be withdrawn at anytime. The Clinton News -Record is not responsible for the loss or damage of unsolicited manuscripts, photos or other materials used for reproducing purposes. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40064683 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 53 Albert St., Clinton ON NOM 1L0 (519)482-3443 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. Canada Aocnal Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association editorial Harper right on NATO spending QMI Agency We're not surprised NATO wants Canada to double military spending from our current $19 bil- lion annually to $38 billion. NATO expects member countries to spend at least 2% of their Gross Domestic Product on defence. In the real world, only a handful of countries, led by the U.S., Britain and France, actually do so out of the 28 member coun- tries in NATO. Canada spends 1% of GDP on its military - about half way down the list of NATO members - and is under pressure from NATO to boost spending. Particularly so in light of Prime Minister Ste- phen Harper's tough talk about Russian President Vladimir Putin's military incursion into Ukraine, and about the threat of global Islamist terrorism. From our point of view, however, Harper is taking the logical approach, which is to negotiate Canada's role in NATO in facing these twin threats, and then drafting a mili- tary budget in Canada to meet them. That may well require more than the $19 billion annually Canada now spends on its military. But raising the budget to $38 billion at one fell swoop, or over a few years, is exactly the wrong way to do things. That's guaranteed to lead to military boondog- gles and wasteful and inefficient spending, just to get the money out the door. Indeed, wasteful, inef- ficient and extravagant military spending is hardly a new phenome- non in Canada, under both the Harper govem- ment and its Liberal predecessor. Harper is also being criticized at home for cutting the military budget by about $2.7 bil- lion, in order to help bring the federal budget into surplus, so he can spend the extra cash on tax cuts. First off, aiming for a balanced budget and reducing the tax burden of Canadians are legiti- mate political goals. Second, the decline in military spending is a logical reflection of the ending of Canada's enor- mously expensive, 10 -year military mission in Afghanistan, which was a NATO operation in which, lest we forget, 158 Canadian soldiers died. Indeed, given the amount of blood and treasure Canada spent during its Afghanistan mission — both in real terms and relative to other NATO members - neither Harper, nor the previous Liberal govemment under which it started, need apologize for our contribu- tions to the NATO alliance. column When a mystery is solved Tara Ostner The Clinton News Record One of the ships from Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition has been found in the waters of Victo- ria Strait off of King William Island and this has many Canadians and people from other parts of the globe talking. Prime Minister Ste- phen Harper has commented on the discovery calling it "a great his- toric event" and Queen Elizabeth expressed her enthusiasm in a message to the Governor General. The two ships of the Franklin expedition and their crews disap- peared in 1845 while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. While there is some evidence to suggest that some of the crew members survived for a short time, eventually all 128 on board died. Since the disappear- ance there have been numerous searches to find the ships but no one could ever solve the mystery. Now, however, that has changed as we have finally solved the mys- tery and this can be said to be exciting for various reasons. For example, the discovery helps to illustrate Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, proves the accuracy of the Inuit people's story and will hopefully lead to more tourism in the Arctic. However, I think that our excite- ment over the solved mystery can be understood from a more basic level, too. People get excited when a mys- tery is solved because they don't like the unknown. After all, when you don't know something, you cannot predict it and this, in turn, means that you can't control it. And, let's face it, we like to feel in control of things. When it comes right down to it we don't like unsolved mysteries because we don't like the feeling of not being in control. When a mystery is solved, however, we gain knowledge, pre- dictability and at once we feel in control of a situation. Ultimately, though, and, as we all probably know deep down, control is just an illusion; while we might wish we had it, we know that we actually don't. The universe is inherently unpredictable and con- stantly changing in ways that are so complex that not even the most brilliant minds have been able to figure out. Far from being in con- trol, we are really just slaves to chance. Nevertheless, when a mystery is solved like the mystery of Frank- lin's ships, we gain comfort from the fact that we feel as though we are in control of our circumstances and thus our existence, even if this feeling is only experienced for a fleeting period of time. We need discovery in our lives because it gives us as sense of satisfaction, purpose and hope, things that are surely what keep many of us going and keep life interesting. True skeptics will say that we cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow; we have no way of knowing for certain that this is true. But we now know where one of Franklin's ships has been sitting for well over a century and, from this, a certain amount of gratification results. There are enough unknown and unexplained things in life and, in a world with so many unan- swered big questions, it's nice to be able to find comfort in finding answers to the small mysteries. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The News Record welcomes letters to the editor. All letters must be signed and include a daytime phone number for verification purposes. Letters can be sent care of the Internet at clinton.news@sunmedia.ca, sent via fax at 519-482-7341 or through Canada Post care of The Editor, P.O. Box 39, Clinton, ON NOL 1LO. 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