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The Citizen, 2012-02-23, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012.Editorials Opinions Publisher: Keith Roulston Acting Editor: Shawn Loughlin • Reporter: Denny ScottAdvertising Sales: Ken Warwick & Lori Patterson The CitizenP.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. N0M 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. N0G 1H0 Phone 887-9114 E-mail norhuron@scsinternet.com Website www.northhuron.on.ca Looking Back Through the Years CCNA Member Member of the Ontario Press Council The Citizen is published 50 times a year in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc.Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $36.00/year ($34.29 + $1.71 G.S.T.) in Canada; $115.00/year in U.S.A. and $205/year in other foreign countries. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40050141 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 152 BRUSSELS ON N0G 1H0 email: info@northhuron.on.ca February 25, 1965 A group of thieves had their way with the Village of Brussels, Walton and several other areas throughout Huron County over the previous weekend. Topnotch Feeds Limited of Brussels was burglarized. The office was broken into and ransacked. The thieves, however, left the office safe untouched. McCutcheon Motors had a sum of money and a quantity of cigarettes stolen as thieves gained entry to the building through a side window that they smashed. The building occupied by McGavin Farm Equipment had its lock forced open and an undetermined amount of gas was stolen. Other establishments in Clinton and Auburn were also forced open in similar manners. The Brussels Arena was also looted over the weekend. The front door was forced open and the refreshment booth was broken into. Cigars, cigarettes, chocolate bars and gum were stolen. The goal for the Brussels March of Dimes campaign was $200 and $232.61 was raised throughout the community. A local radio broadcast reported a deadly fire at a nursing home in Brussels, Belgium, in which 19 people died, which caused dozens of frantic calls to the nursing home in Brussels, Ontario. Alice Tribner and Gail Wilson, both of Brussels, were honoured by the Huron County 4-H Homemaking Club, which held its annual achievement day at Howick Public School on Feb. 20. February 25, 1987 As of March 1 it was mandated that all cats and dogs living in Huron County receive rabies shots. Failing to get a pet vaccinated could result in a fine of up to $5,000. Ontario Hydro’s new power corridor to carry locked-in energy from the Bruce Nuclear Power Development plant to a new transformer just outside of London was set to slice through Huron County, running from north to south, bisecting the Townships of Ashfield, Colborne, Goderich, Stanley, Hay and Stephen. With an election expected to be called later in the year, the Huron Provincial Liberal Riding Association set March 5 for its nomination meeting to be held at the Clinton Legion. The riding was a new electoral district which was created when redistribution was approved in July of 1986, expanding the Ontario Legislature from 125 seats to 130. At the time, Huron County was split between two seats, the first being represented by Huron-Bruce in the north by Health Minister Murray Elston and in the south by Huron-Middlesex representative and Agriculture and Food Minister Jack Riddell. After the next election, the old seats would disappear. February 23, 1994 The Maitland Valley Conservation Authority announced its budget for 1994 and it was forecasted to drop by 8.5 per cent. The budget was approved at the group’s annual meeting held in Wroxeter. Warm weather was causing watercourses to swell and the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority was warning people to stay away from them. The warm weather the area experienced on Feb. 18, 19 and 20 cleared much of the ice from many smaller watercourses and severely weakened the ice on larger area rivers. Wild boars escaped from a farm and were cited as being a problem in some of Huron County’s western areas, like Goderich Township. Bob Pegg from the Ministry of Natural Resources said that animals had been seen along the Maitland River between Forester’s Bridge and Benmiller Bridge, as well as on several farms in the area. Pegg said the animals needed to be removed from the area because of the threat they pose to area crops and disease they may spread to the swine population. February 22, 2007 The Walton Women’s Institute expressed its intentions to sell the Walton Community Hall to the Municipality of Huron East. Huron East Council received the letter in January stated that the group wished for the municipality to take over ownership of the building that had previously been owned by the Women’s Institute for 31 years. Huron East Treasurer Brad Knight said the municipality would have to finalize its budget first and then enter into negotiations with the Women’s Institute to iron out the details of an ownership transfer. The first shipment of ‘Good Food Boxes’ had arrived in Blyth. The initiative was rolled out by the Huron County Health Unit and was aimed at delivered fresh and local food to the people of Huron County for an affordable price. Kali Alcorn was days away from leaving for South Africa where she would be working with pre-school children with disabilities as part of the Lions Youth Exchange. North Huron Reeve Neil Vincent commended staff on the application video submitted on behalf of the township for the 2007 Kraft Hockeyville competition. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. We are not responsible for unsolicited newsscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright Our bit toward the deficit fight Many residents of Belgrave, Blyth and Brussels would willingly give a multi-million-dollar boost to the Ontario government’s attempts to reign in the $16 billion (and growing) deficit. Premier McGuinty, please cancel construction of the new Maitland River Elementary School in Wingham before any more money is spent. Let’s face it, most of us, if we’ve been told we’re going to take a massive pay cut, don’t go out and build a new house. Instead, we would fix up the house we live in and try to make it last as long as possible. But that’s not the way things are in education. Instead, millions will be spent on a new super school in Wingham while other, still serviceable buildings are abandoned. Part of the problem is that the province is more ready to give money for new buildings than it is to repair existing ones. There’s also no room in calculations for the social and economic damage done to communities which lose their schools through the arcane intricacies of the funding formula. There will also be new costs in bussing more students over longer distances to take them to the new school, but if the government follows one of the 362 recommendations of the Drummond Report, released last week, it will be the parents who pick up that cost. The report’s author, economist Don Drummond notes that the cost of transporting students to school has ballooned from $629 million in 2003 to an anticipated $845 million in 2012, and suggests that parents should pay a “modest” user fee if their kids take a school bus. This is adding injury to insult for parents of children who could walk to a community school but will now see their children taking a school bus to a distant school. As Drummond said, Ontario is facing extraordinary times. Surely times are extraordinary enough to revisit decisions to borrow money to build schools we can’t afford and so many people don’t want. — KR So much for that theory The combination of information in the recently announced census data and the stark realities outlined in last week’s Drummond Report on the state of the Ontario economy, illustrate that Canada is still a nation of supplying raw materials to the world. For decades we were urged to become more than a nation of “hewers of wood and drawers of water”, but it has become apparent that it is the regions that supply resources, particularly oil, that are prospering while the regions that added value, such as Ontario’s manufacturing sector, are suffering. In fact, the success of the oil industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan is indirectly responsible for at least some of the troubles of the industrial sector by driving up the value of the Canadian dollar and making Canadian-made products more expensive in the rest of the world. The high Canadian dollar also contributes to cross-border shopping as bargain-hunting Canadians travel to the U.S., and contribute to the deficits in provinces like Ontario. Meanwhile, the selling of raw materials continues in the oil patch with proposed pipelines both to the U.S. and the Pacific Coast to carry unrefined bitumen, rather than processing the tar-sands oil into a more refined products and creating more Canadian jobs. The irony of Ontario predicament is that it comes during the government of one of the most visionary premiers this province has had. Whether you agree with him or not, Dalton McGuinty has listened to the economic and business experts who say Ontario needs to be a low tax environment to attract business. He has accepted the advice to bet on green energy as a new growth industry. He has encouraged innovation hubs to foster research excellence and applying that research in fields like medicine. And he has made education one of the highest priorities of his government. But Canadian business has long had a branch-plant mindset, with somebody else, in a distant head office, making the innovative decision- making. Even when we have our own innovators, such as the former Champion Road Machinery Company in Goderich, we welcome foreign buyers who take the innovation and move it out of the country. We’re much more comfortable selling resources than innovating, it seems, and we’ll happily take the easy money. — KR & Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise.