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The Brussels Post, 1978-01-11, Page 2osui*E LS ONTARIO. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY, 11, 1978. Serving. Brussels and the surrounding community,. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros.Publishers Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Dave Robb - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association leNA Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $9.00 a Year. Others $17.00 a Year. Single Copies 20 cents each. I Snowy ivy Behind the scenes By Keith Roulston •1 Small towns need investment The expeCted business blow-up in Quebec finally happened last week when the huge Sun Life Insurance Company announced it would ask its shareholders to approve a move of the company's head office from Montreal to Toronto. The company claims it just can't do business under the new language legislation which says all business must be conducted in Trench. The Quebec government, on the other hand, charges that Sun Life has been one of the worst exploiters of Quebec over the years and has taken more than $400,000,000 out of the province by investing money earned there through insurance premiums in other provinces instead of reinvesting it in Quebec. It's a complicated argument and one that may seem far away for Huron County residents but it touches much closer to•home . than most would suspect. The ramifications of the whole battle shaping up may touch us only indirectly in that it can have an effect on au.: whole Quebec separation issue but there are similarities between the plight of Quebec and problems in our own area. The Quebec government's argument that the insurance company is not treating Quebec well can apply equally well to just about any small town in Canada. Insurance companies, trust companies and even banks have for years been accommodating the drain of small-town Canada resources to the big cities. How many dollars do such companies take out of your town in a year? A quick look may not make it look like much but multiply the number of dollars your family pays in insurance premiums of various kinds by the number of families in your community' and suddenly the amount becomes significant. (Canadians, after all, are the most insured nation in the world). Add to that the amount of money that is invested with trust companies and other financial institutions and the amount of money invested by small town people can be very impressive. But how much of that money .is coming back into yOur community? My guess is that it would be a small fraction of the money that these companies have to invest, In many small towns, particularly those without sewage facilities, it is nearly impossible to get a mortgage from one of the regular inditgage lending companies. They simply can't be bothered with small towns. It's so much easier to lend mortgages to larger centres and better still to lend to "safe" projects like city apartment and office complexes put • up by .huge companies led by men who travel in the same circles as the men who led the mortgage companies. So the accumulated savings of small towns from all across Canada has helped build the .CN Tower in Toronto, helped fuel the battle of the banks to see who could build the highest office building in downtown Toronto and even helped build large Montreal complexes like Place Ville Marie. If the province of Quebec as a whole has been cheated by Sun Life, how much more have the small town people there been cheated since even the money that has been reinvested in the province has gone to large centres like Montreal and Quebec City. The maddening thing of all this for small town people is to see this kind of thing happen, then hear city people speak as if they are supporting us through government grants, etc. ' If small towns in Canada are ever to regain their once strong position in the country, they are going to have to find a way to reverse the current capital drain. A way must be found to reinvest the savings of the community back into the community. Think of how much good a million dollars invested in your community could do this year. Most likely that million dollars is there for the investment but is instead being used by financial institutions to help build a new suburb in a large city, or a new factory somewhere else. We have got to find, ways to put our own money to work in our own community if we ever hope to stop the decline, of our rural way of life. Until we do, we will forever be dependent of the whims of governments for the future of small towns. Some small towns have worked at solving these problems through such things as credit unions and development corporations but most of our towns have gone along doing little and complaining hard and long about how hard used we are. We have the ability to solve our own probletng, Until we do, we should stop complaining about being victims of big business and big government. raftr gBrussels Post Why pay so much ! A few weeks ago many of us saw a*CBC television program featuring Freddie Laker of Laker Airways which clearly outlined the need for unrestricted c.harter air flights in Canada. It was shown that in countries where these charters are allowed, both the regular , airlines and the people prosper, and that it also gives a tremendous boost to .tourist business from within and without the country. In Canada we are in great need of more travel business and the need for more charter flights and less retrictions are most obvious. Yet, what has been crone about it by those in control way up in the "ivory tower"? The Canadian Transport Commission has done something, but what it is, is incredibly stupid. The Globe and Mail had this to say about it editorially: "In a stunning demonstration of bureaucratic incapacity to accommodate anything - however beneficial - that will change things, the CTC has handed the control of charter flights in 1978 to the enemies of charter flights - Air Canada and CP Air - and barred from operation in Canada the Canadian company which has proved (abroad, naturally) that it knows how to operate charters to public satisfaction ....Forbidden to operate charters inside Canada at all is Wardair lInternationali Ltd. of Edmonton, the country's largest international charter carrier. Five regional carriers will be permitted to take part in the charter program, but only within their regions. Quebecair, for instance, will be able to fly charters only within that part of Quebec which is east of Montreal. Passengers wishing to use regional charters will find themselves short of destinations ... This is plain stupid when it is considered how many people would like to take advantage of the Wardair $199 -round-trip-Toronto -Vancouver proposal. It is criminally stupid when we remember two things. Canada has a high jobless rate and needs as much of its vacation money as possible spent at home. Canada is in a crisis of unity, in which Canadians should be meeting Canadians. The Government should override its bureaucrats in the CTC. It should order them to admit Wardair to do within Canada in 1978 whatever Wardair's proven business sense and the preferences of passengers suggest that it do. Maybe that will force Air Canada and CP Air to get in there and compete. Maybe at the end of 1978 what has happened will have proved the need for some regulations. But Canadians would at least have been faced with a choice,' not a fraud. (St. Mary's Journal Argus) The illness you II never see coming,. Get in shape—and don't give the enemy a big target.