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The Citizen, 1990-03-07, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1990. Opinion Unworkable solution There’s something about Canada that turns everything into a problem between French and English speaking Canadians. So t is that the Meech Lake mess has become reduced to the one issue of the “distinct society” clause when the problem is much larger. With the deal in danger of not being ratified positions are hardening as supporters of the deal, particularly in the Quebec government, see the possible rejection only as an insult to Quebec, one more instance like the English-only declarations, the Quebec is alone in a hostile country. The truth is that even without the distinct society clause, whatever it means, the Meech Lake Accord would be a bad deal, not just for English Canada but for Quebec. Perhaps especially for Quebec. Supporters of the deal can’t seem to see the fact that the very problems of getting this deal ratified demonstrate the weakness of the whole reform package. Under the deal agreed to by the premiers in the all-night session at Meech Lake, future constitutional amendments would require unanimous agreement to be accepted. Now just when have all 11 first ministers in this country ever agreed on anything? In 122 years of our history it has happened exactly once: that night at Meech Lake. Now supporters of the pact are furious that new governments of some of the provinces do not agree with the deal their predecessors approved. If unanimity goes into law will Alberta ever get its elected and equal Senate? Not a chance. Would Ontario be likely to get improvements to native rights? Not with the way western provinces have guarded their jurisdictions in other constitutional negotiations. Does premier Robert Bourassa really want to be subject to the veto of tiny Prince Edward Island if he can work out a reform to benefit his province with the other eight provinces and the federal government? Meech Lake is a straight jacket that will paralyze the country from taking action on needed constitutional reforms. Much more than the distinct society clause it is the unanimity clause that is the most troublesome in the package. The very difficulty getting the Meech Lake pact approved should show the danger its unanimity clause means to the future. When fair is unfair While governments on one hand are trying to find ways of balancing budgets without cutting programs others, in the interests of “fairness”, are driving costs ever higher. The potential costs, for instance, of a recent Federal Court of Appeal which ruled that natural fathers must be given the same rights as adoptive fathers and be able to take up to 15 weeks unemployment insurance on the birth of a child. The case came about when a father declared he had been discriminated against because he wasn’t awarded unemployment insurance to stay home with his children when an adoptive father would have been. The ruling is an incidence ofinsanity by increments, all in the name of trying to do the right thing. It means that now both the mother and the father are entitled to 15 weeks unemployment benefits when a child is born. The judge ruled that the father must have the benefits but without cutting into the time for the mother who needs the time to recover from the birth. It started easily enough. Trying to build a system that didn’t discriminate against women for being the individuals in our society who must give birth to the next generation, someone came up with the concept of letting women have unemployment insurance when they took time off to have a baby. Strictly speaking it was a misuse of the unemployment program which was intended to help those who couldn’t find work, not those who had to take time off. One of the questions asked others claiming insurance, for instance, is “were you able to work?” Obviously women on maternity leave aren’t. Still, the sentiment was right so nobody complained that maybe some other way of protecting motherhood would have been better. The same rights were given to adoptive mothers because, although they didn’t have to recover from giving birth, they should be treated the same as natural mothers and have the chance to care for their new children. But then came a case where an adoptive father, not the mother, wanted to stay home with the new child. Since there still would only be one UIC payment, it seemed only fair to let the father have the benefit. That, however led to the latestrulingthat could conceivably lead to Unemployment Insurance being paid out to both mothers and fathers, at a huge expense. It may bankrupt the concept of an “insurance” program that is more or less supposed to pay for itself. Fairness has been taken to a ridiculous extreme. There must be some way to bring this program back in line or the whole program may be lost. OZd wood and snow Letter from the editor Movies just love to smash things BY KEITH ROULSTON One of the less enjoyable (but never boring) parts of this job is covering court. You certainly see a different side of the life of your community in the criminal court room and it can be depressing. One wonders how judges and attorneys and police can keep from being totally cynical about the public. A fair number of cases arise from what the law calls mischief but what most of us would call vandalism. The culprits (they are almost all male and usually young) go out, usually at night, and demolish property, from mail boxes to street signs to cars and houses for no apparent reason. I always find it hard to see how anybody can take a delight in smashing things. But then the other night we rented a very popular Hollywood movie and took it home and found ourselves watching two hours of cars being blow up or otherwise demolished in police chases and accidents; of houses being blown apart by bombs and being riddled with bullets, with people falling from seventh-floor windows and landing in swimming pools and not even being stiff and soar later, not to mention lots of people being killed and just enough sex thrown in to titilate people who like sex and violence together. Think back, and it often seems Hollywood has a mania for wrecking things. Think of the old western movie. Somewhere along the way there was almost always a bar-room brawl that destroyed the bar and during which someone would be thrown through a huge mirror behind the bar. The modern equivalent of the bar-room brawl is the car chase. In the entire world there probably aren’t as many vehicles that explode in flames in an entire year as there are shown on the screens of movie theatres in a single weekend. Teenage movies love this kind of thing. Tom Cruise’s first big hit Risky Business saw his parent’s house demolished by overeager party goers and his father’s expensive car submerged in Lake Michigan. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off features an expensive classic car of the one character’s father hurtling through a garage and down to the valley below. It’s supposed to be hilarious and from the popularity of the movies, it must be. Seeing things get wrecked, then, seems to be one of the things that gives people enjoyment so is it any wonder that when some of these guys get depressed or angry and have a couple of beers too many (and alcohol seems always to be involved) that they turn to smashing things. The question is do the movies encourage vandalism or just reflect that part of human nature? From the market place economics stand-point, you can always argue that if Hollywood put violence and vandalism in movies and everybody hated it and stayed home, movie producers would quickly drop similar scenes from the next movie they were producing. On the other hand, when millions crowd the theatres to see such “action shows, it’s obvious that this is filling a “need” in the audience. On the other hand you can argue that by making violence and smashing things socially acceptable, movies are actually promoting it. If a movie hero gets angry and takes a sledge hammer to somebody’s car, maybe the guy watching the movie figures there might be some release by doing the same thing when he’s in a foul mood and has had too much to drink. Given that kind of argument many people have sought to put curbs on movies and television and books over the years to keep out everything from explicit sex to violence to sexist language to words felt to be sacriligious. The difficulty with all this is that when you start messing with what can and can’t be written or shown on movie screens, you’re messing with one of the most important freedoms of our democracy. Once you start saying this or that can’t be done, who’s to say there won’t be law soon saying you can’t criticize government or make political speeches. Continued on pace 5 P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 f'.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont NOG 1H0 Phone 887-9114 The Citizen is published weekly in Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $19.00/yr. ($40.00 Foreign). 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. We are not responsible for unsolicited newscripts or photographs. 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