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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-04-11, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1990. Foreign aid helps everyone Imagine yourself walking down a street. You see a neighbour on the other side of the street who suddenly crosses the street, stands in front of you and spits in your face. When you ask why, the neighbour says he thinks you might be going to do something to him, so he wants to send you a message not to bother trying. The example seems absurd but it really is the same as the English-only resolutions of communities like Listowel. Although Listowel’s motion was a little more vague than some of the other 50 passed in Ontario communities, it still ends up being the same: a resolution that will do no good and possibly a lot of harm. By saying their communities were gong to carry on in English, most of these municipalities were stating the obvious. There seems to be no threat from anyone that Listowel (or Brussels or Blyth or any of the local townships) is going to be forced to use French in its day-to-day life. The infamous Bill 8, that brings bilingualism into provincial government services in some specified arpas of the province where there is a significant French-speaking population, doesn’t touch local municipalities. Bilingualism in Listowel or Perth or Huron counties is a non-issue. If local politicians have so much time on their hands they want to get into non-issues, perhaps next we could expect them to take positions on the problems of the homeless in Toronto or New York or perhaps the plight of fishing villages in Atlantic Canada with the closing of fish plants. It’s hard to understand municipal politicians, who claim to be so overburdened by increased work loads, making issues out of non issues. If what they really want to do is send a signal to the provincial government that they don’t want Queen’s Park to push bilingualism any further, then send a clear message in the form of a clearly-worded resolution that says bilingual Ontario should also be a common-sense Ontario that doesn’t require French-language services where there are no French-speaking people. If they want to protest the moves in Quebec to deprive English-speaking people of their right to use the language on signs, then say that clearly in a resolution sent to the Quebec government. This current English-only idiocy is just a gratuitious insult to everybody who speaks French in Canada. It does absolutely no good to anyone and can hurt Canada badly. Make message clear Here’s lookin ’ at you Mabel’s Grill Among the objects of the wrath of increasingly grumpy Canadians seems to be foreign aid and the feeling we’re giving away billions to help the rest of the world while we’re in need ourselves. At the annual Members of Parliament Dinner of the Huron County Federation of Agriculture, one of the speakers took to task Murray Cardiff, M.P. for Huron-Bruce, for the generosity of his government in foreign aid. The money, the speaker implied, is needed more at home. Referring to the recent forgiving of loans owed by Commonwealth Caribbean countries, Mr. Cardiff said the timing of announcing the writing off of the $300 million loans was not the best, coming at a time when the government was trying to persuade Canadians we’re in a economic crisis in government spending but that there was little choice. The loans were virtually unrecoverable anyway, he said. He also pointed out that a lot of the money the Canadian governmentgivesinaidtounder-developed countries goes to helping buy Canadian products. Canadians have benefitted from these loans and grants even if we never get the debts repaid. Often some of this aid helps the Canadian farm economy by helping remove food surplusses from the Canadian market. It has been one of the complaints of critics of our foreign aid efforts for years that too much of our aid comes with strings attached. Too often, they say, countries only get help if they’re going to buy Canadian machinery or Canadian food when perhaps they’d be better off taking the same amount of money and spending it on other projects. The aid, critics have said, is more to Canadian manufacturers and producers than it is to the third world country. It’s something that should be remembered by all those who want to slash Canada’s foreign aid budget. The hurt from such cuts might be felt in our own communities as much as in poorer countries. Despite our feelings that Canada is a generous country, we have always fallen far behind many other industrialized countries in our giving. To cut back now would only be to abandon people who need our help. Canadians may think they are facing hard times but it’s nothing compared to the endless poverty of many of these countries. We have little to lose and much togain, as Mr. Cardiff points out, in our continuing aid efforts to third world countries. When we give, we gain from extra trade and we make ourselves look and feel good at the same time. When we don’t, we hurt ourselves and the recipients of the aid and end up looking like the mean-spirited rich who get so wrapped up in their own world they can’t see the poverty of others. There are people who will tell you that the important decisions in town are made down at the town hall. People in the know, however know that the real debates, the real wisdom reside down at Mabel's Grill where the greatest minds in the town [if not in the country] gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering So­ ciety. Since not just every one can partake of these deliberations we will report the activities from time to time. MONDAY: Billie Bean said he’d love to have been the guy organiz­ ing that Wrestlemania at the Skydome on the weekend. Imagine, he said holding an event that could make $5 million in one day in one place, let alone the $40 million world wide. Tim O’Grady said he didn’t know why anybody would pay a lot to watch wrestlers when they can watch the Parliamentary channel for free. Ward Black said he wouldn’t mind wrestling so much even it is was acting, if the actors were a little better. Yeh, said Hank Stokes, but then they might go into politics instead. TUESDAY: Hank was talking about Prime Minister Mulroney’s wel­ coming of a potential free trade deal with Mexico. “There’s only so much of this country to go around and he already gave most of it to the Americans,’’ he said. Ward said he could see there might be great benefit to Canada from increasing its free trade area. Yes, said Julia Flint, the upper class in Canada will get to make more money by moving its factories to where the labour is cheaper, get to buy things cheaper because they can be imported cheaper than they could be made here and thus have more money to spend on servants who should come cheap because we’ll have a large labour surplus around here from the people laid off when the factories moved to Mexico. WEDNESDAY: Billie was saying he wished he could get a car made out of the same stuff as this new “invisible” fighter plane the U.S. has unveiled. Imagine going down the road as fast as you want and the O.P.P. couldn’t pick you up on their radar, he said. “Yes,” said Ward, “but at $106.2 million apiece for those airplanes I don’t think you could afford a car of that stuff.” But, argued Billie, that’s the price to the Pentagon where they sometimes pay $1,000 for a single bolt. For the general public it might be cheaper. Hank said the airplane would be a lot better if it was invisible to the naked eye as well as to radar. “Couldn’t you just imagine the smiles on the faces of the defence contractors if they could build invisible aircraft and charge $106.2 million apiece for them?” Julia asked. “It would be every busi­ nessman’s dream, selling nothing for a big something.” Hank said it might be the one way Canada could afford to keep up with the rest of the world in defence. We could announce we were going to build 2,000 of these invisible airplanes and then we wouldn’t have to spend a cent, just pretend we did. Nobody could tell the difference. It would keep both the hawks and the doves happy: the hawks thinking we had a big airforce and the doves because they couldn’t see it and it didn’t cost anything. THURSDAY: Tim said it must be nice to be the Progressive Conser­ vatives and have so many you can afford to boot a few out like those M.P.s from Alberta who refused to support the GST. Don’t feel too bad for them, Hank said, they might get their revenge. After the next election they, at least, might still have seats. FRIDAY: Ward said that politicians can get in trouble for calling judges before they make a decision but he wonders if Premier David Peterson mightn’t have called judges of the Supreme Court to say thanks for them deciding the Starr enquiry was illegal. “It may have been his enquiry they quashed but I’ll bet they made his day in doing it,” he said. The Citizen P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. N0M 1H0 Phone 523-4792 P.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.OO/yr. ($40.00 Foreign]. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisment will be credited. 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