HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1990-12-05, Page 5Arthur Black
Speaking of
naked emperors
There’s an old fable called “The
Emperor’s New Clothes’’, in which a
fast-talking tailor manages to convince a
mighty monarch to prance about in the
altogether. The emperor thinks he’s wear
ing the most magnificent outfit of cloth so
wondrous and subtle only people of
discriminating sensibilities can appreciate
it.
His loyal subjects know its worth their
necks to see anything other than what their
emperor wants them to see, so they, too,
praise the tailor’s masterpiece.
It takes a guileless little kid to point out
the obvious. “Look! The Emperor has no
clothes” he shouts. And the whole house of
cards come tumbling down.
Canadians identify strongly with that
fable because we’re living through a
parallel version of it. Except in our version
it’s not clothes that are missing. In the
Canadian adaptation the little kid would
stand up and shout “Look! The Empire has
no brains!’’
To put it bluntly, the country is
rudderless. There’s nobody at the helm.
We should hang a giant OUT TO LUNCH
The International
Scene
Junk,
American style
BY RAYMOND CANON
We have all heard any number of times
about the open border between Canada
and the United States. While this may be in
contrast to the border between any other
countries, it does have its drawbacks. One
of the most annoying has to be the influx of
unwanted American practices. It doesn’t
help that we share a common language but
it all reminds me of the oft-repeated claim
that what is good for the United States is
good for the rest of the world.
One of the most objectionable practices,
or should I say two, that started in the U.S.
and have infiltrated our society are junk
mail and its more recent companion
unsolicited phone calls. I’m sure all my
readers have been afflicted by both of
them. Perhaps the most obnoxious of the
lot is the phone call which comes at about
supper time, or more precisely just when
you are taking that first bite. Some of the
calls are downright insidious; the caller will
claim that they are (1) doing a survey (2)
not selling anything or (3) 1 have won a
prize.
It seems as if our friends south of the
border are getting fed up with these twin
phenonomena every bit as much as we are.
A few days ago I was watching an
American TV channel which was showing
the huge bag filled with printed matter
which was purported to represent the sum
total of all such mail which each family
receives each year, subsequent to that I ran
across a few more details on the matter.
According to the report no less than 13
billion catalogues are sent out each year by
American companies, said to number
about 8,000. You may wonder how they get
names; the answer is that they buy
subscription lists which most publishers
are happy to sell them. They also
apparently exchange lists so that, if they
don’t get you the first time around, they
will the second.
I can deal to a considerable degree with
junk mail. Almost without exception it goes
into the pile set aside for my blue recycling
box. What really annoys me. as it
apparently does the Americans, are the
sign on the hook of the Avalon Peninsula.
From what I can see on my TV, Ottawa
has been pretty much reduced to a
smoldering Beirut-like ruin, infested with
roving outlaw gangs of Fat Cat Tories and
Old Fart Senators.
Oh, we get a plethora of droning
speeches about fastening our seatbelts
prior to GST takeoff; about how this
country is not in a recession. Well, not
really a recession per se. Well, not a really
DEEP recession ...
But folks, I fear these are merely
recorded announcements.
I don't want to frighten anybody but I
think this country is running on automatic
pilot. There doesn’t appear to be anyone in
the cockpit.
We’ve all heard the radio and television
ads about the federal government’s “deep
and abiding commitment” to the environ
ment. Tell that to the consultants who tried
to prepare report cards on environmental
quality across the country. They finally had
to give up. They found out that by and
large, nobody’s monitoring anything.
In short, nobody in the country’s capital
can say with any degree of certainty how
good or bad Canada’s doing in terms of
forests, fish stocks, farmlands, wetlands or
hazardous waste disposal.
Because nobody in Ottawa has bothered
to keep track.
“I was flabbergasted, not only at the
gaps, but at the lack of correlation across
the country.”
telephone calls. The vast majority of them
come in the early evening, i.e. about the
time I have my supper. Sometimes they are
not human voices at all, at least, not at the
time. It is nothing less than a recorded
message which I hear. To a considerable
degree such outfits are relying on the fact
that Americans, and with them Canadians,
are turning more to phone orders. My U.S.
statistics show that no less than one
American in every four used the phone last
year to order something which is a fifty per
cent increase over the number only six
years ago.
The situation has become so bad that the
U.S. government is starting to take action.
More specifically they are zeroing in on
what is known as telemarketing fraud. This
involves purchases of materials which are
paid for by credit cards but which are never
received by the consumer. While the
Senate is working on this one, the House of
Representatives has already passed a bill
Letter
Press conspiring to keep
global wanning quiet?
THE EDITOR,
Canada’s media has turned a blind eye
to the surest threat facing our species.
Certainly the threat of War in the
Persian Gulf deserves covering. Certainly
the explosion of world population from five
billion to 10 billion or more over the next 60
years deserves coverage. The death of
40,000 youngsters every day from prevent
able disease and starvation deserves
coverage. Nuclear War, pollution - the list
goes on. The question I raise is why the
dismal coverage given to the second World
Climate Conference held in Geneva last
month? One Canadian reporter, Anne
McIlroy of Southam capably covered the
event and the reality of Global Warming;
the surest threat to our survival.
The World Scientific Community reach
ed consensus that there will be warming of
two to five degrees Centigrade and a sea
level rise of 30 - 100 cm. during the next
century. All other consequences aside it is
estimated that the costs to protect Cana
dian property alone from a one meter
sea-rise is 9.5 billion dollars!
Scientists concluded that a 20 per cent
reduction in Carbon Dioxide emissions
Who said that? Farley Mowatt? Some
Greenpeace activist/hippie? Nope - Peter
Vivian, one of the would-be report card
writers and corporate vice president of Bell
Canada International.
Then, of course, there’s the recently
delivered Auditor-General’s report which
tells us that our ecological watchdog,
Environment Canada, is more of a tooth
less Chihuahua; that the Canadian armed
forces are standing on guard with shoddy,
outdated equipment that would shame a
Colombian drug lord; that Pearson Airport
is a moldering ruin; that university kids
who suck on the public coffers for student
loans don’t have to bother repaying them --
Ottawa doesn’t prosecute; that CS1S is
double-crossing the RCMP and the Moun-
ties are hamstringing Canada Customs and
while those clowns slug it out at centre ice,
Canadian drug smugglers are laughing all
the way to their Swiss banks.
All of which begs the question: Who’s in
charge here?
No one, I fear. Where was the govern
ment during the Oka standoff? On vaca
tion, apparently. And when it was over, the
same absentee arbiters flatly refused to
address the antive grievances that led to it
in the first place.
We’re all paying nearly 50 per cent more
for every tank of gas. Has Ottawa lifted a
finger to get Big Oil’s greedy hand out of
your back pocket? Not that I’ve heard.
The only finger Ottawa’s lifted lately has
been strictly reserved for you and me.
Centre finger. Right hand.
that would set up lists of fax and telephone
users who do not want to receive unsolicit
ed sales approaches.
Not surprisingly the marketing industry
has started to fight back, claiming that
self-regulation and the marketplace itself
will weed out the sales techniques that turn
consumers off. They may have a point in
that the use of fax machines to market
goods has tapered off considerably since it
was discovered that the recipients reacted
in a vigorous fashion.
1 am doing my bit. My approach is to
handle such calls by informing the person
politely but firmly that, while I am sure
they have an interesting product, my house
rule is that I never accept such calls
between the hours of 6 and 8 p.m. to date
not one has seen fit to call me back.
At any rate, when the Americans find a
solution to all this, I hope it crosses the
border with the same speed as did the
objectionable practice in the first place.
over the next 15 years is technically and
economically feasible for all countries.
To stabilize concentrations of Green
house Gases at about 50 per cent above
pre-industrial concentrations by the middle
of the next century will require worldwide
reductions of net CO2 emissions by one to
two per cent per year.
Canada proceeded in Geneva to endorse
the conclusions of the scientists and then to
propose that Canada will only stabilize CO2
emissions by the year 2000. This position
flies in the face of the House of Commons
Standing Committee on Environment Re
port; “No Time to Lose”. This unanimous
All-Party Report concluded (after hearing
over 60 witnesses and over 200 submis
sions in the past year) that Canada must at
minimum reduce CO2 emissions 20 per
cent from 1988 levels by 2005 A.D.
Why? Because the Committee believes
that the threat of Global Warming is
serious and steps must be taken now.
Canadians are the fifth largest per capita
emitters of Carbon Dioxide on Earth. Only
nations like Bahrain or the United Arab
Continued on page 23
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1990. PAGE 5.
Letter
from the
editor
Who do you believe?
BY KEITH ROULSTON
Here’s a question for you: who woulc
you believe, Sinclair Stevens or Briai
Mulroney?
Mr. Stevens, the former Conservativt
industry minister who resigned in scanda
over conflict of interest charges, claimec
on the weekend that there was a secret dea
between the Mulroney government and the
U.S. government to drive up the Canadiar
dollar so the U.S. would go along with Free
Trade. Mr. Stevens said in a 1985 meeting
with Malcolm Baldridge, then U.S. com
merce secretary, he was told the Canadian
dollar would have to go up toward 90 cents
U.S. from its then 72-cent range if Free
Trade was to go ahead.
The government, through Finance Mini
ster Michael Wilson denies there was any
deal. Mr. Wilson says Mr. Lewis wasn’t at
the negotiations (he resigned in 1986) and
he was.
For her part NDP leader Audrey
McLaughlin said she wouldn’t be at all
surprised if there was a secret deal to
increase the value of the Canadian dollar
because it would go along with the pattern
of secrecy of this government over things
like the Meech Lake deal.
The government’s defence against the
Lewis charge would be much more
believable if its actions on interest rates
weren’t so inexplicable. Mr. Wilson and
John Crowe, the Governor of the Bank of
Canada, have insisted the number one
threat to the country has been inflation and
they have been determined to beat
inflation to the ground. Mr. Wilson refused
to admit the country might be in a
recession even when every other breathing
body in the country already knew we were.
Even with the statistics firmly in hand,
even when Mr. Wilson now finally uses the
dreaded “R” word, interest rates are still
considerably higher than in the U.S.
We are in a situation entirely different
than we have seen before. We have a
made-in-Canada recession, a recession we
didn’t import from south of the border
where the economy, though showing signs
of weakness, has not gone into a tailspin
like ours.
Could we have expected anything else?
We threw open our borders allowing
American plants to flood our markets and
making it attractive for our plants to move
to a place in the U.S. where they have
cheaper fuel, low minimum wage laws and
lower taxes, then we increased the cost of
doing business here by increasing interest
rates two per cent over the U.S. rate and
drove up the Canadian dollar so it was
more expensive to export and less expens
ive to import.
Canadians voted the government and its
Free Trade agreement in because they had
been frightened into thinking their jobs
and their standard of living was in danger
if they didn’t accept Free Trade. So now
they have Free Trade and their jobs and
standard of living are suffering. They
believed that people with business experi
ence like Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Wilson
knew more about things like Free Trade
and running a government than the
Liberals or NDP.
Can anybody really think Mr. Wilson
knows more about running a country now
despite all his Bay Street experience? This
country is suffering. People are losing
businesses and farms and jobs but he
keeps on with the same old refrain about
having to have high interest rates to beat
inflation. He continues in the same smug
attitude that says the rest of us are a bunch
of children and only he knews enough to
know what is best for us.
How much longer can Canadians con
tinue to suffer high interest rates? If Mr.
Wilson’s preoccupation with defeating
inflation continues, we’ll continue with
high interest rates because his GST will
drive up inflation. Whether or not Mr.
Lewis’ claim of a secret deal is accurate,
this may be the best government the U.S.
has ever had.