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Home My WebLink AboutThe Citizen, 1987-08-05, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1987. Editorials A society built patch upon patch The provincial government recently announced a program to encourage municipalities to install incinerators to dispose of garbage instead of continuing the near-futile effort to find more and more safe placesTto bury it and the reaction from the environmentalists was swift. Pollution Probe was quick to warn that incineration has its own dangers, citing experience in Europe where burning garbage simply spread toxic chemicals further away from the waste site, polluting land and water. The attractiveness of incineration is liable to grow, however, because of the mounting problems with landfill sites. Nearly all local municipalities are having some problems, especially as the local office of the Ministry of the Environment cracks down on regulations surrounding dumps. With burning in local dumps banned, space in landfill sites is being used up at an alarming rate. Seaforth and Tuckersmith’s lengthy and expensive efforts to find a safe new landfill site shows the dangers that lie ahead for all area municipalities if the current trend continues. Huron County council has already foreseen some of these problems and set up a committee to look at county-wide solutions to the mess. But all these things are not real solutions. Like many modern problems we're busy putting patches on, like putting patches on a leaky tire. We never seem to go to the heart of the problem but keep putting patches on until there are more patches than original tire. The solution to the garbage situation is to create less garbage. Each Canadian today produces many times more garbage than even a couple of decades ago. Every year the problem gets worse. We seem to be addicted to this wasteful lifestyle and nobody is willing to pay the price to find real solutions. Consumers want the convenience of modern packaging with all Greed, as a common denominator A local daily newspaper last week ran a headline story that trumpeted that Canadians pay the highest cost for dairy goods in the world which led us to look up and down main street to see if we could identify the local dairy farmers by the Porsches and BMW’s they own. Greed, we like to think, is the sin of the rich and few. The greedy are those who make excessive profits, who keep wealth huddled to themselves. But with the constant attack on the only farmers who seem to be making a decent living these days, those who have turned to supply management marketing boards, the urban press and the consumers’ associations are showing us that the vast majority of urban consumers are greedy. Not satisfied with having good quality,~ne.adily available farm products at prices that have gone up less than the cost of inflation in the last decade, they insist on the right to have bargain basement, distress-sale prices in all goods. The article pointed out that we pay more in Canada for dairy products than they do in theU.S. or Europe. It did acknowledge that we also don’t have the costly surplusses of dairy products they have in the U.S. and Europe, but it didn’t seem to see the connection. The reason they have lower prices in those other countries is either because of huge subsidies or because farmers are losing money producing those dairy products. Cons umers seem to want farmers to go on losing money so they can have price wars to keep the cost of all food products down. The fact is it doesn’t work in the long run. From March 1976 to March 1986 the Consumer Price Index for all foods increased 119.9 per cent while the dairy products component increased 117.6 per cent. The price of eggs, another quota-controlled commodity, has gone up 50 per cent in the period. Even with the excessive profits the London Free Press seemed to be hinting dairy farmers make at the expense of consumers most dairy farmers won’t likely make as much money in a year as the reporter who wrote the article, or the school teacher or the postal worker or many other consumers. He will work long, hard hours that none of these would agree to. He will risk his investment every day, risk his health operating dangerous farm machinery and maybe riskthelivesofhis children too get inexpensive farm labour. Urbanites profess concern for the plight of farmers who are in financial trouble but one has to wonder about that concern when the media and consumer groups are willing to destroy the marketing controls that help some farmers live a stable, reasonably profitable life. those colourful boxes and plastic containers and styrofoam trays under individually-wrapped portions of everything from beef to brussels sprouts. Manufacturers and merchants, geared to fast turn-over, high-volume business, would be frightened to change the rules. There was a time, a decade ago, when people seemed ready to attack the heart of problems and try to change our ways of doing things if it mean’t getting better control of this world. But a recession came along early this decade and people lost jobs and suddenly nothing else mattered, not pollution, not lack of control of the economy of our own country, not fairness in the workplace, nothingbut jobs, jobs and jobs. If business screamed that new regulations that once seemed to make sense would cost jobs, then business quickly got those regulations thrown out. New laws were designed to lessen regulation of business so it would provide more jobs, not solve ecological problems. But, as businessmen were fond of saying in the years of the push toward a Just Society’ there ain’t nofree lunch. This throw-away society favoured by mass marketers and consumers is simply shifting the burden from huge companies to municipalities. Current marketing practises are making more money for General Foods or Lever Brothers but it’s the tax payers of Hullett or Grey townships that pay the bills. And to add insult to injury, expensive packaging drives up the cost of food which means the local farmers, who are helping the cost for landfill, get less and less of the food dollar. But as a society, we’re not ready to tackle the real problem. We’ll just keep on putting patches on the patches and hope we can keep the big money-making, job-producing system working a little longer. [Published by North Huron Publishing Company Inc.] Serving Brussels, Blyth, Auburn, Belgrave, Ethel, Londesborough, Walton and surrounding townships. Published weekly in Brussels, Ontario P.O.Box 152 P.O.Box429, Brussels, Ont. Blyth, Ont. NOG 1 HO N0M1H0 887-9114 523-4792 Subscription price: $15.00; $35.00 foreign. Advertising and news deadline: Monday2p.m.in Brussels; 4p.m. In Blyth Editor and Publisher: Keith Roulston Advertising Manager: Janice Gibson Production and Office Manager: Jill Roulston Second Class Mail Registration No. 6968 Letter from the editor BY KEITH ROULSTON The two events happened about the same time but I, like I imagine most Canadians, didn’t connect them. One we called a tragedy. One we got upset about. About the same time we were getting angry in Canada about that boatload of 174 “refugees” land ing on the east coast of Canada, 18 peoplewerefounddeadinabox car in Texas with a sole survivor to tell the horrible tale of how these Mexicans, trying to get into the United States had been sealed in a box car and had died from the heat and lack of oxygen. Like most Canadians I was upset by the flaunting of the law and fairy play by the “refugees” who claimed they had come from India but, who, evidence showed, had really come from Europe, lying to make their story sound more sympathetic. It wasn’t until I read a column by Fred Bruning of News- Continued on Page 6