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Home My WebLink AboutThe Citizen, 1987-08-19, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1987. Opinion Approach this goodie with caution One of the most attractive election promises for hard-hit residential and commercial taxpayers is the pledge to move the provincial share of the education bill from 45 per cent to 60 per cent. Smart voters, however, should approach the promise warily. Larry Grossman, the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader has made the promise a plank in his platform. The Liberals say they’re already working toward that goal, and the New Democratswill no doubt say they'd have already achieved that goal if they'd only been given the chance. Since thecost of education on the local taxpayer takes a huge bite out of every tax dollar, the temptation is to snap up this election goodie. But perhaps we should sit back and look this gift horse in the mouth for a moment. We should have learned by now that the bigger the hunk of any local cost the province pays, the more control it takes over local doings. But more so there’s the fact that although we may be paying a big part of education costs, an amount that really hurts, we at least know how much education costs. Any big increase in the local cost of education is reflected immediately in our local tax bills, and we can at least let our school board representatives know we’re unhappy. But if another 15percentof the education bill is shifted to the province, education costs can rise without us knowing just how much they’re going up, without us feeling the cost where it really hurts: in our pocket books. What’s more, the money spent will still be ours, just taken from another pocket. And does anybody seriously think that if the province does pick up more of the cost, the amount paid for education on our local tax bills will actually go down? The biggest lobby for the increase in funding is the Ontario Teachers Federation, representing 109,000 teachers in the province. The Federation would like to see an extra $330 million added to the education budget each year, until after five years education would see a real gain of $ 1.3 billion. The Federation is very selfless about his, never suggesting that any of this extra money wouldgoto the teachers, butclaimingthatit’s needed to better the education of the students. The Federation has been lobbying hard for some time for more provincial funding for schools, pleading the case of the young students. The concern seems so genuine that one might expect the Federation to put its money where its mouth is and propose teachers across the province freeze their own salaries over the next few years. This would gain almost exactly the same amount for education spending as the Federation wants and still would leave teachers, who earn on average double what other citizens in this part of the country earn, well ahead of the common folk. Barring that unliklihood, .let’s not grab onto this new proposal before we’ve thought it out. Turner's tables turned The irony was delicious. Polls showed John Turner and his Liberal party were in trouble last week but along came a poll that showed they would win an election but only if Jean Chretien was leading the party not John Turner. Ifitwasn’tsosaditwouldbe funny. Four, five, even six years ago polls showed that the Liberals would be in trouble if an election was called underthen the leader Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. They would be ahead in the polls however, if a white knight from the past came back to lead them: John Turner. John Turner came back. Good, opportunistic Liberals sensing the chance to continue their long reign, put him in office even though the policies he espoused seemed more like they should be in a Conservative party platform. The glow lasted only a couple of months, long enough to get Mr. Turner into a disastrous campaign that almost buried the party. Mr. Turner insisted only he could save the party, that it must be rebuilt from the ground up in his image. It’s in his image all right. Today, like Mr. Turner, the party doesn’t seem to know where it stands on any given issue. The party, and Mr. Turner have to find new ways of explaining how they support nearly everything Brian Mulroney’s government does from Meech Lake to Free Trade and yet still should be regarded as a real alternative for the voters. Still, the media wasn’t very fair with Mr. Turner last week. After all the same day the poll showing Mr. Chretien could lead the party to victory was released, Gallup poll showed the Liberals just one point behind the New Democrats. Hardly anybody talked about the trouble of Mr. Mulroney who’s so far back he’s almost out of sight. MA FOOR CHAR.. HE'S BEEN ON HOLIDAYS ANP DIDN'T KNOW THEY'D RECALLED PARLIAMENT. ..THE SIGHT OF ALL THOSE M P S IN AUGUST WAS JUST <--------TOO MUCH! j-------------T| f Mabel’s Grill 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 [ifHot in the country] gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering Society. Since not just everyone can partake of these deliberations >re will report the activities from time to lime. MONDAY: Ward Black said he figured maybe there was hope for him yet after he picked up the paper this morning and saw Phil Niekro, a 48-year-old pitcher was being treated like the saviour of the Toronto Blue Jays pennant hopes. “I hear,” said Ward, ‘‘that this guy is famous for a pitch that catchers have to get a great big ball glove to catch because nobody knows where it’s going. Maybe I can help the Blue Jays then. When I was a kid I never knew where my pitches were going either.” TUESDAY: Hank Stokes was talking about an article he read in the paper about a new study that says Free Trade could cut farm incomes in Ontario by 50 per cent. That, he says is kind of like how to divide zero in two. Billie Bean said that people seem to be out to do the impossible, to prove that you can make things bad enough that farmers won’t keep trying to farm. Hank said this study finally helped him figure out why they call it ‘ ‘free trade”: ‘ ‘ After it comes in you’ll give all your trade away for free.” WEDNESDAY: Tim O’Grady said this morning that he’s always had a hard time trying to figure people out. We will, for instance, find every labour saving device in the book to keep us from using up any more energy than possible, then we’ll join expensive clubs, or buy fancy equipment, to help us burn off calories so we can stay in shape. Then there’s the matter of people without clothes on. Mil lions, more like billions, of dollars are made every year from people buying books and magazines and video tapes of people with no clothes on. Walk down Yonge Street in Toronto and you’ll see whole book shops side by side that make their living oft nudity. Yet people are all up in arms out in Scarboro because some nude sunbathersonasecluded beach where you have to work pretty hard just to see them. You’d think they’d be taking a free peak or maybe putting in one of those telescopes where tourists put a quarter in so they could get a piece of the action. FRIDAY: Julia Flint was talking this morning about those two women who are making headlines swimming in Lake Ontario this summer. The one girl, Jocelyn Muir is swimming around the entire lake to raise money for charity while the other Vicki Keith Continued on Page 5 [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. N0G1H0 N0M1H0 887-9114 523-4792 Subscription price: $15.00; $35.00foreign. Advertising and news deadline: Monday 2p.m. in Brussels; 4p.m. in Blyth Editor and Publisher: Keith Roulston Advertising Manager: JaniceGibson Production and Office Manager: Jill Roulston Second Class Mail Registration No. 6968