HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-10-28, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1987.
Time to fight
or give up
It snowed for the first time this year across southwestern
Ontario last week but it was hard to know if the snow came from
the clouds or from the snowjob Canada Post was trying to pull on
rural Canadians.
Canada Post finally admitted openly that it plans to franchise
5200 post offices across Canada in the next 10 years but Gilles
Hebert, director of rural services said the new services would
be equal or better to what people have come to expect. We’ve
heard that one before.
He said that under the new format a post office may simply
switch to a different location with a different postmaster but in
some cases, postal services may be transferred to a nearby
area. What that means is that many postmasters like the ones in
Brucefield and Ethel are being offered take-it-or-leave-it deals
that will see them provide a post office, plus insurance and
labour, for only a few dollars a day. Canada Post is telling these
people that if they don’t take the post office it will move out of
town and they will be responsible for driving the final nail in the
coffin of their community, not Canada Post.
The challenge has been thrown to rural Canada. We can
stand up and fight together or shrug and let one community
afteranotherloseproperservice.Wecanlet government
Members of Parliament know that if this declaration of war on
rural Canada is not reversed there won’t be a Tory elected in
rural Canada in the next few years or we can quietly sit back and
accept this. If we don’t fight we deserve what Canada Post
wants to give us.
Two views of Canada
battle it out
The nature of the Free Trade debates makes it obvious that
two vastly differing views of what is beneficial to human beings
are battling it out for supremacy.
The supporters of Free Trade generally point to the economic
gains that can be made by closer economic union with the huge
United States economy. They see human well-being tied to
material prosperity. Free trade will bring lower prices to
consumers and more jobs to the country in the long-run even if
there are some people who are hurt in the short run.
Opponents of free trade often dispute even these benefits.
But many of those who are against free trade say that there are
things greater than economic gain or loss at stake. Many fear
Free Trade will lessen Canadian independence.
While many of the arguments are on a massive scale (billions
of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs) perhaps it would be
easier to understand the argument with an example from
everyone’s life.
As small children we enjoy the love, comfort and support of
our parents. We like leaving it to them to worry about all our
material needs. As we grow older, however, especially as
teenagers, we get a mind of our own. We resent being told what
to do and when to do it. We want to set our own rules that meet
our needs and desires, not keep living with the rules of our
parents. Sooner or later we decide to give up the economic
comforts of home and move out on our own.
Objectively and economically, this decision makes asbolute-
ly no sense. Usually we leave our parents with a big empty
house to rattle around in. There would be plenty of room for us
to continue to live there. Sharing a home would mean savings
for both the parents and the young adult. We ignore this good
sense because we want to live our own lives.
From a purely logical point of view, not only should Canada
and the United States be united economically, there is probably
no reason why there should be a border at all. There is also
probably no logical reason why the United States should not join
with China and the Soviet Union to make one big global country.
But the Americans don’t want to live the way Russians or
Chinese people live. Many Canadians can admire the U.S. but
don’t want to be Americans. If we did we’d move to the U.S.
The government claims that just because we have Free Trade
with the U.S. it doesn’t mean that the U.S. will set the rules, but
already Canadian rules have been changed to gain American
support for Free Trade. Our government bowed to pressure
from the U.S. over the drug patent legislation although most
Canadians (not including this paper) supported shorter patent
protection which meant lower prices. It has agreed not to give
Canadian magazines preferential postal rates, a move which
may hurt an industry that was just starting to get on its feet after
years of struggling because U.S. magazines were dumped into
the country.
There are indications that the Canadian government has
succumbed to heavy U.S. pressure and will drop its plans to
give Canadian companies to control film distribution by
preventing American distributors to tie up distribution rights
for Canada as throw-in to contracts for American distribution.
What other solutions to uniquely Canadian problems will go by
the wayside in the future in order to harmonize our laws to those
in the U.S.?
For economists and big business leaders Free Trade is about
wealth and jobs. For many people it is about having the right to
live your life as a grown-up country, setting your own rules and
finding your own solutions to your own problems.
they can do so by exporting to such
countries as the United States and
our beers are very popular south of
the border. The most popular is
Molson’s and the second most
allows such protectionism to run
rampant in this country.
Anyway, while the Canadian
brewing industry is making up its
mind whether it wants to live in the
The beer industry,
here, there
and everywhere
BY RAYMOND CANON
I have toconfess that the beer
industry will never get rich off of
my purchases of the foamy stuff; I
tend to drink it in countries where
the water is suspect which means
that one year I drank more beer in
two weeks in Iraq than I did for the
whole year in Canada. I really do
not have any preferences; beer is
beer to me and I really have to
laugh atthosejocks onT.V. who, it
is suggested, are always able to
know the beer they are drinking.
Frankly I doubt it.
My interest in the beer industry
was whetted by the recent one-day
illegal strike which the workers
staged in this province in order to
protest againstfree trade. I started
towonder just why they were so
adamently opposed since Labatts
for one is a pretty aggressive and
competent company. It was then
that I discovered that, while we
may get very angry about protec
tionism U.S. style, we are practic
ing the mostblatentkind right here
in Canada when it comes to
marketing beer.
The rule is that you cannot
market a beer in any province
unless you set up a manufacturing
plant in the province. That means
that throughout Canada we have
close to 40 small plants, each one
producing for a province in which
they are located. If they want to
effect any real economies of scale,
popular is Moosehead. “Moose
head,” you will say, “I’ve never
heard of it.” Precisely! Moose
head is made in New Brunswick
and since it is not produced in
Ontario, you can’t get it here; you
have to go either to New Brunswick
or to Pt. Huron.
19th or 20th century, the rest of the
world’s brewing industry is going
international. Faced with rather
flat markets at home, they are
looking for growth in other coun
tries and it seems that no place is
sacrosanct.
We saw a little bit of this
As long as we have such a
fragmented industry, we are not
going to be able to compete with
American Breweries and it is a
small wonder why the beer workers
went out on their one-day strike.
However, the real ogre is not the
United States, it is Canada which
world-wide action when it was
announced that Foster’s, a giant
Australian brewmaster, had
bought out Carling O’Keefe, the
No. 3 producer in Canada. Actually
Canada is only one of the countries
they have expanded into; they have
Continued on page 5
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