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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1989-09-27, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1989. Opinion Double standard? The majority of Ontario residents probably felt the arrest of Bob Rae, New Democratic Party leader during a recent demonstration to block a new logging road into one of the provinces last areas of virgin timber, was a publicity stunt. The majority of people probably feel little sympathy for either Mr. Rae or the cause he was fighting. Certainly Mr. Rae isn’t very popular in the Temagami where the road into the bush will open up new areas of timber and keep local mills open. Without new timber, town leaders feel, the future of their community is doomed. Yet if this patch of original bushland were in some other corner of the world, would we feel the same. With the increase in the greenhouse effect, there’s been a great deal of concern in the past couple of years over the mass clearing of Amazon jungle in South America. The clearing has two detrimental effects on the world. The loss of all those breathing, growing plants means a major loss of earth’s ability to change carbon dioxide into oxygen. It’s that carbon dioxide that’s building up, causing the effect where heat can get into the earth’s atmosphere but can’t escape, just as in a greenhouse. The global warming caused by too much carbon dioxide is threatening to bring huge changes to our climate. But also lost are whole species of plants, plants that have been the source of many miracle cures over the past few decades. As the jungle is cleared, the plants are lost, in some cases forever. Canada’s northern forests are not as critical in the world view as the Amazon jungle but who knows what may be lost if we turn over the last vertiges of the native forest to the modern, forestry practices that strip every tree off the landscapes and start from scratch. It is easy to understand the feelings of the people of Temagami who see their future threatened by do-gooder outsiders yet this is the same problem the poor people of Amazon regions face that drives them to slash and burn their forests. For the people directly involved, the future is now. They worry about jobs today and let tomorrow look after itself. Y et if areas like the A mazon and Canada ’ s woodlands continue to be laid waste tomorrow will not look after itself. Art of doing the deal Brian Mulroney seems to bring one of his skills with him to the Prime Minister’s office from the world of big business: the art of doing the deal. In that game you have a final destination in mind, and you maneuvre the other guy into eventually giving you just what you want. Take the furor over the goods and services tax, for instance. One respected business commentator the other day spoke in awe of how the government has manipulated people into saying things they’d never have said a few months ago. Mulroney and Michael Wilson hit people over the head with a nine per cent tax and now people who would never have agreed to the tax at all are saying: “well maybe we’ve got to have the tax but it has to be lower.’’ Mulroney has also learned the “old camel in the tent’’ approach: you know the fable about the camel that sticks its head into the tent and says it’s cold out so can he keep his head in, then asks for his neck and his shoulders and so on until the camel is all in the tent and crowds out its master. That seems to be the approach Mulroney used in selling the Free Trade Agreement. When critics of the deal worried about things like social programs, regional support programs and marketing boards, the Mulroney government assured us they are all protected. Now U.S. complaints under GATT have cut the bottom out of the milk marketing system and the U. S. is using regional support programs as an issue of unfair subsidies. We’ve got the deal, now we find out there ’ s a whole lot more to it than we were told and the tent is getting a little crowded. While many have said Mulroney does not have a vision for the country the evidence of his legislation in the past five years shows he envisions a Canada more like of Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain or the United States. Canadians, he feels, must be forced to be more self-reliant, more risk taking. It’s afair enough goal but the Prime Minister and his party haven’t tackled it in an honest way. While many Conservatives openly believe in this goal, Mr. Mulroney has never had the courage to tell Canadians: “You elect me and I’ll make this country more self-reliant.’’ He has generally promised not to reduce social programs, not to undermine things like marketing boards, but then tried to slip his own agenda into place once he gains election. It’s a bottom-line, end-justifies-the-means kind of thinking that is revolutionizing Canada even if Canadians never voted for it. P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 P.O. Box 15’, BRUSSELS, Ont NOG 1H0 Phone 887-9114 Safe haven 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 [if not in the country] gather for morning coffee break, otherwise known as the Round Table Debating and Filibustering So­ ciety. Particularly, said Tim O’Grady, in Ontario where they won’t let you advertise if you’re a lawyer. TUESDAY: Ward asked Hank Stokes if he was going down to the big Plowing Match this week but Hank said no, he could generally get stuck in the mud on his own farm without travelling 150 miles to Windsor to do it. Billie Bean figures it’s about time they changed the name of the plowing match. “One year I asked somebody where I could find the plowing and he looked at me like I was crazy.” MONDAY: Ward Black said he hates to be cynical but he wonders if the Ontario Liberals might be happy to see the lawyers who are trying to argue that the Patti Starr inquiry shouldn’t be held in front of television cameras win their argu­ ment. “David Peterson may have promised an open inquiry but I bet he wouldn’t cry if the courts said it couldn’t be,’’ he said. Actually, said Julia Flint, she wondered how hard the lawyers would argue that case. It might be good for their clients to keep the whole thing low profile, she said, but for the lawyers, playing in front of the TV cameras day after day could be the kind of advertising you just can’t buy. WEDNESDAY: All the fuss over the opening of “The Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto must be a nice diversion for Garth Drabinsky what with all his other financial troubles these days, Tim was saying. Drabinsky is the guy who spent millions remodelling the Pantages theatre and putting on the very expensive show. Mean­ while, however, there are rumours he’s going to lose his job as head of the Cineplex Odeon because it’s losing too much money. “I can see it now,” said Tim, “the plot for a future full scale musical: an embit­ tered theatre producer hides out in the basement of the lavish theatre he helped rebuild and dreams of love with the star of the show on stage.” THURSDAY: “Billie, I’ve got the job for you,” Hank was saying as he showed Billie a story in the newspaper. The story was about the possibility Canada should have foreign spies out there trying to find out other countries’ secrets. The people doing a study had even suggested that with free trade Canadians should be spying on the U.S. to give us an equal chance of capturing foreign markets because it’s obvious the Americans know a lot more of our secrets than we know of theirs. “Can’t you just imagine it,” Tim was telling Billie, “lying in the sun in California trying to dig out the secrets of the movie industry, a couple of starlets bringing you cool drinks; you acting just like James Bond.” “More like with my luck they’d send me to Cleveland to find out about steel plants,” Billie said. So, said Julia, this is what Brian Mulroney meant when he talked about Free Trade creating more jobs. We have to create spies to keep an eye on the Americans so we can have an even break. 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