Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1991-07-24, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1991. PAGE 5. Revising history can be tricky I sec the Americans are renaming a national monument down in Montana. Custer Battlefield is to become The Little Big Hom Battlefield. Well, fair enough. Custer was outsmarted and outdukcd in his famous last stand. Naming the place after him is kind of like giving the Stanley Cup to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The new name doesn't bother me. What's got me worried is how easy it was. We seem to be renaming a lot of things lately. Frobisher Bay becomes Iqaluit. Dorchester Boulevard becomes Boulevard Rene Levesque. Internationally, familiar names are being plastered over with increasing frequency as well. Remember Tanganyika and Zanzibar? Gone. It's Tanzania now. Burma is now Myanmar. In the USSR, Volvograd used to be Stalingrad which used to be Tsaritsyn. And St. Petersburg, which used to be Leningrad...is now St. Petersburg again. Canadian dollar too high BY RAYMOND CANON If you want the real culprit in the failure of the free trade agreement to produce the number of jobs it was supposed to, not to mention the large scale shopping across the border, you have only to look at the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar. For quite some lime it has been sitting at the 86- 87 cent U.S. mark, which means that an an American will get about $1.15 Canadian in terms of the U.S. dollar. Frankly, that is about 10 cents too high. If I had my druthers, I would like to sec the Canadian dollar worth about 75-80 cent range and the lower in that range, the better. This would mean that the American dollar would get in the vicinity of $1.30 - $1.35 Canadian. Those are, rough figures but I think you get the idea by now. What does a high Canadian dollar do in terms of U.S. currency? For one thing it makes all the U.S. goods that we might like to buy cheaper than so many people are doing some of their shopping on the other side of the border. The Bank of Canada would also tell you that it reduces the rate of inflation in this country and, since the Bank is concerned about this inflation and is one of the reasons why the dollar is so high, we can blame the Bank if we want to. However, back to that later. Right now the Canadian dollar is operating under what economists like to call a “dirty float.” This means that, while the dollar is subject to the law of supply and demand in determining its value, any time that the Bank of Canada does not like what this is doing to its value, it can enter the market, buy or sell dollars and thus influence the value. It can also influence the same market by changing the bank rate, that is, the rate at which the central bank lends money to the chartered banks. If it raises the rale in comparison to, say, the bank rate in the United Slates, more companies will invest their short term deposits in Canada and the resulting demand for our dollars will drive up the rate of But the, the USSR used to stand for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In the latest Kremlin flip, “Soviet” has been replaced with “Sovereign”. As they say down at the ballpark, you can't tell the players without a program. It isn’t hard to understand why Russians are eager to get rid of every vestige of repressive thugs like Lenin and Stalin. The Communist Party has appointed a special committee the sole function of which is to rechristcn streets carrying the names of no longer fashionable heroes. Still, I can't help wondering just how faR this revisionist fervour will go. Seems like all that has to happen is for some historical figure to fall out of favour and bingo — the name changers stir the paint pots and warm up the printing presses. That could be very dangerous. I mean, just suppose that tomorrow some obscure professor at Dalhousie calls a press conference to announce new historical data on Queen Victoria. Turns out the Tiny Perfect Regent was actually a child-beating, nose-picking, penny-pinching, racist, sexist, ageist kleptomaniac. Suppose that as a result of said professors revelations, Queen Victoria’s image becomes a repugnant amalgam of Roseanne Barr crossed with Tammy Faye Bakker by way of Brunhilda. Suddenly the name of Britain's longest reigning monarch is anathema. Nobody exchange of the Canadian dollar. Sometimes these dollars enter Canada of their own violition, as it were. Let me cite an example. Businessmen in Hong Kong are becoming rather edgy about the take-over of that crown colony by the Chinese in 1997. Many of them are demonstrating this fear by setting up shop in other countries. Would it surprise you to learn that Canada is the No. 1 choice of the other countries and thus billions of dollars have and still are flowing from Hong Kong to our country and in so doing contributing to the high exchange rate. If you think that all these flows of capital don't have an effect, let me set you straight. In our day-to-day business as a nation, which is known as the current account, Canada runs a deficit of about $17 billion. This means that we spend that much more in other countries than is spent here. The two big culprits are the interest we have to pay on the money we have borrowed to finance our national debt and the fact that Canadians as tourists (and shoppers) spend far more elsewhere than foreigners do here. counterpart. Those arc the real culprits. Rutabaga Festival a success THE EDITOR, On behalf of the Blyth Rutabaga Festival, our committee of volunteers wants to extend our sincere thanks to The Citizen for your help in making our second annual Rutabaga Festival such a great success. Due to the support of the many service clubs in Blyth, we were able to make a small profit (over $700) which will help in Looking Backward Continued from page 4 College of Engineering and Applied Science at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Brother and sister, Tim and Kim Fritz of Brussels won the Lions Elimination Draw, netting them a cool $2,500. FIVE YEARS AGO JULY 23, 1986 wants to be associated with it. Good bye Victoria. Not to mention Regina, Prince Albert and Consort, Alberta. And then there's my personal geographical situation to consider. I live in Wellington County, not far from the city of Waterloo and the towns of Arthur and Wellesley. They even brew a beer hereabouts called Iron Duke. All those names are of course, taken from one Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, most famous for thumping Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. By all accounts the man was a genuine hero - but so were Custer and Lenin a few short years ago. What if some historian discovers that the Duke of Wellington really wore army boots of clay? What if that sets off another frenzy of name changing? I could wind up with an awful lot of blank spots on my driver's licence. But it's not just my problem. It's your problem too. If they can make a virago out of Victoria and a wretch out of Wellington you better start fretting about your own geographical identity, chum. Pretty soon the name changers could be re­ dubbing whole countries - whole continents even...including the one you and I inhabit. Sure. All they have to do is dig up some dirt on that 15th century Italian sailor, Vespucci - what was his first name again? Oh, right — Amerigo. Yet, in spite of this $17 billion deficit, the Bank of Canada has $3 billion more in its foreign currency holdings than it did a year ago. That will give you a rough estimate of how much capital is flowing into Canada for one reason or another. If we consider costs, most Canadian goods which would be exported to the United States would be competitive if the dollar were, say, 75 cents U.S. This is because of what is known as the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). This economic law says that you should take a specific amount of Canadian money (say, $1,000) and buy as many goods in Canada as the equivalent amount of U.S. dollars would buy in the United Slates. We certainly can't do that at 86 cents but we could at 10 cents lower. All this adds up to one major headache. If you are looking for something to blame, don't blame the Free Trade Agreement, blame the high exchange rate of the Canadian dollar and, while you are at it, the high bank rate compared to its American organizing next year's fun-filled festival. On September 11, we'll be holding our next meeting to discuss plans for 1992's events. We'd be happy to have anyone attend this meeting to be held in the Blyth Legion beginning at 7:30 p.m. to hear any ideas and suggestions. Jane Gardner Secretary, Rutabaga Festival. Ron Vcrcruyssen was chosen to try for one of the 12 spots on the Ontario Juvenile Basketball team. In addition to playing at the Canada games the top 12 had the chance to represent Ontario in an international juvenile tournament and become identified as potential national team members. Gone to Glory opened at Blyth Festival. Letter from the editor I'm not sure I could pass the test By Keith Roulston I guess it's a good job I was bom in Canada because I'm not sure I could pass the test Immigration Canada might throw al me to make me prove my marriage was the real thing instead of just an excuse to slay in the country. A Toronto couple recently flunked the test and immigration officials decided that their marriage was just an excuse for him to gel landed immigrant status and so he's got to go. The newspaper article I read sounded like it could have been part of the script of the movie Green Card. In that movie an elegant horticulturalist who wanted an exclusive apartment with a conservatory married a rough-hewn French musician because she could only get into the apartment if she was married and he could only stay in the U.S. if he was married. They planned to gel married, say goodbye and never see each other again. The fun of the movie began when immigration officials got suspicious and the couple had to actually move in together and do a quick study to pass the tests they would be put through. They were taken into separate rooms and asked questions to show how intimately they knew their partner. I figured I would have flunked a good number of the questions. I would have flunked a lol of the questions Hcaro and Miles Johnson were asked by Canadian immigration interrogators the other day loo: Who made the bed this morning and what colour were the sheets? First part, no problem. My wife. In fact one of the things that might have made the investigators suspicious was when Mr. Johnson said he made the bed...even though Mrs. Johnson agreed he had. Just how many men do? As for the colour of the shcets...I don't know when was the last lime I noticed what colour of sheets were on the bed. Who cooked last night? Heck the way it is around our house, we're lucky if anybody's home to cook. Docs popping a frozen pizza in the oven count as cooking? That, I might have admitting cooking... or barbecued hamburgers or pork chops or an omelette. All the good things I'd have to credit to my wife. The Johnsons couldn't remember who cooked the night before. With the kind of unmcmorablc meals a lot ol us arc eating these days forgetting might be excusable to anybody but an immigration officer. Where did you meet and who proposed? I can remember where we met... what husband would dare forget since the penalty would be worse than the immigration people could imagine. As to who proposed, they'd stump me on that one. As I recall we just sort of grew into the idea and nobody ever had to say the actual words. I don't suppose that would cut it with the immigration people. What kind of furniture and appliances are in the kitchen? Now I know I'd flunk that one. J had to get a part of the dryer the other day and they asked me the brand and I didn't have the slightest idea. I could give the colour of the appliances, but then the Johnsons could too. They flunked when he said the table was in the kitchen of the bachelor apartment when it was just near it. Close only counts in horseshoes. They didn't get to the one about who sleeps on which side of the bed. That one I could answer after 22 years. But it doesn't sound like it would be enough. I'd be gone.