Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-08-28, Page 4• CNA BLUE RIBBON AWARD 1995 P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM tHO Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. NOG 1HO Phone 887-9114 FAX 887-9021 .Left standing Photo by Janice Becker Letters THE EDITOR, Consider this scenario. You are a retiring farmer, yet you want to stay on the farm and help your children get a good start in the business. Should you attempt to sever a retirement lot off the farm? Provincial statistics show that retirement lots change ownership within an average of three years after the consent to sever is granted. What type of conflicts might your children face with future property owners and their farming practices after you move on? What is the possibility that your children will be able to carry on with the business you have worked a life time to build and maybe your parents before you? These thoughts are futuristic but this is the type of thinking that is needed to chart the future of the next 20 years. Twenty years is how long the previous Huron County Plan survived. Retirement severances is just one of the many issues that affect land use planning and the way we farm in Huron County. Planning is a mystery to some folks while others perceive it as an obstacle to their individual wishes. The County Plan sets the overall goals and philosophy of planning for the County. Each township then adjusts its policies to fit their situation while keeping within the overall goals of the County Plan. Community participation in the development of planning and community development policies is important at both the County and the Township level. An opportunity for you to participate in charting the future of Huron County and more specifically the policies that affect agriculture is available to you with a series of three workshops. You may attend one or more of these workshops as the policies will evolve from one to the next. These workshops are jointly sponsored by the Huron Federation of Agriculture and the Huron County Planning and Development Department. Everyone is welcome — farmers as well as our nonfarming neighbours. All workshops will start at 8 p.m. in the evening on Thursday, Sept. 5 at Belgrave Community Centre, Thursday, Oct. 3 at Goderich Twp. Community Centre and Monday, Nov. 25 at Hensall Community Centre. To confirm dates and locations or make other inquiries please contact the Huron County Planning and Development Department at (519) 524-2188. We hope to see you out at one of these workshops. Stephen Thompson President, Huron Federation or Agriculture Pat Down, Chair, Huron County Planning and Development Committee HFOA president urges farmers to help chart county's future PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1996 C Ti e North Huron itizen Publisher, Keith Roulston Editor, Bonnie Gropp Advertising Manager, Jeannette McNeil The Citizen is published weekly In. Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable in advance at a rate of $27.00/year ($25.24 + $1.76 G.S.T.) in Canada; $62.00/year in U.S.A. and $75.00/year In oiher foreign countries. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. We are not responsible for unsolicited newscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are © Copyright. Publications Mail Registration No. 6968 Busting for a fight It's a strange thing about human nature that every so often people get tired of compromise and are in the mood for a real fight. Whether it's a married couple or neighbouring countries, sometimes there's the urge to have it out. Right now the provincial government is ready to have it out with the province's teachers, and at least some of the teachers seem to be in the same mood. Ontario's education minister, John Snobelen, speculated last week that he might take away the right of teachers to strike and that he may take over negotiating with all teachers instead of leaving it to the individual board of education. Teachers union representatives, in turn, threatened a showdown if the government acted. In some areas of the province the teachers are not only battling against cuts and a freeze on their salaries, they're arguing they should get back the pay increases lost under the NDP government's social contract. The problem about spoiling for a fight, is that when you get the fight you've been looking for, you suddenly realize it isn't any fun. Everybody has a lot to lose by a confrontation. The government may find itself in the same position as boards of education who stood up to teachers unions in the past: the taxpayers who were urging them on suddenly become parents who want their kids back in school, now! Teachers too have a lot to lose. This is a government with an ideological agenda. It will win at all cost. If teachers go on strike they'll lose a lot of money before they get some small face-saving concession from the government, then the government will go on with its plans as before. But the biggest losers will be the students, the people who have nothing to gain no matter who wins. They will be the ones who sit idling by while the grown-ups fight it out. They will be the ones who lose precious days, weeks or months, of the education that both sides claim is so important. They are the powerless in this power struggle. So to both the government and union leadership, before you throw the first blow, think if you really want the pain this fight will bring, and think of the innocent bystanders who will be hurt. — KR A welcome show of responsibility Canadians witnessed a refreshing case of a high official ,accepting responsibility last week when Monique Begin, former federal minister of health, stepped forward to accept whatever responsibility was her due over the tainted blood scandal which saw hundreds of recipients, particularly hemophiliacs, infected with AIDS. Begin didn't have to accept the responsibility. The Krever commissions looking into the scandal have been a battleground of lawyers seeking to have their clients protected from blame. An exemption had been given to federal and provincial health officials. But Begin was bothered by the idea of not accepting responsibility for the actions carried out in her name. She visited an ethicist in Montreal and they agreed that as a matter of morality and integrity, she should renounce her exemption and accept whatever blame the commission should decide was hers. She wrote Justice Kreven urging him to lay the blame where it should be. "Justice is offended if people at the top of government or bureaucratic structures are not held responsible for their actions, but employees at less senior levels of hierarchy are. Moreover, public ethics requires that those at the top be accountable." No longer being in politics, Begin has nothing to gain by this move, arid potentially a lot to lose. She has however, the knowledge that she lived up to her own high moral standards. Contrast that acceptance of responsibility to the attempts of General Jean Boyle to squirm off the hook and blame underlings for the attempts to cover up the crimes of Canadian soldiers during the Somalia mission. According to Boyle, he's a victim of the ineptitude of those serving below him. It's not his fault if people lie to him. Boyle's attitude is all too prevalent in government and business. One of the privileges of rank seems to be to be able to make the buck stop short of the top. Certainly it can be unfair for the top dog to be blamed for goofs made by every single person who works for them, but ducking responsibility is also wrong. Thanks goodness for people like Monique Begin now and then.—KR E ditorial