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Times -Advocate, September 4, 1996
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1:I)1 I'OIZi \I ti
The $100,000+ Club
f provincial cutbacks aren't
forcing your blood pressure to rise, the
disclosure of public sector employees
that earn an annual salary of more than
$100,000 is guaranteed to make your
blood boil.
Just the thought of a public television
reporter who is earning more than the
organization's president, and the chief
of the Metro Toronto Housing Authori-
ty, which houses people on social assis-
tance, earning $176,618.06 is enough to
drive one into joining a popular revolt.
Outrageous is an understatement.
While university students may be
forced to give up higher education as a
result of higher tuition fees and institu-
tions are forced to close programs and
departments to meet provincial cuts,
university presidents are earning sala-
ries ranging from $200,000 and up, and
many professors far surpass the
$100,000 mark.
While the Hospital for Sick Children
gears up for another massive fundrais-
ing campaign to meet the costly de-
mands for its facility, its president
earns $535,041.54 in salary, bonuses
and taxable benefits.
If there is any reason to privatize the
debt -ridden Ontario Hydro it's the 649
people who are paid more than
Published Each Wednesday Morning at 424 Main St.,
Exeter, Ontario, NOM 156 by J.W. Eedy Publications Ltd.
Telephone 1-619.2361331 • Fax: 519.2354766
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GO +1. JEAN BOYLE
ACRON ROWE
$100,000 a year each. Fifty-five per cern
of these people are union members and
make the Power Workers Union plea for
Ontario Hydro's preservation sound like
.Ontario
whimpering of a political despot.
It's time for the $100,000+ Club to
wake up and smell the coffee.
Such salaries are a detriment to the ef-
forts of the Harris government and com-
mon taxpayers to eliminate the provin-
cial deficit. The institutions and boards
which approve these salaries should be
subjected to a public protest similar to
the city-wide protests in Hamilton and
London. The salary disclosures also
show how messed up the operations and
funding of Metro Toronto really is. Any
municipal government that supports a
$102,393 salary for a senior housing
plumber has its head screwed on back-
wards.
Institutions are jumping to the defence
of the university presidents, police
chiefs and big city hospital CEO's stat-
ing they have the experience and creden-
tials to justify their $100,000 salaries.
In lean and mean times like these, the
justification is as ludicrous as Marie An-
toinette's preference for cake during the
French Revolution.
From the Fergus Elora News Express
Your Views
Letters to the editor
Support needed for 1997 Canada Day
... it would be a shame to see it
go by the wayside...
Dear Editor:
The Canada Day celebrations committee would
like to e, 1. nil our many thanks to all of those who
supported us. As a group of eleven people (Kevin
and Sandi Poole, Nick and Tibby Carter, Karen
Kneale, Rob Waas, Tdm Lawson, Barry Clarke,
Harry Young, Dennis Siren and Barry Davis), we
have found 1996 to be one of the toughest years
ever. At the end of July we were showing a substan-
tial shortfall but thanks to John and Mary Wright of
Wright's IGA Grand Bend, our commitments have
been met.
Thank you John and Mary.
The evening of fireworks and the first Rusker Fest
attracted people of all ages and from many other
communities. This event is one of the most impor-
tant events of our community and it would be a
shame to see it go by the wayside. It is ourselves
and only ourselves, the businesses, organizations
and residents that can keep this event and events
like this alive. We all know that there is a lot of
competition to get that tourist dollar and it would be
very easy for communities like London, Sarnia,
Goderich and Port Stanley to take that away from
us. So please find it in your heart to support the
1997 Canada Day celebration committee.
Once again thank you to the many that supported
us in 1996.
Committee Chairman
Kevin Poole
• • • WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND? • • •
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discussion of local issues, concerns, complaints and kudos. WE ASK THAT YOU KEEP
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Sign your letter with both name and address. Anonymous letters will not be published.
A View From Queen's Park
By Eric Dowd
Moving from place to place,
I've had the opportunity to meet
many different types of
neighbors along the way.
As a kid on 7th Avenue in
Owen Sound, neighbors' yards
were welcoming yet forbidden.
Five stitches in the left hand
tells you never to go near
Roger's wiener dog again while
scratchy rose bushes indicate
Mrs. Webb's garden is not the
place to hide while playing
nicky-nicky-nine-door.
I remember spooky houses
with strange cats and manicured
brick homes where people never
stepped on their own grass.
Walking the dog as a kid in
the 70's was a free -thinking
activity. Stooping and scooping
were only for those at war with
dandilions.
And back then, it seemed like
neighborhood kids played
together more. Huge hordes of
us would meet on the hill by the
giant willow tree and trek across
lawns in a game of
hide-and-seek or kick -the -can
while dusk covered the summer
streets and bugs buzzed in our
ears. The neighbors never
complained about footprints in
IT WASN'T
ME„,
ITWASN'T
ME,,,
41frA.
Distributed by Miller Features Shd,c to
Simple. Cruelties
Brenda Burke
Neighbors
the gardens or screams that
shook the glass panels of front
doors.
At university my neighbors
were of a different sort. The
shuffling, television stoned, beer
belching, half -closed -eyes sort
that stayed up until 6 a.m.
blowing funny smoke through
holes in the wall and playing
guitar with a mega amplifier.
And, lest I ever forget, the
deep, dark roommate who slept
with the dresser anchored in
front of her bed, claiming
invisible people watched her
slumber.
And of course, the blessed
landlady who, despite the cost
of $350 per month board, would
allow no food in the room, no
use of the kitchen facilities and
no parking on site.
There were worse. Like the
man who stumbled into our
Toronto apartment while
playing an inebriated game of
cards with the folks upstairs.
Or the nosey landlord who
stooped to peek in our basement
apartment windows and
occasionally let herself in to
steal bananas.
On the other hand, some
neighbors are kind. Like those
who put plastic bags full of
garden goodies on your outside
doorknob.
Or better yet, those who cut
your grass for you or throw you
a huge 'Welcome to the
Neighborhood!' party that lasts
nearly all night long with
blaring music, riding lawn
mowers, flaming stereo
speakers, a scavenger hunt that
requires a man dressed in drag,
dancing the Macarena in the
street, hordes of chocolates and
of course, the contents of a box
of Minute Rice poured in your
bed.
My father always warned me
to get a place in country where I
wouldn't have to worry about
what the neighbors thought or
how thick my window blinds
were or how vocal my dog was
or what my cat was doing all
night long.
"It's peaceful," he'd say. "No
neighbors to bug you and tell
you what to do. Besides, you
don't have to feel pressured to
keep up with the Joneses."
So far the Joneses have been
pretty interesting.
TORONTO - The most intriguing question in
Ontario politics does not involve politicians, but
whether the teachers' unions will be able to mod-
erate the tone of the country's most right-wing
newspaper.
Five teachers' unions through their pension
plan have agreed to invest $70 million in a man-
agement -led buyout of the company which owns
the unusually partisan Toronto Sun and other pa-
pers.
An investment of this size would normally enti-
tle those making it to have some say in the way
the company operates and the teachers say they
would like the Sun to be more pro -union and less
supportive of right-wing Progressive Conserva-
tive Premier Mike Harris.
The teachers are worried particularly about
Harris's spending cuts, which have cost some
their jobs, and warning he is considering with-
drawing their right to strike, and say it is 'impor-
tant for teachers' voices to be heard.'
The Sun traditionally has been highly critical
of teachers and their unions. They must have
been distressed recently when the paper said
that while others in the public sector have be-
gun to accept reality and the need for cuts, 'the
teachers' unions start whining about any threat
to their cushy salaries and perks.'
Teachers, the paper says, 'have amassed a
costly collection of benefits largely through the
strong-arm tactics of their union leaders,'
which include a 'remarkably generous, fully in-
dexed pension plan...a black hole for tax dol-
lars' and 'absurdly generous cash -outs of sick
days upon retirement' (which many can accu-
mulate and be paid for even if they were not
sick.)
The Sun scoffs that teachers 'work for 38
weeks a year' and will never 'give up their
summers off' and suggested 'why not trim their
two-month summer holiday by a week or two?'
It says teachers' unions also 'obstinately try
to protect everything that was won in another
time and reality. It's time they woke up, like
,rs;
Teachers buy in
everyone else in the public service has had to,
and faced the financial facts.'
The Sun also devotes a lot of space to attack-
ing unions generally. When unionists including
teachers demonstrated against Hams' cuts, the
Sun complained unions merely 'drag out the
tiresome, old confrontational rhetoric of the
left. Threatening and bullying seem to be all
that unionists have left. They have no real solu-
tions to offer.'
The paper complains constantly about 'union
bosses', rarely conceding that any were elected
?nd have members' support, 'union jackboots
trampling rights' and 'union bully boys' and
'cossetted and spoiled union brats' and 'self-
absorbed and self-centred union whiners.'
The Sun also has a devotion to Harris which
it is not going to be pried from easily. Almost
its only criticisms are that occasionally he
moves too slowly for its liking.
In the 1995 election, it told readers 'your mis-
sion is clear - you must vote rot Mike Harris'
A
and 'have courage - there is nothing scary about
what Mike Harris is saying' and 'uncork the
champagne bottles. Mike Harris will be swept to
power.'
The Sun has now said the teachers' unions can
have members on its board, but its owners have
never dictated its editorial policy.
This probably was said tongue in cheek, be-
cause the paper was founded mainly with devel-
opers' money and started as pro -developer and
right-wing and its writers do not need to be di-
rected: they can see what appears in the paper. At
one time half its columnists ran in elections for
the Tories.
Unions and other narrow interest groups should
not beencouraged to buy into normal newspa-
pers to Pito influence their views and the Sun's
are too deeply ingrained to be changed easily.
But there is a delicious irony in that some of its
most battered targets will get a chance to chal-
lenge them in its boardroom and this should
make for an uneasy alliance.