Zurich Citizens News, 1978-04-06, Page 4Page 4
Citizens News, April 6, 1978
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Aright to know
The recent controversy in the town of Mitchell
over the disclosure of salaries for municipal
employees is something that has not happened in
Zurich and hopefully will not happen in the future.
A key phrase that the politicians and municipal
officials of Mitchell seem to have forgot is"public
accountability," and the fact that access to infor-
mation which has come before a municipal council
meeting is guaranteed under the Municipal Act.
The Act states in part, that with certain excep-
tions as provided in the Municipal Act "Any person,
at all reasonable hours, may inspect any records,
books, accounts and documents in the possession or
under control of the clerk, except inter-
departmental correspondence and reports of of-
ficials of any department or of solicitors for the
corporation made to council, board of control or
any committee of council ..."
Clearly, a municipality must give the informa-
tion that is demanded of it providing that it falls un-
der the above criteria. The Act goes on to state that
the municipality can charge a fee for the obtaining
of such information.
The thing that makes this whole dispute such a
joke is the release of the range of salaries that the
employees. receive.
While this a practice followed by large govern-
ment agencies such as school boards where there
are large number of employees performing the
same work and receiving the same pay, it just
doesn't make sense in a town that has fewer than 20
employees.
As for clerk -treasurer Currie McVicar's state-
ment that "We (the town) just don't like it spread
all over the paper," he seems to forget that a
municipality is a lot more than just its employees.
In private industry, the employer (if he's at
all on the ball) knows what he pays his employees
and the same should hold true when you are in the
employ of a municipality.
It is also too bad that McVicar didn't bother
looking a little further afield when he said that to
his knowledge 18.municipal councils did not divulge
the salaries of its employees.
When salaries came up for discussion at Zurich
council in December, no member of council batted
an eye except in the case of one employee who
some council members felt was 'underpaid.
As long as the members of a community are
getting a fair return on their dollar and the salary
-levels seem to be fair, little if anything comes out
of salary disclosures.
Does somebody have something to hide in
Mitchell?
Just a facade
Canada, which has earned an international
reputation as being a benevolent bosom to im-
migrants from around the world, is rapidly losing
that distinction. Canadianism used to be thought of
as a mosaic that welcomed difference. To qualify
as part of the mosaic meant living and working in
this vast land, regardless of the spelling of your last
name or the color of your skin.
Last week, a London family which moved to
Canada from South Africa 10 months earlier, decid-
ed to move back tothatstrife-torn f
s i
e to
rn countrybecause
they could no longer endure the racism that was
making their children's lives here a misery. Lon-
don, apparently, poses a greater threat to the Arab
family's welfare than all the racial turmoil and
political upheaval which has made South Africa one
of the most insecure places to live on this planet.
It's true that children can be horribly cruel to
each other without realizing theimpactiof their ac
tions. And it is also true that some children are
picked on by their classmates simply because they
are different..,either shorter, fatter, taller, or
smarter than the rest. But in this case, the
difference was racial. The children who led the at-
tack picked out the Arab children from all the other
"different" sorts of children in their school and
made them targets of abuse. The choice did not just
happen randomly. Some adults, somewhere,
sometime, created the prejudice in these young
minds. After all, babies don't emerge from the
womb hating East Indians.
It would be easy to dismiss the racism as the
product of unthinking youth. People who hide
"behind these excuses are the same kind of
enlightened do-gooders who sit intheir manicured
subdivisions preaching social equality, only to
the evacuate a e neighborhood should an undesirable
move in. This is probably what one Londoner who
works closely with recent immigrants meant when
she described discrimination against foreigners as
"sneaky racism". It's the kind that offers aliens a
superficial goodwill, but in the crunch won't -hire
them or give them a place to live.
More and more, Canadians are learning that their
country's reputation as den mother to the world's
wanderers is really just a facade.
The Gazette,
University of Western Ontario
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Miscellaneous
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By
1.1 TOM CREECH
State of siege
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It was Thursday, March 30, the usual day after,
day after 'the Citizens News had been put bed, In other
words, it meant coming to work an hour or so later,
the euphoria of having put out another edition was sub-
siding and the reality of having to scrape up some
more copy for this week was being faced, albeit
somewhat reluctantly.
A "quick nip" into. the pasteup area of the T -A to
see how the Crop and Soil News was coming and a talk
with the assistant editor enabled this writer to learn
that the situation at Fleck Manufacturing in Huron
Park was indeed tense.
Stationed at the corner of the Crediton road and
highway four were six OPP officers and three
cruisers. Nobody but nobody was getting through to
the former air force base, not even a ministry of
transportation and communications survey crew who
were turned back.
A mile and a quarter south of this check point was
a similar sight: OPP officers and cruisers.
At the intersection of county road 21 and the road
leading to Centralia, were two cars parked off the side
of the road, a Laidlaw transport truck and lo and
behold, an OPP cruiser with Constables Ed Wilcox
and Bob Whiteford.
Initially, the situation here was the same, no
vehicles to Huron Park. Twenty minutes after the
writer's arrival things changed somewhat as anyone
who didn't look like a striker could pass through..
Forty-five minutes after I left Exeter, I'm finally
in Huron Park. Parking behind four cruisers each with
a woman officer, I walk the three blocks to the gates
at the industrial park's entrance and notice eight of-
ficers at the entrance in riot gear, the grey police bus
and another four cruisers parked off on the shoulder of
the road.
Arriving at the - Fleck plant, approximately 40
members of the United Auto Workers from the Budd
automotive plant near Kitchener are there along with
a dozen or so Fieck strikers.
I remarked to one of the photographers present
that if you didn't know that there was a strike going
on, you'd think it was a bunch of workers out for their
morning constitutional as the police were con-
spicuous by their absence.
Noticing a police cruiser about 100 yards to the
north of the plant, the writer ambles down to see what
if anything, the gentlemen in the black suits are
watching.
As I near the end of the plant, footsteps behind me
become louder. I hear a voice say "Stay where you
are, the cops are watching."
Turning around to look at a broken window, a head
that we learned later belonged to "Gene, Gene, the
kicking machine" slowly rose from beneath the win-
dow sill and flashed the peace sign (or some other two
finger gesture) towards this writer. .
Slowly extricating himself from the interior, Gene
proceeded to walk on the road beside the Fleck plant
until he reached another broken window.
Reaching inside, a large barrel was removed from
the building and the remaining fragments of the win-
dow were in the process of being destroyed.
Heeding the calls of the other strikers, Gene
stopped this activity and retired.to a cement platform
a few feet away:
At this time, the cruiser from the 'far end moved
in along with seven other cruisers which had been
stationed along the runway portion of the park.
After some commotion, Gene was placed in the
Please turn to Page 6
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