The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

6 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday February 7, 2009 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Letter to the Editor NEIL OLIVER Vice-president and Group Publisher, Metroland West DAVID HARVEY General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director Metroland Media Group Ltd. includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Caledon Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution SARAH MCSWEENEY Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora EraBanner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian Funding for education should be sustainable Re: Region agrees to Mac tax, Oakville Beaver, Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 It is not about whether we should invest in education ... rather which tax payer's pocket should fund the investment, i.e. which order of government will reap the dividends via income growth and corporate tax and the appropriateness of funding from that source. In the Mike Harris days, the Province removed 50 per cent of local (municipal/regional) responsibility for funding education from the residential tax base (excluding industrial commercial property taxes) in exchange for greater local responsibility for income redistribution programs such as welfare. While this substitution was marketed as "revenue neutral." Over time, all parties came to acknowledge there that was nothing neutral about it. Councillor Keith Bird witnessed this interchange. He also served during the last recession when the discretionary funding at both the Town and Region were nonexistent; and when more of the funding of provincially-mandated services, first welfare, and then social housing, was downloaded onto the municipal and regional tax base. At that time, the mandated funding requirement for welfare was at the 20 per cent level -- not at today's, which is nearly 50 per cent or more and when we are, once again, in a recession. Perhaps he voted against at the Region because he remembers that time and sees that the current property taxpayer's exposure has increased and that job losses are once again mounting. Early in this term, Halton -- supported by its component municipalities -- rightly challenged the Province on the inadequacies of funding to regions and municipalities: the building blocks of this nation. It is tempting to fill in the blanks in the provincial and federal funding vision. By stepping forward to do so (as municipalities such as Oakville have previously and just done), there is increased exposure to Ontario residential taxpayers, who already pay more taxes due to home ownership than their peers elsewhere in Canada and throughout the U.S., our largest trading partner. I celebrate the arrival of McMaster University within Halton and the possibility of Wilfrid Laurier situating in Milton. Further, I understand the decision made by Regional Council was a complicated one. Nevertheless, this decision sends a mixed message about our resolve to secure lasting and sustainable municipal funding, while further exposing our residential taxpayers in uncertain times. The need to make this decision illustrates the lack of a comprehensive provincial funding strategy for post-secondary education at a time when our national competitiveness has fallen dramatically. It is my hope that the federal budget will tie its stimulus package deployment to investment that improves Canada's competitiveness as a nation and generates a lasting dividend for today's generation and future ones, rather than a burden of unproductive debt. Economists confirm that improved competitiveness increases our earning potential, advances the health of the bottom line and thus the quality of our lives. Doubtlessly this generates more income, consumer confidence and spending and more tax revenues to the province and federal that collects these funds. I agree education and innovation are vitally important to our transition to a knowledge economy: the real question is how to fund it in a sustainable and responsible way. ANN MULVALE RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION Celebrating customs PHOTOS BY NIKKI WESLEY/ OAKVILLE BEAVER ANNUAL TRADITION: From left, Laxna Pathmanathan owns the catwalk as she models an outfit from Sri Lanka, then all eyes are on Maggie Cook as she performs an Irish dance while Lilias Kim and Rajan Grewal are happy to take it all in at St. Mildred's Lightbourn's fourth annual multicultural fair Thursday night. Four-plus minutes of awesome oratory on a common condiment round our humble (and slightly neurotic) home, this is one of the most tense times of the year. No, it's not tax time, although that annual angst-fest is quickly creeping up on us. So, you wonder, what could be more stressful than reckoning with Revenue Canada? Speech topic time, that's what. Even as I write, our 13-year-old is walking the planks, pacing the hardwood, working her grey matter, wracking her brain, trying to come up with a speech topic that she can embrace and embellish to the tune of four-plus minutes of sparkling spoken word. She's frustrated because she's been trying to tackle a topic for weeks. And the picky perfectionist has gotten nowhere. By this point the whole house is on edge as we try to help her without making it seem like we're forcing a topic upon her, just to end the agony. "How about how difficult it is being a 13-year-old girl in this crazy day and age?" I suggest. "Oh, I get it, dad: sarcasm." Then a (energy efficient) light bulb turns on in her head. "Wait, how about a speech on sarcasm?" "Yeah, that would be a great topic. Sorry, I'm being sarcastic." Honestly, I can't envision four-plus minutes on sarcasm, even with three minutes of funny examples. Furthermore, I wasn't A being sarcastic about how tough it is being a 13-year-old girl these days. I think that would be an excellent topic. Discuss the unbelievable expectations, the prodigious pressures, the hormones gone bananas. Just the other day my wife related that many of our daughter's friends are already ensconced in a time-consuming and potentially pricey beauty regimen that includes Andy Juniper regular visits to a professional plucker of eyebrows; heck, my wife noted, when she was 13, she wasn't even aware she had eyebrows. Talk about expectations and pressures. Alas, I don't see my daughter as the type who could stand in front of her peers and do the old Dr. Phil confessional. "Toilets!" calls a voice from down the hallway. One of our son's friends has apparently taken up the topic search. "I did a speech on toilets," she adds, enthusiastically, "and I won." Sounds like a crappy topic to me and my daughter concurs. Although, it was a winner... "What would you do if it were your speech?" she asks me. "I'd do it on the last 50 years of music -- a half-century of revolutionary changes not only to music itself, but in the way music is listened to. Did you know that 50 years ago most people did not have a means to play music in their homes? Now, I can go for a jog with 10,000 tunes in my back pocket. It's amazing!" "Yeah, dad," she says, "great topic." Ah, we're back to sarcasm. And with that she slinks off to her room to do some serious soul searching, or to text a friend, or something. Later she returns, triumphantly, sort of. "I've got my topic," she says. I give her a drum roll and she announces: "I'm doing my speech on ketchup." I don't know whether to laugh (she's finally picked a topic), or cry (she picked ketchup). Regardless, she sets into crafting fourplus minutes of awesome oratory on that most common condiment. And the whole house breathes a sigh of relief. She's in Grade 8, her last year of compulsory speeches. We've survived our final speech topic time. We've reached another milestone in maturation. And, no, I'm not being sarcastic. -- Andy Juniper can be visited at his website, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com.