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Page 6-Oakville Beaver, Wed., Nov. 4, 1964 O akville Beaver Published every Wednesday at 258 Church S t ., O a k v ille , Ont. TELEPH ON E 845-8191 8 845 - 6422 Publisher J. Earl Morrison Editor Calvin Millar Advertising Manager A. W. Finn Death And Taxes Man, said the Bard, has seven ages. The tax­ payer comes to at least that many mileposts on his way through life. Some of them he never leaves behind him. He just keeps paying. First, he qualifies as a charge on the treasury when he is born. Second, as soon as he gets an allowance to spend, he' s a taxpayer without knowing it. And he might as well face the fact that these hidden taxes are going to be with him throughout his lifetime. Third, he gets a job. He ceases to be a bene­ ficiary through the family allowance but he starts paying unemployment insurance and is introduced to taxation at the source. Fourth, when and if he takes a wife he begins to gather exemptions. If he is naive he may think that the government is giving him something. Fifth, he buys a house or pays rent. That' s when he makes the discovery that real estate taxes always go up and never down. Sixth, he begins to see a glimmer of hope when the government recognizes: his 65th birthday by tapering his tax rate slightly. Seventh, he reaches the final goal, an old-age pension beginning at 70 years. This is not to be confused with government largess s i n c e the wherewithal to pay pensions comer from him and other taxpayers like him. Taxes will also enter into his dying. That' s one time when he doesn't have to worry about them. Help The Aged Only too often elderly people are left to themselves. They live alone----refusing to enter homes for the aged. Younger members of the fam­ ily cannot be bothered with them. This brings to mind the bizarre story of an 81-year-old- woman. She fell in her home and lay injured five days before being discovered. Doctors fought to save her life but she died 93 days later. There are many other stories -- all indicat­ ing the need for daily checks on the older citizens living alone. Some communities have volunteer organizations which make regular visits to elderly residents. Others have gone a step fu rther---- taking hot meals to these residents. Organizers say the cost is minimum for the duty it performs. What are we doing in Oakville? Capital Report Expose Absent Members OTTAWA -- This is the most talkative par­ liament in the history o f C m i i I » b u t ' i t h a s n ' t been so big on action. Since the s e s s i o n s t a r t e d Feb. 18, this " long parliament* has broken all records in the verbal Olympics. The nimble fingers of the Hansard reporting staff have taken down about eight m i l l i o n words of debate. Printed on the pages of Hansard itself, this ocean of talk takes up about 10,000 pages. Bound in hefty, black v o lumes , this output makes the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em­ pire look like a pamph­ let and rivals the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And still the talk goes on. The length of the 1964 session has smashed all records, including the 174-day high point set by the session of 1960- 61. The previous record session was spread over two years. This is com­ pressed into one. But if Canada' s 26th Parliament has been long on debate, it has also been short on de­ cisions. The major business of the session -- ap­ proval of the spending estimates, railway leg­ islation, the Canada Pen­ sion Plan, labour code, redistribution of elec­ toral boundar i e s , the flag -- have come float­ ing down the tide of talk to build into a giant log­ jam of legislation. Each party blames the others but the situation is taking its toll of the morale of members of parliament, especially the backbenchers. They* re bored, resent­ ful, and some of them are rebellious against their own party leader­ ship. All these factors have something to do with the recent humiliation of the Liberal G ov e r n m en t when opposition parties combined to write an ex­ tra holiday -- Remem­ brance Day -- into La­ bour Minister MacEach- en' s vaunted new labour code. MacEachen had rejec­ ted the addition of an eighth statutory holiday both privately in the L i­ beral caucus and public­ ly in the commons. But when the vote came at the committee stage, only 44 of the 128 Lib­ erals were on hand and the opposition won. Later, some restless Liberals claimed they had stayed away delib­ erately -- a telling com­ mentary on the state of the party d i s c i p l i n e which is absolutely vital to a minority govern­ ment. Another sign of par­ liamentary boredom has been a rising incidence of absenteeism among the $1 8, 0 00- a-year MP's. The' T-to-T* club -- members who leave Ot tawa Thursday and don't return until the fol­ lowing T u e s d a y -- is again in full swing but now can travel by air at the expense of the taxpayers. This makes member­ ship in the T-to-T club open to Western mem- (Cont' d on page 7) This And That A recent cross-Canada survey indicated seven out of 10 Canadians believe Red China should be admitted to the United Nations. It was quite unlike a poll eight months ago when only 53.9 per cent of the population favored Red China getting into the UN. It shows the power of the atom. Letters to the Editor A great deal has been said about the shopper -- has anyone stopped to consider the man on the other s i d e o f the counter. Do they think of his needs and the time that he has to spend with his family. Everyone, apparently, has only Friday nights and Saturday to shop. Why can't they do some of their shopping during the week. This would give the store-keepers some time to t h e m s el­ ves and their families. Most stores operate with experienced he lp during the week and call in part-time employees on Friday nights and Saturday. signed Caveat Emptor Commentary by Cato More Sail Needed Rumours are going the rounds that the federal government is thinking of r e d u c i n g income taxes. As welcome as the move would be, to individual and corporate financial land-bearers, it would be silly to spend the extra money before it is in our pockets. The Liberal party in government has a built- in ob j e c t i on , almost amounting to revulsion, to sharing the wealth. I don' t profess to know the reason for it, or when or where it started. The only conclusion I can arrive at is part of the party' s outlook. If we cast our minds back to pre-1957 days we shall remember that the Hon. Douglas Abbott, then minister of finance, hung on to the tax dollars like grim death - the only other thing we can count on. • In financial matters it seems that the country is incapable of producing an imaginative minister. After 1957, the Conser­ vative government suf­ fered a niggling ache in its money wisdom tooth. Now the tooth has been drilled, gouged, scraped and scaled, the cavity filled and the molar res­ tored as good as new, the present f i nance minister is taking care of the tooth to the extent that it isn' t being used at all. As I see things in Ottawa, if the Liberal government is further e m b a r rassed in its efforts to legislate, and t h e r e by embarrasses everyone - if, for in­ stance, there is more trouble over that damned flag - the chances are there will be a cut in t a x es followed by an election. • The opposition can render further service to the country by forcing both i s sue s , but in­ directly, by refusing to yield, at least in the flag business. Whether Mr. Diefenbaker will get his reward from a grateful, money-jingling elector­ ate remains to be seen. (Corn'd on page 2A) • •