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, hs t He (A », THOR wa ¥IAG ar Tail £ LW rhe TE Pe gate NA TRAN IA SULT, dg CREAR RAL PAST 23 43 15 VE) Sa VO He KO $5 RL OM ZB At RRC AA AY PERL SAV ATRIA TUBA 2 SIN Vv wid Right In The Ear They may be cracking the champagne in the board rooms of the oil companies in Calgary. Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau may actuval- ly believe that the energy agreement of last week Is 'fair and equitable' for the people of Alberta and the rest of Canada. The Canadian dollar may strengthen a bit, and yes, interest rates might even come down a bit in the wake of the agreement. But over the next five years when a gallon of gas at the pumps Is $4, and home heating oil is $2.50, the average Canadian is going to be caught in an inflation squeeze which will make the last ten years look like a Kindergarten picnic. The ripple effect of world oll prices in a country as big and as cold as Canada is going to be horrendous. Most people will find ways to cut their personal consumption of gas and oil by driving smaller cars, leaving the car at home, insulating the house, or converting to natural gas or electric heat. But the doubling of energy costs is going to drive up the price of just about every commodity and service, and for the average family, there will be no escape. It has become plain and clear that the federal and Alberta governments did precious little com- promising on prices when they worked out the agreement. Each in its own greedy way wanted its own fat share of the pie, and to get it, they simply made the pie larger. That pie, by the way, is the one the consumer has to bake. Ontario, which is the largest consumer of petroleum products, obviously is going to be hardest hit. ~ | The price of goods manufactured here is going to have to increase, hurting the domestic consumer and further cutting the competitive edge in the inter- national market-place. Most reasonable Canadians have accepted the fact that" energy costs have to increase in this - country. We have been living on borrowed time with prices for a non-renewable resource which were too far below the world price. But that so-called world price set by OPEC is an artificial one pushed up by a group of Middle Eastern oil sheiks. Now, the average Canadian is going to be saddled with energy costs just the same as any country which doesn't have a drop of oil beneath its soil. Our federal government is grasping for addi- tional revenues to pay for all the fiscal mistakes of the last decade. As usual, the Fed is asking the average Canadian to go into his pocket, but so far, | editorial comments. ARRAN sense san STITRNALN APEHMAML MASA R RRL RAGA SANNA A RRR RR RR ANNA IARANANV JHERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE RATE OF INTEREST 1% NOJ HIGH AT ALL ad oF $ wavs ww MN a. Ne AVON ONAN WWW Nk ARMM NANNY RR SN hs » \ N EASE TY wid NNN 'there has been little indication from Ottawa that the federal government is willing to cut costs by trimming its own fat. There is still a lot of confusion about just exactly what the cost of a gallon of gasoline is going to be in 1986. Some say close to $4, others say it more than likely will be $6. Does it really matter? If there is a silver lining somewhere in this ugly energy price cloud, it could be that at last, both the private sector and the governments are going to look seriously at alternate sources of energy. * Ontario, for example, which leads Canada and indeed the world, in the development of nuclear technology, could find other provinces lining up to buy reactors which produce electricity. The development of energy from the sun, the winds, the tides, forest products, garbage, and so on, has hardly been tapped, and the reson for this has been there was just no need because petroleum prices were still within reason. The whole picture may change in the next five years. Still, five years from today, the country Is going to be very much dependent on oil no matter what new advances are made in the development of renewable energy sources. . i. The prospects are not very pleasant. To say that there will be big changes in our style of living is nothing more than a gross understatement. : The average Canadian can hardly be blamed right now if he feels a sense of betrayal. Alberta and Ottawa went through 18 months of bickering and wrangling over the price of a barrel of oil. All that tough talk was nothing more than a way of saving political face. The end result was a thorough skinning of the rest of the country. TOO MUCH TO HANDLE If this column appears in your local paper wiih a biack border around it, you can shed a silent tear, or a noisy one if you'd rather. The black border will mean this is the last column you will ever read by Bill Smiley. It will mean that he has a brand new set of bill smi wings, and is swooping and gliding about with the cherubim and seraphim. Or that he malicious bureaucracy: 'Sorry, we close at noon on Saturdays. Nope there's nothing I can do. Just hafta wait till Monday." In some countries you can bribe officials, but not in this one." y Suppose all the U-Hauls were-taken for that particular date. Suppose the furniture storage place had no room when they got here. Suppose the wife of one of my friends broke a leg, and the other friend slipped a has a brand new coal shovel, and is shovelling away with the incubi and succubi of the other place. It will mean that he has succumbed, simply succumbed to a combination of playing three roles at once: Head of the English Department, a German general and A Man Called Trepid. Head of the Eng. Dept. in June is enough to whiten the hair of a new-born black baby. First, there is the administrivia, about 10 memos a day: Please have your inventory completed by yesterday (60,000 books): Your list of books for rebinds has not been submitted, it was due last Friday; You have- not completed the inventory of the class- rooms in your® department (as though somebody had walked off with six desks and a 'waste-basket since last June): Where were you when the emergency meeting of department heads concerning gum-chewing. by custodians was held? Where do you hide every time you are paged? When will you have your course outlines ready, or are you going to use the same old ones, merely changing the year? And so on. = That I can handle. I usually stagger through and collapse in a lawn chair the day } after graduation. But this year another ingredient was tossed into the mire in which I wallow each June. It was known as Operation Get Kim-and-the-kids home from Moosonee. With complete disregard for my ad- vancing debilitation, she blithely suggested. that I hire a U-Haul trailer, drive 500 miles, load her stuff - including a piano - into it, and drive home, with her and the kids in the back of our car, no doubt sleeping. The piano weighs only 700. pounds. I can lift 25 without throwing my back out. I wouldn't drive 500 miles in day to see Cleopatra kissing Joe Stalin. That was out, and even my wife agreed that there comes a point. As far as I was concerned, she could hitch-hike, including the 300 miles from Moosonee to Cochrane, which contains no road. But I had to think of the Boys, perhaps being carried off and dumped into James Bay by mosquitoes, or eaten to the bone by black-flies. So I swung into action, with my calipers, my maps, my calculator, and my wife shouting at me to tell her not to sell her toaster, and to sell her ironing board, . because we have lost her other toaster, an "we have an ironing board, an extra one, tha almost works. She hired a box-car from Moosonee to Cochrane. A mere $380. Still 500 miles to go. I dropped a few hints-around the staff room, cheerily describing my problem. Two friends of mine, who are entirely out - of their minds, announced they'd go and get her and kids and the stuff: "No problem. We'll drive up Saturday, pick up the stuff turn around and drive home." "What about the piano?" '""No Problem. We've done pianos before.' "What about all that driving?' "No problem. We'll take turns sleeping." As far as they were concerned, it was a mere jaunt. As far as Kim was concerned, during $80 worth of long distance, no problem. As far as I was concerned, it was a logistical nightmare. Supposing my friends got to Cochrane on a Saturday afternoon, and the freightyards were closed for the weekend, and they all bumped into that old disc before they started. Suppose the Boys had scarlet fever when they arrived: in Cochrane and the whole expedition had to be quaratined for three weeks. Now I know how a general feels when he's planning an operation. Do all the paper- work, get everything set, and then some idiot shoots his foot off with an qutomatic pistol, and he is your key man for the whole works. At times I felt like General Rommel. The trip was laid on. The freight yards would be open (according to Kim, whose Intelligence Service I trust as far as I could kick a jeep), the U-Haul was reserved. At others I felt like General Scheisskopf. The storage place gave me the gears and demanded a financial rip-off. Kim calmy said she'd meet my friends in the Cochrane station at 4:30. I've been there. You could not find your Uncle Dudley in the Cochrane station, : Anyway, the green flares have gone up, 'the Operation is launched, and I am crouched at home, feeling Trepid, which I presume is the opposite of Intrepid (meaning fearless). "