Ontario Community Newspapers

Port Perry Star, 9 Dec 1981, p. 4

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ASAT emi IRATE 2 A Ailes 3 - v 15 SESH Industrial Development Durham Region council may be on the verge of giving local municipalities to "officially" set up industrial development and promotion departments. The push for this comes from the City of Oshawa, whose regional councillors have hardly kept secret their feelings that Durham's industrial development department has not been doing the job when it comes to attracting new industry to that city or the Region for that matter. While the Durham Act specifically gives the function of industrial development and promotion to the Region, several municipalities actively pursue new industry on their own. If the Region goes ahead and asks for changes in the legislation to allow local municipalities to set up and pay for their own departments, it's almost a sure bet the next step will be a push to disband Durham's department. After all, if Oshawa can have its own department, other municipalities like Whitby, Pickering or Ajax, will follow suit, and they will not want to be paying towards the Regional department, which has a budget of about $300,000. But where would that leave a small municipality like Scugog Township which simply cannot afford to hire an industrial development officer and set up a department? ) Scugog Township, being part of Durham Region, must rely on the Regional development department to actively work for new or expanded development. In actual fact, there has been precious little new industrial development 'north of the ridges' in recent years, but with the Region maintaining its own department, at least the three northern communities of Scugog, Brock and Uxbridge had access to informa- tion about potential new industries. If communities like Oshawa, Whitby and Pickering, set up their own departments, and if the Regional department is disbanded, Scugog, Brock and Uxbridge will virtually be out in the cold when it comes to actively looking for new industry. These communities will never be able to compete with the larger ones along the lakefront which have easy access to first class transportation facilities, serviced land and so on. But that is not to say Scugog, Brock or Uxbridge should be forgotten when it comes to industry. Each of these communities has industrial land available, and bringing small compatible industry to these communities is important not only fo expand local tax bases, but also to provide jobs and payrolls. If the Region goes ahead and allows Oshawa to set up its own department, the small municipalities like Scugog will find themselves in more of a squeeze than they are now when it comes to industrial development and promotion. POSTMARKED ... READY JO GO Boorishness | Not The Answer Last week, two farmers from western Ontario had to be forcibly removed from the Ontario Legislature after they hurled swear words at the Minister of Agriculture. . The farmers were in the building to protest high interest rates and lack of government action to help farmers going broke because of them. While some farmers may be on the verge of bankruptcy, the tactic of disrupting the Legislature with loud curses and other boorish behaviour is not going to go very far in working out a solution to the problem. or ' And it certainly is not going to garner much support among reasonable people of Ontario, and that includes other farmers, the vast majority of whom recognize that if rule of law breaks down, the problem of high interest rates may seem small by comparison. Frustration over high interest rates is running at a peak among many people: homeowners, large and Unfortunately, the two farmers were allowed to go free after venting their anger, when in fact they should have had charges levelled at them as a deterrent against othets pulling the same stunts, and as a reminder to every citizen of this province that the legislative assembly cannot be subjected to the rabble of the street corner. Along the same line, labour leader Dennis McDermott has on two occasions in the past couple of weeks, threatened to take his protest inside the federal House of Commons. Just what that would accomplish (aside from maybe an ugly riot) is absolutely nothing. Even the threat of such a move is a serious matter. Protest 'is a legitimate function to bring about ' change in a democratic society, and it is precisely this democracy which gives us all 'the. right to voice our dissent. But assaults against the integrity and sanctity of the houses of Parliament which are the heart of our democracy, are threats against the rights and freedoms of us all. i iy These kinds of actions may make fancy headlines and may even serve to set certain people up as martyrs for a cause. So be it. But they should never be . taken lightly. ' Ti : JUNK MAIL Usually, I spot it right away and toss it in the round filing cabinet without even Because I write a syndicated column, I've been put on the hit list of some public ) relations outfit in New York. As a result, 1 receive a stream of garbage mail containing' fascinating material about some product or other that is being pushed by the PR firm. : small business, industry and labour. ° | opening'it. Today came one of these missives and, distracted by something else, I had opened the thing and read a paragraph or two before I realized it was just another piece of puffery. "It was headed: NEWS FROM: The Ham- Itook another look at the heading, spotted the apostrophe, and now it made sense. A brewery will deliver heat and hot water to a hospital. As part of its brewing process, the brewery used to end up with a lot of excess Last time I saw Hamburg was in 1944, and it was literally. hamburg: The RAF had firebombed it by night and the USAAF had pounded it by day until it was a heap of rubble. I was a prisoner of war and saw it burg Group. For Release: Immediately. All heat that must be cooled before it is released - And from that vast deposit of natural gas known as Ottawa issues daily enough hot air to-heat Montreal's Olympic Stadium, even though it has no roof. : «And that's only touching the bases, without going to the outfield or the infield. Think of all the hot air produced by teachers and preachers, union leaders, p abortionists, and anti-abortionists, public \ relations people, medical associations, school boards, : And there's lots more where that comes from. The squeals of those caught with a mortgage to be renewed, the moans of farmers who are losing their shirts, the bellows of angry small businessmen: all these are wasting energy by blowing hot air from a train window on my way to an interrogation centre in Frankfort. Forty-odd years: later, it-has risen from press releases say the latter. Anyway, I thought it would be a pitch for MacDonald's or a string quartet. It wasn't. It was a series of little articles about Hamburg and Germany, touting that city's great variety of attractions. into the air. Now, instead of being wasted, that heat will be channeled into the hospital where it will be put to good use. the ruins like a phoenix, and is a booming Cost of the deal, equipment and stuff, is city, visited by over a million travellers in about 400,000 marks, to be assumed by the 1981. i LE city. The debt will be liquidated through the But Hamburg-Schmamburg, I'm not into our rather frigid climate, there to be i dispersed into nothing. Add to this all the hot air that is poured into our telephone lines, that is batted back and forth over business luncheons and at parties and over the breakfast table. Such junk has about as much place in this column as an account of the origins of bee-keeping in Basutoland. And I'm supposed to print it free. What dummies these PR people are. However, I'd already read enough'to hook - me on the first article, entitled: Brewery's Waste Energy To Heat Hospital. It didn't make sense at first. Why should breweries waste energy to heat a hospital, unless they're trying to make amends to all the people who wind up in hospital with -eirrhosis of the liver from drinking their poison? savings 'on energy that would otherwise have to be purchased. Are you listening, Labatts, Molsons et al? Instead of pouring money into sports and all these phoney ads, about as subtle as a kick in the ribs, indicating that beer-drinking will make your life macho, full of fun and beautiful girls in skimpy swim Buits, why don't you channel your heat into hospitals? Think of the free publicity! Ain't them Germans something, though? If they didn't start a war every so often and get clobbered, they'd own half the world, with their resourcefulness and hard work, their limits. provinces. going to urge my readers to go there. It was the article on heating that caught my eye. Aside from the breweries in Canada, this country has another industry that could produce enough heat so that, if it were properly channeled, we could thumb our collective noses at the Arabs. I'm talking about politics. Town and city councils produce enough hot air to heat at least one hospital within Provincial legislatives produce enough hot air to replace half the oil used in their -It's perfectly simple. All we need is a means of bottling the stuff somehow, and distributing it to the right places. If our scientists can send a missile to Mars, surely they .can find a method of storing and channeling the incredible quantities of hot air that rise in clouds over our country. Peter Lougheed might have to cap some of his oil wells, but if somebody came up with the solution, we could not only tell the Arabs what to do with their oil. We could probably buy Saudi Arabia. Maybe I'll drop a line to the Mayor of Hamburg, see what he suggests,

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