Ontario Community Newspapers

Port Perry Star, 30 May 1989, p. 6

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v Eu T \ PY » 'a ne } ? of vaM \¢z32307 ANT2 VY 25:13 T5004 : | E § Elsewhere $60.00 per year. Single Copy 50¢ Editorial Comment WHY WAIT We can't quite figure out what Michael Wilson, Rich- ard Grise, and Joan Smith are waiting for. As of the weekend, all three had shown no indication they would resign. Mr. Wilson, of course, is the federal minister. of fi- nance, the man who weathered one budget leak back on April 27 when a TV network found itself in possession of budget information before the document was presented to Parliament and the people of Canada. Mrs. Smith is the Solicitor general for Ontario, and a member of the Provincial Legislature. Her position in Cab- inet makes her the boss of police forces in the province. Yet back in April, she walked into an OPP station in a small town north of London to make enquiries about a 24- year friend of the family who had been arrested for creat- ing a disturbance. She later phoned the station to find out more information. Mr. Grise is the MP for the Quebec riding of Cham- bly. He was elected as a Conservative last November, but has not set foot on Parliament Hill since that day. He is now listed as an Independent MP and draws - : his $60,000 salary. Last week, he was found guilty on several charges of breach of trust and fraud, involving kick-backs from contractors getting federal contracts in his riding. He was fined $20,000, sentenced to one day in jail and put on probation for a couple of years. This guy must resign as an MP. If he doesn't he should be forced out. If there are no rules to force a crook to give up his seat in the House of Commons, the rules should be changed. We are not of course suggesting for one minute that Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Smith should be compared in any way to Mr. Grise. But both Wilson and Smith should re- sign from their positions in the respective Cabinets. When Global News acquired a copy of the federal budget prior to its presentation to Parliament, there were Opposition cries, quite naturally, for his resignation then. But many non-partisan observers were prepared to give him the benfit of the doubt. Now, it has been revealed that three days before the budget was to be tabled, copies were floating around Ottawa, and one ended up at the head office of a major insurance company. Wilson had re- vealed that he knew of the budget leaks, but did not dis- close this knowledge for fear of jeopardizing an RCMP in- vestigation. Though Wilson is a man of integrity and perhaps the most able minister in the Mulroney Cabinet, he clearly has no choice now but to resign as Minister of Finance. The budget leak was in fact a flood. As for Mrs. Smith she showed a clear lack of judge- ment in approaching a police force on behalf of a family friend. There are indications that she was prepared to re- sign from Cabinet, but Premier David Peterson rejected her resignation. In sticking by the Solicitor general, the Pre- . mier of this province is also showing a lack of judgement. Does he not realize the implications of Mrs. Smith's late night visit to that police station? Even the slightest hint of any political interference in a | police investigation is grounds for the resignation. Mrs. Smith should have known better and the Premier should know better as well. | Mr. Wilson should resign at least ' until the RCMP have conducted a complete investigation into the budget leaks. As for Mr. Grise, the fact that he has not resigned his saat in Parliament is a national joke. Little wonder that a lot of people in this country find politics distasteful. v Lo WN \ ¢ . Inquiries invited Chatterbox ab by CATHY OLLIFFEH Remember the pea shoots | was so excited about? Remember the "happy gardener" schmaltz? Remember the sunlit garden | wrote about last week? The garden | was going to plant "with all manner of earthly delights? Even if you don't remember it, | do. And un- fortunately, a memory is all | have left. My garden, save for half the original pea shoots which have blossomed into sturdy little plants, is history. Long live the swimming pool. That's right, there is now an above ground pool sitting on the spot where my garden used to be. My beloved and | had been thinking about buying a pool for some time, and we had even :shopped around for a few prices, but Da yg proved too expensive for our meagre et. But thén last week, about a day after | wrote the "happy gardener" column, we spot- ted an ad in this very newspaper for a "like new" used pool. The owner had bought the pool, set it up and then sold his house--the new owner of the house didn't want the pool, so it was dis- mantled and put in the pool owner's new gar- age. The pool had never even been swam in. Doug and | thought we had died and swum to heaven. We looked at the pile of nuts and bolts iting in the 'garage and bought it on sight, the Friday of the Victoria Day weekend. Which gave us three full days to put the | up in our backyard (in my garden, actual- bn his the flattest part of our whole back- yard). Three days! We thought we had plenty of time to get the thing up. We figured we'd be swimming by Monday afternoon. No problem! On Friday night we sat down with the in- structions and then watched the instructional video that came with the kit. The video made the whole process seem so easy. These two guys in the video had the whole pool up in ess than 20 minutes. It took them about five minutes to level the ground, another five min- utes to set up the base, and yet another five to get the wall up. The rest of the video showed tiny details like getting the pump working and filling the pool with water. "This doesn't look so hard," | said to Doug, who Byieel whole heartedly. We went to bed that night with visions of air mattresses and suntans dancing in our heads. : Saturday morning we began to remove sod from the lawn (the garden wasn't big ehough to accomodate the entire | area). In the video, the guys had the sod removed in about a minute. It took us ten minutes to get the first square foot removed. And we didn't finish with the sod until early Sunday moming. An inkling of truth began to filter into our brains--this might be a little tougher than the video had let on. But we didn't let this minor set-back in timing get us down. We said, "getting rid of the sod is the hardest part! The rest will be a breeze! We'll be swimming on Monday night!" The next step was leveling the ground. By backhoe. A backhoe can leve und in a couple of hours--our ground still wasn't lev- eled on Monday night...the night we were sup- posed to be swimming. : Unfortunately the only thing we were swim- ming in was a miasma of sunburn and achi muscles--and an unlevel hole in our backyard. We left the hole for a week and finally got back to work this past Sunday. We figured we'd be swimming by Sunday night. Wrong. The only thing we accomplished was putting up the wall and deepening our sunburns, Next weekend we should be able to finish off the project in theory, we should be able to swim y next Sunday night. But knowing our luck the pool won't be done until Christmas. | the way, this is where normal ple hire a Foro -guess | should have stuck to gardening. | 6 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, May 30, 1989 : : i t EDITORIAL BUSINESS OFFICE ; bi geen Publisher - J. Peter Hyidsten Office Manager - Gayle Stapley i Editor - John B. McClelland Accounting + Judy Ashby (Ta | 235 QUEEN STREET - PORT PERRY, ONTARIO News/Features - Cathy Ollitfe Billing Department - Anna Gouldburn | PHONE 985-7383 FAX 985-3708 News Reporter - Rob Streich Retail Sales - Kathy Dudley, Linda Ruhl Mormber of the i BE Cornu crzacaa seus dass vol by vu PRODUCTION ADVERTISING Canadian Community Newspeper Associa i} Second Class Mail Registration Number 0265 Annabell Harrison Advertising Co-ordinator - Valerie Ellis Ontario Community Newspaper Association £) i " Trudy Empringham Advertising Sales Representatives Published every Tuesoay by the { Subscription Rate: In Canada $29.00 per year Detlone Hicaeh Pat Webster, Lisa Hutchings Port Perry Star Co, Lid. Port Perry, Ontario i AL ER pu i 2, _/ -- I T-------- cp Zn a re le o Sek AL

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