Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday September 1990 the HERALD OUTLOOK is published each Saturday by the HALTON HILLS HERALD Home Newspaper of Halton Hills A Division or Canadian Newspapers Company Limited at Street Georgetown Ontario 8778822 PUBLISHER K Robert MANAGING EDITOR Colin Gibson Second Class Mail Registered Number Lisa Rutledge STAFF WRITERS Ben Dummett AD MANAGER Dan Taylor SPORTS EDITOR Rob Risk ACCOUNTING Jennie Shier CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Joan ADVERTISING SALES Valois Craig Teeter Roberts Kim Haryott PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Dave Hastings Stu Robertson Wilson CIRCULATION Marie Banks are fighting for your money TORONTO Have you ever bought a mutual fund that adver tised a juicy rate of return only to find to your disappointment that you ended up with substantially less Then this story is for you Two big banks are fighting it out for your opinion and it is reasonable to assume your money The TorontoDominion Bank is championing the conser vative approach The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Royal Trust and The Royal Bank of Canada among others are being more aggressive The CIBC has emerged as leader of the promo tional pack Hes an oldline banker snorts John Vivash president of Securities of his Mark Wettlaufer managing director of TD Investment Management Hes a mutual fund salesman sniffs Mr in return Insults and accusations aside these gentlemen are eager to pre sent their cases to you then customers The advertises the current yield on its money market fund CIBC the effective yield which tends to be higher Until recently mutual fund managers in Canada quoted the more conservative current yield Customers should be able to take the current yield each day divide it by days and come up with the monthly dividend that they receive on their account Mr argues What you see in the newspaper is what you get in your account EFFECTIVELY HIGHER The effective yield assumes that the current yield will remain cons tant for one year and that the customers will keep his shares for that long Mr Wettlaufer says It is calculated as if interest were reinvested and compounded mon thly for a full year Using the current yield the TDs money market fund yielded per cent on Aug 20 Mr Wettlaufer says Had the bank used the effec tive yield the return would have been per cent a full o 77 percentage points higher Why does the want to adver tise the lower rate of return Because it is afraid of can mbalizing its deposit base fumes Mr Vivash of the CIBC Why would anyone want to put out a lower rate than they could show if they do not have a hidden agen da Mr Vivash says the TD is trying to hide the nch returns on its money market fund richer than the CIBCs by the way so customers will leave their money in bank accounts and term deposits Banks need strong deposit bases in order to borrow money Mr Wettlaufer dismisses the He says the CIBC is us ing aggressive advertising to lure business from other banks Indeed thanks to its advertising cam the value of CIBC s money market fund has soared to more than million so far this year million at year end Pods Corner THE END AND BEGINNING I am a tiny leaf on high The time has come for me to die To flutter to the ground below To be covered up by Winters snow On gentle winds I feel light as a feather My llfes blood gone my skin turns to leather The wind now cold it starts to blow The whiney voice whispers please let go Youve lived your life seen storm and strife Birds have nested beneath your spread Your tiny arms they feel like lead The mighty wind it now does blow My grasp on life begins to go Im on my way down In a slow long glide To nestle by somebodys side I turn my eyes to Heaven on High This at last Is the day I die I remember well in early spr ing When I Just a budding thing The warm spring sun carreBsed my and so Now at last I have begun to grow I stretch my arms to enhance V i i I shudder at the world with all its woes and strife Lifes blood now flows throughout my veins Just like a horse who feels no reins Ive got a new life I feel grow ing pains My eyes look up to a pale blue sky I stretch my arms and start to cry Oh what a lovely glorious day at last Im on my way The winds they are gentle with me they play And as night falls I can hear them say Close your eyes and rest tomorrow is another day Spring turns to summer sum mer to fall I feel just like a mighty ball Which has rolled and rolled and gathered no moss I guess this Is my destiny and loss And now as I lay here on the ground below Thoughts of my life they come and go Ive had a great and glorious life And weathered most of its woes and strife I feel so tired Its time to go So come on Winters first blanket of snow By Poppa Tyrer Government research project is paying first dividend OTTAWA A government financed research project aimed at reducing the risk of shellfish poisoning among seafoodfanciers has paid its first dividend In the first year of a col effort the National Research Councils Atlantic Research Laboratory and Fenwick Laboratories Ltd Halifax have isolated a lethal poison found in the red tides that wash over many of the worlds richest fishing grounds The algal blooms commonly known as red tides have not been detected in Canadian waters but have ruined catches in S waters as far north as Maine They have been reported with increasing fre quency in other parts of the world Shellfish touched by the red tides have caused shellfish poisoning in humans and lab sleuths have identified acid as the toxin Aware of the possibility of red tides occurring eventually in Cana dian waters the NRC decided to pursue the toxin through the com plex ocean food chain to its unknown source The people in the lab took a hard look at shellfish toxins that may occur and even though diar rhetic shellfish poison had not been found in Canadian waters thought it would be good to develop the ex pertise to monitor NRC spokesman Judith Young explain ed TOXICOLOGY The NRC laboratory had already won prominence in the field of research In late its scientists worked around the clock for hours to track down the deadly acid in Prince Ed ward Island mussels At least two people had died and more than were poisoned after consuming the mussels The NRC and OceanChem Labs Ltd now Laboratories signed a twoyear agreement last November to isolate the acid purify it and develop a reliable method of testing for its presence in shellfish Young considers the quick results quite a success story and said a firm Diagnostic Chemicals Ltd has already given a contract to sell and eventually produce the Rennie Ottawa TfcutniM Wwi acid under a licence granted by Diagnostic Chemicals produces chemicals enzymes and diagnostic kits for researchers Since the mussel panic the small company has become a leading producer of domoic acid But company president Regis Duffy said it will take time to develop a market for the acid Little is known about okadaic acid he explained In addition to being the prime suspect in rhetic shellfish poisoning it can af feet the nervous system Duffy said it also carcinogenic and a potent agent for developing tumors The company will spend a year searching out buyers before it begins production of the toxin Research laboratories will likely be the first customers but if the market for acid expands as it did for domoic acid Diagnostic Chemicals would even tually be selling the product to regulatory authorities who monitor shellfish catches NATURAL SOURCE The marketing of acid may be the easiest part of the deal Duffy has arranged with NRC Even the process of isolating the acid is a standard chemical pro cedure he said The trick is to grow the the minute aquatic plants that are the foodstuff of shellfish and the natural source of the toxin The NRC and Fenwick Laboratories are the plants under tightly controlled con ditions in lab tanks And thats an art form Duffy commented The process also makes the acid a very costly commodity for researchers This stuff is phenomenally ex pensive Young remarked Duffy said the price might be around S per milligram SNAFU by Bruce