Ellie Earrir Examiner Ellie Tannin Examiner Published by Canadian Newspapers Company Limited 16 Bayfield Street Barrie Ontario ELIO AGOSTINI LP SEVICK Advertising Manager Publisher and General Manager HENSHAW Managing Editor The Barrie Examiner Monday March 14 1977 Stress common aims of Quebec Canada In political speeches and com ments heard so far not too much stress seems to have been given to the common interests of English and FrenchCanadians by those arguing the issue of Quebec separation Actually the general interests of both French and English descen dants as with other Canadians are very similar To many who have been reading political reports it seems too much emphasis has been given to special treatment and other abstract arguments Some cant help but wonder if this were done to divert from realistic issues What appears to be forgotten Canadians generally do not look for or expect any privileges not ac corded to their fellow citizens The great majority of Canadians of all extractions are content with having equal rights or at least equal opportunity to strive for them They feel more attention should be given the blessings of the Canadian heritage The advantages of living in country which has proven itself one of the most progressive and often considered an example to others for its democratic rights and procedures is something which shouldnt be considered lightly Canadians value their right to analyse public issues and freely criticize their administrations if they feel like it without fear of dic tatorial reprisals Two World Wars were fought in defence of protecting these democratic rights in which English and French were allies fighting together for their mutual protec tion If Canadians feel today we can improve on our heritage it is within their rights to press for the political action they think necessary The basic democratic right of choosing the people who are to govern at the polls is something which is taken for granted as it should be but it should not be overlooked that it is not necessarily so in many countries Every Canadian in our way of life has the right and indeed respon sibility to do his part to he make his country better an more Erocgressive democracy so long as oes not infringe on the rights of his fellow Canadians Our democratic way of life is something which perhaps is not always fully appreciated until it is threatened It is something which is as great value in todays world or perhaps even more so than ever before Perhaps because Canadians in Quebec and the rest of the country have so much in common it is so generally recognized that it doesnt need stress But with all the political talk of strife and differences it is well past time that these longtime friendships and common ties should be reasserted Lets face it Canada needs Quebec and Quebec needs Canada for maximum effort to make bet ter country for all DOWN MEMORY LANE 15 YEARS AGO IN TOWN The Barrie Examiner March 14 1962 Deputy Reeve Fred Cook of Bradford is awarded the Natonal Citation for Diistinguished Service to Christian education by Cana dianA top team of gymnasts from the Canadian Army Physical Train ing Centre Camp Borden is dem onstrating the various methods of improving and maintaining the fitness of todays soldiers at the Canadian National Sportsmens Show in Toronto Bradford town council approves the hiring of Aurora dog catcher Walter Lowe who is resident in Bradford The Barrie Public School Board an nounces that it is demanding ap proximately two mills less than last year on the residential assessment and onequarter of mill less on the commercial assessment0ne hun dred and 13 cases of communicable disease are reported by the Simcoe County Health Unit during Feb ruaryAlliston Hornettes win the Ed Boynton Trophy emblematic of Alliston and District Girls Hockey League supremacy Questions by curious MPs often stay unanswered OIlAWA CP Ever won der how many golf profes sionals draw unemployment in surance Or who decided God Save the Queen would not be played when CBC television stations sign off each night Those are two of more than 2000 written questions put to the government by curious MPs 16 Bayfield Street Barrie Ontario Telephone 7266537 sonneuveRosemount leads the list of curious Liberal MPs Hes asked 78 questions in cluding the one concerning golf pros on the UlC lists During the last session of Parliament which began Sept 30 1974 and lasted 342 sitting days the longest in history MP5 put 5908 written questions to the government Last year Max Saltsman NDPWaterloo Cambridge mounted campaign to make the country bigger suggesting that the Turks and Caicos Islan ds of the Caribbean be annexed to provide Canadians with their Registration Number 0484 Second Class Mail Return postage guaranteed Daily Sundays and Statutory Holidays excepted Subscription rates daily by carrier 85 cents weekly $4420 surly Single copies 15 cents Mail Barrie $4420 yearly Simeoe County $3400 yearly alance of Canada $3800 year Fotor Throw Off 83900 yearly National Advertising Offices 65 Queen St West Toronto dispatches in credited to it or The Associated M1710 640 Cathcart St Mon treal Member of the Canadian Press and Audit Bureau of Ur culati0ns The Canadian Press is ex clusively entitled to the use for republication of all news this paper Press or Reuter and also the local news published therein The Barrie Examiner claims Copyright in all original adver tisrng and editorial material created by its employees and reproduced in this newspaper The advertiser agrees that the publisher shall not be liable for dama es arising out of err ors in vertisements beyond the amount paid for the space actuall occupied by that por tion the advertisement in which the error occurred whe ther such error is due to the negligence of its servants or otherwise and there shall be no liability for noninsertion of any advertisement beyond the amount paid for such advertise ment yright Registration r203815 register61 OTTO LANG since the current parliamen tary session began Oct 12 They are among 864 queries awaiting answers Many of the questions go months without reply par ticularly if they concern politicallyexplosivetopics Perhaps the most con troversial answer provided to written question since last 0c tober was the one telling Progressive Conservative backbencher Tom Cossitt Leeds that Transport Minister Otto Lang spent more than $740000 on government flights during the last three years The government has since made no attempt to answer similar questions also put by Cossitt on the cost of executive flights by other cabinet minis ters Since Oct 12 the government has answered 1126 of the slightly more 2000 written questions The longest was 350page list of all St Lawrence seaway contracts provided in response to yet another Cossitt query Cossitt leads all other MP5 for the number of questions put on the order paper 0f the 864 unanswered questions 83 are from him New Democrat Da vid Orlikow Winnipeg North has 82 although 67 concern the same thing He has gone through each government employee classi lcation to ask how many bu reaucrats in each are paid more than $27500 year Hal Herbert Montreal Mai own place in the sun He passed out lapel buttons inscribed Turks and Caicosl choose Canada This year Saltsman is wor ried about keeping the country as big as it is in the face of the Quebec independence move ment So he has had his buttons cov ered with stickers showing heart around maple leaf and fleurdelis and the inscription Lets kiss and make up Now hes passing those around Joe Guay minister without rtfolio and jokingly described opposition MPs as sim ly minister without made is first cabinetministerlike speech this week to provincial panning conference in Winni Peg He opened it this way Ur ban Affairs Minister Andre Ouellet has asked me toTell you how much he regrets not being able to be with you today HEYHAvtiou SEEN iii PARLIAMENT HILL Incons1stenc1es show up in statements from PQ By STEWART MaclJIOI Ottawa Bureau Thomson News Fervice When Rene Levesque trav elled across Canada few years ago to explain why the election of the Parti Quebecois would be good thing for the entire country he would explain it this way English Canadians like their Frenchspeaking coun terparts are tired of all the hassles we have had It would be easier for both of us to end this and you could stop asking What does Quebec want What docs Quebec wantf We in the Parti Quebecois know what we want We want out There were no ifs ands or buts Once Mr Levesque would come to power there would be no uncertainties there would be only an uni compromising commitment for the ollticzll lndc pendenceo Quebec But then the campaign began for the Nov 15 provin cial election and the Parti Quebecois leadcr decided to campaign on different plat form The issue of the day was good government and any decision about separatism could come later in referendum The issue was virtually shrugged off The larti Quebecois was elected presumably on its good government plat form and the new premier acted for all the world like someone who had been han tied clear mandate to break up Canada He went to New York and told 1500 in fluential businessmen that the independence of Quebec was inevitable And back home he said his party would be satisfied with nothin less than political in depen ence for Quebec He later announced that machinery was being put in place for referendum NOCONFUSION Finally as Mr Levesque had earlier predicted we had reached point where every Canadian knew what Quebec wanted There would be no more misunderstandings of powersharing of equalization payments of cable television rights etc It was to be crisp clean break Why we even had Quebecs consumer affairs minister Lise Payette saying how sorry she felt for the rest of Canada which would in all likelihood be absorbed into the United States Quebec knew what it wanted and knew where it was going she said Unfortunately English Canada had never es tablishedaclear identity But before could become mistyeyed over our misfor tune noticed that Mr Levesque had began em phasizing his socalled com mon market arrangement with the rest of Canada Quebec be emphasized would want to maintain its historic economic and YOUR BUSINESS Return to twodigit inflation potential disaster for pensioners By VINCENT EGAN Business and onsumer Affairs Analyst Thomson News Service The return to twofigure an nual rate of inflation last month for the first time since 1975 is bad news for all consumers and potentially disaster for retired people with fixed in comes Consumer prices rose an av erage of 09 per cent between January and February accord ing to Statistics Canada Thats an annual inflation rate of about 11 per cent It also raises once again question about the economic talents of the people who are supposed to be our policy makers in Ottawa Heres what Finance Minister Donald Macdonald and at the beginning of February We may see mixed pattern of speedup and slowdown in the inflation rate over the next few months But continuing slowdown of cost increases particularly wage increases will maintain the underlying momentum to ward lower inflation rates He then went on to conclude that it was time to start to study the dismantling of the an tiinflation controls that were introduced in October 1975 One can only wonder whether high indexed salaryto be followed by large inflation proof pensioncan blind cabi net minister to something as WORLD TODA Use of American funds leads to bad feelings By JOHN IIARBRON Foreign Affairs Analyst Thomson News Service The other day watched an American tourist insist on United States change for American money spent in the local Shoppers Drug Mart She then turned on the rson behind her who had ask with some annoyance Why cant you Americans use Canadian money to say that Canadians are rude when they didnt used to be By com arison during the last Cana ian postal strike went to Buffalo to send off Christmas mail and watched other Canadians in line turned away because they wanted to pay for stamps with Canadian currency At that time Canadian dollars were worth about $103 Ameri can which meant little pre mium to the US post office in downtown Buffalo doing busi ness with all those temporary Canadian customers Recently some nasty stories moved north of the border that some banks in Daytona Fla were discounting Canadian dol lars as much as 14 cents be cause of the current slump in our currency On March it had dropped to 9486 cents US the lowest sin ce 1970 and has hovered around the 96cent mark This business of manipulating the value of each other funds at the individual customers level may be small matter compared to the more important world of changes in interest rates But it has been an ongoing cause of irritation between indi vidual Canadians and Ameri cans for decades While Americans can and of ten insist on using their money here can you name any city in the US where Canadian cur Liiisr POLLS monetary links with what remained of Canada And the in re he described this arrangement the more it smacked of federalism Its easy to become con fused you see And the remier than said that since was elected to head provincial overnment he would gra all we can from the federal treasury like any other province would do In the meantime of cour se his intergovernmental af fairs minister Claude Morin was trying to shut off some of the heavy federal ex penditure in the Hull region of the province And another minister was talking about liberating Hull from the federal presence lnconsistiencies began ap pearing When the new session of the legislature opened Mr Levesque read the throne speech himself and didnt use the word inde ndence an ce He did rea firm his com mitment to referendum but then proposed new type of association with the other provinces What he had in mind was exactly the 0K posite of isolation or wit drawing into ourselves UNCLEARTOTRUDEAU Prime Minister Trudeau even expressed some cons fusion It is possible that Mr Levesque is prepared to discuss new form of con tract in Canada without going the independence obvious as the renewal of super inflation The fact that the inflation rate for 1976 was 75 per cent high but slightly below the Trudeau governments target of eight per centis no reason to give up the antiinflation ef fort The finance minister seems to have forgotten that the target for this year is sixper cent inflation and for next year four per cent Instead he has apparently allowed himself to be swayed by Big Laborwhich is treated enerously under the antiin ation programandby some spokesmen for Big Business who want to abandon restraints and return to the economic jungle as quickly as possible rlency can be used just as eas iy UNFAIR PREMIUMS Where such is the case the local business outlets even the banks will demand premium out of all relation to current ratesofexchan At the same time have seen stores in downtown Toronto where American tourists con gregate charging unfair ex change rates on US dollars when the Canadian dollar was ashigh as $104 My complaint made in an in tercity restaurant which ca ters to weekend tours from De troit resulted in the usual balo ne about carrying charges he Detroit tour sts main dderly Indies and yo bla families were complain ng just aswedointheUS Often the reason for this is sheer opportunism in Canada the tendency to panic in the US Godin the Parti route Mr Trudeau told news conference If that is so am very happy Now let us present Gerald Quebecois member who defeated for mer premier Robert Bourassa in Mercier riding We can only assume that he knows whats on Mr Levesques mind If the Canadian people want their country to stay together so much that they are willing to give us the status we long for the political and economic envi ronment in which our cen turiesold frustrations will disappear then we are willing to remain in Con federation Describing himself as pinchhitter for Mr Le vesque Mr Godin said in dependence has never been resented as goal in itself ut as means to achieve goal They sure fooled me for awhile This was followed by the story of Mr Morin actually shelling out $2 for pin from the QuebecCanada Movement an organization dedicated to saving Con federation But then he tur ned around and said it would soon be rare item Incidentally if any of you still have some uncertainties about what Quebec actuall wants dont hesitate to as uestions but please dont rect them at me Thus the finance department and the AntiInflation Board have been taking the lead in stimulating public discussion of the best means and times to end the restraints That simply spreads the no tion that the antiinflation ef fort is all but over and creates more of the inflationary psy cholo that the restraints were inten edtoend Spokesmen for organized Ia bor make no secret of the fact that they will demand big cat chup wage increases at the first opportunity And business after two years of enforced rollbacks of profit margins wont be far behind PRICES TAKING OFF The underlying momen tum far from pushing toward lower inflation rates as the finance minister contended is exerting strong upward pressure on consumer prices Still to be reflected in the Consumer Price Index are the recent big jumps in postal rates gasoline prices air fares and the price of coffee and other food items Among the other increases still to hit Canadians are prop ert taxesand again gasoline an oil pricesnot to mention the cost of almost everything we bring in from other coun tries Imports are becoming more expensive because our dollar is becoming less valuable on for ei mexchange marketsin tu partly because our econ omy has been so weakened by inflation The antiinflation program sounded promising when it was announceda determined threeyear effort to restore price stability and correct such structural problems as the chronic shortage of affordable housing and our lamentable level of labormanagement strife After 17 months it turns out that the politicians attention span is too short their staying power too weak In terms of inflation it will soon be the summer of 1975 all over again Douglas saved BC from US By son BOWMAN It is claimed that 50 cents of every dollar circulating in Brit ish Columbia comes directly from the forest industries Yet it was the fur trade that began British Columbias develop ment stimulated later by the discovery of gold In 1852 some American pros pectors arrived at the Queen Charlotte Islands to search for grim They were not successful evidently began more widespread survey on the main land then called Caledonia At formal dinner in Victoria on the night of March14 1858 Gov Douglas casually roduced some gold dust that ad come from the North Thompson River In matter of days the float ing population of Victoria was on the way to the area by the Fraser River route Some of them began looking for gold alongthe banks of the Fraser and one lEarty made an impor tant str at Hills Bar It is said that they were washing dishes at the edge of the river when gold dust appeared in the soap suds It was not long before ros pectors began arriving rom the California old fields and the Puget Soun area The ex to builders By DON OHEARN Queens Park Bureau Thomson News Service TORONTO The HOME program now is being ended The brainchild of Stanley Randall back in the 60s and one of the few really innovative measures introduced by John Robarts administration Home Ownership Made Easy under the hardsell explanations of Randall was going to solve our housing problems There would be house for everyone at price that every one could afford As outlined by the ebullient minister there was going to be housing utopia PRACTICAL SUCCESS The program turned out to be good though not that good The government assembled thousands of acres of land and arranged for developers to build lowcost housing on it Then it arranged financing with low down payments As consequence there are thousands of families through out Ontario today livin in their own houses who proba ly with out HOME would be in rented accommodation And in its later years of cour se the program became so popular that lottery system ad to be adopted for the allo cation of homes and lots In practical terms and as far as it wentthere were always those who argued that even more housing could have been providedthe program was success INTERPRETING THE NEWS Thicket of semantics for President Carter UNITED NATIONS CP The question of what sort of borders Israel should have in final peace settlement has emerged as fresh source of controversy in the Middle East morass US President Jimmy Carter stepped into thicket of seman tics earlier this week when he told visiting Israeli Prime Min ister Yitzhak Rabin the United States believed that Israel should have defensible bor ders in the overall set tlement That statement heartened the Israelis but created concern in the Arab world It marked the first time since the 1973 ArabIsraeli war that US president endorsed Israels insistence that its ultimate borders be defen sible and not merely Secure and recognized as laid down by the UN Security Council His views assumed impor tance because Carter is to meet in Washington over the next few months with both Arab and Israeli leaders to seek to ve the way for meeting of th 1976 by MA Inc Im wearing the peasant look because AM peasanu QUEENS PARK Sell HOME lots citement became so intense that mills shut down and soldiers and sailors deserted theirposts Many of the Americans who arrived were convinced that the United States would take over Caledonia now the mainland of British Columbia They were Singing Soon our banner will streaming Soon the eagle will be screaming And the lionsee it cowers Hurrah boys the rivers ours If Gov Douglas had not taker strong action quickly some of it without authorization tht Americans prediction might have come true OTHERMARCHM EVENTS 1682La Salle claimed area which now is Arkansas for France 1782Sir John Johnson was placed in charge of the Indian in Canada 1892Royal Commission waz appointed to investigate the Ii quor business 1916Women in Saskatche wan were given the right to vote ismMassey College was es tablished at Toronto But in one direction it was failure This is that it did nothing to hold down soaring land prices And it well might have If the government had sold its lots at cost for what it paid for them its big volume could have had definite impact on the selling price of other land But it always refused to do this It set its prices at the mar ket at the going rate of similar land in the area WHY MARKET VALUE Whats more it never did come up with any stron argu ment as to why it shoul follow market value In fact about the only dis cernible reason for this decision was that Randall was blin kered freeenterpriser who wouldnt want to do anything that might have any scent of so cialism He set the policy and his suc cessors continued to follow it Thus one of the big potential values of the HOME program was lost And the policy is being fol lowed to the end There still are good many thousand lots in the HOME in ventory And these are to be soldat market value Nobody seems to have thought how valuable it could be if these were sold to builders at cost with the requirement that they construct on them lowcost housing of certain standard sides at Geneva later this ea Rabins visit was the irst Arab leaders are to follow hit to Washington shortly Elaborating at news confer ence Wednesday Carter sug gested that in an ultimate set tlement Israel should with draw almost completel from the Arab lands seiz from Egypt Syria and Jordan in the 1967 war with only minor ad justments in the borders that existed before that war But before thatfinal settle ment he said Israel could have defence lines which can be extensions of Israeli defence capacity beyond the per manent and recogrized bound aries The nub of the problem is Is raeli insistence that the final settlement must provide her with defensible borders which would involve much more than just minor ad justments of boundary lines For their part the Arabs always have pressed for the full recovery of every inch of land occupied in the 1967 war