Think smal |

by Jim Smith |

Bursting The Canadian Bubble

Traditionally, Western man
will hold down two jobs at
once — so he can drive from
one to the other in a more ex-
pensive car.

In Sudbury, the story is-a
little different. Hundreds of
able-bodied men in that city
aren't thinking of buying bet-
ter cars; instead, they're look-
ing forward toa life of taking
the bus or walking,

The men have been employ-
ed by the nickel industry, Sud-
bury’s principal employer. But
times are tough for Canadian
nickel (and dimes, too, but
- that’s another story) so the

men have been laid off. It
appears that there’s no other
- work for these men to take on.

What this development says

about Canada's International
~ economic position is more
“ than slightly disturbing. Indi-

cations are that the Canadian

economic bubbte is bursting.

For generations, Canadians
have lived happily in the know-
ledge that, if all else should
fail, we could always fall back
on our natural resources. He-
wers of wood and drawers of
water may not rank at the top
of our preferred occupations
list but it was nice to have the
security of a resources income,
Lately, some economists have
gone so far as to suggest that
we should abandon our at-
tempts to become a leading
manufacturing nation and re-
vert to selling our resources
to the rest of the world.

Now we are discovering the
harsh truth: the reat of the
world doesn’t need our re-
sources. Canada once control-
led 90% of the worid’s nickel
supply, for Instance; now huge

China Top Pop _ .

BRDU

‘ Pe ty ee te ven hb ae Pars
A ate Dede Recess es ly Rs ve
leadevde: vb Eu V . t + Postauey

Theis YORK (AP ina
@ top pop song in a
these days, for those of
you who haven’t kept up
with the Peking charts, is
a lilting litte number
called: The People
Gloriously Carry Manure
to the Fields

Maybe it’s not the ty
of: thing Irving Bevin
picked up from his
shoeshine boy or that sent
Rodgers rushing home to
Hammerstein, but there
is). a certain earthy
compulsion about it. The
title hits you where you
ve.

Ltried it out on a couple
of song-pluggers standin;
‘on the corner of Broad-
way and 51st, waiting to
be mugged, and they
were impressed.

Perhaps not. enough to
run to a phone booth and
hum a couple of bars to
Elton John or
Ronstadt, but enough to
take the cigars out of
their mouths and begin
thinking about spin-offs
and demos and derivs
(derivatives), which is
how song-vriters talk
when they can’t think of
anything that rhymes.

DEBBY WITH GONGS
One of them began
snapping his fingers
thytmnically and keening
in a falsetto voice. You
Light. Up My Hone
Wagon, he improvised,
and got excited. “Hey
that’s it. Debby Boone
‘ and a background maybe
of Chinese temple gongs
cr. pagoda s or
whatever they have out
there.” ;
Mannie, who had an
almosthit in Plain-
Talking PeanutPicker
from Plains, favored
something’ more |
sophisticated, on the lines
of Stephen Sondheim..
“Try this,” he -en-

thused:
“Doesn't it reek?
“Me chopping rice in
the paddy,
“You up the cresk.
“Send in the fertilizers.
at :

"He would have dashed
off .to “the nearest

Woolworth’s to twafinger

it ona piano, like Al
son in Pine movie, only

| Think small” is an editorial

Linda:

deposits of high-grade nickel
have been found in countries
like Indonesia and Guatemala
and, suddenly, Canada no
longer has a monopoly posi-
tion. In the United States,
pulp producers have discover-
ed how to use trees that will
grow twice as fast as Canadian
trees — undermining a ¢radi-
tional Canadian industry.

Meanwhile, the federal and
provincial governments have
been taxing the resource sec-
lor unmercifully. Faced with
Canadian taxes, resource pro-
ducers have been choosing to
put their money into other
countries, creating more com-
petitive problems for Canada.

The Sudbury situation also
emphasizes the problem of
multinational corporations.
Both INCO and Falconbridge,
ihe two largest employers in
Sudbury, operate in several
countries, When they found
that it was more economical
to produce abroad, they shifi-
ed production out of Sudbury,
ignoring the enormous social
costs they woutd inflict on
that city.

Unless Canada’s various
governments realize that we
don’t occupy a monopoly po-
sition in the international re-
source industry and provide
some incentives for resource
producers rather than regard-
ing them as nothing more than
easy tax dollars, we may end
up without a resource sector
at all. The Great Canadian
dream could well become a
nightmare.

* message fram the Canadian
Federation of Independent
Busi [+]

sable

Woolworth’s doesn
carry pianos anymore
and Arnie, his partner,
was shaking his head.

“Bette Midler maybe
could do it with a tear
running down her cheek
or Shirley Bassey in a
Chinese sarong slit up to
the Manchuria border,”
he said, “but it’s the
masses, not the classes,
that rule the top of
pops in Peking.

4

Polish customs
are “different”

BREST, U.S.S.R.
(Reuter) — With a timid
knock, an elderly woman
wearing a round grey felt
hat and a worried ex-
pression steps into the
compartment as the
Warsaw-Moscow express
enters Brest station on a
wintry Saturday evening.

“Any flowers, fruit,
vegetables?” she asks,
clutching a dark green
plastic bag obviously
intended for such con-
traband goods.

“No seeds, shrubs or
plants?” she perseveres,
despite the negative
response to her first
question. Seemingly
unconvinced, she accepts
the second ‘‘no’’ and
bustles off along the
corridor.

Brest, just across the
River Bug from Poland
and better known to the
outside world as Brest-
Litovsk, provides visitors
travelling to Moscow by
train with their first taste
of the Soviet Union.

The ‘‘quarantine’’
olftcial, whose unex-
pected questions surprise
many first-time tourists
into surrendering some of
their pre-packed Western
food supp ies, is followed
by a khakiuniformed
frontier guard officer and
a private,

PASSPORTS REMOVED

-The officer, in his late
20s, studies each passport
and the visas inside,
comparing the pho-
tographs on each with the
faces in the compartment.
before announcing, “You

‘will get them back later.”

The travellers are then
invited into the corridor
and the yo vate
enters, lifting the bottom
bunk and peering into the
narrow wardrobe alcove,

apparently looking for -
c

andestine frontier
crossers,

But the youth mutters
an apology, pleasantly
surprising a family who
on the outward journey
had Deen woken at Brest
in the early hours by a
border Guard flingin
openreach compartment:

door::tn’ the freezing ‘air
with *-r-bellows: «of
‘teveille.”

A plump young woman
from the customs, the
white. chiffon scarf
around her bouffant hair
style incongruous against
the slate grey of her
uniform, comes next. She:
appears interested only
in the currency eniry on
the declaration form.

But along the corridor a
male official orders an
Tranian businessman and
a Polish tourist to put on

the their coats and take their

luggage off the train to
the customs inspection

“What about the Bee hall

Gees doing How Deep is
the Communal Furrow?
Or something for Rod
Stewart like You're in my
Quota, my Little Red
Book of Nitrates? I think
I could coax Englebert

‘Humperdinck into Help’
Me Nak

e It Through the
Harvest and, for the flip
side, Bird Lime Keeps
Falling on My Head.
Unless, maybe we should
think in terms of a Nash-

ville sound.”
TITLES PLENTIFUL
They lowered _ their

falsettos to a Johnny
Cash _basso-agriculturo
and began pawing at the
pavement with. their
earth shoes.

Song tides plunked out
of them like notes from a
fivestring banjo: |

“The Ripe,
Fields of Home.”

“Once More With Peat
Moss."

“This Time We Almost

Brown

‘Made Our Quota, Didn't

We, Comrade?”

"J Can’t
Shovelling This.”

Genius
deserves respect, I left
them as they strolled into
the Stage Delicatessen,
babbling about calling up
Peter Frampton for a
single demo on Dug,
Drained and Compost
Heaped and getting to
Simon and Garfunkel for
Go Tell it to the Chairman
and The Crops They Are
A’manured,

Early afternoon fell
and from the doorway of
an upstairs disco near the
Winter Garden Theatre
came the recorded
strains of—could it be?—
Tony Bennett belting out,
I Left My Hoe in the
Evergreen) Commune,

at -work

VALUED FOR DUTY

In the customs hall,
several officials chat
while one checks the
Polish tourist’s bags. He
pulls out three rolls of
colored cloth, scarce in
the Soviet Union, and sets
them aside to be valued

the officer

discovers five pairs of
‘flimsy lace

anties.
“What are these for?” he
demands, halding them.
aloft in obvious distaste.
“No. one would wear
these at this time of

year.” ;
The train backs away
from the “Warsaw

Platform” outside to the
sidings where the light-
blue carriages of the
Polish state railways will
be winched up to have
their wheels replaced by
the wide, gauge used in
Russia.

Beyond the customs
hall the visitor, stranded
for the next hour, finds in
a glass-fronted waiting
room a push-button in-
formation board which
tells travellers what they
can take across the
border or bring back. ©

Those leaving to take
up permanent residence
abroad are allowed one
automobile per family,
while individuals can
take three woollen
sweaters and one watch.
The list of restrictions is
long.

But the mass of the
people thronging the
station have no thought of
crossing the border now,
or probably ever.

Brest is the junction of
five major rail routes
Soviet Union linking the

viet Union,

Baltic states of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania
with Byelorussia, the.
Ukraine and Moldavia.

The _straight-backed
wooden benches in the
main waiting hall are
crowded, Many  trav-
ellers are sleeping in the
most unlikely positions—
feet on the ground but
body draped sideways
across a companion’s lap
while the companion
slumps forward across
the other’s back.

A group of students
Play ca on at
while four younger boys
wearing the peaked caps
of a school for railway
cadets sit watching a Ka-
zakh woman playfully
brandishing a toy sub-
machine-gun at a friend.
MOST STALLS CLOSED

A souvenir stall is
closed and so are the two
bookstalls on the plat-

form of the “Moscow
side.”
Through their dark

windowe.:: catt::be: -seen:
volumes: .: -on ~*~ plant:-.
growing; war novels in
Russian, Polish and
Byelorussian and the
collected ‘speeches of
Communist party chief
Leonid Brezhnev in
several languages. __

A young army captain
barks at two passin;
soldiers in fur hats an
boots who apparently
failed to’ salute fim. He
peers at their leave
passes and leads them
away toward a military
police guard room.

Two small boys.ask for
beer at a food stall, The
attendant refuses, but
only because they haven't
enough money.

Later they return and
she passes over two
bottles. The boys decline
her offer of kefir, a cold
soured-milk beverage,
and show no interest in
the buns and sparsely-
iced cakes. .

‘STOPPED BY GUARD

Agroupot

Byelorussian peasant
women in felt boots and
thick fur jackets with
bulky bundles of
belongings wrapped in
sheets over __ - their
shoulders scramble down
to cross the track but are
turned back by a guard.

Nova Scotia Town
‘Has A Tough Time

STELLARTON, N.S.
(CP) — This once

rosperous centre in the
Pictou County coalfields
is the focus for an open-
pit minin
aimed at alleviating the

province's energy crisis. ‘

However, the town,
with a population of 5,600,
_is not counting on the
project to stabilize its

uture econamy,

Mayor Robert J.
Monroe says the town will
co-operate with the
venture because it will

rovide cheaper power
or the province but in-
sists on reclamation and
restoration of the land to
allow future development
of more diversified in-
dustr and housing
growth. .

Monroe said the town
needs the kind of industry
which it can service and
support. A local in-
dustrial park, operated

operation.

by Industrial Estates Ltd.
(IEL), the province's
industry-promoet

17 of

agency, utilizes o:
a possible 160 ACTES,

e said the town’s first
priorities in negotiations
with the province for the
open-pit operation were

rotection of persons
ving on the border of the
it site and compensation
or possible damage to
Streets by heavy
machinery.
SURVIVED CLOSINGS
Monroe said the town
has fared well in recent
years, despite the failure

of the Clairtone Sound -

Corp. and the recent clo-
sure of the Electrohome
furnivurs piant,

He listed _several
successful — industries
including Sobey Stores
Ltd., the ‘grocery-store
chain - which has
headquarters and a
distribution centre here.

Need for advertising i

The man _ responsible
for. Wintario and The
Provincial has roundly
criticized misleading
advertising for govern-
ment lotteries.

Speaking to the Ad-
vertising andSales Club
of hence Marshall

‘ollock, @.C., managing
director of the Ontario
Lottery Corporationn
which administers both
Wintario and The
Provincial said that the
strength or weakness lies
in the inegrity of a
system.

He said:

“Sure, we're interested
in fair and acctirate
representation of the
odds and yes we've got a
dispute going on with
Loto Canada as to who
actually gives the best
chance to win a million.
While I don’t think It is
helpful to launder those
kinds of issues in public I

think it is essential that -

the public be assured that
what they read about the
lotteries not only in the
press but in their ad-
vertising is absolutely

ue.

“It's not like  tooth-
paste. If we lose public
confidence we can’t come
back out on the market
next year with a new
flavour or anew package,

Once the essential in-
tegrity of the system has

been lost it's game over,
The bubble has been
burst.

“For that reason we're
scrupulously careful
about what we say and
how e say it. We even
worry about what the
consumer thinks we have
said.

“We're also conscious
in our advertising and
promotion, of the fact
that, while over 32 per-
eent of the ublic
originally supported the
government’s decision to

et into the lottery

usiness, there was a
minority - some &.2
percent who were op-
posed to it largely on
moral and religious

grounds,

“Being a public lottery
we have attempted to
respect that minority
view in the tone and
quality of our ad-
vertising. .

“We've consciously
avoided the “lust and
greed’ advertising
syndrome, the “dream
sequences” of swimming
pools and desert islands
and have concentrated on
the fun and excitement
that can be derived from
playing the game.

“We've —s._ also
scrupulously avoided the
temptation to stret
stretch the claims to the
ultimate which have

gotten some of our
colleagues in other into
some trouble.

“For example, and I
really don't know how
they continue to get away
with it, some American
jurisdictions advertise a
“million dollar prize’
when in fact they give you
& prize of $50,000 a year
for 20 years. Now you
don’t have to be an ac-
trary figure out that
that kind of annuity is not
a million dollar prize, it's
not even the interest on a
million dollar prize. At

THE HERALD. Monday, January 16, 1978, PAGE 3

ntergrity in lotteries

current rates its present
value is somewhere in
the neighbourhood of
$550,000.

“Loto Quebec recently
got into a little bit of hot
water wit with their
Super Loto in which they
advertised a grand prize
of a million anda half
dollars which was ac-

tually $100,000 year for
15 years. Soon we'll hear
about a million dollar
lottery that offers a dollar
a year
years.”’

for a million

“1 know your landlord depends on the rent but
you still can’t list him as a dependent,”

Swed

@ renters

rent

OR

J

Imp

An

ortant Message —

Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters (SAFER)
is a programme introduced last July which
gives senior citizens direct. monthly cash .

’ payments to assist in the payment of rent.
The amount of the SAFER payment is based.
on how much income the senior citizen
receives and how much is paid for rent.

Eligibility
All senior citizens who meet EACH of the

following conditions are eligible:
@ 65 years or older

@ paying more than 30% of their income for

@ in receipt of Canadian Old Age Security
® the senior citizen OR spouse must have:

1) resided in British Columbia for two years
- immediately prior to application

2) resided in British Columbia for a
continuous five year period at any time. _

7 Exterigion of Retro-Active
Payrfent Period .
When th#/SAFER programme was first

‘introduced, information cards were sent to
ALL senior citizens of British Columbia:

Province of British Columbia
Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing

Honourable Hugh A. Curtis, Minister

er @! e e,¢ |

_. Senior Citizens

" * “Phe Government of British Columbia: :

urges all senior citizens who may be eligible for
SAFER and have not yet applied, to do so.

Based on the completed application forms
received to date, it is apparent that many
senior citizens who may be eligible for
SAFER have not as yet applied. To ensure
that all senior citizen renters in B.C. receive
the full benefits due to them, we have
extended the closing date for retroactive
payments to March 31, 1978. Payments can
extend back to July 1, 1977.

SAFER and Rent-Aid
(Renters’ Tax Credit)

This is to remind ALL senior citizens that
they should apply for Rent-Aid when
completing their 1977 Income Tax Return
whether they have been receiving SAFER
payments or not. Every senior citizen renting
in the Province as of December 381, 1977 is
entitled to a MINIMUM of $80.00 in Rent-Aid.

Full information, assistance and application
forms are available at the B.C. Housing
Management Commission in Vancouver and

at the Regional Offices of the Ministry of
Municipal Affairs and Housing in Victoria,
Frince George, Kelowna and Cranbrook. .

An application form and information can
also be obtained by completing and mailing

the coupon below ta:

 leeeleeeeieeieeieeieeeeieieion

MINISTRY'OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS AND HOUSING
SAFER Division, Parliament Buildings |

Programme,

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3E1

Please send me complete information and |
an application form on the SAFER

of hora

ruiavg Fy. waned

NAME

ADDRESS

»BC

| CITY/TOWN

’ POSTAL CODE

1

a

PPAR Re too a ere tere

‘Boeke Rema eT Et eras

eee tteta 7

Sees

ee