Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 17

Comment Editor: Peter Menzies 235-7594 e-mail: menziesptheherald.southam.ca CALGARY HERALD Tuesday, May 6, 1997 A17 ey Issue Take a seat and ponder the world ELECTION ork isw EDMONTON andidates can talk about everything When I was a kid, we had a souvenir-shop wall plaque showing a caricature of an old farmer sitting in an outhouse with his chin on his hand. "Sometimes I sits and thinks," it under the PETER STOCKLAND Herald columnist sun, but the critical issue in this election campaign is work. Officially 1.4 million Canadians are unemployed and look-ingfor jobs, about the I OCvy I I I LINDA GOYETTE Edmonton Journal CHRETIEN telligent discussion of new workplace issues. They oppose "old methods of job creation" like Liberal infrastructure spending, but would put more pressure on industry to invest in Canadian jobs. Conservatives would set up an Inter-provincial Trade Commission to enforce tougher rules.

They say a 10-per-cent increase in domestic trade would create 200,000 new jobs. Like Reform, they would lower personal and corporate taxes to spark job creation. But Tories also say they would introduce a law to put employees' interests before other creditors when a company goes bankrupt. Best new idea: Require Canadian banks to publish detailed records, by region, of deposits taken from consumers, compared to consumer loans provided to local small businesses. New Democrats: Job Creation Isn't A Dirty Word "The government has failed to deliver on the most pressing issue facing ordinary men and women and their children," Alexa McDonough said this week.

In a platform that puts job creation as the top priority, the NDP ignores the Canadian political orthodoxy of the moment. It would argue in Parliament for much higher corporate taxes to pay for direct job creation in the public interest, in city transit and energy conservation for example. The NDP says Canada needs a National Employment Act to enforce job creation targets, just like deficit targets, to aim for a 5.4-per-cent unemployment rate by 2001. On other workplace issues, it would argue for new measures to redistribute work among Canadians and discourage overtime. Best new idea: Chartered banks would be required by law to reinvest their hefty profits in enterprises that create far more Canadian jobs.

Voters used to say that Canada's mainstream parties were indistinguishable on the big issues. On the subject of work, that isn't true anymore. We have a choice, and we've never needed it more. nology and tourism development. The best way to create jobs, they say, is to have public finances under control to encourage private sector investment.Liberals would add $600 million to their infrastructure program to create new jobs in communities.

Youth employment strategy consolidates $2 billion in existing programs. Beyond job creation, the Liberal platform says next to nothing about economic insecurity in the workplace. Best new idea: 20,000 adults with dependent children would qualify for a $3,000 education grant if they enrolled in retraining or post-secondary classes. Reform: We Trust our Beloved Private Sector "We'll reduce the size of government, and lower taxes, to create real jobs," says Reform's Blue Book. That's about it.

True believers in trickle-down economics, Reformers would cut companies' premiums for employment insurance by 28 per cent "in order to create more and better jobs." They would also cut the capital gains tax in half so Canadians with bucks would have more money for "investment, innovation and entrepreneur-ship." Their faith in the wealthy is eternal. Reform promises to strengthen export opportunities in the Maritimes and B.C., and work for free trade among provinces. It is sketchy on details. It would abolish affirmative action programs. It would cut personal income taxes to increase consumer spending.

Reform says nothing about emerging workplace issues other than unemployment and falling family income. Best new idea: Didn't see one. Conservatives: We Trust Our Beloved Private Sector a Little Less "We are living in a period of intense adjustment," says the PC platform. "The result of all this change is widespread personal insecurity" They get it. While they tilt ideologically toward Reform's laisser-fa ire point of view, the Conservatives offer a far more in i MviW same number as when the Liberals took office in 1993.

Although a brighter situation in Alberta and British Columbia breaks with the national ttend, Canada's unemployment rate has been above nine per cent for six years. Canadians with jobs are more insecure than they were in 1993. They still worry about the possibility of a layoff notice, but day to day, their deepest anxiety is about the changing nature of work itself. The trend toward part-time, short-term and contract work threatens a family's effort to put together a dependable income. It sabotages the ability of younger, single Canadians to become independent.

Too many well-paid people are working overtime; too many underpaid people are begging for odd hours on a patchwork pay-cheque. The political response? To varying degrees, every major party is trying to offer distinctive ideas. Voters can examine their wildly different strategies in the next four weeks. Here's a quick, condensed version based on the parties' written platforms. Liberals: We're Doing Everything Right "Canadians recognize that the private sector creates jobs, but they expect government to create the conditions that will stimulate job creation," says the new Red Book.

Long on boasts about the Chretien government's record, short on new ideas, the Liberal job strategy emphasizes public investment in small business development, youth training, trade expansion, new tech said, and sometimes I just sits." Well, sometimes when I'm just sitting, questions I've never had reason to think about before just pop into my head. In no order they are Why is everybody suddenly talking about "the millennium" ending or beginning? A millennium is merely a unit of 1,000 years. It's from the Latin "my lend it to 'em" meaning the time it takes neighbors, friends or inlaws to return borrowed snow-shovels, screwdrivers and books. We had the turning of a millennium four months ago. It was the thousand years between Jan.

1, 997 and Jan 1, 1997. Did life change? Did we even notice? Why do we notice when the millennium odometer flips over from the year 1000 to 2000? (OK, 1001 to 2001 for you calendar pedants.) Why do we only get excited about years marked with a 0,1, or How do today's kids know virtually every stupid expression, joke, insult, counting rhyme or skipping song that was popular when their parents were kids? The other day two kids were bickering, and I heard one of them launch that grand old piece of repartee: "I know you are, but what am The second kid retorted with heavy sarcasm: "That's so funny I forgot to laugh." I almost twisted my neck doing a double-take. Where did they get that stuff? After all, people generally stop saying such things at about age 10. So, unlike some of the more colorful terms learned when daddy hits his thumb with a hammer, kids aren't likely to pick it up from mamma and papa. Does it lurk in the paint on school walls and emerge like some weird, time-resistant tongue bacteria? Or is it written down in some sacred, secret book kept in the dankest corner of the school basement and shown only to a MANNING This race has just begun Mcdonough TORONTO ere we are II lurching into the second of JL JL the federal election campaign and the universe is beginning to ST i ti unfold in many interesting ways.

The biggest single election story, clearly, CLAIRE HOY For Southam Newspapers CHAREST balancing the budget. McDonough likes to ask why, if government can set a target for its deficit, it can't do the same thing for unemployment? For starters, government deficit targets are consistently off base, but to the extent they can predict them it's because they have considerable control over their own spending and revenue projections. Governments do not have that sort of control over whether Joe's Snack Bar in Tweed, hires another server. It's pretty basic, Alexa. Think about it.

And you'll understand why your opponents are snickering at such nonsense. As for Chretien, he seems to be doing what he does best very little of anything which, alas, is probably all he needs to do to hang on to his job. Still, there's a feeling out there, hard to quantify or explain, that Chretien will not do nearly as well in this election as he and the Liberals think he will. Many Canadians are not impressed at Chretien's decision to call an election long before the customary time, and while it seems unlikely that he could lose, it's not out of the question that his healthy majority could suddenly turn into a minority Manning was clearly the winner of week one. He not only embarrassed the Liberals by releasing their Red Book II before they did, but he handled the Manitoba situation well McDonough tried and ended up looking as if she was exploiting the situation The best news for Manning, however, is that according to several public opinion pollsters, national unity is rearing its ugly head again.

Stay tuned. This thing isn't over yet. terrible campaign start hurrah! hurrah! what with both his campaign bus and his separatist message getting lost so badly that Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard and his Parti Quebecois organizers had to rush in to salvage the mess. Still, before people get all excited and before you assume that a public opinion poll showing the Tories doing well in Quebec and the Bloc sinking means something the fact is, come election day, the majority of Quebec ridings will still be in the separatist camp. Why? Mainly because the anti-separatist vote, however strong it may seem, is concentrated in a collection of ridings in and around Montreal, while the vast majority of ridings in the rest of Quebec are almost totally francophone and very loyal to the separatist cause.

As for Tory Leader Jean Charest, he made plenty of announcements during the week, but it's not clear whether many people were hearing his message. In terms of actual public impact, he didn't seem to make any Could it be he's too slick by half? I think so. NDP Leader Alexa McDonough kicked off her campaign by revealing the details of her party's platform mid-week. McDonough's effort is akin to the slightly daft aunt who wanders into the family gathering and offers her global solutions to the gathering. Everybody listens politely, then moves on to the next topic once she leaves the room.

The centrepiece of McDonough's strategy, for example, is her plan to legislate unemployment to five per cent not to mention spending billions more on government programs at the same time as she's was whether the flood-ed-out folks in southern Manitoba should or can vote on June 2 with the rest of us. Chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kings-ley took a quick tour of the three ridings hardest hit and declared that those people will be voting after all, a decision Reform Leader Preston Manning slammed as "impractical" by pointing out that many of these people as if they don't have more pressing concerns are not going to be able to even get to a polling booth. Manning was insisting that Prime Minister Jean Chretien not accept Kingsley's recommendation Chretien had insisted that he would and delay the vote for those people by 90 days. And why not? It's true that voting at a different time likely would have an impact upon how people actually voted, but since we're not talking about enough ridings here to change the outcome of the election, what's the harm? he good news of the week is that Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe had a DUCEPPE Chosen Child of the Stupid Expression who passes it on to his or her peers? Why do boys always want to make everything exist five feet off the ground? Why do girls insist life remain on terra firma? I bought my son one of those radio-controlled racing cars for his birthday The first thing he did was build an enormous jumping ramp in the driveway to see if he could turn the car into a plane. When my daughter was granted the honor of being allowed to try it, she put a stuffed bear in the front seat and pretended it was going shopping.

Are boys born with an air gene? Do girls come factory-equipped with a mall chromosome? Am I generalizing? Why do people say irregardless? There are two English words. Irrespective. And regardless. I'm fascinated by the work being done pinpointing parts of the brain where various human functions occur. But I'd love to see some scientist discover the little cranial love nest where two words go in, cuddle up and produce hybrid offspring such as irregardless.

Is anyone working on this at the moment? Why are people always disgruntled, but never gruntled? If something has to be armed before it can disarmed, why don't people have to be gruntled before they're disgruntled? Why do TV news anchors always do that thing at the end of the show when they gather their papers in a neat pile, stand them on end and give them a little double tippy-tap? What's on those papers, anyway? Why do they have them on the anchor desk if they make such a mess? Don't they know we know they read everything off a tele-prompter? And why are TV newscasters called Why the nautical image? Wouldn't calling them "paper weights" be more appropriate? Why does the media feign titillated surprise when celebrities do things that show "they're only human" after all? Unless the celebrities in question are Flipper or Mr. Ed the Talking Horse, what else could they be but human? Recently, for example, there was a wire photo of Cherie Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as she answered an early-morning knock at the door in her nightgown. This was presented with great glee, and as if something astonishing had been revealed. W'ell, it might have been surprising for those under the impression she sleeps in a suit of armor. More, we ere informed she quickly closed the door when she realized there were cameras outside.

What was she supposed to do? Disrobe? Think about it. Peter Stockland can be reached by telephone at 235-7562 or by e-mail at stocklandpintheherald.southam.ca GUEST COLUMN Legislation puts fathers on backburner Bob Dickson is a family doctor in northwest Calgary and joint parent of three-year-old Luke. New child-support legislation has the potential to exacerbate the injus tices inherent in the areas of separation and divorce. I commend the woi'k being done to nated against by courts, which accept and render judgments on the basis of false or embellished allegations and statements that are virtually impossible to defend against. Men are often portrayed as less emotional, less feeling, less loving and caring, and are then manipulated around and even refused already minimal access.

The new child-support legislation states that children have the right to be financially supported by both parents, yet nowhere does it mention the right to be parentally supported by both parents. Payments are calculated on the support-paying parents' income yet the custodial parent while expected to contribute, has absolutely no onus to do so there is no monitoring, enforcement or obligation to do so, legally or otherwise. An example of the potential injustice in this area would be that of a non-custodial parent earning $50, 000 per year and paying a large number of after-tax dollars to the custodial mother (now not to be taxed in her hands) while she could earn up to $49, 999 per year and choose not to contribute a cent toward the child's support. Also, the non-custodial father might have the child in his care up to half the time but not a single penny is allocated for his expenses incurred. Inequities are rampant throughout, such as forcing non-custodial parents to pay for all post-secondary education costs while non-divorced parents have no such obligation.

I realize there is not a lot of political will in the country to rectify the injustices being perpetuated on thousands of good fathers. The pseudo-feminist agenda not to be confused with the real and legitimate concerns of true feminism is strong and infrequently challenged. Lawyers generate income through polarizing separated families and the government's tax grab will likely be in excess of a quarter of a billion dollars a year through this new program. I can only hope that the fundamental right of children to be jointly parented and to spend valuable time with their fathers will somehow come to the forefront and that true justice will prevail. and arrogance, have pushed the pendulum of fairness in the area of separation, divorce and child custody far out of balance in favor of women.

Unfortunately, the reality is that children are seen by the courts as property of women rather than precious beings to be jointly loved, raised and parented. Figures show that more than 90 per cent of ex-wives are given custody in Canada. Fathers are often viewed as entertainers, paycheques, providers, cash cows and mere visitors while research shows that fathers are key to forming the social identities of children and are extremely important for the physical, mental, emotional and economic health of their children. This is evidenced by a more than 700-per-cent increase in criminal activity among boys without fathers. Unequal access time disregards the rights of children and causes alienation of one parent's family and friends.

Courts blatantly disregard the human rights of children and fathers and attempts to rectify this can be very costly. Fathers are routinely discrimi DR. BOB DICKSON crack down on "deadbeatdads," that small percent age of men who tarnish the good names and reputations of the majority of fathers who are honest, loving, upstanding and supportive of their families. The mean-spirited pseudo-feminist agenda that is pervasive in our country and in the justice system is being propagated by women who have little or no regard for or understanding of the true tenets and meaning of feminism and who, through their own greed, anger.