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Path: utzoo!hcr!chrisr
From: chrisr@hcr.UUCP (Chris Retterath)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: oil "nationalization", social policy and crime rate
Message-ID: <617@hcr.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 18:47:23 EST
Article-I.D.: hcr.617
Posted: Mon Mar 26 18:47:23 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Mar-84 21:37:55 EST
References: <3596@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 41

"Enlightened" social policies? That is your opinion, perhaps.
I don't want to question anybodies opinions, but here are some
quick examples of the kinds of things I don't like. If you like them,
I guess I'm a "redneck". Isn't it fun throwing names around!?
(These are just off the top of my head):

- a couple of unemployed people who set up a company in Hamilton
to provide a "Pet Finding" service to find people's pets was
closed down by the police; seems pets are property and you have to
pay a big fee (which they couldn't afford) to be a private investigative
firm merely to provide the service of looking for property.
This is as inane as most licensing arrangements.

- proposed censorship of video cassettes mailed to your house.
That the Ontario government can propose this without a storm of controversy
shows me how far we have gone. Suggest to any American that the U.S.
government would do this and watch the sparks fly! What you do/watch/see/read
is YOUR business not mine, except here. The censors even want to go into
Quebec and British Columbia to bring pressure to bear on those provinces
(which have no such censorship) to bring suits against people sending
the stuff here.

- regarding oil prices: I don't really care who owns the oil companies,
do you (really, now)?? When the prices were high people here got upset
about the Albertan "sheiks" and the gouging multi-national oil companies.
In reality, Canadian oil prices were artificially kept lower than world
prices, at the expense of those Albertans. Now, Canadian prices are
higher than world at the expense of us all, because of gouging federal
(and final-use provincial) taxes. If the price was low, would you care
who owned the company? And if the prices are high, do you really beleive
the national oil company (Petro-Can) will sell at a lower price than the
multi-nationals? And if you can buy shares in the multi-nationals, then
you're not really shut out from the profits, are you? while Petro-Can's
(assumed) profits will disappear into the grab-bag of federal revenue.

There are probably better examples, and many more, than I can list
now. I personally wonder at the trust and hope people place in government
policies, when the record has been so pathetic and the costs so high.
Our "enlightened" social policies have racked up a bill that we
will all be paying for the rest of our lives, and our children's after us.
TANSTAAFL!