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NDP government is scaring away US investment Ontario should be ashamed. We have just been beaten by Quebec. For years, Ontario was the engine that drove Canada. Ontario was considered by foreign investors as the place for safe, solid investment. Quebec, on the other hand, with its spicy politics and recurring threats of separation, lagged far behind the hardâ€" working and politically safe Ontario. And now that‘s changed. Quebec has surpassed Ontario as the preferred investment location by our American cousins. How is this possible, you ask. Stability is the answer. Sure, Quebec still peppers its politics with talk of separation. But lately things have cooled off and Quebec has buckled down to the task of strengthening its economy. And its people are doing a good job despite the recession. The province‘s pension funds invest strongly in Quebec industries providing their own financing. _ â€" â€" o 6verafi, Quebec is holding their own. And that‘s stability â€" exactly what investors want to see. The muted cries of separation no longer bother or frighten the Americans. . And so the Americans are in Quebec with their dollars â€" nice green Yankee bucks. They buy Quebec government debt issues. And so far this year, they have bought more than they did in the previous year. ue w lhe o c Posn snnee Quebec still pays a higher interest rate than Ontario. That‘s because it has a lower debt rating than Ontario. But it is catching up to us. Ontario recently had its debt rating reduced after the NDP government presented that disastrous budget in the spring. _ EeP tid Ontario, on the other hand, isn‘t doing so well. Granted the cold winds of the recession are still blowing out there, but the storm has calmed down and some promising good weather seems to be on the horizon. However, there is more to the story than the recession. _ Our politics picked up a flavor that investors, especially Americans, don‘t like. Socialism. And that came from our new provincial government. New York‘s Wall Street watched with interest when the NDP was elected. They continued to watch and when the budget revealed that Ontario was taking on more debt in terms of deficit financing, Wall Street lowered the boom. Ontario‘s debt rating was reduced from a tripleâ€"A to a doubleâ€" A. Debt rating is simply using a scale to measure risk. The higher the risk, the lower the rating. And the lower the rating, the higher the interest rate. The additional interest compenâ€" sates investors for the risk they take. l a2k i. ‘91 HONDA CLEAROUT AHAOT __ Now Quebec‘s rating is doubleâ€"A minus. This is lower than Ontario‘s rating, but here‘s the catch â€" Ontario‘s rating went from the exceptional tripleâ€"A to the run of the mill doubleâ€"A. And the rating only recently changed. This brings up investor questions such as "Is it going to stay there?" "Is this just the beginning of further decline?" Investors don‘t like uncertainty. They also don‘t like change. And that‘s what Ontario is all about these days â€" change and uncertainty. Now when you consider that the Province of Ontario will have to go to the debt markets to take out loans to finance the deficit, there are two major concerns â€" will the markets want to buy Province of Ontario debt and if so, at what_prige‘? â€" haol Cl Uoneadean bea e m fes Lo nc tion e es i d. 0 Ontario and the NDP better get this show back on the road. Or Ontario, the little engine that could â€" won t. Pattie Moran is a corporavte'bénker living prices and selection anywhere at ... r in Waterloo For your convenience, we are open Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for July and August Monday thru Thursday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. &A R7A0 mm o l o .'f 6 8 l fe. t «* e C ~ e 4 T en J We , * C !* *R kss . A.0 P a is +C ; f L Liz Rogers is becoming SIZE WISE Keren Adderley Chronicle Staff Liz Rogers knows what it is to be successful, and with four retail clothing stores and a shoe store all doing well, she didn‘t get where she is today by making rash business decisions But she will take risks, espeâ€" cially when she knows that risk will pay off, even if it means expanding her operation in the middle of a recession. "This isn‘t normally something I would do, especially in these times, but when I know some: thing is a good idea, when I know there is a definite market, I‘ll take the risk," says Rogers. And she‘s taken risks before, says Rogers, such as opening the fourth location of her women‘s clothing store Lizzy R earlier this year when other retailers were running for cover because of the recession. But her latest business venture is something new, someâ€" thing relatively untried and this time, the risks are greater. It‘s called Size Wise, a whole new â€" women‘s clothing . store geared towards fashionable workâ€" ing women who can‘t find the sizes they need in regular cloâ€" thing stores, something Rogers says she has experienced personâ€" ally. "I went to buy a dress for a wedding not long ago and had Liz Rogers, owner of the Lizzy R clothing stores, is willing to take risks for a good idea trouble finding something fash ionable at a reasonable price because most of the stores didn‘t carry my size." There are specialty stores that carry nothing but larger sized clothing for women, says Rogers. but they tend to concentrate on the larger sizes and gear their clothes towards a conservative consumer. "The sizes | want to carry are between 12 and 20. These sizes tend to get over looked because they‘re beyond what is carried in most stores and below those sizes the specialty stores concentrate on. I want to carry clothes that the modern, fashionable working woman wants but has trouble finding just because she‘s a little bigger than what‘s considered average." "I love this business... When you really enjoy what you‘re doing, you can‘t help but succeed." And, unlike most specialty stores, Size Wise won‘t have the price tag that is normally asso ciated with specialty clothing "I want to keep the prices reasonable, much like the Lizzy R stores, where a woman can get WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 1991 â€" PAGE A13 (across from Conestoga Mall) 545 KING STREET N WATERLOO Liz Rogers ©746â€"4120 * Chronicle fashionable clothing at a good price I‘ve had enough customer: asking for a line like this that I‘m confident the store will do wel! The store. to be located in the Waterloo Town Square, is sche duled to open in August and Rogers predicts that other loca tions will soon follow "At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, 1 see it expanding rapidly into more stores because there is such a market for this type of store " Another market Rogers will tackle is larger: width shoes which she will begin stocking in her store, Dara Shoes in Water|io Town Square "I‘m going to start smaller on this one though." says Rogers, "but. if all goes as well as I think it will. I may expand that side of it too." Rogers, who came from Ireland to Canada with her husband and only $75, is the perfect example of a success story. The couple owned and operated two successfulre staurants before she tried her hand at retail "I opened my first store in 1982 and have done nothing but ex pand since then. 1 love this busi ness, it‘s not work to me. and I think that‘s the key to success When you really enjoy what you‘re doing you can‘t help but succeed." \ _ SOMETHING § FOR [ _ EVERYONE!