PAGE 4, WEDNESbAY, MARCH 17, 1982, WHITBY FREE PRESS _____________________________________ ||||_ whitby Volce of the County Town [ Put Michael Ian Burgess, Publisher- Managing Editor The only Whitby newspaper independently owned and operated by Whitby residents for Whitby residents. blished every Wednesday1 by M.B.M. Publishing and Photography Inc. Phone 668-6111 The Free Press Building, 131 Brock Street North, P.O. Box 206, Whitby, Ont. MICHAEL J. KNELL Commun ity Editor MARJORIE A. BURGESS Advertising Manager Second Class Mail Registration No. 5351 Registration No. 5351 "Rep-by-pop"is a basic human right, not something to be debated byregional council Last week, Durham Regional Council's manage- ment committee declined to recommend that a request be made of Ontario Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Claude Bennett to increase the representation of Whitby and Ajax on council. Two weeks ago, the minister indicated that he would "look favorably" on a request from regionai council to amend the Regional Municipality of Durham Act to add an extra seat for the two muni- cipalities. Bennett also forwarded a copy of a study con- ducted by his ministry on the current composition of regional council. That study was of the opinion that the northern, rural municipalities of Brock, Scugog and Ux- brdige were over-repesented on council, based on their population. It also said that both Whitby and Ajax were sub- stantially under-represented if one used the "representation-by-population" principle. What is interesting to note, is the clause in the report that states Whitby would still be under-represented if it had another seat on council. I've done a lot of thinking about the British Empire late- ly, largely because of three books I've been reading on and off since December - James Morris's trilogy on the British Empire. Colonialism died as an acceptable force in the second.world war, although there were people even then, who hadn't recognized that fact. There aren't many people left today who would argue that it shouldn't have died. The problem is, as I see it, that when we accepted the fact that colonialism was wrong, we tended to chuck the baby out with the bath water. Rudyard Kipling was denigrated as a writer. Everything British was suddenly bad. But if you examine the Empire in the context of its own time, and judge the British on the basis of what passed for human rights in Victoria's England, it wasn't ail bad. The British abolished slavery for example, before anyone else did, in the 18th century, and devoted the best part of a century to finding foreign remnants of it and rooting it out. That the British felt superior to many of the people they governed cannot be denied. They invented some of the nastiest racial epithets of ail time. But if you're fair, you have to admit, that through it all the British did a great deal for the people of the Empire. Ask yourself now in the 20th cen- tury, if the attitude of the Americans, the Canadians, the British themselves, towards the third worid, is as enlight- ened as it ought ta be now that colonialism has gone. When the winds of change first hit, the British and the rest of us simply dropped the former subject peoples with a dulI thud. The new Empires are commercial, not geo- graphic, and the Third World, by and large, has been left out. In the main, our aid programs are a joke. Refugees continue to flood, in their thousands, from the horrors of Cambodia and the nunbing totalitarianism of Hanoi's Vietnam, from the battle grounds of Latin America, from Afghanistan, from Poland from stupifying poverty where- ever it is found. In retrospect, the British Raj doesn't look as oppressive nowas it did in the first flush of internation- al liberalism in 1945. That's not news, but that too is reality. Currently, Whitby has a three-member delega- tion at the region comprised of Mayor Bob Atters- ley and councillors Gerry Emm and Tom Edwards. Ajax has two - Mayor Bill McLean and Councillor Jim Witty. At the meeting of management committee, councillors were llesitant to increase the size of regional council for some very good reasons. Durham Regional Chairman Gary Herrema poin- ted out that every year the region experienced growth, the demand would be made to increase council's size. He speculated that council would, before long, have 60 voices. Whitby Mayor Bob Attersley seemed to oppose the request on the grounds that the extra coun- cillors (including one more for the City of Oshawa) would cost the local taxpayer between $70,000 and $80.000. Attersley has aiso expressed doubts about the wisdom of increasing the size of government, arguments that have been well documented and reasonably based in logic. However, it seems to this publication that these arguments have not addressed the central issue. The central issue is the fact that our democratic structure is based on the principle of "represent- ation-by-population". This is the cornerstone of our systems of government be they local, regional, provincial or federal. Our society is entirely based on the "one man - one vote" theory. We pride ourselves on the fact that in Canada, ail persons are equal before the law, have the equal right of franchise and the equal right to fair representation in government. The committee seems to have conveniently for- gotten these basic facts. It is not fair that Whitby (or Ajax for that matter) should have an increasing percentage of the region's population while having a stagnant per- centage of the voice in regional government. How can any responsible man justify the fact that Whitby has three members of regional coun- cil to represent some 37,000 people while Pick- ering has four for the same population? Some regional councillors (most of them from Oshawa) are of the opinion that representation should somehow be based on assessment for property tax. This suggestion is totally contrary to our-basic democratic principles and should be rejected out of hand by any person believing in the democratic process. The issue before regional council is not one of cost or assessment or budgetting or anything else. The issue at hand is fairness of representa- tion. "Representation-by-population" was a principle established after centuries of fighting to erode the absolute power of the monarch and has been em- bodied in every form of government spawned in the Western World over the last century. Yet, this regional government is willing to throw away this principle because it costs too much. It is the opinion of thispublication that "rep-by- pop" is an idea, a principle that is worth the insig- nificant $70,000 or so a year. (Especially when it is considered that Durham Regional Council will spend over $100 million in 1982.) "Representation'by-population" is a basic right of évery Canadian citizen and taxpayer not a con- cept to be debated by a few regional councillors fearing for their tax base or political position.