Police thinking. Hypocritical newspapers.

In Ontario, a rash of traffic accidents and fatalities from mostly young drivers racing each other on the highway resulted in the provincial nanny state recently enacting a draconian “stunt driving” law that has some serious penalties attached to it: $10,000 fine, jail time, loss of driver’s license, etc., if you are caught going 50 kilometers an hour over the posted speed limit.

While it has been used to prosecute the people the law was intended to affect, in typical police fashion, foolish charges have been laid against those who are speeding for other reasons; such as, trying to pass a big transport truck on the highway to get to a safe lane. After a couple of these showed up in court, the judges ruled the law unconstitutional and those rulings await the appeal of a higher court.

Meanwhile an auto mechanic was charge with speeding on the express highway on his motorcycle. He was going 243 kph in 100 kph zone on a multi-lane expressway. There was no evidence of racing and the prosecutor chose not to proceed with the stunt driving charge. The man was convicted and fined about $1,400.

Accrding to a story in today's Toronto Sun, Mr. Julian Fantino, the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner, a strong supporter of Ontario's stunt driving law, said in an e-mail: "I am disappointed that the sentence did not also include a psychiatric assessment before the individual is allowed the privilege of driving in Ontario."

If you are ever in doubt about the wisdom of letting the police mind set the public agenda, that statement should do it for you.

Anybody who has ever ridden a motorcycle knows that they cry out to be let loose on a good open road. There is no thrill to compare to cranking one of these things up to its high end to see how it can fly. That may be careless, or even reckless, behaviour, but it is certainly not abnormal.

What is abnormal is having a top police official who thinks that anybody who wants to experience the thrill of riding a motorcycle at a speed beyond the humdrum one permitted by law needs a psychiatric evaluation.

And Another Thing

There are four daily newspapers in the Toronto area market that duke it out for circulation honours and advertising revenue. The one in that regional market with the largest circulation is the Toronto Star.

In my mind, it is unique in another way. I find its rivals generally consistent in political bias. The Star, however, has no shame.

In a recent op-piece, penned by one of their editorial editors, Martin Regg Cohn, the writer pretends to be former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, chastising the current PM, Stephen Harper, for how he is handling his international profile, particularly his relations with the American President, and comparing Harper’s allegedly dismal performance with Mulroney’s stellar one.

I am old enough to recall how the Star treated Mulroney and his government for the eight years when he was in power. I cannot recall them ever praising him for anything. This attitude was not just in the editorials, it infected every single columnist in the newspaper. Even the humour guy, the late Gary Lautens, who I thought was a genteel person who would never say the word “shit” if his mouth were full of it, wrote a serious, nasty rant against Mulroney to my complete surprise.

I recall that the government did some polling during the public discussion of the free trade agreement with the United States, then in the offing. The pollsters determined that 47% of the country’s opposition to the Mulroney-sponsored deal came from the Toronto Star.

The Star vilified Mulroney for having a close relationship with Ronald Reagan. Now they are pretending that was a good thing.

What a nest of hypocrites!

Ford really does have a better idea

In Germany, new car sales are up by 21.5% in the month of February. In fact, it is the best February for sales in a decade. At the same time new car sales in Ontario are down by over 50%.

The difference is that, in addition to the carmaker’s generous incentives, the German government introduced its own incentive package, offering 2,500 Euros towards the purchase of a new car for anyone trading in one that is more than 9 years old.

Ford Motor Company of Canada suggested that the Ontario government launch a similar program. It has also been recommended (not by Ford) that the federal and provincial governments suspend their sales taxes on new car purchases for a time. This should apply only to cars and trucks made in Canada.

I remember back in the 1980s when the Japanese motorcycle companies invaded the “big bike” market in the U.S. and Harley-Davidson, the only surviving American motorcycle company, was on the verge of bankruptcy. President Reagan imposed a 100% import luxury tax on big motorcycles and this gave breathing room for Harley to reinvent itself and come roaring back, literally and metaphorically, to financial health.

Now a tariff is the opposite of a government incentive, but the point of Ford’s suggestion and the example of Reagan is that the government has tools at its disposal that it can wield very effectively to assist industry. It doesn’t require injecting massive amounts of money into the bank accounts of the companies that pissed their money away in the first place. And it certainly doesn’t require the government to supervise an industry the way the public would expect it to do to safeguard the loans.

If it is a credit problem, then the government could provide the lenders with credit guarantees for purchasers of new cars. These government tools are not forever. They would only be employed until there was some sign the industries were out of the danger zone.

I drive an 8 year-old vehicle made in Ontario. It has more than 335,000 kilometers on the odometer. The body is beginning to show some small signs of rust, but the engine and transmission are running just fine. I am expecting it to last to at least 500,000 km without major trouble. However, if the governments suspended the sales taxes, the manufacturers continued the attractive sales incentives I have noticed when passing dealerships, and there was a generous scrappage fee, I would trade it in tomorrow for a new one.

I am looking at a replacement vehicle in the $30,000 range. With sales taxes that car would cost me approximately $34,000. The manufacturers are currently offering discounts of $3,000. If a scrappage fee were introduced at say, $3,500, and the sales taxes were suspended, the cost of the vehicle is less than $24,000. That is a $10,000+ saving, tax included, on a car that was originally priced at $30,000.

It would very hard not to bite on that one.