For Yellowknifer to voice an opinion on home businesses, we must first declare clear bias.

That's because this newspaper began as a home-based business 25 years ago. There are many such success stories in our business community.

Still, there are two points of view. One is that home businesses enjoy an unfair advantage over businesses either leasing office space or housed in their own buildings.

On top of that is the nuisance factor of having bustling home businesses located in residential areas.

But on the plus side of the balance sheet, home businesses often turn into stand-alone enterprises which make up 94 per cent of Canadian companies, workhorses without which no economy can survive.

In a recent survey commissioned by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 33 per cent of Yellowknife businesses responding described city hall as "Most co-operative," with home-based businesses.

While there is room for improvement upon that level of co-operation, city hall also represents residential ratepayers so home businesses cannot expect to operate without regard to their neighbors.

On the unfair competition issue, the best judge would be the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce. The CMHC study found the chamber was strongly supportive of home businesses and pushed for "liberalized" regulations.

Presumably, if the majority of chamber members felt home-based businesses operated with unfair advantage, the push would be for more regulation, not less.

It will be left up to the new city council to make certain a balance is kept within the business community and peace maintained in the neighborhoods.

With 47 starts in the summer alone, home-based businesses are here to stay.

The doom and gloom squad still have plenty of ammunition at their disposal, what with a still-shrinking government sector in these parts. But there are signs they may soon be outnumbered by optimists.

If money talks, and most of us think it does, the financial words are encouraging. Condominiums, such as the new Diamond Pointe development, are selling briskly. And someone just bought the entire Lahm Ridge Tower on Franklin Avenue. Such events signal better times ahead.

Now, it would seem, is not the time to be abandoning ship. And we haven't even mentioned the next diamond mine....

Tonight you can expect the streets of Yellowknife to be filled with a more than usual number of weird-looking people.

No, it's not a charter tour from Los Angeles, it's Halloween. As if the weather wasn't frightening enough, kids and kids at heart try their best to scare the daylights out of each other. All in the name of fun.

It's the one time of year when a good fright is a good laugh, so you might as well enjoy it. We spend most of the year avoiding people who dress funny and demand candy.