6 - Sunday, April 22, 1990 - North Shore News MR. MULRONEY, \PRESUME... Election budget NY DOUBTS that a provincial election is imminent should have <—& been dispelled by budget. On money for municipal budget deficit. And while the government should be “They just write ‘To Stephen San- dar, millionaire, West Van- couver.'’ West Vancouver millionaire Stephen Sandar, describing how correspondence from all over the world has arrived at his home fol- lowing his decision to give away some of his millions to charity. “It is very painful. It’s a very dif- ficult thing to do.” Peter Quinn, chief executive of- ficer for Versatile Pacific Ship- yards Inc., commenting on the closure of the drafting department of its North Vancouver yard. . “There are accidents that car happen, but three in a row is too many." Environment Minister John Reynolds, commenting on why he Publisher Associate Editor 2aragtann Ut of tie becme Press Ltd ana Huté tov the surface, it presents a preponderance of good news: no iax in- creases, more money for educaiion, more affairs, money for reforestation, help for tiome- owners and a tax on poliuters. in short: an election budget. out below the surface, the budgetary news is not as good as it sounds. The budget, for example, was balanc- ed by borrowing $684 million from the government's Budget Stabilization Fund, which appears to be a neat financial shuffle to hide what would have been a Peter Speck Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Advertising Director Linda Stewart North Shore News, tounded in 1969 as an independent suDatban newspaper and quatitied unger Schedule ttt Act iy published each Wednesday Friday and Sunday by Noth Shore Fr Thursday’s the fund is more While the lauded for establishing its new $293.3 million Sustainable Environment Fund, a good portion of the money allotted for taken up with current reforestation programs. The government also plans to invest $3.5 billion in transportation, ferry and related projects over the next five years, but the cost of priority transportation projects for the province is almost three times that amount. government’s new-found commitment to the environment is good news, the suspicion remains tbe? fooming election was the main isspira- tion behind that commitment. Winning the political game requires a good opening and a strong finish. What the goes on in Detween is vitally important to issued a pollution abatement order to the Woodfibre pulp mill in Howe Sound. “They’ve got tremendous people who put our guys back together. Pm all for them.”’ John Palmer, organizer of to- day’s Lions Gate Hospital Foun- dation fundraising soccer game at Kinsman Stadium between the Vancouver 86ers and Canada’s na- tional soccer team, commenting on why he organized the game to support the hospital. **Half the trustees’ campaigns are run dy the teachers and paid for by the teachers.”” Former North Vancouver School District 44 trustee Margie Good- man, commenting on the provin- cial government’s school referen- 1139 Lonsdale Avenue. North Vancouver. BC V7M 2H4 59,170 (average. Wednesday Tit VOICE OF NOMTH AML we) VANCOUVED Display Advertising 980-051 1 Classitied Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom 985-2131 Distribution 986-1337 SABRE sunscrcions 9861537 all, but rarely remembered by any. dum system and what she said was the desire of teachers to continue getting salary increases. “We are up against the wail on this.” North Vancouver District 44 School Board chairman Rev. Roy Dungey, commenting on the board’s projected $2 million budget shortfall. “Tm really glad that there is a Sunshise Foundation so I conld have so much fun this day instead of being in school and doing who knows how many pages of math." Nine-year-old North Van- couverite Rebecca Crosby, one of 73 terminally-ill, seriously-ill and severely-disabled B.C. youngsters recently airlifted to Disneyland courtesy of the Vancouver chapter of the Sunshine Foundation. MEMBER ————— spansiont iced Maternal mcMding MANUSCHDIS and Dctures ry stoch should be accompamed by a Stamped addressed uryelope SOA DIVISION Friday & Sunday) Entire contents = 1990 North Shore Free Press Lid. All rights reserved. sx. G 6 on North Shore owned and managed Deadlines loom for Saving environment TGDAY BEING ‘“‘Earth Day,’’ no self-respecting columnist can decently shirk the duty of contributing three minutes of his wisdom to the environment. So forgive me, Bob Hunter and Peggy Trendell-Whittaker, for trespassing briefly in your garden. Pi try not to mess it up. The nub of the problem with the environment is that there’s too much of it and — if the boffins have got their time frames right — too few years feft to fix it before it finally fixes US. So it’s unrealistic to expect we can beat that deadline by the leisurely process of ‘‘educating”’ and ‘‘encouraging’’ ourselves to clean up our filth. And we've cer- tainly no hope of winning the race against time until we face, head- on, the global population threat. Sure, every little step helps. 1, for one. am not in the Jeast cynical about business and industry climb- ing on the environment band- wagon. Store shelves ijull of ‘‘en- vironment-friendly’’ products (as long as they really ARE), brokers pushing stock in ‘‘environment- conscious’’ companies, rechargeable batteries, non- disposable diapers and reusable shopping bags 2re much better than nothing. If business and industry are also making handsome bucks out of it all, that’s fine with me. Nobody ever said saving the planet from the human race was going to be cheap. But leaving it to free market forces alone won’t save us, because merely offering hundreds of mil- lions of individuals the opportuni- ty to make the right choice takes too long. With the Greenhouse Effect and the ozone holes we may have a grace period of only a decade or two, say the wise men. They may be overly pessimistic, of course, but if we wait to find out, the an- swer could be simply ‘‘game over.”” So, regrettable though it is, the free market's environmental ef- forts are going to need much more help from Big Brother if we want to make it in time. Like a total government ban in every developed nation TOMOR- ROW — not next year — of all CFC aerosols, phosphates, disposable styrofoam and plastic products, unneeded packaging and non-returnable containers. Plus gasoline rationing for all an , - . — PHOSPHATE-FREE DETERGENTS are among the growing number of pleasure-only motor vehicles. And that would be just for starters. Crazy, you say? Not at all — because there’s an even more pressing urgency. So far we're talking only about the 25 per cent of Earth’s 5.5 billion people who enjoy the high living standards of our developed world. In the Third World the other 75 per cent are striving towards similar standards of mate- rial comfori and convenience — though still generations away for many of them. Meanwhile, their sumbers in- crease by about one billion every decade. This population explosion, add- ed to the Third Worid’s march towards a iife like vurs, points to an environmental !Joomsday for the planet — unless we can teach them how to avoid :avaging it as WE have done. So even cleaning ip our own act fast is nor tne end solution. Globally, it’s only ine beginning of ‘the solution. Happy Earth Day! eee DATEBOOK: Expatriate Salmon Armers in chese parts should red- ring August 10-13 ~— S.A.’s 85th anniversary Homecoming. Info on the festivities from Sally Scales at S.A. Chamber of Commerce, I- 832-6247 ... Annual Spring Show by West Van Sketch Club members opens next Sunday. April 29, in Park Royai South — continuing until May j2 during regular mall hours ... Recycling is the big theme, says Eileen Lewis, at the 10 a.m.-2 p.m. flea market being held Saturday, April 28, oy the ladies of St. Pius X Church tn the Parish Hall, 1150 Mt. Seymour Road ... Anniversary greetings Tuesday, April 24, to West Van’s Roger and Agnes Gauthier, celebrating their 55th ... And many happy returns of the same day to North Van bir- thday boy Jeff Adams. kK WRIGHT OR WRONG: “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip”’ (well said, Will Rogers!). so-called “‘green"’, environmentally friendly products now being offered in many supermarkets. But can the protection of the the environment ultimately be left to individual customer choice alone?