vg sae v. _ ; say .- aol - 8 . * 2 oC.’s rookie ‘Municipal Affairs Minister : * Bil Ritchie wants to abolish municipal . an -departments,. once an official community pian is adopted. He should take a cold shower and think again Mr. Ritchie suggests that community plans should be reviewed every 10 years, with the review job contracted out to the private sector. “You don’t need planners to tell you where to put a park or a sewer line,” he toms.” “These are administrative func- ons.” - His viewpoint is dangerously simplistic. No community plan can encompass all the fine details ‘of. its ‘recommendations for periods stretching 10- years or more into the future, ‘ because local and neighborhood factors affecting those details are constantly changing — sometimes in major and un- foreseeen ways. A community plan expresses the general wishes and intent of. a community at a given point in time regarding its long term development. Keeping the plan on track, while reconciling it with new factors and future realities as they arise, is a job hest done by the specialists involved from the start. It is not a job that can fairly or safely be left to non-specialist municipal managers, clerks.or engineers. Certainly, municipal planning depart- ments should be kept as lean and efficient as possible. But it is folly to suggest that their responsibility for shaping a community's desired lifestyle ends with the printing of the rule book. Making the plan WORK is an ongoing task. You don't fire the chef simply because he has written his recipes down on paper. Warning flash As the season of heavy fall rain ap- proaches, last week’s flash floods in West Van were a timely warning to ALL North Shore creekside dwellers. A collapsed ‘dam’ formed by nature’s debris can turn the gentlest brook into a raging torrent in minutes. Only constant vigilance by work crews, mountainside hikers and residents the length of the creek bed can safeguard against costly damage and even human tragedy. Watch it! "| WHOM Weta OE meet Tes Rte EET VaNICRIER 1 sunday news north shore® news 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, 8.C. V7M 2H4 Display Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Circulation 980-0511 986-6222 985-2131 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Editor-in-chief Advertising Director Robert Graham Noel Wright Tim Francis Personnel Director Classified Director Circulation Director Mrs. Berni Hilliard Isabelle Jennings Brian A. Etlis Production Director Office Manager Photography Manager Chris Johnson Donna Grandy Terry Peters Nath Shore News, tounded in 1969 as an independent community newspaper and qualified under Schedute fil, Part Ih, Paragraph fil of the Exciee Tax Act. is published each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Preas Lid and distributed to every Shore Second Clasa Mail Registration Number 3885 Entite contents 4° 4982 North Shore Free Prove Lid. All rights reserved. Subscriptions. North and West Vancouver $25 per year Mailing rates available on request No responsiblity accepted tor unsolicited material mectuding manuscripts and pictures witch should be accompamed by a sinamped addressed peels an the North iccab | 84,700 (average Wednesday & Sunday} BDA ONISKON THIS — IS RECYCLABLE IF BUSINESSES | treated employees the way many union leaders treat their ,»members, governments » across the country would be up in arms, and with good reason. Consider what's hap- pening: eIn Quebec, 3,000 of Restraint: the , By ROGER W. WORTH 9,000 textile workers rejected a leadership- approved deal to end a strike. The method used to decide this crucial issue? A show of hands. - There's a little wonder, then, that union president Gilles Gauthier was quoted as saying “democracy did not play a great role (in the vote).” “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world and the worst of itis that half of them are true.” THE WITTY IRISHMAN, who, long ago, delivered himself of this pearl might well have been commenting on today’s propaganda war between Operation Solidarity and Premier Bill Bennett's embattled restrainers. From early July right up to last week Solidarity gave every sign of winning that war of words by default — thanks to the deafening silence from the Socred trenches. Why Mr. Bennett and his colleagues — having dropped their 26-bill restraint bombshell on July 7 — left their troops for so long without any follow-up ammunition remains a mystery. The likeliest) cx- planation ts that the speed and strength of labor's reaction simply caught them by surprise. It shouldn't have done. The 26 restraint bills touch so many differcat interest groups that Solidarity was dealt all the propaganda cards it needed from Day One Public per cent sector untons (38 of all organized labor in BC.), welfare recipients. hospital patients. rental tenants, human rights crusaders, the women's movement, teachers and professors add up to an impressive constituency = if you can get them all rotesting at the same time hat, too. proved no problem for Solidarity's propaganda experts. Most of the government's 20 bills are quite complex and subtle documents when you study the fine print. It's doubtful, in fact, whether more than a tiny handful of Solidarity’s protesters have ever actually read them. ADRENALIN FLOWS So why confuse people with facts when you can make their adrenalin flow — and bring them out in mass rallies for the TV cameras — simply by producing your own version of the bills reduced to single-sentence slogans? Civil’ servants telegated to second-class citizens. Welfare recipients left to go hungry. The sick uanble to afford hospital treatment. Tenants defenceless against greedy, discriminating landlords. Children starved = of schooling. Teachers thrown on the scrap heap. Thus, Solidarity’s basic story - told in cight words or less per bill. With rent-a- crowds, banners and soap- box demagogucs, an instant media success The belated government counter-attack, which finally unfolded on the last day or so of August. has a lot of ground to recapture Unlike the Solidanty strategy it's long on facts but short on sex brutally It boggles the’ mind to think that anyone could reasonably count hands among an unruly. crowd of 3,000. What's worse, there is. every indication that some of those in attendance were not members of the textile union at all; ticipated in the vote. As a_ result, Gauthier ‘reverted to using a little common sense, calling another vote, but this time using a secret ballot where every worker has the right to make a private and thoughtful decision. © Across Canada, set- tlements between labor and management are either approved or rejected by a small minority of the union members affected. Union leaders’ claim apathetic members are at fault. But others argue that devices such as “show of hands” votes and one-sided leadership explanation of important issues have turned off so many individuals that a lot of members have given up hope that crucial meetings will be run. fairly and democratically. e Union leaders can be heavy-handed, sometimes more so than their big business counterparts. Following - Roman Gralewicz's election as the president of the Seafarers International Union of Canada, for example, union trial committees sought and won membership suspen- sions from ten years to life by Noel Wright appeal. The 28-page restraint primer, prepared by Social Credit's backroom warriors and issued to every Socred MLA for hometown usc, rebuts Solidarity's charges in detail, bill by bill, point by point. BOTTOM LINE It notes a number of direct falschoods (¢.g. Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters has aor been climinated, renters may not be evicted for “racial, religious or pohtical” reasons, private sector workers are not threatened by public sector restraint) lt attacks, in specific yet apparently par- — \ ocracy against four members ‘charged with various of- fences such as “refusing to obey a union officer” and “refusing to cooperate with a union representative.” The four had suported Gralewicz’s opponent. .The union members, whose sentences were later reduced have been barred from working at their trade for ‘periods of up to nine months, a heavy penalty indeed. | Clearly, there is a problem when ordinary members do not feel comfortable when they participate in union affairs. But there is also a simple solution. Governments, who have never been shy about in- tervening in the private sector when they perceive problems, should force all unions to hold secret membership ballots on basic issues such as wage set- tlements, strikes, election of leaders, increases in union dues and the like. What's more, these secret ballots should be held at the place of work. ; That way, every member would have a real op- portunity to become in- volved, and the silliness attached to accepted policies such as “show of hands” votes would end. Who knows, a heavy dose of democracy in unions might even result in fewer strikes. It’s worth con- sidering. (CFIB Feature Service) war of words cases, deliberately misleading Solidarity language, failure to com- prehend the text of bills, faulty logic and ongoing disregard for the taxpayer's pocket. As a defending lawyer's opening speech at a court trial, the government document — now being energetically relayed by Socred MLAs to their local constituents — would rate a good passing grade, despite one or two. unfortunate omissions of its own. lt overstates the 1983 increase in the Human Resources Ministry budget by forgetting the $87 million allotted to public transit, for which Human Resources Minister Grace mcCarthy is also” responsible. This reduces the truce human resources increase from the stated 13.9 per cent to about 6.6 per cent. And the document still maintains a stubborn silence on the key question everyone wants answered the total dollar savings from the restraint program — which Solidarity puts as low as $50 million, but which commosense suggests must be at least four times that figure (10,000 civil service layoffs at an average wage saving of $20,000?) This is the bottom Itne of the restraint program Uneil Finance Minister Hugh Curtus comes clean on at, the propaganda was of both sid¢s promises to leave tts spectators in the same stage of enlightenment as that puzzied Inshman