ICBC PROPOSES A 24% INCREASE IN RATES ... ANY QUESTIONS ? .. AND WHEN THEY Founp MY BELOVED'7{ PINTO , THE. 48000.° STEREO WAS GONE, AND “THE THIEVES HAD Put One elephant in bed bad enough ... FROM OUT OF NOWHERE, MIND you... ANO BANG! KNocKED THE CELLULAR RIGHT OuT OF MY HAND AND RIPPEP THE. NOTE - PAD T WAS WRITING ON. A BUNCH OF DENTS ALL OVER AND SMEARED RUST IN THEM. LTAINK ABOUT IS THOU. OUGHT “TO COVER IT. NEWS VIEWPOINT Wasted on the way the new auditor general sadly shows once again that when it comes to government spending the times they are not a’ changin’. As former auditor general Kenneth Dye recently told a West Vancouver homeown- ers’ assaciatios when describing the abili- ties of federai zovernments to use tax- payers’ money: “‘They spend very well — quickly and in !arge amounts.’’ Current auditer general Denis Desautels is getting a first-hand look at that talent so peculiar to governments, especially federal governments. : He found, among other things, that our civil-service-heavy federal bureaucracy in Ottawa excels st paper shuffling and spending, but falls short in such key areas as accountability, an oft-ridden hobby T HE recently released report from horse of MPs from all over Canada. Desautels also found sloppy government handling of its fleet of 28,600 vehicles and a disregerd for how cabinet ministers use government jets. Other highlights of managerial in- competence included overgenerosity in student loans, $39 million of which will probabiy not be recovered; improper ac- counting of nearly $2 billion in taxpayers’ money adminstered by native Indian bands and tribal councils; delays in enforcing en- vironmental standards; and on and on. Desautels advocates establishing a better scorecard for Canadians so that they might be able to see how their government is managing their tax dollars. For the last two decades that scorecard would show Canadians on a2 iong losing streak. NEWS QUOTES OF THE WEEK ‘*Human error does occur.”’ Canada Post spokesman Ilona ‘Beiks, after an eight-year-old bill _ was delivered to a North Van- couver man. “We're getting nice, clean words ‘that mean total horror like, ‘‘pe- ripheral damage”’ during the Gulf War — beating up people you didn’t mean to beat up. Look at Yugoslavia — you go sround the world and it’s civilians who are getting bump-d off.’ National president of the Red Publisher Associate Editor Comptroiter North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified Peter Speck Managing Editor... Timothy Renshaw Noel Wright Advertising Director .. Linda Stewart Doug Foot Cross, Jon Turpin, on war’s civil- ian toll. : “I felt the forest was forever crowding me into the sea.”’ Novelist and film-maker Michael Poole, on travelling the West Coast in a canoe. “IVs great I’m really excited about it. I feel really blessed by these pecple.”* Luke Thomas, 11, who suffers from brittle bones, on the work of focal police and ambulance atten- Display Advertising 980-0511 Real Estate Advertising 985-6982 Newsroom 985-2131 ‘Tia VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER: Distribution Subscriptions Classified Advertising 986-6222 Fax Administration dants in helping to organize the Sunshine Foundation’s Christmas party for physically challenged and terminally iff children. “tf still think it should be Mollie Nye’s Way rather than Mollie Nye Way. You’ve had your way with this community for so many years and I’m giad.”’ North Vancouver District Mayor Murray Dykeman, in pres- enting retired teacher Mollie Nye with a copy of the street sign that will bear her name. 986-1337 986-1337 985-3227 985-2131 MEMBER North Shore managed under Schedule 111, Paragraph Ul of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by Nerth Shore Free Press Ltd. and ‘ distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number 3835. Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 per year. Mailing rates available on request. ubmissions are welcome but we cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited material including manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope. V7M 2H4 north shore: SUNDAY © WEDNESDAY + FRIDAY ry 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, 8.C. j@< SN SOA DIVISION 61,582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) Entire contents © 1991 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. | - let alone two! AN EERIE silence has falfen over over the U.S.- Canada-Mexico free trade negotiations. When did you iast read, or watch on TV, a major news story on their pro- gress? The kind of cheery hype we were fed daily during the 1987-88 talks on the U.S.-Canada free trade agree- ment? There’s rumored to be good reason for Ottawa’s sudden reti- cence — the realization by the Mulroneyites that a three-way trade pact could be the final nail in their 1993 election coffin. Because former trade minister John Crosbie’s vaunted U.S.- Canada dea! has turned out — for average Canadians tliree years later -- to be a lemon. Everything costs MORE, with a 7% GST added for good measure. The flow of lower-priced, duty- free U.S. cars. VCRs, clothes, mi- crowaves and you-name-it into Canadian stores is still distant. Two years of harsh recession have brought the highest joblessness in a decade and record cross-border shopping has many Canadian retailers bleeding. This time, too, many lost jobs will never return. With a high Canadian dollar depressing ex- ports, plants are closing for good or moving to the Staies to benefit from lower wages and taxes. The hard tnith is that Canada makes nothing, the Yanks (and border- hopping Canadian industries) can’t make more cheaply in the U.S. with its reduced costs and much longer production runs feeding a market £0 times the size. Add Mexico, with a market of 86 million, 1 the mix and things get far worse. Labor costs much cheaper than in the U.S. and rap- idly developing skills give it everything to gain fro: free trade with its northern neighbors — in- cluding both U.S. and Canadian workers’ jobs. And when Mexican wage levels rise, it will be because JOHN CROSBIE... trader. MICHAEL WILSON... mum. keeping Noel Wright HITHER AND YON Mexicans have learned to do the ENTIRE manufacturing process, instead of just making compo- nents to ship back ta U.S. or Ca- nadian assembly plants. : Uncle Sam seems philosophical about the prospect because, in return, he gets access —.badly needed for U.S. security — to Mexico’s vast oil reserves. Canada gets no such trade-off for lost jobs. ‘ All this, of course, is tightly linked with Canada’s soaring billion debt, which forces Ottawa to bleed us white with taxes mere- ly in order to hold the line. As long as THAT burdea continues, how can most Canadian businesses hope to compete below the border? Sharing a bed with an elephant for three years has brought the mouse no relief. Sharing with two elephants could finally crush it. One suspects the 16% - Mulroneyites are at last tumbling to the truth. Why else would trade czar Michaed Wilson now be keeping so mum? TAILPIECES: Calling the anon- ymous lady who found six’ valuable stolen paintings beside a dumpster and took them to the police instead of back home. North Yan Arts Council has a lit- tle Christmas gift for you, Ma’am — three paintings for you to choose at their Art Rental night Wednesday, Dec. 11, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Presentation House and hang in your home free for a month. If you’d like them, please phone Ella Parkinson, 988-6844, sconest ... Turn out next Friday, Dec, 13, and cheer on the West Van Police and Firefighters in their Charity Hockey Game vs. the BCTV Tubes. Face-off is 7 p.m. at West Van Rec Centre rink, with all proceeds going to the Santa Claus Fund ... Mean- while, Capilano Ccrumunity Ser- vices needs reception desk, switchboard and bookkeeper vol- unteers ~~ if you’d like to help, call Joan, 988-7115, for the details. WRIGHT OR WRONG — the text for this Sunday: Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon. _ eS a