6 - Friday, August 3, 1990 - North Share News fart ie. bas} NEWS VIEWPOINT INSIGHTS THE OKA STANDOFF... -QUEBEC SOVEREIGNTY. _TVE.BANK RATE... } ANWLBONEY MUST BE BESIDE HIMSELF WMH senlmngur rZ. Waste of water the North Shore. At ceriain times of the year it fails in such abundance that supplies would ap- pear to be inexhaustible. And because of those seemingly interminable rains, local residents could almost be excused a certain perverse pleasure in using large amounts of water as a way of getting back at the soggy forces of nature. Almost. The reality is that heavy rains and snowfalls help build up the supplies of fresh water in focal reservoirs that are needed at dries times of the year. Unfortunately, the habits of water-rich Lower Mainlanders do not change with the seasons. The recent spell of hot weather, while a boon to visitors and sun-starved natives, I T IS easy to take water for granted on has placed increasing demands on Lower Mainland water supplies, most of which are located on the North Shore. West Vancouver’s Eagle Lake reservoir is fast approaching the critically low levels ef 1987, when all watering in the municipality was banned. But resident memories of such water shortages are extremely short. West Vancouver waterworks officials are currently issuing approximately 80 warn- ings per day to residents who are violating the municipality’s sprinkling regulations. Green lawns are great, but green lawns at the expense of adequate water supplies for drinking and fire fighting represent skewed values and a flagrant disregard for one of the most precious resources on earth. LETTER OF THE DAY Fear no way to manage environment Dear Editor: I heartily endorse environmental axioms such as clean air, clean water, soil conservation, recycling and good forest management, but Iam beginning to doubt the cred- ibility of some environmental organizations. Consider the following, on Vancouver Island alone: ° Forestry and mill workers have had their lives endangered by spiked trees. « A member of the legislature in Port Alberni received a bomb threat. He has been pushing hard to have tree spiking declared a criminal offence. eA minister of the Crown was pushed and shoved by a rude North Shore News, lounded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified undet Schedule 111. 1139 Lonsdale Avenue Paragraph Il of the Excise Tax Act, is published each North Vancouver, 8.C . Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free + ON. Press Ltd. and istiibuted ‘9 every door on the North V7M 2H4 Shore. Second Class Mail Registration Number Subscriptions North and West Vancouver, $25 peryeat, 59,170 (average, Wednesday Matting rates availabte on request Submissions are i welcome but we Cannot accept responsibility for Friday & Sunday) group of people protesting timber harvest on private land. This could open up an incredible Pan- dora’s Box of restrictions of other activities on your own private land. Elsewhere: © Paul George of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee was quoted in Vancouver Maga- zine that information in one of their newspapers on cancer rates in pulp mill communities was “bogus ... totally prefabricated ... to scare people.’’ This violates a trust. What else are he and his group fabricating? © Perhaps most frightening, two people from a California en- vironmental group were severely Publisher ........... Peter Speck — eesmecs or str a are wrt areas Display Advertising 980-0511 Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw ‘north shore: Classified Advertising 986-6222 Associate Editor .... .Noei Wright news Newsroom 985-2131 Advertising Director . Linda Stewart Bates tant ; Subscriptions 986-1337 NESDAY + FIDAY 9803997 injured when a bomb of their own making detonated prematurely. One must seriously question the motive of those engaged in such activities. Large multi-national ‘‘en- vironmental’’ organizations are creating a lot of fear in our socie- ty. We must be on guard that we do not allow our fear to rule our decisions. Whenever we have done so in the past we have made some terrible mistakes. By all means, let us pursue the noble goals of a clean, safe en- vironment. But let us do it through sound, scientific knowl- edge, not fear and cmotion. Gord Eason Port Alberni MEMBER Put the GST back to top of the list! REMEMBER THE GST? if Meech Lake, Oka gunmen and B.C. roadblocks have recently pushed it lower down on your worry list, today is none too soon to put it right back at the top. Assuming Brian Mulroney and Michael Wilson get their way — which, alas, they may — there are now only five months left to Gouge-and-Screw Day. Their seven per cent sales tax on almost all goods and services except gro- ceries and visits to the dentist is due to start Jan.1. For the moment the Liberal- dominated Senate — which must pass Bill C-62 before it becomes law — is doing us proud. In its unhurried public hearings coast to coast it’s finding, and taking note of, the same response everywhere: upward of 70 per cent of Cana- dians want the tax killed. And Liberal Senators are show- ing signs they might be happy to oblige, or at least to delay ap- proval long enough to force Ot- tawa to abandon its January 1991 deadline. But unhappily a sword now dangles over the Senate’s own head. At present the upper chamber has just enough vacancies for Mulroney to wipe out the Liberal majority by creating a dozen or so instant new Tory Senators. It would be a scandalous, total- ly undemocratic act of patronage, but don’! put it past the PM. As with ech, he’s cornered — and with a i4 per cent popularity rat- ing yon ton’t have much to lose. The basic GST principle — a tax on spending as opposed to in- come — is sound. It lets individu- als make choices about the total tax they pay. But this Tory ver- sion is a disaster on four counts. It is an EXTRA tax grab. Aside from some temporary credits to low-income groups it brings no compensating income tax relief. It is open-ended (similar taxes in Europe show average increases as high as 1.4 percentage points every couple of years). And, of course, it does nothing to halt the government’s own reckless waste and extravagance. But still worse is the likely ef- fect on inflation. Finance Minister Wilson promises it will rise only by a fairly painless 1.25 per cent, but the extent to which his rosy forecasts are now discredited was shown in June, when even the Tory chairman of the Commons Consumer & Corporate Affairs Committee called the 1.25 per cent estimate ‘‘quite simply wrong.”” Unions are now building ‘‘infla- tion protection”’ clauses of three to four per cent above the present five per cent into their contracts from 1991 onward. They predict only 30 to 50 per cent, at most, of the savings from the old Manu- facturers Sales Tax will be passed Noel Wright to consumers. Their calculations also include the cost to businesses of complying with the tax and the effect of ‘‘piggyback”’ provincial sales taxes. Non-union professionals, mer- chants and landlords are reported- ly doing the same survival sums and getting similar answers. In addition to the harsh impact of living costs, an eight to nine per cent inflation rate next year could push interest rates even higher — with dire results for Ot- tawa’s deficit and the economy as a whole. You bet it’s time to put the GST back at the top of our worry list! eRe TAILPIECES: Congrats to West Van's Ralf Wickberg, charter president of the Kiwanis Club of Capilano, on being named the next Kiwanis lieutenant-governor of District 13, Pacific Northwest Division, which extends from Delta to the Sunshine Coast ... The same again to former North Van resident Barbara Brown on graduating this summer as ‘‘facul- ty student with highest distinc- tion’’ from the University of Toronto -— a dual-major B.A. in history and women’s studies ... A smart salute also to Lt. Mike Biehl of West Van, just awarded his ‘‘wings’’ after an intensive 11-month flying course at CFB Moose Jaw on the same jet planes as used by the Snowbirds ... And happy birthday today, Aug. 3 — especially from al! his former four-legged patients — to North Van's Earnie Earnshaw. eek WRIGHT OR WRONG: In- telligence is like a river — the deeper it is, the less noise it makes. unsolicited material nctuding Manuscnpts and pictures s which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed SDA OivISION envelope Entire contents © 1990 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. North Shore owned and managed LT. Mike Biehl ...\wings” win- RALF Wickberg ...boss Kiwa- ner. nian.