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Entire contents
© 1996 North Shore
Free Press Ltd.
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Now... NO FACELESS
CORPORATION 15 GOING

CSS

SSS

Hews Viewpoint

Savin

would likely have been closed.

off track |

Bear Editor:

Re: Keith Highway Access #°
to Close (April 26 News).
To the government: and
ICBC: you must be nuts! You're ©

getting 5.7 accidents per year,
so you move them, make them._
go through three more tums,
two lights, higher density taf-
fic, past a playground, a
preschool, 20 to 30 residences, |
a left tum into morning sun-~ |
shine, and then into the biggest —
mess of an on-off ramp in the
Lower Mainland! aa

You'll double the accident - |
rate and maybe take a. few .
child-pedestrians with them. :

in addition, how long. will: §
Bruce street residents have to’ |
sit in the north-bound lane ‘of:
Mountain Highway waiting for
someone to. let them. in line?“ I-
Were there no- NDP-voters ‘on
Fern and Bruce streets? "|:

This is not a solution to. the
problem, it is patchwork * ;
agement”. The Fern. street: on-
ramp is complicated’ enough
already with traffic having to
merge on 10 the highway in the ;
middle of traffic ‘trying to exit,
.coupled with the mess of peo-
ple trying to “pass the line’
the right of the long ramp.

In addition, the figure in the

HiS IS a fish story that deserves repeat-

ing. And not just because it has a happy

ending. The lesson it carries is as
important as the result it delivers.

In the overall scheme of things on planet
Earth, the Seymour hatchery story is perhaps
no big deal. But on a community level it is.

Last Friday, the federal government rede
into town in the person of Fisheries and
Oceans Minister Fred Mifflin: His handlers

_ had him outfitted in the hero’s white hat.

_. He came bearing news that the federal gov-
ernment would restore its annual $153,000
funding for the hatchery..,

That funding, as documented in the News,

‘had been threatened by federal budget cuts.

Its loss would have been bad news for the
Seymour river’s already depleted trout and

* salmon stocks. It would also have been bad

news for the community-run hatchery, which

And it would have been bad news for the
entire North Shore, which benefits as much
from the educational value of the hatchery as
it does from the practical fish-producing
value of the facility. 2

The real hero of this whole story, however,
is not Mr, Mifflin. It is Mary-Sue Atkinson.

The North Vancouver.mother and sports
fishing enthusiast led the charge in early 1996
to save the hatchery’s funding, The tenacity of
her grassroots letter-writing and telephone
campaign heiped turn the tide in the federal
budget cut battle, A

There was nothing in’‘the whole affair for
Atkinson. She merely saw a valuable part of
what mekes her community special about to
disappear. And she did something about it.

Therein lies the inspirational moral in this
fish story: you can fight city hall and win.

-problem on the off-ramp).

. | North Shore News shows two |

east-bound fanes’ tuming ‘jiitto

* the re-worked on-ramp — what

about the traffic coming . from’
Mount Seymour Parkway? .
You'd be better. off: if yo
eliminated the Fern’ Street off-
ramp and put an ‘off-ramp
before Mountain highway. ‘This
would climinate. the traffic
going on to the highway: from
Keith Road and. then off.on to.

the Fern street ramp (half the

Please go back to the draw-
ing board and‘use your’ brai

‘this time, Why waste money to
Move a problem a few hundred

aster jugg

AS THE election dust

thickens, nothing so
far seems to be clarify-
ing matters much. Soa
little character analysis
may be in order.

Starting with a personal
note. Having pontificated for
years about politicians, I'm
often asked why I never
entered politics myself. Pin
always slightly ashamed of my,
real reasons—one being that politics is the
supreme spectator sport and Pina glutton for
entertainment. ;

The second, and more serious, is that [ tack
the killer instinct. | wouldn't even know where
to look for my opponent’s jugwar.

Almost all temporarily successful political
leaders (i.e., those who get clected to power)
are brimming over with the killer instinct, no
matter how skilled they become at tickling |
babies under the ch'9. But unfortunately the
killer instinct that wins elections is useless, in
itself, for solving post-election problems which
— unlike political opponents — are impervi-

. ous lo sudden-death techniques.

Killer-instinct politicians invariably com-
pensate with one other talent: the ability to

juggle figures so fast that the
audience can't follow what is
happening and so must take
the juggler’s word for it.

Like last week's meaning
less budget which boasted
that government debt will
drop this year by $99 million
while glossing over the $774
million jump in reat taxpayer-
supported debt for 1996-97—
when B.C.'s total debt will
have soared 42% since 1991,
by $8.4 billion to $28.5 bil-
lion, That’s well over $5 mil-
lion per day deeper into the red every single
day the NDP has been in power.

Add, over the same period, $2 billion in tax
hikes and an annual interest payment now
about to reach $1 oillion on the growing debt
— plus Mr. Clark's ruthless jugular-chopping
of anyone standing in his way — and you get a
pretty nasty picture of B.C.'s immediate future,
should he be returned with an overall majority.

While unlikely. that still can't be complete-
ly ruted out -- given his pitbull attacks on
stumbling Liberal leader Gordon Campbell, his
quiet encouragement of Reform to split the
right-wing vote and his daily dazzling of voters
with “goad news” statistics, replaced by the
next batch too swiftly for any of then: to be
dissected,

hither
and yon

ler aims for jugul

Imagine then the absolute dictatorship, in
financial and all other areas that Mr, Clari
jugular and juggling talents would impose.
This is no consensus-loving Mike ‘Harcourt nor”
intellectually balanced Bob Rae. B.C,’s new”
NDP leader is a skilled career politician with
tunnel vision, whose spend-tax-borrow policies.
would eventually juggle the province into,
bankruptcy after he ruthlessly crushed all
opposition, ‘ ao

With its laughably named “human rights”
laws the NDP has ‘already (even tinder gentle
Mike) shown how far it is prepared to trample
on individual liberties to serve the party's own
sectarian ends, oho

Unless you really enjoy paying ever higher ..
taxes to watch B.C. go broke with your mouth -
gagged, think twice about re-electing Mr.

Clark!
go220%

INTERNATIONALLY recognized planner

lan Thomas addresses W. Van Chamber of -
Commerce’s 7 p.m. breakfast meeting ;
Tuesday, May I4.in Hollyburn Country Club ©
— reserve (926-6614) by 2 p.m. Friday, May”
10... And “Up Country” paintings (some for
sale) by acclaimed local artist Wanda

riffiths at West Van Library continue on dis- -
play until May 26,
; 940 ;

WRIGHT OR WRONG: The world's shortest:
sermon is a traffic sign: KEEP RIGHT. |

ne i