\ 0 6 - Wednesday, April 3, 1985 - North Shore News Editorial Page Tough lesson ome grim realities about wages, jobs and technology in restraint-ridden B.C. were revealed last week. Figures released by Forest Industria! Rela- tions show that the average number of Inter- national Woodworkers of America (IWA) members employed this year will be one-third less than in 1980 —- 20,600, down from 36,900 at the start of the decade. Meanwhile, in the same period, the average per-person wage, now $32,087, has risen by 30%. That 30% wage gain by IWA workers still. with jobs pretty obviously has to have at least some connection with the 33% of their IWA brethren now jobless. But a further factor noted by FIR is the huge increase in produc- tivity during the period, gespite the big curtail- ment in employment. The iegging and sawmill sector of the forest industry had previously been slow to adopt the new technologies, but since 1980 its swing to more efficient, capital- intensive equipment has been impressive. What it all seems to say at this point in time is that high wages combined with modern technology are the ‘enemies of full employ- ment, a fact of life that is being painfully discovered in numerous other industries — notable among them construction, where muny smaller unionized contractors are on the brink of closing down because of the inroads made by chegzper, non-union firms, ‘Wages that outstrip productivity have always discouraged employment growth. To- day’s tough lesson from the forests is that technology can now look after productivity, making excessive pay an even greater threat to new job creation. ‘Laughing- -stock? he Motor Carrier Commission must now decide, after last week’s hearing, whether Vancouver : -is to. be the : laughing-stock of the: world during Expo. That .. will | happen if the’ MCC doesn’t thorize Open. competition — especially at. ie airport — in the Lower ‘Mainland taxi ~ business: The absurd monopoly exercised by ‘the Vancouver Taxi Owners is a horse-and- - bugey age concept that -has no place in a 1986 : ' world available metropolis. “Display Advertising _ Classified Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom _ 985-2131 Circulation 986-1337 Subscriptions 985-2131 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North. Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 Publisher Peter Speck Marketing Director. Robert Graham - Advertising Director + Administration . Mike Goodsell Classified Manager ~ Val Stephenson on request. Operations Manager Berni Hilliard Advertising Director - Sales Circulation Director Dave Jenneson Bill McGown Editor-in-Chief Noel Wright Production Director Chris Johnson Photography Manager Terry Peters North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule lit, Part Wt, Paragraph Itl of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Class Mai! Registration Number 3885. Entire contents - © 1985 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. Subscriptions, North and West ¥...1couver, $25. per yeat. Mailing tates No responsibility accepied for unsolicited materia including manuscripls and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped. addressed envelope. Member of the B.C. Press Council iceao | §5,770 (average, Wednesday Friday & Sunday) SOA Dy "SOH SN" G wie’ THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE 980-0511 Big sticks bad for French in case you BILINGUAL “HAWK”, hadn’t noticed, is now running Canada's Official Languages Program. . D'iberville Fortier, who took over last September as Commissioner of Official Languages from Max Yalden, thinks bilingualism is seriously ill and is urging government to bankroll a life-saving operation. Even if that adds to the $36 billion deficit. “Radical -surgery,’’ he dectares in his annual report to Parliament, ‘‘might ap- pear to offer important sav- ings, but we must not kill the patient in the process.” Mr. Fortier’s diagnosis is that official bilingualism, after 15 years, suffers from a bad case of stunted growth, sexcept in Quebec and the Ottawa region. But’ even at the higher levels of the federal civil ser- vice, and in its scientific and technical branches, he says, there still aren’t enough Francophones. And neither Francophone nor French- speaking Anglophone civil servants get sufficient op- portunities to use French. The private sector, one - sioner’s however, are caused by the . Prairies and B.C. Out in the gathers, is in still worse shape. Mr. Fortier calls on Ottawa to offer it “incen- tives’’ and to “‘take language needs into account in awar- ding contracts and. sub- sidies.’’ (No French, no business, no handouts!). Most of the Commis- sleepless nights, boondocks west of Ontario, he notes, French services are confined almost exclusively 1o education, radio and TV. To show what_happens to Francophone minorities in this bilingual wasteland he cites the French-mother- tongue residents who've thrown in the towel and now speak English even in their own homes: 44 per cent in Manitoba, 63 per cent in Saskatchewan, 57 per cent in Alberta and a whopping 72 per cent in B.C. His unhappy conclusion is that the present situation “threatens the probable ex- tinction of most French- speaking minorities outside LETTER OF THE DAY Supports Star Wars Dear-Editor: Re “Useless nukes: our best bet’’, March 27, 1985. Thank God we have a paper with the guts and ‘ common sense tO support the American. new Strategic Defense Initiative. Trying to achieve nuclear disarmament throught nuclear freezes and other paper agreements is pursuing an illusion. The Soviets will only respect a superior force that will make their nuclear . weapons obsolete. In addi- tion, Reagan has offered to share the anti-missile technology with the Soviets. Why this fear of a technology that renders the Soviet and American nuclear missiles uscless? | think we'll look back in the future and wonder why we embraced such an insane and immoral doctrine as Mutually Noel Wright |] Quebec’’ untess ernment is prepared to ‘“‘put teeth’? into the program -- carrying an ample money bag in one hand and a big stick in the other. With due respect, I feel Mr. Fortier is coming on a trifle heavy as far as we western bumpkins are con- cerned. Assured Destruction, MAD. Instead of waffling about whether we will participate, the Canadian’ government should’ be enthusiastically supporting the program. Here is an opportunity for B.C. to provide employment in new technology which will be the basis of a new in- dustrial revolution in atomic fusion; mineral processing and space exploration. [ would like to recom- the gov- When you consider that only 2.7 per cent of the west’s seven million popula- tion claim French as their mother tongue -- and ap- parently two-thirds‘of those no longer speak it at home. -- it’s hardly surprising «that westerners haven’t chosen to * squander their ‘nard-earned tax dollars on 24-hour-a-day French language services at every provincial and municipal institution. ’ ‘In B.C., with a mere 1.7 per cent of official Fran- cophones, we're. not doing all that badly ‘as it is. B.C. . parents even line up in the rain overnight te... grab French immersion vacancies for their moppeis: And the good Gommissioter himself ° concedes that B.C.’s French education program “enjoyed a modest increase”’ last year. That spells:some ‘pretty solid bilingual goodwill, Gut here if the rain forest, 3,000. miles from Quebec, interested peasants learn French for the ‘best ‘of all reasons: because it’s FUN. And nothing spoils fun as quickly as menacing noises and big sticks. N’est-ce pas, M.Fartier? mend the book ‘‘Beam Defense--An Alternative to Nuclear Destruction’? by Aero Publishers Inc., 329 West Aviation Road, CA 92028. This book was writ- ten by the staff of the Fusion Energy Foundation‘and won the top award of the Avia- tion/Space Writers Associa- tion for the year 1984. Albert A. Ritchie North Vancouver