Bae

AS FOR decentralization,
I’m all in favor.

I've made this point before,
but it is worth saying again: the
surest way for Canadians to
maintain their identity is for the
country to be as diverse and
decentralized as possible.

This is something in the goals,
as | interpret them, of both Brian
Mulroney and Sill Vander Zalm
that I find myself 100 per cent in

| sympathy with, no matter what
kind of arguments and quibbles [
might have with some of their
other deeds and styles of
delivery.

Both the Meech Lake Accord

and Vander Zalm’s regionaliza-

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

for in the face of Ottawa's colo-
nialism.

‘The beauty of a loosened fed-
cralism and any move to unplug
the bureaucrats from theit power
centres in Victoria is a reduction
in the distance between public
and public servants, the top
echelon of which invariably lives
above the clouds.

There is another clement in-
volved here. When you scratch a
Canadian, or even a British Col-
umbian, you always
find...something else: Gulf
Islanders or West Vancouverites
or Northerners or folks from the
Kootenays or the Chilcotin or
Surrey.

“There isn’t a nation in the world that isn’t to one
degree or another 2 police state, however soft-
edged, imposed from above on its captive

eitizenry."’
tion program are steps that
move, it seems to me, in the
direction of E.F. Schumacher, as
much as anybody.

Schumacher, one of the gurus
of the conservation movement,
wrote Small is Beautiful, an clo-
quent argument for downsizing
all forms of government as much
as possible to the local level.

Can it be that Mulroney and
Vander Zalm, as well as a million
hippies, somchow read this stuff
along the way?

Rather than the accord and
regionalization being political
schemes that will hurt most Ca-
nadians or British Columbians,
they will do much, I believe, to

} strengthen us in the end — with
the unfortunate qualification that
the accord does not serve native
people or anybody fiving in the
Northwest Territories very weil.

In the long term, though, a
program of decentralization
should serve the needs of: both
these groups as well. in) fact,

{that’s what they’ve been asking

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These people are fairly fierce
about knowing who they are. The
territorial imperative never did
die, you know. It is alive and well
from Bowen Island to Prince
George.

} have observed,. from my
travels throughout Canada and
B.C., that al the regional and
local levels, there is no question
about identity. Identity is built-
in, There is no need to agonize
about it.

It is only at the national level
that it gets at all tremulous.

And rightly so, since a modern
nation-state, especially one so
large and thinly-populated as
Canada, is a collective hallucina-
tion, a fraud, a mirage, pure illu-
sion.

There isn’t a nation in the
world that isn’t to one degree or
another a police state, however
soft-edged, imposed from above
on its captive citizenry.
Moreover, nationhood invariably
involves some regions dominating

others, Canada being a classic
example, of course.

It has been estimated that if a
vote was held in all of the world’s
nearly 300 countries, allowing
everyone to decide where they
wanted their borders to be, ac-

cording to who they thought they |

were, we would emerge the next
day with at least 3,000 nations, if
not $2,000.

The term = Balkanization is
always used negatively when we
talk about breaking away as
much as possible from a
domincering centre. But there is a
positive way of looking at the
dissolving of strict hierarchical
Structures: the more political
power you have closer to home,
the more political power you
have, period.

Power centres like Ottawa or
Washington or Victoria are other
small places, like the small place
you live in, but which happen. to
exert authority far beyond their
borders.

The further its authority ex- {

tents, the less sensitive it is to the
spirit of any given place, its
nuances and real needs.

I submit the Swiss as a good
example of a fiercely independent
people — probably the most truly
independent in the world. Yet
they loathe centralization.

Their national government, in
fact, is a council whose chair
rotates automatically every year.

At the level of the cantons —
equivalent to our municipalities
— the Swiss practically live in
different countries. The degree of
autonomy enjoyed by the cantons
would make a sovercignty-
association lover sweaty with en-
vy.

It seems to me that the Swiss
are grown-up in a way that few

national groupings are, and cer- j

tainly not yet Canadians. We
need less government at the top,
more at the bottom.

To decentralize, to loosen up,
is to move that way.

our one &

wishes to announce his retirement
effective January 4, 1988

DR. RICHARD ROSTON
wiil continue his dental practice
at #2181940 Lonsdale Ave
North Vancouver, BC.
Phone 985-7325

THE CORPORATION OF THE
DISTRICT OF NORTH VANCOUVER
TENDER OF 2
HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL SITE (ZONED RH 1) #
OSTLER COURT, INDIAN RIVER, SEYMOUR ff
0.8 ha (1.99 ac)
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF UNITS — 72

Offers to purchase the freehold may be made to the Land Agent
until 11:00 a.m. on February 23, 1988.

A brochure providing full details of the site, the conditions of sale
and tendering procedures is available from the Land Department,
District of North Vancouver, 355 West Queens Road, North Van-
couver, B.C., V7N 2K6. Please contact Haze! Baxter, telephone
987-7131 local 264,

‘Renze and Romeo

: (formerly of Lyan Valley Center)

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