p ve e Chiff School. Ten days ago it killed the project (for the moment) by a one-vote margin — after earlier having given it the go-ahead. Council is involved merely because the new school would require the rezoning of certain ~ District-owned land. And all rezonings require public hearings. Council could not have evaded its duty to hold public , hearings on the project, even if it had’ wished. As Mayor Don Bell pointed out, the two Cove Cliff hearings earlier this year revealed “substantially.more people in favor” of the -new school than against it. However, there ‘was also opposition from residents living near the proposed site and, after the second hearing, this was apparently sufficient to change Alderman Peter Powell's mind — thereby leading to the one-vote defeat of the project. Meanwhile, the school board ae the new school. The Education Ministry wants it. Many parents of students now attending the ageing Burrard View School certainly want it. School Board chairman Dorotliy Lynas says the matter is “none of council's business” and she’s right, of course, apart from the rezoning aspect. Because of the strength of backing for the new school —-from Deep Cove parents right up to Victoria — we feel council would be wise to reconsider, even at this late hour. Possibly by setting-up an independent task force to probe the facts more thoroughly than a public hearing can do. In the final. analysis government exists to serve people — not the reverse. Dressing down Mens lib is on the move in the Legislature where MLA Graham Lea was orderd Monday not to reappear without wearing a necktie. Lea complained that none of the six female MLAs has ever been dressed down for inadequate attire. Perhaps one of the girls would now like to lend the boys a little moral support by testing the effect on the speaker of a T-shirt and jeans. = sunday news north shore news 1139 Lonsdale Ave . North Vancouver, B C V7M 2H4 (604) 985-2131 NEWS ADVERTISING CLASSIFIED CIRCULATION 985-2131 880-0511 936-6222 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Editor-in-Chiet Robert Graham Noel Wright Advertising Director Enc Cardwetl Classified Manager & Office Administrator Bern Hithard . Production Tim Francis F aye McCrae Managing Editor Andy Fraser News Editor Photography Chris Uoyd Ellsworth Dickson Accounting Supervisor Barbara Keen North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent commun ty newspaper and qualited under Schedute Part tll Paragraph tt of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid and distributed to every door on the North Shore Second Class Mall Registration Number 3885 Subscriptions $20 per year Entre contents © 1980 North Shore Free Press Ltd All rights reserved No responsibility accepted for unsolicited maternal mctuding manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by 5 stamped, addressed return envelope VERIFIED CIRCULATION 60,870 Wednesday, 49,913 Sunday & <1 ANT hy. 4 oF SN CD THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE OTTAWA(SF) - Language guarantees and redistribution of powers. We'll be hearing a lot about those two things through the long hot summer, as politicians of both federal and provincial stripe hammer away at building Canada a new constitution. The atmosphere is crisis, because if progress is not made this summer, Quebec Prime Minister Rene - Levesque will have a barrel of ammunition for his coming provincial election. There is nothing he would like better than to have concrete evidence for Quebec voters that Canadian federalism cannot work. Levesque, in these constitutional talks, will be playing his obstructionist role in a low key way, because open thwarting of a majority which would benefit the Parti Quebecois would damage Quebec terribly. His strategy must be to ¥ woo the voters who voted > on May 20th with some reluctance. The point remains that there is more pressure than ever before on Canadians to Don’ t ‘get noungément upset that about we Canadian Comment BY PETER WARD produce a_ constitution acceptable to the entire nation. Perhaps that is the only way of ending the perpetual constitutional talking Canada has endured for a good part of this century. Perhaps there are dangers to this rush ap- proach, too. Constitutions last a_long time. They are not easy to change, certainly in the Canadian experience. Do Canadians really want provincial and _ federal politicians to tackle the task in a crisis situation? We might wind up with something worse than the “Come in, sir!” last week’s have an- double-digit inflation again for the first time since 1975. An analysis just published in a local daily newspaper suggests that we're ne arly 14% better off than five years ago in “true cos. of living” terms. There are, of course, a few qualifying conditions. For starters you have to be taking home (after tax and other deductions) at least the average net weekly wage of $266.60 — and working not more than 36 hours to carn it. Your diet will have to consist exclusively of sirloin steak, large grade A eggs. coffee, milk, butter and beer. Your luxuries must be confined to cigarettes, visits to downtown movies and 17 cent postage stamps. Naturally, you'll gasoline for the car. And your sole clothing — buy summer and winter — will consist of men's woollen socks. These are the 11 regular consumer items chosen by the analysis as its basis for comparing today’s “truc living costs” with those of 1975. The analysis points out that the prices of those 11 commodities are not the only things to have skyrocketed. So have Vancouver's gross weckly wages — from an avcrage of $224 in 1975 to $343 in 1980 The comparisons, thercfore. are finally based on how long a 36-hour-a-week average wage-camer must work 1p order to buy this or that PLUSES, MINUSES The individual = figures offer some fascinating revelations in themselves In 1975 a litre of regular gasoline cost 16.5 cents Today it costs 249 cents Yet the time it takes today's average wage-earner to cam that 24.9 cents is exactly the same as the time he took to earn the 16.5 cent price five years ago — namely, two minutes. For four other items his earning time has actually decreased. A downtown movie ticket now requires only 32 minutes of his work = as against 43.5 minutes in 1975. For a dozen large eggs 9.9 minutes labor 1s all that's needed compared to 11.3 minutes of effort in 1975 He can earn a litre of 2% milk almost a whole minute faster than five years ago — in 5.9 minutes compared to 6.8 minutes And he clips off nearly two minutes in the case of a dozen domestic beers, for which he now toils only 47 8 minutes compared to 49 7 minutes in 1975 The remainder of the 11 item shopping list, alas, costs a little longer Working tme today to carn a pound of sirlom steak (with the 1975 time in brackets) comes to J? 1 minutes (up from 433 minutes). a pound of coffee 32 minutes (17 9 minutes). a pound of butter 14 2 minutes (14 minutes), 200 cigarettes 72:9 minutes (70 7 minutes) & postage stamp | 4 minutes (it minute), and those men's woollen socks 24 3 minutes (21 7 minutes) CARS AND HOMES Balancing against the the minuses. pluses you'll by Noel Wright have to work almost two minutes more in every hour than you did five years ago to buy the selected con- sumer items. That's the bad - news. The good news concerns cars and houses In both cases” the of your brow, it seems. 1s significantly reduced as against 1975 A two-door sedan costing $4,808 five years back mcant slaving away for 27 © weeks The same car today, costing $6,048. keeps you hard at ut for only 249 weeks a cutback of just) about six minutes off every working hour swecal In 1975 the average Vancouver area house pnce stood at $58,143, representing 6 43 years of toil Today, the pnce has soared to $82,510 But wonder of wonders, you now carn that tn $.95 years. The time on-the-job saving more than four minutes per hour devil we know — the Britis North America Act. The most procedure for drafting a constitution i studying “and drafting th document in question. Th efforts. of such a body —. which must be widely: representative of all parts of the country are then normally approved by the legislative bodies of the provinces and the federal government , then put to thi people in a_ national referendum. : . That’s not the perfect route to follow, but it seems to me it threatens fewer potential dangers. This is ‘indeed a critical time for Canada, but Pierre Trudeau must not be put in a position of trading off central federalist powers in order to achieve his aim of getting language rights from coast to coast enshrined in a new constitution. It might make him a place: in history, but it might lead to the ultimate tearing apart of the country. Combine these 1980 car- buying and home-buying bonuses with the figure for the 11 consumer items and you wind up working a net 8.3 minutes (or 13.8%) less: each hour than you worked", in the mid-1970s to earn the © money for the same total : package. ILLEGAL, SEXIST No doubt the authors of | the analysis had their own. good reasons for choosing . those particular 11 consumer . items as their yardstick. But who really wants to live on an unrelieved diet of steak, eggs, coffee. and beer? Movies, cigarettes and 17 -- cent stamps are all very well, but a bit restrictive as one’s e sole luxuries. The sole item of clothing - . hee allowed on the list —- mens .. woollen socks — strikes one as being both illegal and sexist. They might at least have included a pair of pants and a shirt or bra in licu. Even if one decides to stick with the prescribed list — at the risk of obesity, high blood pressure and arrest for — the the indecent analysis is question frequency. If you cat three pounds of steak a week and stay home watching TV cvery night, you'll obviously be worse off than your neighbor who cats only eggs and goes to three movies a week. Come to exposure silent of on think of it, how many $6,600 - cars and $82,000 houses did you buy last week? Last month? Last year? . Somewhere in all this there must be the answer to the question that really bugs me if I'm 14% better off than in 1975, how come I'm getting poortr and poorer? pu rchasing - milk, butter °.