| isa 7 HELLO MA, CHRETIEN? COULD YOU CLARIFY LIBERAL POLICY ON CRUISE MISSILE TESTS? FAST NEWS VIEWPOINT ‘URPRISE: THE LIBERAL ear trum- pet has suddenly gone missing. : “But hearing deficiencies are a chronic problem’ for politicians, especially elected -ones. Prime Minister Jean Chretien is a good ; example. Prior. to his government's election » last Oct. 25, he and his party exhibited acute ‘powers of hearing. ">. “They nodded enthusiastically when: voters across Canada cried in unison that they, wanted the country’s deficit drawn and "quartered. ‘Voters ‘also said they had..been wrung dry. of tax dollars ‘and that they were ick of tax increases and even sicker of waste- fui: government spending, inefficient govern- ment bureaucracies, ill-considered govern- ment plans‘and all manner of outrageous: government flimflam and boondoggle. . Earnest head- ~nodding: was, the order of the : Dear. Editor: “! Foster's “North Shore. Heritage” | The six trees in front of the Thank you for printing Dorothy : building are pint-star magnolias. specially chosen by our landscap- Now hear this day from all Liberal candidates. - But with the federal Liberal government set to deliver its first budget, hearing prob- lems and memory failure suddenly abound. Though all but the feeble of thought are demanding drastic cuts in federal govern- ment spending to address the urgent matter of-our looming $45 billion deficit, the prime minister is suddenly not listening. He is quot- ed as saying something about: people not stopping eating and working just because they have a big mortgage on their house. The trouble is Canada’s house is mort- gaged to the hiit, and we are in danger of having it repossessed by foreign lenders. We don’t need glib analogies and fuzzy thinking from our country’s leader, we need something rarer than a kept. political promise: concrete action to stop our freefall ‘into financial disaster. sted a bid of $6,980 when tenders were invited and worked with architects Honeyman & Curtis. Further information is available - column describing the heritage building’ occupied. by First Church ‘of: Christ," Scientist, North Vancouver; at 185 East Keith Rd. Your article: coincided with the: ers, Cottage Gardeners, as were the other plants. The work was completed by the members themselves, with the pra- - fessional supervision of Cottage Gardeners of North Vancouver.: trom our records, should you or the North Vancouver City Heritage inventory require it for information purposes. We are proud of our building, completion of a major landscaping project undertaken by our church members to enhance the heritage nature of the building and nearby residences, and to provide us with a gracious-looking, maintenance-free 3600. 1 t i Peter Speck .Timathy Renshaw «Noel Wri Classified Advertising Newsroom ‘Comptroll oe North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an _indgpendent suburban newspaper and qualitied. “under Schedule 111, Paragraph 111 of the Excise “Tax Act, is publishad each Wednesday, Friday and + Sunday by North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to avery dour on the North Shore. ‘Canada Post Canadian Publications Mai! Sales * Product Agreement No. 2087238. Mailing rates available on requesL Submissions are welcome but we cannct accept responsibility for unsolicited * qoaterial including manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a stamped, addressed Bnvelope. V7M 2tH4 Our records show that the lot - overlooking Victoria Park East was purchased in December 1923 for - The{builders were Stewart & lot. « Coltart of Vancouver, who submit- Display Advertising Real Estate Advertising 985-6982 Subscriptions 1139 Lonsdale ‘Avenue North Vancouver B.C. North Shore Managed and many visitors have commented on the unpreténtious simplicity of both the exterior and. interior design. Cathy Liddle North Vancouver 986-1337 986-1937 985-3227 985-2131 980-0511 Distribution 986-6222 Fax 985-2133 » Administration MEMBER Gena aN’ —— ; soa aranae , 61,582 (average circulation, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday) Entire contents © 1994 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All tights reserved. TL HAVE A scoop bere. Sit dawn, you uty find this unpleasant, Here itis: Governments fib, Oh. Sorry. You knew thie? Darin, Ethought it was quite a rev chation, Hecertainly was to nie. The Queen alwitys looks so redi- able an our currency, Abo Brian Mulcongy seemed absolutely sin- cere the night he was chosen leader of the Conservative Party. Mind you, Falways found the Easter Bunny dependable. too. It's a bit of ajolt. though, dis- covering (hat focal government also can tell a stretcher or two witha straight face. In this case, to be sure. Pin talk- ing about the Greater Vancouver Regional District —- that faceless, amorphous, unelected and thus unresponsive jiggle of governmen- tal jelly composed entirely of bureaucrats and politicians who Pass jobs around to each other and are relieved to find a clubby haven, far from the everyday scrutiny they have to tolerate in their awn com- munities. Also, | am talking about garbage. c Loyal readers will recall my i ~ recent column stating that on Dee. 30 | was obliged to transport our household trash to the North Vancouver. Transfer Station, which: ‘is operated by the GVRD. I was charged for 80 kilograms . of garbage. That's 176 pounds. And that. as [told readers and the GYVRD, was nuts, - The scale had to be wacko. l doubt if that (rash weighed ar an ‘ounce over 60 pounds: There were a couple of annoy- ing, point-missing asides, A recycling maven wrote a letter to the editor carnestly detiiling’ how I could reduce my garbage and save the ravirnment. voy Tam already saving the environ- ment, thank you. The issue was the accuracy of the scutes. ! Another silly woman I some- times encounter took:the same tine, - _ Simply assuming that —~ because | ‘ama rich, famous columnist — I “must live a high life of conspicuous. ; consumption, and’ ‘have six bags of ‘garbage per week) Wrong again. But the GVRD’s response wasn't much brighter. : I phoned a GVRB bureaucrat. Part of the conversation concerned dishonesty. Not, heaven forbid, that of the transfer station scales, No, the public's. He said I'd be surprised how muny people cheat at the station — typically, by dropping off a passen- ger on the road nearby. ‘ - That naturally lightens his load, The passenger then skulks through the fields and wends his way into the station, joining his conspirator, The trash is dumped. Naturally. when the vehicle is weighed going out, the so-called - tare — the difference represented by the discarded trash, charged for vatihe rate of $6.90 per 100 kilo- grams —- is falsified by whatever the passenger weighs, I got the distinet i impression that _ the bureaucrat did not consider me above suspicion. | confessed that | am indeed wretchedly dishonest, but the price for my corruption is somewhav higher than the $5.50 1 had been (over)charged at the trans- . fer station. Atlength, though, the bureau- Trevor Lautens } cratallowed that the transfer station. n scales had been overhauled before’ Christmas. He still didn’t admit that the. scales could be wrong. Then he. asked if it had been a wet day.) Why? Because the weight of water on the scales might cause'a mis- reading. Hub? : After that, he wrote me an Official Letter. But it made no rr ‘erence to the above far-out possibil ‘ities. 1 repeated another Point he ‘had made: : “When a customer questions the weight of the wastes detivered’ they © are asked to have their vehicle re-’ _tared to confirm the weight'of the = empty yehicle and to determine if there is u discrepancy between the 66] got the distinct imp ession that the suspicion 99 inbound and outbound sc: “We are unaware of any °- instance when the reweighed vehi cles differentiated by any signifi- : cant amount from the initial weight: taken and typically customers are, very surprised with the amount o ‘waste that they have delivered. to the facility.” Well, that’s the, Official Letter. o. No admission of possible error. ' Your government is doing things 3": right for you. And the fact? I know: | for a fact that there Aas been trou-” ble with the scale mechanism. A Western Scale Co. worked on it”: for hours on Jan. 24, well into dark- , ness, finishing up just before 7 pm. Follow-up: I took a week's garbage to the station once again“; recently, Weight: 10 kg —22 °° pounds. That, Pd say, was accurate. Compare it with the alleged:176,.- pounds of my Dec. 30 drop-off. Final confirmation: The ; Vancouver Sun's outstanding writer Nicole Parton phoned to say that: she had the same experience that - same week, Consider. Who would you trust — Iwo journalists or a government? I know you didn’t hesitate a moment.