4 - Wednesday, March 29, 1989 - North Shore News

® strictly personal e

THE IDEA of 1,000 teenagers running around B.C., saving
the environment, is wonderful, I guess.

A billion seedlings being planted
in the next three years is good too,
depending, of course, on whether
they are the right seeds at the right
time and in the right place.

Getting energy from industrial
waste is likewise an idea whose
time actually came about 20 years
ago, but 20 years late is better than
never.

And creating a new environment
ministry is great, too, one sup-
poses, although the distinct possi-
bility of more bureaucratic inertia
always looms when you talk about
new departments.

Pardon me, I should be clapping
louder. These goodies are promises
straight from the throne speech. I
mean, that’s like gospel. This is
our future reality taking shape be-
fore our very eyes.

What it means is that, at long
last, our Premier Vander Zalm has
hauled himself up on to the en-
vironmental bandwagon. He hap-
pens to be about the last politician
on the planet to have done so, but
let’s not be picky, picky, picky.

And yes, indeed, it would be
valuable to have a small army of
otherwise unemployed youth on
standby to be sent in to fight oil
spills and ‘‘other environmental
crises."”

Best of all, it’s nice to see the
premier turning a little ‘‘green’’

Man ordered
to stand trial

A 34-YEAR-OLD Port Coquitlam
man was ordered March 23 in
North Vancouver provincial court
to stand trial) on a charge of

ing instruments suitable for

charged in connection with a
Feb. 9 incident in which a
flashlight, screwdriver and a pair
of pliers were seized by police in
North Vancouver.

No trial date had beeu set to

press time.

For assistance in obtaining
non-emergency information|
about chemicals, call the

CHEMICAL
REFERRAL CENTRE;

1-800-267-6666

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for some reason other than reading
his reviews,

May I do the honors of receiving
him as he clambers aboard the
bandwagon?

Welcome, Mr. Vee Zee, let me
give you a hand. Here's your
“ecology nut’ button. If you'll
just sit over here behind Mr. Gor-
bachev and Mr. Bush and Mrs.
Thatcher and Brian and Monsieur
Lucien Bouchard and Jabba the
Hutt. Thank you.

Okay, Bill, now that you're one
of us, let me give you the introduc-
tory rap. Here we go. First of all,
you’ ll notice this thing we're on is
round. Not this thing we're riding
on. The thing underneath it. We
call it a planet. Plan. It. Got that?

This particular planet is named
Planet Earth. You'll feel at home
in no time ai all.

You know Monsieur Bouchard?
Our new federal environment
minister. The chap who didn’t
want to use the army to clean up
the oil spill along the west coast of
Vancouver Island because it would
be too expensive.

You may recall back then, Mr.
Bill, that your correspondent cried
woe and gloom at the thought of

Monsicur Bouchard getting the
environment mimstry job full time.
It has come to pass thusly, as you
can see for yourself’.

W etcome. Mr. Vee Zee,
let me give you a hand.
Here’s your ‘ecology nut’
button. If you'll just sit
over here behind Mr.
Gorbachev and Mr. Bush
and Mrs. Thatcher and
Brian and Monsieur Lucien
Bouchard and Jabba the
Hutt.’”’

One thinks sadly of how dif-
ferent things might have been. If
Pat Carney had been able to stay
and had been chosen as environ-
ment minister, there might have
been some reason for hope.

With Monsicur Bouchard, |
have a bad feeling, n’est-ce pas?
He is one of those peculiar liberals
who favors linguistic fascism of the
unilingual kind in Quebec and the
bilingual kind elsewhere.

His degree of greenness may be
a very pale variety. This is impor-
tant, don’t you think? We have

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fong been in the habit of measur-
ing a person's degree of leftness
according to whether they were
pinkos of outright reds.

Personally, 1 think Monsieur
Bouchard is more lime than true
green.

We shall see. After confirming
that a leaked document from En-
vironment Canada had fingered
‘virtually every mill" in Canada
as being guilty of dumping more
toxins into the water than official
standards permit, Monsteur
Bouchard promised tough new
laws to reduce pollution from pulp
mills.

I should be applauding this, too,
shouldn't f, Mr. Bill? He said he
was so deeply concerned he was
going to waive the usual five-to-
seven-year consultancy period, and
get cight on with writing new regu.
lations.

Too bad he didn’t see fit to
release the report in the first place,
a report which stated, incidentally,
that 83 out of 122 pulp mills in
Canada dump far more toxic
wastes than they are allowed.

Brian McCoy of the Council of
Forest Industries of B.C. claimed
that the interior mills are ‘‘by and
large in compliance”’ with existing
regulations, but admitted that
coastal mills are not.

Sounds like what Terry Jacks
has been saying all along.

One question, Mr. Premier, be-
fore you drift off. Would you be
willing to unleash those 1,000
teenagers of yours on Howe
Sound?

I don’t think they'll need detail-
ed instructions. Just tell them to
follow their noses and do what
must be done.

Sooner or later, we're all
ecologists, Bill. Or we're dead.
Settle in for the duration. Falling
skies don't go away that easily @

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Park
status
restored

THE RECREATION designation
of a portion of Mount Seymour
Provincial Park formally has been
removed, and the full Class A
status of the park restored, accord-
ing to the provincial Ministry of
Parks.

Removal of the designation was
made March 22 by the provincial
government as part of an an-
nouncement that 12 new Class A
provincial parks had been created
and the areas of 10 existing pro-
vincial parks had been upgraded to
Class A status.

In all, 1,500 hectares of the
3,508 hectare Mount Seymour
park were removed from _ recre-
ation designation.

Minisiry of Parks spokesman Ed
Wall said the upgrade will have no
impact on the current operation of
Mount Seymour Resorts Ltd., the
private company that runs
Seymour’s downhill and cross-
country ski facilities.

“Basically, it’s a flousecleaning
move,’ Wall said. ‘‘There will be
no change to any current commer-
cial use.’*

Wall said commercial develop-
ment within provincial parks is
now controlled by parks-use per-
mits rather by the former system
of designating certain areas of
parks as recreational.

“We are trying to restore integ-
rity to the park system,’’ Wall
said.

Class A status protects a park

See Seymour

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