Tis Werth Shore Naws is sublhed ty darth Shore Free Press Ltd., Pattishar Peter Speck, from 1139 Loasdals Avenue Worth Vaxcouver, B.C., V7la ey rS: 4 PETER SPECK Publisher 985-2137 (101) “Doug Foot Bee Dhaltwal Comptrolier Human Resources Manager 385-2131 i) 985-2131 tr sea-1837 (ize ‘Rezn tz) new ee reeH es SSanatstration * 083-2131 Biapisy Advortiaieg . 208-2011 foal Estsan Adtvertisieg 926-2121 rites Speria/Cemeamty 885-2138 (147) LETTERS TO THE EOTOR Letters must include your name, full address & telephone number. VIA intemet: trenshaw @ direct.ca COMPUTER 885 - 880-8027 User 10: malibox ° Passwort! etter Vert tos ew, fonted mn oe sm sabutun newspaper and quebfied under Schokse 111, Pargaph 111 OF te Exrhe Tax Ack pblided exh ‘Wathaday, Fridsy and Sunday by Seth Shore Froe Prem Lid and distnbutad to every door on the Meath Shure. Cansdla Post Canakan Publications Mail Sales Prodixt Agreement No. 0087238, Mailing rss available on requ ama SOA DIVISION Entise contents © 1996 North Shore | Free Press Lig... Al tights reserve. HEY failed to win a majority of votes in B.C., but the NDP still won a majority government. Those on the side of free enterprise will wonder at an electoral system that delivers such skewed results. They will also wonder what another four years of NDP rule will.do to the province. And they would be forgiven for being more than a little apprehensive. Because if the past NDP term is anything to go by, the next four years could exact a toll on B.C. that will take well into the 21st century to recover from. Unless the NDP leopard has changed its spots, expect further erosion of B.C.’s fiscal vitality brought on by a socialist dedication to tax, spend and borrow economics. Expect also the further erosion of basic democratic rights, such as free speech, the right ta dissent and the right to express opinion contrary to what is commonly accepted by the masses. Expect too further goverrinent intru- sion into private lives and a push to increase public reliance on government. On the North Shore, the impact of the election could have more far-reaching local impact. Local residents voted solidly for a change in the current government. All four ridings elected Liberal candi- dates in decisive fashion. David Schreck, the lone NDP MLA in these parts, was sent packing after one term. And rightly so. But a Liberal stronghold under a socialist regime could face an uphill bat- tle in focusing provincial government attention on such pressing local issues as rapid transit and the Lions Gate Bridge. If the NDP leopard has changed at least some of its spots, perhaps politics and patronage will not play a part in all its decisions. Hope springs eternal. mailbox Commuters need ramp © Dear Editor: . 4 aa ’ “Re: 2nd Narrows Bridge repair. We all agree. that the: proposed repairs: ‘will disrupt traffic severely. There is never a good time to do. ‘that, so we might ds well get on “with it. . What I would like to know is why the Keith Road on-ramp has to be closed. as ‘vell? This ‘ramp did not suddenly become dangerous. It - could have been closed last y‘2ar, or next year, or best of all, after a safe new ramp was built. As it is, the Lynn: Valley com- muters will not only suffer with the inevitable delays on the bridge... They will not even. get. on the: bridge! l This untimely. ramp closure ‘should be delayed until a suitable and safe alternative exists for Lynn Valley commuters. - Hartmut Schniid North Vancouver Election ; a ‘ivisive disaster DON’T tell me it was close. A miss — in our political system — is as good as a mile. ht was a disaster. We're going to get four or five years of “smart” politics, Glen Clark-siyle. He will divide — continue to divide — the non-New Democratic Party forces with the sharp tools of class division, income division, where-you-live division, ideological division, and, if it’s been invented, division division. He's already dane so. And he'll do more — crushing all savers, all investors, all who scrimp and save, all owners of anything above subsistence assets, in the name of the “midule class, working Yes, Glen Clark will champion with his mouth the very people he will destroy with his policies —- while the targeted “rich” move'on. Because, of course, his relentless spread of state “services” paid with higher and higher taxes, feeding a bloated state, conscripting more and more public employees into government, will cre- ate the very thing politically favorable to his party: dependency, the dependency of a people impover- ished by government to the point that they cannot provide for themselves and so need government help. And as the body of independent-minded people who proudly sacrifice and scrimp for their and their children’s future shrinks, why, they will become a minority hated and envied by the great majority of state-dependent plebs. indentured to the state and grateful to their “piviector,” the NDP, they will give Clark and — Trevor .Lautens Ciark clones yel unborn the “democratic” mandate to force everyone into his Procrustean bed. Procrustes, as my well- informed readers hardly need reminding, was a legendary Greek robber who made ¢every- one unfortunate enough to be his house guest fin his bed. The tall were hacked off to fit; garden the short were stretched to fit. of | biases Like all serious socialists, Clark is a Procrustean. There is no room in his narrow (and, in the end, deeply ignorant) vision for the unusual or the non-con- forming, either the “rich” against whom he’s open- ly tried to whip up class hatred, or those who express awk-ward (i.e.. non-NDP) ideas, as demon- strated by his sup- port for the notori- ous: Bill 33, the full- time gag law, and Bill 28, the election- ume gag law. True, at this point Clark is only a Junioi-grade mar- tinet, a sawed-off despot. Mark my words. I feel in my bones, augmented by his _ record to date, that he is by far the most left-wing NDP leader the province has ever experienced. And the slimness of his election victory Tuesday — with the bitter pill that his 39% popu- lar vote was several percentage points behind the Liberals’ — means nothing. (As Rafe Mair tirelessly teaches, under our sys- && Glen Clark will champion with his mouth the very people he will destroy wih his policies... FY tem whoever gets 50% bus one of the vote (of, as in the case of this split ‘vote, much less) gets 100%, of the power. ‘ That said, I'm among those who at this moment — I write an hour after Clerk's victory was proclaimed —; bitterly blame the non-NDP forces for squandering the political capital they held. Their campaigns were inept and aimed at each other. For God's sake, this is a governmeent with no less than three police investigations going on into its activities. That's tike Louisiana under Huey Long, or the old Tamany Fiall gang. The bingo scandal — kickbacks from charities tu fund NDP political goals — including a police raid on party headquarters. The disgraceful “editing” of an inde- pendent report critical of the social service estab- lishment in the case of Matthew Vaudreuil. Those alone should have hanged the govern- ment. How can those who voted NDP look at themselves in the mirror? A smal} consola- tion prize: David Schreck was deservedly torpe- doed in North Vancouver-Lons- dale by Katherine Whittred, praised by David Mitchel! as the best North Shore Liberal candidate. Congratulations also to Jeremy Dalton, Dan Jarvis and newcomer Ted Nebbeling. But the four solid Liberal seats on the North Shore no doubt prove Glen Clark's Marxian “class” theories. So don't be surprised if we're punished for that by this government,