6 — Friday, Novernber 20, 1998 ~ North Shore News Surp! NYONE for a modest tax revolt? How about an immod- ¢ one? The news that the federal govern- ment’s budget surplus has breached the $10 billion mark is a good place to start in the fomeatation of some kind of cross-Canada taxpayer ire. Consider fellow tax slaves that the $10 billion is yours. Consider also that your tax burden has risen over 1,168% since 1961. That well over half of the $60,671 income of the average Canadian fami- ly is sucked out of its paycheque to cover taxes, levies, duties, licence fees and other government charges. That the entrepreneurial vitality of this country continues to suffer from the socialist philosophy of penalizing . the successful. Consider that, according to north shore news VIEWPOINT US anger Statistics Canada, the real disposable family income of Canadians has declined every year since 1990. Consider the above and heat should be rising in your overtaxed soul. Finance Minster Paul Martin claims that the federal government can’t afford to institute billions of dollars in tax cuts even with the $10 billion sur- plus which has far exceeded his previ- ous predictions. Well, the minister should know that the rest of us eking out a living at street level can’t afford to drag the country’s tax burden any longer. Left in the hands of the govern- ment, the $10 billion will surely meet a fate that traditionally meets all such funds left in the hands of government: tossed down another bureaucratic rathole. None of us can afford th... ~~~ (heap gin, politi War victories are a shared heritage Dear Editor: I take exception to John Moore’s column of Nov. 1] on Canada’s pallid patriotism as contrasted to Australia. The three cenotaphs should be considered in terms of their settings when they were erected. All were focal points of their communities at the time. North Vancouver has recently rescored its through the citi- zens. In West Vancouver the Book of Remembrance sits in the library window facing the cenotaph. As well the flag and the fallen are lit at night. Vancouver's cenotaph was at the heart of Vancouver when it was erected. Canada also commemorates by roadways of trees in Caigary and Montreal. Increasingly the policy of naming mountains and lakes after the war dead is done by the provinces, Jonathon Vance’s book Death So Noble well counters Moore’s view that we are a “modest undemonstrative lot.” Our cenotaphs were intended not only to honour the dead but to be a comfort to the mothers and families through Victorian traditions. Study the figures of Vimy and you will see the themes that dominate even at the later dare when it was built. The cenotaphs usually incorporate the Cross of Sacrifice by Reginald Bloomfield and the ideas of Fabian Ware and Sir Edwin Lutyens. Australia established its history of the First World War through the mateship of Gallipoli. Canada took its tradition through the Western Front and such features as the Silver Cross Mothers, a tradition to this ay. While Canada and Australia are not similar, or should be, their victory battles together in the Last Hundred Days stand as part of their shared heritage. David Raftery West Vancouver north shore Worth Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburdan newspaper and qualihed unde: Schedule 111, Paragraph 113 of the Excise Tax Act, & published each Wednesday. Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Led and distributed to every doer on the North Shore. Canada Post Caradan Pubbeations Max Sates Product Agreement No 0087238. Mating tates avalladie on request. i Py Sarbara Emo Jonathan Distribution Manager 886-1337 (124) Creative Services Manager 985-2131 (127) 61,582 (average circulation, Wecnesday, Friday & Sunday) The North Shore News Is publishad by Horth Shore Free Press Ltd., Publisher Peter Speck, from 1139 Lonsdale Avenue North Vancouver, A bouquet from the Garden: My favourite CB store has run out of Vaughan-Jones Gin — the only $20 brand left on the shelves. “It’s backlisted,” one of my favourite employees at my favourite LLCB store deadpanned. He didn’t wink. Didn't need to. Buth of us knew. I'd bet my roll that the other gin mills — whose brands sell at $21 and change and up since the recent price rise — have raised a stink about the “unfair” V-J price. If the fix isn’t in, prove me wrong. 9090 Scoundrels! Bandits! How can governments look at them- selves in the mirror? Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh and Health Minister Penny Priddy are aping the American states that have just pulled off a $206 billion US shakedown of the tobacco companies, They're drooling at the thought of comparable lolly for B.C. from the wicked purveyors of the weed. It recks of hypocrisy. Gutlessness. And foul ethics. If governments want to out- law tobacco, let them have the gonads to do it. They won’. They want to collect huge, crazy taxes on tobacco while utter- ing picties about its evils. Be warned, citizens. This is your fight too. Using the tobacco precedent, the next thing they will come after is strong drink. And then? Fatty foods? Big Macs? Unsalubrious habits on Saturday night PETER SPECK Publisher 985-2131 (101) Valerie Stephonsan Classilied Manager 986-6222 (202) Terry Photography Manager 985-2131 (160) Pug Foot Comptrolier 935-2131 (133) Entite contents © 1997 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All fights reserved. instead of vigorous walks in the outdoors? Hear this: When governments institut- ed monopoly state medicine, it was a Faustian bargain: We'll look after your body -— just sign over your body to us. ~ You are losing your free- dom to “abuse” your body as you wish — to go to Hell in your own handbasker. 300 And if you think 'm exaggerating: What a stunning example of state insolence and contempt tor citizens when Mary- Woo Sims, ezarina of the B.C. Human Rights Commission, issued a statement en com- mission stationery lauding the Nisga’a treaty! Sims hasn’r got an iota of right to meddle in this political question. Any notion of her independence from govern- ment is now expused as a complete fraud. She is mouthing the Glen Clark line and the public is paying her for it. aag And, not to let up on Big Brother's Little Brother, as I fondly call our pre- mier: An ovation for National Post columnist Diane Francis for uncarthing the arithmetic the Clark government did- n’t reveal to you when — “coincidental- ly” during the B.C. Business summit — he boasted of a big coup for his povern- ment: A joint venture benween Daimler- Benz Acrospace AG and Canadian Airlines International Lrd. to operate CAI’s engine repair shop in Vancouver. This deal was tricked out to be worth $17.5 million to the provincial economy. LM cs and payoffs And the prestige! The fansous-name German multinational had chosen little old B.C. for its first such investment in North America, With, it turns out, a big dollop of help — from B.C. taxpayers. The doughty Ms. Francis, smelling something too good to be true, sniffed out that Clark gave _ Daimler-Benz a $19.5 million forgivable loan in return for its $17.5 million invest- ment. Bottom line: A $2 million signing bonus for che company. These sweer deals for business are completely reprehensible. A recent Time magazine cover story showed that big- name companies have foxed dumb, eager states, counties and municipalities to make such deals, slyly watching them out-bid each other for the jobs. The companies have either skinned the suckers by pulling out soon after col- lecting the inducements, or coasted on a low-cost (to them) ride. Each “saved” or “created” job has cost taxpayers as much as six figures per job. Incidentally, you wouldn’t believe it to hear the Fraser Institute’s critics’ rants, but the free-market Fraser roundly con- demns such deals. Qo0a Doug Collins, his latest book soon to appear, is recovering from knee surgery. Old war wound? “No, old rugby wound, I think,” says wife Betty. ago Final flower from my garden: I’m a fan of two excellent News columnists who perhaps don’t get the recognition they deserve: Car writer Greg Wilson, who gives you the straight goods, and Michael Dowty’s super-knowledgeable stuffin the real estate section. 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