ni af 6 - Friday, July 27, 1990 - North Shore News itt dewa ier Gann : % Liggy . Canyon costs HE GROWING number of acci- dents and deaths at Lynn Canyon Park demands a solution beyond the traditional warnings and calls for increased canyon security. Action is needed on a level anyone can understand: financial. Sust as skiers who wilfully ski out of bounds have been billed for the costs of mountains, so should swimmers and hikers who wilful- ly ignore canyon warnings and fencing be billed for the costs of their rescue by their rescue by local local emergency services. The logistic complexity of pulling ac- cident victims from the canyon requires the large scale deployment of manpower for extended periods of time. According to a July 22 News story, services from the demands placed on local emergency canyon-related accidents have, at times, left fire, police and am- bulance stretched too thin to adequately cover other areas of the North Shore. And the most infuriating aspect of the rise in canyon accidents is that the ma- bravado. More signs jority are caused by alcohol-induced warning of the extreme dangers of the sheer canyon walls and the foolishness of diving into unknown creek depths wili do fittle. More appeals to common sense will fall on the same deaf ears. book. And fences can always be climbed. It is time to hit would-be cliff divers where it hurts the most: in the pocket- is N. Shore turning into Winnipeg? Dear Editor: Upon returning from an ex- tended trip, I am shocked to see that someone is trying to destroy West Vancouver. They have already done a good job in North Vancouver by blasting out all the trees around the top of the big cut to install hundreds of look-alike houses. Now they’ve smashed the top from two ridges above Eagle Harbor, entirely destroying the natural beauty of this precious Snore Second Class Mad Regstaton Nur Supscnptons North and West Vancouver $2 Marhng rates available on reque: welcome bul we cannot ac unsolicited matenatinctuding mar winch should be accaompamed Dy a star envetope suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule 111 Paragraph It of the Excise Tas Act. is publisned each Weanesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press tid and distributed to every door on the Noun er 3BRA peryear 59,170 (average, Wednesday area, only to erect the same cookie-cutter monstrosities in the midst of a moonscape. It seems to me that both North Shore District and City councils have a job to do in stopping this mindless destruction before we turn the entire area into another Winnipeg. When are we going to learn that we cannot continue to destroy? Can’t we learn to fit in with the natural surroundings, or at least selectively build where the natura! contours of the land allow for it? How about a law on selective integration with nature rather than trying to level it down to a bomb-crater? Or how about a bounty being placed on every tree, with a punitive tax-dollar value being applied to each inch of di- ameter? Let’s cut the excuses and double-talk and put a stop to this obscenity. Ma.ray Grant North Vancouver Publisher Peter Speck peeemmeemrumnmeanD wees vane outs Display Advertising 980-0511 Managing Editor Timothy Renshaw Classified Advertising 986-6222 * . P Newsroom 985-2131 Associate Editor Noel Wright Distribution 986-1337 Advertising Director Linda Stewart fee we Subscriptions 986-1337 SUNDAY - WEONESDAY + FRIDAY North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent Fax 985-3227 1139 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver, B.C V7M 2H4 Friday & Sunday) Ld ee. SDA DIVISION : MEMBER North Shore owned and managed Entire contents -° 1990 Nosth Shore Free Press Ltd. All righis reserved. _| Protecting privacy | poses legal puzzle SINCE THE Bud Smith scandal the Mounties and assorted fegal beagles have been running round in circles trying to decide whether the taping of his car phone calls was a criminal act. Some bright legal minds must also be having fun balancing that whole question against the im- plications of the Doug Small case, on which more in a moment. The law is quite clear about phone calls over land lines. Tapp- ing them is illegal — except when police or other authorities obtain a judge’s order on the grounds of reasonable suspicion that the calls involve a criminal act. Similarly with mail. If you open an envelope addressed to someone else, you break the law. But the Post Office can be empowered to do so if the contents are suspected to be criminal in nature. With car phones, which a $150 scanner can overhear as easily as any Citizens Band radio broad- cast, case law so far on whether conversations are ‘‘private’’ or **public’’ is apparenuy non-exis- tent. Common sense, however, sug- gests the latter, The Criminal Code defines a private conversa- tion as one where ‘‘it is reasonable for the originator ... to expect that it will not be intercepted by any person other than the person intended.’’ Car phones obviously offer no such ‘‘reasonable expec- tation.” So much for technicalities. Doug Small — the TV reporter who broadcast highlights of the 1989 budget a day before Finance Minister Michael Wilson was due to bring it down in the Commons SOD TURNING AT Cedarview Lodge for new extension catering to Alzheimer patients ... Ad- ministrator Lenore Nicell flanked by Jim Irvine and Gordon Crozier. — would seem to raise a much wider issue on the whole question of privacy. Mr. Small received, unsolicited, a copy of the budget pamphlet, millions of which had been printed for distribution a day later. As any good newsman would have done, he held it up to the camera and read it on the evening newscast. zian Mulroney promptly mouthed off about ‘‘a criminal act.’? The RCMP were unleashed and Doug was hauled into court charged with theft under $1,000. Last week Judge James Fontana threw the case out, rapping the Mounties over the knuckles for ever bringing it. The value of the pamphlet itself, he noted, was .02 cents and (read carefully!) there was no theft because information is not property. In so ruling, Judge Fontana appeared to be following an earlier landmark decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which states: ‘Confidentiality cannot be stolen because it cannot be pos- sessed ... It is enjoyed.”” If words have any meaning at all, surely ‘‘privacy"’ and ‘‘con- fidentiality’’ are the same thing, you’d think. If so, neither one of them can be possessed. Then how, you may well ask, can ANY communication be legal- ly private if others are in a posi- tion to share it? And in that case, why does the Criminal Code pretend the op- posite? Time, I guess, to hand over this intriguing puzzle to the lawyers! kak TAILPIECES: A big welcome greeted former North Van District alderman Margaret Campbell — now living in Ontario — at the recent Penticton convention of Busix:ess and Professional Women’s Clubs, attended by 250 deiegates from across Canada. For the past 26 years the local club, of which she’s a past president, has offered a Cap College bursary for mature women in her honor ... Rumored to be eyeing a bid for West Van aldermanic seats this November are former alderman Diane Hutchinson, former school trustee Lilian Thiersch and former Chamber of Commerce president Bill Soprovich ... And back with long-suffering Ambleside’s Ag- gressive Builders, | wonder which big-time spenders of tax dollars at City Hall decided to pave the village service lanes with those or- namental red bricks. Isn't blacktop — at one-sixth the cost and laid in an hour — good enough for delivery vans? ken WRIGHT OR WRONG: Few people are wise. Most are other- wise.