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Entire contents
© 1995 North Shore
Free Press Ltd.
All rights reserved.

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HERE APPEARS to be plenty of

room left at the public trough for

private businesses to gorge along-
side politicians and bureaucrats.

B.C.’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Minister David Zirnhelt announced
recently that he had doled out a further
$600,000 in taxpayers’ money to various
companies, including North Vancouver’s
Northern Marine Farms Ltd., which got
$149,313 to help it investigate the devel-
opment of a black cod aquaculture
industry in B.C.

Under the Partners in Progress pro-
gram, Zirnhelt has given away $3.2 mil-
lien in grants to businesses in just over a

year. The program, according ito
Zirnhelt, launches “innovative and suc-
cessful projects that stimulate economic
activity and create job opportunities.”

Drivel.

If the projects were as innovative and
successful as the NDP claims, private
backers would be falling over each other
to invest. Instead government handouts
continue at an alarming pace.

According to the National Citizens’
Coalition, the feds handed cut
$1,061,576,000 in loans and grants
between 1593 and 1996 as part of
Western Economic Diversification.
Another $974,495,000 was handed out to

news viewpoint

a

East Coas: Susinesses.

Business and government continue to
preach restraint in these tough economic
times. But that preaching falis flat when

business anu government themselves fail .

to heed their own advice. At a time when
essential public services like education
and health are being squeezed, tossing
public money at private sector equacui-
ture experiments is irresponsible. The
provincial NDP and federal . Liberals
need a crash course in fiscal restraint.

And if you see farm-raised B.C. black
ced in your local supermarket, ask fora
discount. After all, you’ve already pold
for it.

A REFLECTION. or : two

- about the Capilano

Sportsmens Club issue.

You'll recall that the club was
described in this space last week. It
has been a tenant of the corporation

_ Of West Vancouver for a remarkable,
trouble-free 45 years in Ambleside

Park. The landlord — that's your
West Vancouver government —
gave it three months’ notice to
vacate in October. It granted a one-
month extension ending Jan. 31.

A few observations. First, the
eviction was tantamount to shutting
the club down. ‘The corp had to
know that. Find a new home for its
specialized necds, including a
firearms range? in three months?
And affordable to boot? No way.

Furthermore, the Capilano
Sportsmens club (incidentally, that’s
the club’ 's own spelling — “sports-
mens” without an apostrophe)
invested plenty maintaining its for-
mer military building. It has kept up
repairs including a newish ceiling.

It has been offered no compensa-
tion. Barring the unexpected, it wiil
have zip to show for its long exis-
tence, apparently soon to end.

On the other hand, the corp gave
it fantastic lease terms — a mere
$142.45 a month, so little that tax-
payers could legitimately demand
why town hall was so generous. (Is
it so kind about your taxes?) You
could argue that the club —- a warm,
old-shoe of a place, with moose-

Trevor

&
of biases

heads on the walls, pleasantly rum-
pled sofas in front of a big fireplace,
cups and plaques for various compe-
titions, ancient pictures of promi-
nent members — should be grateful
for having such a cheap ride for so
long.

The club offers hiking, fishing
anc other outdoors programs, certi-
fied instructors for firearms training,
all open to the public, not just mem-
bers. If anything it deserves criti-
cism for not advertising its wares
and attracting more than its present
170 members.

What bothers me most, though,
is that a family-oriented club that
also opens its doors to West
Vancouver Air Cadets and Scouts is
being evicted in favor of a proposed
youth centre that at present is very
much pie in the sky, and whose first

Club b given seer boot

tenants will be Youth Outreach — a
drop-in centre for troubled
teenagers, complete with paid coun-
sellors.

In short, the ‘‘old-fashioned”
good citizens with a clean 45-year
record are being displaced in favor
of “new-fashioned” kids whose par-
ents (or “‘society”?) have somehow
ignored, abused or otherwise failed
them — in Canada’s richest com-
munity.

That may be good contemporary
social policy. But is it good justice?

And a belated happy 50th birth-
day to Vancouver City Savings,
whose vaults bulge with the Lautens
family fortune.

Which brings up a fine irony.
North Shore News columnist Doug
Collins and I both stash our treasure
at VanCity’s West Van branch. Once
when we bumped intc each other
there, Doug remarked: “Here’s
something I can’t explain (surely the
only thing on earth that Doug can’).
How is it that a couple of right-
wingers like us have our accounts at
the socialists’ bank?”

We guffawed loudly. Guess the
explanation is simple enough: we
like it. Thanks, Nancy, Eric, Peter,
Jen and all the others.

It boggles the old mind that

tax tales

ANYONE LOOKING for examples

-of government waste will find a gold

mine of squandering in the réports

put out by the Social Sciences and”
Research | Council

Humanities.
(SSHRC)...

The SSHRC is a federal govern-

ment agency group that claims its job.
is to “support such discipline-based_

research as in the judgment of schol- -

ars will best advance knowledge.”

The only things it seems to
“sdvance,” however, are new ways to
waste our tax dollars. Consider these
@ $33,800 '— to examine. “Major,
League Basebail. in Detroit: the

re Tigers.”(Seven. . “taxpayer,

ears.) os
asi $100,670 — : for an ‘area :

(Six taxpayer oyun) re
@ $19,400 — ..for ; a on

board’s mess on respected Robert ..

Smith without mentioning, “Oh, by —

the way, you "re on your own —
we've canned the entire board of
trustees.”

Poor Dr. Murray Newman. The
retired founding director of the
Vancouver Aquarium is off soon to
Honolulu to give a little advice on.
an aquarium planned there. Then on
for a little snorkeling and Se alkine
barefoot in the sands of Guam and
the Caroline Islands.

Sounds awful, Ah, well, I sup-’
pose somebody has to do it.

Right off all previous topics and
the map of the North Shore:

A sharp memory. Gene Kelly. A
movie shown, astonishingly. for the
times (1952), after school in the
auditorium. Called An American in
Paris .

Kelly. The muscular school of
dancing. So American. Polar oppo- '
site of the other great, Fred Astaire
— fluid, elegant, European through
the sieve of America. Now both
dead.

That movie sent a silly young
Canadian lad off to Paris at age 19.
He found no Kelly, no Oscar .
Levant, even less a Lestie Caron.
Tell you abcut it some day.

B.C.’s ministry of education; |
unloaded North Vancouver school

‘