6 - North Shore News -- Friday, November 24, 2000 VIEW POINT: sky is the limit lhe arrests last week of three Vancouver airport contract employees suspected of stealing credit card information from trav- ellers paying the Airport Improvement Fee has renewed atten- tion to the controversial charge. Since 1993, the Vancouver international Airport Authority has charged travellers $5 to $15 cach to pass through the airport. To date, the airport gravy plane has racked up $300 . million. The Airport Improvement Fee (AIF) is supposed to pay for the $400 million-pius it cost to build the opulent internation- al terminal and a new. runway. And you thought the fast ferrics were expensive? “The fee was estimated, at one - point, to end in 2603, but because of to continue witil 2006. Airport offi- cials don’t like to give an exact ETA about when tiiis annoying charge is truly going to end. YVR’s Web page says the fee “will not be imposed ... longer than is necessary.” What is necessary, of course, is up to the air- port authority, a non-profit company with a first-class taste that it can force weary ccunomy travellers to pay for. Since airport privatization, the air- port authority operates the airport and can charge fees through a long- term lease with the feds. The airport authority's ability to forcibly charge the ultimate airport ewners, we the taxpayers, seems like robbery. Now with the workers’ arrests, a suspected organized crime fink and money missing from credit cards, ¥VR managers need to commit to a date for the demise of the fee. -—— HE'S BEEN KICKING HIMSELF FOR NOT LEGALLY CHANGING HtS NAME To “NONE OF THE ABOVE“ dwindling passengers, it is projected mailbox | ICBC ‘deal’ entices and evaporates — “Dear Editor: £° Recently “my 17-year-old son acquired his driver's * Licence. We own three cars. It is decided who drives which “car; depending on the events of the day, You can imagine the discussions going on in our houve regarding the cost of car insurance. More specifically, the cost to whom? Should my. son pay his “own car insurance thereby alteviating the possibility of my husband and 1 fosing our stars and safe- _ driving discounis in the event t of him (my son) being in an * accident? -- The cost differesice i in car insurance, in my son’s name . “and in mine, is quite significant. You can imagine our inter- est_in ICBC’s ad on TV and radio, directed at parents of teen -drivers, stating “we (the: parents of teen drivers) deserve 'an-insurance break.” The ad’ talks ‘about a-“great deai” and “great value,” for families with teen drivers. 'm not a stupid person, and assumed there would be pages of fine print, but I was pretty suze we. qualified for their “great by deal/value.” We are a family, two adults driving, one teen driving, three cars to insure. | * Wa usband. inquired about ICBC’s “family leal,” our broker said he didn’t know a thing about i it. That is because 'there is'no great family deal. = In speaking: with a representative from ICBC public affairs and marketing, I learned that the ad was addressing “the fact, that over and above basic coverage, ICBC did not penalize a driver because of their age, as do some private nsurance companies “This is nothing new,” says the repre- sentative. : : “e* What I neglected to‘ask the rep was, “how ‘much were these ads (advertising nothing new) costing me, as a tax: - payer?” It seems ICBC needs help appropriating funds that would actually give the insurable a break... | I would say this ICBC advertising i is not misleading, but ‘ false. * ota are We, unde a 19692 an nope * guburban’ newspaper and qualified under Schedule “411, Paragraph 111 of tha Excice Tax Act, is published “each Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by Lower ”- Malntand Publishing Group Inc., a division of Southam "Publications, a CanWest Company and distributed to “every door on the North Shore. C2nado Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreenient No. 0087238. Mailing rates avaitcble on request. Entire _cuntents © 2000 Lower Maintand Publishing Group “ine., & divigon of Southam Publications, a CanWest Company. At sights reserved. Averape circulation tor " Wednesday, Friday and Sunday is 64.471. ° won itical LET'S comb out the candidates so unworthy that they aren’t even worth considering: fan McKay, Liberal, running in Wes: Vancouver-Sunshine Coast, and Sam Schechter, New Detnocrat, running ii North Vancouver. I don’t want to be too hard on Schechter, but when he couldn't or ‘wouidn’t appear at an afternoon all-candidates’ meeting at Capilano College — surely rich territory for a guy aged only 19 — he disap- peared from my radar screen. His stand-in was that old Voice of Poli . Socialism, or that Voice of Old Socialism, -Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East. She did give me a laugh, though, when she ~ whose party is grounded in bitter, ‘ British-style class conflict — accused the . Alliance of being divisive. - McKay is something else. He’s dropped out of the sky, an unknown in these parts, has been abroad for years, and . ¢ nomination by packing the meet- ~ ing with Sikhs from Squamish — playing” the race card in a way that’s mysteriously : acceptable to the politically correct. Not: “tome, = One other thing. I asked to interview . him. He said, phoning on a busy day, he'd *. get back to me. At this writing he hasn't.’ Injured vanity on No, it’s the: suspicion that he ai tubeant ques: o tions, No one twisted his arm to get him’ to run al Presume), Es) like any candidate. hat eS nanny ey Nag WF errerrererert eerste ‘doesn’t have to carry the can for it on the - roses grow. If Bell deviated an inch from *” goods and services tax. He was expelled , . ~-and sent into utter (i.c., non-Liberal) * ~ MeKay should either take the heat or stay out of the kitchen, North Vancouver Liberal candidate Bill Bell, to his credit, at least has been accessi- ble. But on my altimeter, Bell’s credit took a free fall at that Cap ; College meeting when he uttered this weasel sentence when asked about the blockade of Iraq — which he oppos- es and his party sup- ports: “It’s really great that I’m aorta Liberal MP, I'm running as a Liberal.” He went on to - ‘call himself “a maver- - ick.” . Get it? Bell is smugly glad that he wasn’t in the Commons to back the government's Iraq blockade and’ hustings — but, boy, just wait till he’s your MP and watch his maverickism as he. ’ boldly bucks party policy when he dis: ‘ agrees with it! . Which is the stuff that makes your the whip-patrolied Liberal party line he’d & -be instantly nunziatafied — as John; -: Nunziata was when he had the guts to” » demand his government carry out its . 1993 campaign promise to scrap the darkness — the highest honour the party . could unwittingly impose on him. And in: » 1997 Nunziata’s riding had the moxey to. . deme him back to Ottawa as an indepen- : dent.) 057 area Whe moxcy, Alliané incumbent ed White took. no nonse: at the: a LETTERS TO THE EDITOR inust incluce your name, full address and telephone: number. . _ Sakmlt via e-mail Inbecker@asnews.com Coast Alliance MP John Reynolds. ; ' O00 .. Gians to discuss whether a w “have a virgin birth.” df, %G Ss considered Cap College meeting. when a sullen stu- dent said White was “a former member of the Heritage Front,” which he'd read . “with my own cyes” in the North Shore - News. Which is utter rot. White coolly ; shot him down. Q00 “It’s no secret: Allan Williams, West Van. councillor and arguably (or unzzguably) - the town's most respected political voice,’ will vote for West Vancouver-Sunshine — ~ Six federal Liberals were elected in.” B.C. in‘1997, but a seventh —.Lou Sekora — was added in a byelection. .. “| Thanks to West Vancouver-Capilano ” Liberal MLA Jeremy Dalton for pointing. out my oversight fast Friday.” Ba laisy Love it! Regarding Alliance’ + so-callle - bigotry, and the CBC's hypocrisy knowing thar it can fearlessly dump on Stockwell Day’s Christian creationist belic& with ‘ total impunity and applause from the glib erals and leftnecks: . A caller to Peter Warren? 's show’ on ~ CKNW last weekend drily suggested that the CBC “assemble a panel of obstetri. can And a second deadpan « caller phoned Warren to say: “Jimmy Pattisda is an evan: clist, and heaven forbid that we wind. i dup * fin | politics) with anybody that astute.” The logjam holding up Vancouver Chamber of Commerce’ slowwww move into the old court faciligdes has been broken, C of C p ide Loyd ¢ tells me. 1139 Lonsdale venus, North Vancouver, BC vm OHA