6 - Wednesday, August 13, 1986 - North Shore News

New job thinking

ith B.C. unemployment again over 12% and

only two months of Expo left, Bill Vander

Zalm rightly rates job creation as his tog
priority. But recent experience shows he can’t depend
on the private sector to do the task.

In this, our new premier shares a problem facing
virtually every other free-enterprise economy, and one
which politicians don’t even dare discuss aloud. The
harsh truth — which demands entirely new thinking
— is that the supply of traditional jobs can never again
keep pace with the job market and will increasingly fall
short of its needs.

Compared to the fairly acceptable balance between
the (wo up to the 1970s, the reason is twofold. First,
the swelling of the work force itself, due partly to the
big influx of women. Secondly, the rapid advances of
technology.

The whole object of computers and automation,
alike in the sawmill and the supermarket, is to produce
more goods and services with fewer people, thereby
enhancing profits. In business and industry, therefore,
technological substitutes for human workers will in-
evitably increase.

Ultimately, the solution for those shut out of tradi-
tional jobs may have to be whole new areas of non-
traditional jobs which benefit society as a whole — at a
cost. One equitable way to meet that cost might be a
tax on technology itself,

By allowing only a portion of its benefits to be re-
tained by private sector users, livelihoods and self-
respect could be created for those to whom technology
now denies both. Worth a thought — along with
other new ones?

“GOLDEN YEARS’ CHALLENGE — PART 1

The high price of

THE VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER

SUNDAY + WEDNESOAY - TeiDAY
1139 Lonsdale Ave.
North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4

57,656 (average. Wednesday a

Friday & Sunday) SDA DItSiCn

OLD AGE. The good news is that most of us make it. The have — can provide a maximum of
bad news is that its cost threatens to become more than 4pproximately $700. Given the

society can handle unless we find radical new approaches.

The proportion of old people in
the population is steadily rising.
Three years ago 10 per cent of all
Canadians (more than two million)
were 65 or over. In about 40 years
the figure will double — to one in
five.

Centenarians are stil! fairly rare.
But since 1930 even the chances of
a male living to be 100 have in-
creased by 16 per cent. And
nowhere in Canada is the geriatric
explosion bigger than in our own

community.

During the decade endir.g in
1991 it’s estimated that the 65-plus
brigade on the North Shore will
have shot up by 47 per cent, from,
14,700 to 21,600. Which means,
five years from now, about one in
every six North and West Van res-
idents will be drawing the old age
pension.

In West Van, where 16 per cent
of today’s population is aged 65 or
more, that’s already happened, not
to mention the kids of 60°-and over
who make up 26 per cent of West
Vancouverites and are expected to
reach 30 per cent by 1990.

Seniors, unavoidably, are by far
the heaviest users of health care

and other ‘‘support'’ services —
ranging from fong-term hospital
beds, operations and medication to
housing, transportation, home
help and recreation needs.

Moreover, alas, many of them
reach the Golden Years with all
too little gold of their own to help
pay for these expensive necessities.

Studies have shown that only
about one in three Canadians 65
and over can enjoy financial secu-
tity for the rest of their days.

Last year the official poverty
line for a single person was set at
$852 a month. The combined old
age pension and Canada Pension
Plan — which many widows don’t

LETTER OF THE DAY

honeless,

Dear Editor:

I have been outraged at B.C. Tel
before, ready to lash out in a Jetter,
to make enough noise to change in-
competence and callousness, but
telephones are electronic, impersonal
devices and who can stay angry
about mechanical contraptions for
fong? So, one forgives and forgets.

Yet phones link people and touch

vital parts of human hves: a friend's
voice at a difficult time may change
despair to hope. Inefficiencies in ser-
vice can be an annoyance, an in-
convenience, disruptions a bother,
yet there are times when deficiencies
become intolerable and a letter gets
written more in sadness than
outrage.

July 31st was the first anniversary

direct or indirect price of services

Noel Wright

@ focus @

needed by seniors, the CPP plus an
additional $400_a month is proba-
bly the minimum required by a
single senior for any degree of fi-
nancial independence.

Without a company pension,
that modest supplement translates
today into needed private capital
of around $50,000 bearing eight
per cent interest or used to buy an
annuity.

In practice, of course, society
foots the bill for the dispropor-
tionately heavy use by seniors of
doctors, hospitals and drugs, as
well as subsidizing other forms of
essential care for seniors who can’t
afford it,

nely

of my husband's death; also the date
of my move to a new home. Know-
ing that distant family and friends
would call this day I had arranged
six weeks in advance for a telephone
switch-over and ordered it three days
early to allow for a margin of error.
Well, the margin was not wide
enough, all the careful planning and
preparations, reassurances and pro-

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jrowing ol

Meanwhile — as a result of in-
flation and the rapid growth of the
elderly population ~ the Canada
Pension Plan itself and many
private pension funds are now
confronted by serious under-fun-
ding problems which will soon
have to be addressed, with stiff
hikes in contributions probably in-
evitable.

The big danger is that the
shrinking percentage of working
income-earners could eventually
find the tax burden attributable to
care of the aged simply too heavy
to tolerate. Not a pretty picture
but one that has to be faced.

For the past year a unique group
of North Shore citizens has been
doing just that, in a positive and
forward-looking spirit. Through
coordinated planning on a scale
never before undertaken in all
areas of care for seniors they aim
to come to grips with the problem
before it swamps us.

To date you. may not have heard
much, or even anything, about the
North Shore Seniors’ Services
Providers Forum, but their prelim-
inary work has now advanced to
the stage where you soon will.

Next week we'll look at the
cominunity leaders involved and
their strategy Jor controlling, 9.1
humanity and dignity, the sou,
cost of growing old.

Publisher:
Editor-in-Chief
Managing Editor
Advertising Director

Peter Speck
Noel Wright
Barrett Fisher
Linda Stewart

Entire contents “

1986 North Shore

Free Press Ltd. All
. Tights reserved

WHOSE IDEA WAS
To BW

CIENCI CARDS
ANYWAY?

HISTORY
LESSON

IMPERIALISM was not always as
universal in 19th century Britain as
is sometimes supposed. On August
13, 1852, Benjamin Disraeli — the
future Tory prime minister who,
30 years later, was to make Queen
Victoria Empress of India — wrote
the following: ‘‘These wretched
Colonies will all be independent in
a short time, and are a millstone
round our necks,”

Also on this date, the Spanish
adventurer Hernando Cortez re-
conquered Mexico in 1521 after
being temporarily driven out fol-
lowing his original conquest; and a
Dr. Leichhardt and party embark-
ed on a major exploration of the
Australian continent in 1844.

Notable people whose birthdays
fall on August 13 include film-
maker C ed Hitchcock (1899),
golfer ben Hogan (1910), jazz
musician George Shearing (1919)
and Cuban leader Fidel Castro

_ (1927).

anniversary

mises came to nothing. Three days
of pleading with the telephone com-
pany to find the error came to
nothing. | had no phone that night.
The details of the repeated errors and
stupidities would be boring to your
readers; at times | knew not whether
to laugh or to cry.

Incompetence is sore telling when
its repercussions hurt: rather than

merely anger and annoy. I am sad

that all of us are shackled to a

monopoly without an alternative.
My hope is that when B.C.

Telephone sees how their blunders

affect lives, maybe, just maybe, they

would find this a worthwhile reason

for change.

M. Simpson

West Vancouver