1139 Lonsdale Avenue North Vancouver, 8.C. PETER SPECK Publisher 985-2131 (101) Doug Feat Chris doar Coinptroties Operations Manager 2131 (133} SH-2131 (166) Managing Editor 995-2131 (116) Pot Semzvon 9800911 (ie (163) ography 68-2131 (160) ". Distrigutior’ Manage on it 906-1337 (124) Dieptay & Ros! Eetate Fax awaroons Fax Ctacsified, Acceunting & Mata Offtes Fax North Shara News, founded in 1969 es on indopendent suburban and qualified under Schedule 111, Paragraph SHE of the Excise Tax Act, ia published cach Wednesday, Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Led. and distrihuted ta every door on the North Shore, Canad Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 0087238. Mailing rates available on request. Entire contents ¢ o © 1996 North Shore Free Press Lid. ea iT if All rights reserved. tae AKE NO mistake about it: the NDP leopard is not about to change its spots. Voters laboring under the delusion that the socialist party’s leadership con- vention will change anything about the party of pleasantness need to find more profitable tasks for their labors. The hypocritical doctrine of phoney do-goodism permeates everything about the NDP. Recent news that the size of B.C.’s civil service continues to balloon during these days of crippling government debt is merely another indicator of the NDP’s dedication to putting more veters on the government payroll. Leadership front-runner Glen Clark has said he will cut the size of B.C.’s civil service, but NDP talk is cheap. And, as a recent pothole along Clark’s leadership campaign trail illustrated, fuelled by bitter partisan politics. Clark let slip a piece of his reborn socialist facade with his crack about Reform and Liberal party leaders want- ing to “cut cut cut with a capital K” — K as in Ku Klux Klan. Responding to cries of racial slur from various quarters, Clark, in dam- age control-central, said the remark was merely “political hyperbole borne out of fA URAC NPE REC ET RMR PS EAS OR AL excitement.” How about a well aimed shot below the belt? Were the remark directed at another - target by a member of any right-of-cen- tre nolitical party or group, it would _ have been a rallying cry for the forces of | righteousness and hustled forthwith into Victoria’s Star Chamber to be prosecut- ed under the NDP’s anti-democratic, anti-free speech Human Rights Act amendments. ; It is an indication of the blinkered party politics that guide the NDP’s ship of state. It should be cause for concern for all B.C, voters. _{ BELIEVE it would be salu- _tary for even the wisest, feet- firmly-on-the-ground mem- bers of the bench to hang a larpe poster in their cham- bers bearing H.L. Mencken’s devastating definition of a judge: “A law student who marks his own papers.” But it is prokably too late to save Madam Justice Gloria Epstein of the Ontario Court's General Division from the sobriety of humility. Her judgment last week in a “same-sex couples” case should go into those mysterious books you see in lawyers’ offices as a land- mark citation for judicial contempt toward the legistators, the mere cit- izens, public standards. It is yet another incremental instalment of the connivance of the “politically correct” (ic. democrati- cally incorrect) elites of the higher bureaucracy, the politicized judicia- ry and crafty governments to ignore and trample the mainstream beliefs, indeed the interests, of the public. Thus in recent years we've suf- fered state-sanctioned inequality based on gender, race, minority sta- tus and disability — legalized prej- udice in the claimed interests of redressing perceived historic wrongs. . We've seen, as in the case of this week's Nisga’a pact, bureau- crats and lawyers workin, working for prof- itable ycars behind closed doors to negotiate huge racially based give- aways of public land and money —- yours and mine -— plus governing and comercial rights in perpetu- ity, about which the public has not a shred of input and only a few shreds of information. And then there’s the fast-rising tide of gay and lesbian power. Which brings us to the case before Judge Epstein. As the Globe and Mail's Thomas Claridge flatly reported, the judge “has effectively rewritten Ontario’s Family Law Act to make its support provisions apply to same-sex couples.” Put aside, for the nonce, the last part of that sentence and the chic oxymoron it bears for those of us who denounce the notion that peo- ple of the same sex can ever be equal in law or function or societal importaace to couples — hetero- sexual couples. What should shake everyone but the single-interest homosexual lob- byist is that Judge Epstein has glibly rewritren the law. We poor rubes used to think that writing laws was what legislatures did. But the Charter of Rights vast- ly accelerated the appetite for courts, especially the Supreme Court, not to interpret but to make law — overriding Parliament, grandly telling Parliament what it really meant or should have meant. (Parliament itself already being dis- missive of majority interests and beliefs if the majority happens to be “wrong.”) Back to Judge Epstein, she of the high hand. The case before her involved two lesbians -— their names helpfully shrouded by the anonymity of initials — who broke up after 10 years of living together. One sought 5,000 bucks a month in support. The Ontario legislature, in a free vote in 1994, turned down the * proposition that “same-sex cou- ples” should be included in family law legislation. Judge Epstein made no legal bones about it: She detied the legis- tators’ decision, “Concluding that in the circum- stances there was no need to defer to the province's legislators,” the tax tales THE MINISTRY of Canadian Heritage together with the: Secretary of State for the Status of: Women are responsible for handing out our tax dollars to various femi- nist organizations. These organiza- tions claim to speak for millions of Canadian women but nevertheless. seem to need big taxpayer handouts: to survive. Here are just a few of the handouts from 1993-94 (a taxpayer - year is the amount of total personal - income tax an average \axpayer pays. in one year — about $4,800): - Mi $102,000 for the United Nations conference on the Status of Women : (21 taxpayer years). &@ $987,550 for the National Action: Committee on the Status of Women ; (204 taxpayer years).. : B $15,000 to the “Company ; of: Sirens,” a theatre group dedicated to feminist plays (three taxpayer years). 2 $18,250 for a study on, he legal needs of Ethnocultura!’ women (four taxpayer years). — From Tales from the Tax “Trough HI, a National Citizens’ Coalition publication. values | Globe reported, the. judge ruled - that the act had no force to. the extent that it excluded “same-sex” couples” from its definition of spouse, and that the phrase “a man and a woman” should be read as “two persons.” Fantastically, she went far beyond that. Based on evidence . from a mere former assistant cleric of the legislature, she decided that “it was virtually impossible to attribute a clear legislative intent to the bill's defeat.” (Whaaaat?) “T accept his opinion that the defeat was strongly affected by per- ceived gains and losses in the then- pending election,” Judge Epstein | airily concluded, (Like, democratic, electoral politics.) And, contending that the Ontario legislature “cannot (or will not) move forward with such an initiative," she did their work — as she imperiously saw it. — for them. Translation: The hell with the MLAs. The hell with the voters who had the issue before them. Judge Gloria Epstein rules. Court will rise. Closer to home: David Mitchell bowing out! Unbelievable. Won't be the same without him — the most quotable MLA, Is an all- Liberal crescent on the North Shore — Ted Nebbeling, Jeremy Dalton, Dan Jarvis, and a Grit who can bump off David Schreck — a pos- sibility?