ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE
YOU EVER BEEN AN
ENVIRONMENTALIST ?

"NEWS VIEWPOINT

Unfair wage policy

Cs fi fair wage policy has been any-
thing but fair to the province’s tax-

payers.

It has already artificially inflated the cost
of government: contracts by over $30 mil- all
lion and pushed the Independent Contrac-

‘tors and Business Association to launch a /
‘court challenge to what amounts to another
payoff to. organized . labor from the NDP -

; socialists. .”

The policy. was introduced on March 30,
1992. Its aim was to force independent
s.Open-shop (ion-union) companies, which
re ‘perform over 70% of construction projects
“in B.C., to pay wages and benefits on gov-
“ernment job sites comparable to the rates
‘<the government pays its own army of

According

taxpayer.

‘ unionized government workers.

The policy initially covered alt public
building projects worth. $1.5 million or
more; it has since been expanded to include

projects funded by
worth over $250,000.

to :a.- Quantity Surveyors
Society of B.C. report, the fair. wage policy
has added an average of 6.5% to the cost
“of public capital projects and will add ap-
proximately $10¢ million annually to the
cost of those projects.

The fair wage policy disregards market
realities to featherbed government job sites

at the expense jof the already beleaguered

B.C.

'
J

There’s not thuch fair about that.

“TETTER R OF: THE DAY
Ice rink higher priority for Seymour

- Dear Editor: .

‘In response to Nicole Parton’s
‘Sept. 17 letter, “‘Desperate splash.
“before polls,”’.I repeat my con-

stention that. the. Lynn Valley
“community would ‘have been far
_ better served, in the long run, by a
full-sized swimming pool..

My Aug. 30 wave pool. com-
:Ments were made in the context of
whether the recreation commission
s planning the appropriate facili-

3 for the district.

‘the .district could build a
“beautiful wave pool’’ in Seymour
-for you and your neighbors 1 sup-
pose, Nicole, and. save you the
commute to a pool where you

Publisher... -
Managing Editor .

. Peter Speck
.. Timothy Renshaw

can’t swim.

But instead, the recreation

commission, has planned a gym-

nasium for Parkgate.

Other council members and |
have expressed our opinion that
an ice rink should be the higher
tecreation priority in Seymour.

It is with the planning for this
gym that I raised a critical hind-
sight view of the wave puol, Are
these the facilities the community
really wants and needs?

Ironically, Seymour may get
neither gym nor ice rink, should
all available money be poured into
the proposed Northlands golf
course (the existence of which isn’t
even hinted at in the draft Parks

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and Recreation Master Plan that
the recreation commission has

presented to council for adoption). -

1 challenge this council to put
the golf course and its financing
options before the public in a
teferendum.

Anna Marie D’Angelo had it
right when she reported that the
wave pool cost $5.9 million; what
she didn’t mention was its original
price tag — $3.5 million.

I shudder to think what the
proposed $9.86 million golf course
would come at.

This is the real front page story,
Nicole.

Coun, Janice Harris
District of North Vancouver

oS

This newspaper

986-1337

taxpayers

arge in

for | un

THE RISING BURDEN of
taxation and the increasing
awareness of the taxpayer
will eventuaily pressure gov-
ernments (o reorganize their
spending programs.

By Michael Walker -
Contributing Writer

One of the programs in which 1
have fong had an interest and
about which The Fraser Institute
has published several book-length
studies is education. Second only
to health care as an absorber of
tax dollars among the service. -
delivery programs, education also
has some peculiar characteristics.

It is true, for example, that the
most significant beneficiaries of
expenditures on post-secondary
education (that is, college and
university) are the higher income
groups. An examination of the
tuition deduction claims by tax-,
payers indicates that the top 30%
of income earners receive about
48% of the benefits of educational
expenditure.

In other words, education is a
service that is financed from gen-
eral tax revenue but which prin-
cipally benefits high-income
earners.

On the basis of this fi nding we
have argued elsewhere that it
would be highly preferable if the
government charged the full cost
of education to the user in the
form of tuition fees that actually

matched the cost of education and "”

then subsidized only those stu-. -
dents whose incomes fell below a
certain level. | :
This would ensure that there
was efficient targeting of the sub-
sidies that government provides to
education. .
(Of course, family i income
would have to be the determinant,
as is the case now with the bur-
saries that are offered to worthy,
low income students.) ;
Another aspect of the failure to
price university services at their
full cost is a concern that there
might be a waste of the under-
priced services. I recently received
a letter from a friend who teaches
at a local community college —
Langara College — which pro-
vides tangible evidence that such
concerns are well grounded.
The information consists of the

costs

percentage of partial and complete
withdrawals by students from
courses in which they had origi-
nally enrolled over the period
from 1984 to 1991. :

The astonishing thing about this _
information is that it indicates, for -
example, that in the 199) summer
term the dropout rate was
14.96%.

That is to say, nearly 15% of-
the students who originally
enrolled in a course subsequently:
withdrew from it. In the spring
and fall terms of the 1991-92.
year, the dropout rate was 10.94%
and 13.45% respectively.

Since this dropout and
withdrawal percentage is signifi-
cant throughout the past decade,
one assumes that the community
college involved made appropriate.
adjustment in its staffing and
other course provisions to take

. this into account. Ii is nevertheless
* the case that from.11% to 15% of

the total initial demand for f
courses was not realized i in fi nal. °

, completion.

Undoubtedly, if the students i in-
volved faced the full cost of pric-
ing for these courses, their plan-
ning and their prior assessment of
their interest in these courses.‘:,:
would have been inuch more in- :
tensive and much less likely to ‘
produce this sort of withdrawal
rate.

The only positive thing that can

” be said about the dropout rate at -

the college is that current numbers.
of dropouts are somewhat below:
the 1983-84 academic year where
16.12%, 15.55% and 20.8% of. -
courses were dropped inthe...
spring, summer and fall terms : a
respectively. :

While | don’ "t. know how repre-
sentative these figures are of the
general experience with colleges, -:
to the extent that they are gener-
alized they indicate once again the
deficiencies of an education:
system that has no prices, or at

Jeast-prices that reflect only g about

15%’ of cost. ae “
Dr. Michael Walker is is ‘executive
director of the Fraser Institute, a
Vancouver-based economic think
tank, © :

Noel Wright
on vacation .

985-3227 pend

Associate Editor _ Noel Wright 504

Sales & Marketing Director. Linda Stewart
Comptroller | Doug Foot

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