1139 Lonsdale Avenue North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 PETER SPECK Publisher 985-2131 (101) Chils Johnson Operations 985-21 3 (168 (168) Newsroom Fax Clacsified, Accounting & Male Office Fax 965-8227 Yorth Shore News, founded in 1909 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualified under Schedule 11t, Paragraph 111 of the Excise Tax Act, is published each Wednesday. Friday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Ltd. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 0087238. Mailing rates available on request. Entire contents © 1995 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. 8 7m t = EPEAT TALLIES EOI TROP RIN SII ECT PRR ERENCES WEIN A. 50 TELt ME AGAIN... How MANY MONTHS Do! HAVE TO DO THIS BEFORE \'M ELIGIBLE FOR U.1.? news viewpoint oS WS Ss: PASSES ~ nee atal teaaelead eaterttnena tian enetenateen omeniaetinn’ itodaatiasadt alietatene akeahereedaenedonnetdenataetenneeaete! Rights and wrongs HE OBTUSE architects of B.C.’s human-rights industry are now reaping what they so carelessly sewed. Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh recently told reporters that he is searching for more money within his ministry to help reduce the time human-rights complainants have to wait to have their complaints heard. Professional blubbers across the land are miffed about the current 600-case backlog that has resulted in waits of over two years for a complaint to be processed. Everyone else in B.C. should be miffed at the 300% increase in human-rights com- plaints registered over the past four years. That increase is a direct result of dim-bulb NDP Human Righis Act amendments, which sent the human-rights industry into overdrive by inciting complaints from the legions of self-made victims all over the province. WHERE ARE the Socreds? Alive, busy and well along the comeback trail, accord- ing to leader Larry Gillanders. Scattered to the Liberals and Reformers — or otherwise dead in the water — say his opponents. Noel There’s something fishy going on with the numbers here. Three years ago, with six Legislature seats backed by 24% of the popular vote, the Socreds claimed a paid-up party member- ship of some 48,000. Today Gillanders says the figure is 20,000 and growing again. Wright 1 and yon sevenfold increase over the 12,500 Not satisfied with restricting the publica- tion or open discussion of material that “indi- cates discrimination” or is “likely to expose a person or group of persons to hatred or con- tempt,” the NDP set up a new Human Rights Commission with the power to seek out alleged human rights violations, be they real or perceived, without even having anyone lodge a complaint. The province consequently has an endless supply of petty squabbles and imagined beefs to drag before government- appointed tribunals for adjudication. But the bureaucracy to handle the supply is not big enough. Solution: pour more tax dollars into the hopper, which is another goal of the whole human-rights industry: building bigger and better government bureaucracies for the taxpayer and his offspring. Now that’s a human-rights complaint worth investigating. a membership card. Just ask for one — apparently — or even wait for it to arrive unsolicited because someone gave them your name. Party membership, paid-up or otherwise, does not always reflect, of course, how people will ulti- mately vote. Nor how parties fare in opinion polis prior te election day. With the second largest paid membership among the three main anti-NDP parties, Socreds currently languish at about 4%. Reform, with only half the Socred membership, hovers at around 22%, Liberals — claiming over nine times the Reform membership — score less than twice as high, at up to 40%. . hither To date, he adds, there are active constituency associations in 45 of the province’s 75 ridings. Candidate nominations for next year’s election started last month, with six candidates already nomi- nated and an interim target of at least 25 by the end of January. The 20,000 paid membership figure, if accurate, is twice that of the B.C. Reform Party. Meanwhile, the Liberals now triumphantly claim a membership of 88,000 —- a members claimed just two years ago. Gordon Campbell has a deserved reputation as a smooth operator, but a miracle growth like that falls right into the feeding-of- the-five-thousand category! In terms of putting your money where your mouth is, however, the Liberals’ figure may be a little sus- pect. Stories circulate that you need not necessarily pay anything up front, at least not right away, to get This in turn brings us to one of the most confusing aspects of opin- ion poll reporting. The results record dec ided vot- ers only. In some cases the unde- cided vote is arbitrarily divided up in the same proportions as the decided vote and added to the lat- ter. In other cases it is ignored, leaving you merely with the decid- ed-vote result. All too rarely do media reports separate out the undecided vote. In cup eeliyre wy Lacrosse box used for other NV sports Dear Editor: The public must be oware that if the lacrosse box at Ross Road school is destroyed, we as a community will be losing a recreational facility that our North Vancouver youth use and enjoy. The box could be renamed the roller-blading or | in-line arena as this is more correctly what it is being used for now. This sport will continue to grow, as the support and the excitement of the Vancouver VooDco team grows. If this facility is destroyed it will cost over $200,000 to rebuild it in a different loca- tion. In these times of fiscal restraints, it seems like poor money management of public | funds, be it school board or 1 North Vancouver District: funds, it still comes out of afl “7 our tax dollars. ” This matter should be. looked at and considered:-[ whether you use this facility : or not. “ The lacrosse box coutd be : retained and incorporated into’ the plans for future develop-. ment of the Ross Road school playground. The matter will . go before the North Vancouver “J: School Board in its January | 1996 meeting. Our schools are publi buildings used by scouts, girt guides and soccer teams, etc. and the grounds are uséd by softball, soccer and many , members of our community ~ that may or may noi attend our public schools. We give our support to retaining and maintaining this facility for our Lynn Vatley residents. Darlene Mcintosh President of Lyno Valley Services LINK Society ‘ recent polls it tias been exceptional. ly high, by one count as much as 44%. How many are former Socred © members watching and waiting? That could be crucial in light of the developing battle between B.C. and Ottawa over unity, welfare: and transfer payments. Both Liberals und, to some degree, Reform are perceived, at * least in name, as branch plants of federal parties — i.e., “the enemy.” The Socreds are burdened with no such albatross. Thumping their “Priority B.C.” drum, they can claim to be still the original, home- grown Ottawa-bashing party of B.C.’s glory years from 1952 to 1986. 4 That ball is theirs alone. How fast and how well the new team can learn to run with it is coach Larry Gillanders’ big 1996 challenge. ” WISH many happy returns of tomorrow, Dec.28, to West Van Kiwanis birthday boy Bill Pulham. WRIGHT OR WRONG: Great souls have wills, feeble ones only wishes (Chinese proverb).