FRIDAY
March 8, 1996

“MAR KE,

doubts

‘Vote-creation’
budget: Grubel

OPINIONS ON the North Shore
regarding Wednesday’s federal
budget cut both ways.

By lan Noble
News Reporter

Business and an oppositior politician

say Finance Minister Paul Martin did not
go far enough in chopping the deficit.
Others who depend on government fund-
ing said carrots dangled by Martin fail to
heal wounds from previous budget cuts.
* Capilano-Howe Sound Reform MP
Herb Grube! called the Liberals’ no-new-
taxes, no-new-cuts offering a “coasting,
boasting and window-dressing” budget.

Grubel said that the $25 billion reduc-
tion in the deficit from 1993-94 to 1997-98
has:come through higher tax revenues, not
spending cuts. He said cuts from previous
budgets are just large enough to meet the
increased costs of servicing the burgeoning

- debt, which will grow by $112 billion in
the same period to $619.7 billion.

“This is nothing to boast about,” said
Grubel, Reform’s finance critic.

He said only low interest rates will lead
to steady growth path but the deficit means
we're paying higher long-term interest

‘. rates than Americans, even though we have
lower inflation.

In this “‘vote-c7eation” budget, “you
have a few goodies here for summer jobs,
... Militant women’s groups who think that

_ their ex-husbands should be paying taxes
on child support. (The Liberals) have high-
er taxes on people who work hard and are
thrifty and therefore have a higher income,”
said Grubel.

He called a redesign of benefits for pen-
sioners, which kicks in in five years, “the
continuation of the Liberal. tradition of
income redistribution, which is very popu-
lar with a certain segment of the population
but it is not good for economic growth.”

Changes wiil make the top 10% of
seniors hide or give away their assets so
that they continue to get old age security
benefits, he said. Grubel wants 0 see 2G
cuts in program spending over the next two
years to balance the brdgci.

Frid Lederer, the chairman of the North
Vascouver Chamber of Commerce and a

See Budget page 3

Weather

Saturday: Periods of rain
High 11°C, low 7°C.

News photo Brad Lecwidge

RYAN REICHELT reckons he and his friends will be skating many extra miles now that the boards have gone from the
Ross Road Lacrosse Box. Some parents worry that without the rink-like reality the box provided, the kids will be just as
tikely to take their games back to busy Lynn Valley streets. See story page 3.

ANORTH Vancouver man charged
with two counts of forging Canadian
passports in. 1994 was sentenced on
Wednesday to spend three months in
his home with an electronic monitor.

oy Anna Marie D'Angelo
News Reporter

B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice
Patrick Dohm said the offences were serious but
the accused was both deaf and just “a spoke in
the wheel” of a larger passport forgery opera-
tion.

“In simple terms, what the accused did was
to use different passport photographs in the
passports on two occasions for money,” said
Dohm during sentencing in Vancouver.

“His counsel says the accused became
involved because he was trying to assist persons
trying to leave Iran, a place which is difficult to
leave,” he added.

Siamak Ashrafinia, 44, pleaded guilty to
forging Canadian passports on:

@ Apnil 19, 1994, in North Vancouver City by
substituting a photograph of North Vancouver
resident Brian Hanley with that of another per-

Judge gives three
months at home
in NV forgery case

son, Hanley is known to the North Vancouver
RCMP,
M&M Oct. 21, 1994. by substituting the photograph
of Nader [smaeli Ranjbar with that of another
person.

Ashrafinia sold the passports for $1,200 and
$1,500 to an undercover RCMP member in
Ashrafinia’s “shop” in the 1500-block of
Lonsdale Avenue.

Members of North Vancouver's lranian com-
munity had recommended Ashrafinia to the
police officer who posed as a man secking to
obtain forged documents for relatives who could
not get into Canada legally.

Said Crown lawyer Don Celle, “These docu-
ments are issued by the government and are
carefully distributed and monitored ... Basically
these were attempts to work around what the
government of this country has set up for people
entering and leaving.”

Celle had sought a six to 12-month jail sen-

tence for the offences.

Each passport forgery charge carries a possi-
ble maximum sentence of 14 years in jail,
according to the Criminal Code.

So rare are passport forgery cases in Canada
that Celle could not find previous convictions to
show how the offence had been dealt with by the
court. He compared the offence to counterfeit-
ing money which also carries a maximum 14-
year jail sentence.

The judge noted that Parliament obviously
deems passport forgery a serious offence before
he handed out the three-month electronic moni-
toring sentence.

Ashrafinia’s lawyer Henry Vlug argued that
his client would experience hardships in jail
because ihe is deaf.

Vlug said his client would nst be able to use
the phone.

Viug had asked for probation or a jail sen-
tence of iess than three months using electronic
monitoring. :

“Because prison itself cannot accommodate
Mr. Ashrafinia,” said Viug.

Viug said his client has been on social assis-
lance ever since he came to Canada about six

See Forger page 3