ml NEWS photo Neil Lucente ROD McLEOD and daughter Stephanie perch atop a 15-foot embankment off their front yard on Deep Cove Road in North Vancouver. T eir home is one of five homes in the 2000 to 2100-block Deep Cove Road that the homeowners say have safety problems associated with ministry of high- way road work peing done in the area. Budget offers no cure for ailing health-care system MICHAEL WILSON’S budget guts national health-care standards and will Jead to the introduction of health-care user fees in B.C., according to David Schreck, NDP can- didate for North Vancouver-Lonsdale. Announced on Tuesday, the $159-billion budget extends the cap on federal transfer payments to the provinces in health and education from two years, as outlined in last year’s budget, to five years, or until 1995-96. Schreck, a heaith-care economist, said that the cap will accelerate the thrust of Bill C-69, passed in Parliament on Feb. 1. Bill C-69 will gradually reduce federal payments to the provincial government until they are elimi- nated altogether by 2004. According to Schreck, the even- tual elimination of transfer pay- ments wil) erode the standards of universal access to health care en- shrined in the Canada Health Act because the federal government will no longer be able to finan- cially penalize provinces that do not adhere to the health act. But North Vancouver-Capilano MLA Angus Ree said the provin- cial government, facing a shortfall in transfer payments, will ‘‘have to get money from other sources By Elizabeth Collings News Reporter and that may be the taxpayers.”” The Social Credit government may have to cut programs, in- crease taxes and introduce user fees, Ree said. ‘I’ve always been a strong sup- porter of user fees. The people who can’t afford it — we'll take care of them — but the people who can, siould pay for it,’’ he said. Ree also predicted the federal government would eventually amend the Canade Health Act to permit the introduction of user fees. Lions Gate Hospital president Robert Smith said he would be hard pressed to find any area in which the hospital could introduce cuts in its services. “1 think Lions Gate runs a pretty tight ship. I’d be very anx- ious (about seeing) any further cuts in our budget. !t means we’d have to decide what things we wouldn’t be deing anymore,’’ he said. In the long run, the funding cap and Bill C-69 indicate that the federal government is, Smith said, “abandoning its role in leading health-care standards.”” But Smith said the federal gov- ernment could still penalize pro- vinces financially through means other than education and heaith- transfer payments if they attemp- ted to introduce user fees. He added that user fees would be costly to administer, difficult to introduce politically and would not act as an effective deterrent to unnecessary use of health-care services. But Dr. Brian O’Connor, North Shore Health’s medical hzalth of- ficer, predicted that the capped transfer payments will force the provincial government to consider new ways of funding health ser- vices, including user fees. O'Connor said, however, that he was “delighted”? by the tax in- crease imposed by Wilson’s budget on cigarettes, which will add 60 cents to the price of a package of 20 cigarettes. LGH, NSH pitch demands Health-care strategies should be local - NSH THE PROVINCIAL health ministry should get out of the business of planning health-care strategies and, instead, fund local health boards to do the job, the North Shore’s medical health of- ficer told the Royal Commission on Health Care and Costs earlier this week. Elizabeth Collings News Reporter Dr. Brian O’Connor and North Shore Union Board of Health chairman Rod Clark (a North Vancouver City alderman) made the presentation during two days of commission hearings held at North Vancouver’s Deibrook Community Centre. O’Connor said he sees an op- portunity to reduce the size of the health ministry by transferring health-care decisions from the province to local health depart- ments. “1 think the ministry of health should probably get out of the game of strategies,"’ he said. In a later presentation, Clark, who is also the chairman of Lions Gate Hospital’s board of direc- tors, joined LGH president Robert Smith and LGH chief of staff Dr. Barrie Purves, in setting out the hospital's recommendations to the commission. Smith said that, in an environ- ment of often contentious labor relations, LGH needs to create a human resources program in addi- tion to offering competitive wages to attract and retaia employees. “We do not train and develop them to the extent private industry would,"’ Smith said. Clark appealed to the commis- sion to address the need to reno- vate the physical structure of LGH, which no longer meets building and fire codes and is in- adequate for the intensity of care the hospital delivers. Built in the late °505 and early 60s, LGH requires a $30-million injection of capital just to main- tain the existing facilities, he said. Clark also pitched the LGH master plan, a $140-million pro- ject that would take 10 years to complete and woutd add 400,000 See Doctors page 8 Sunday, March 3, 1991 - North Shore News — 3 Residents rage over hwy project A GROUP of Deep Cove homeowners has accused the provincial highways ministry of turning deaf ears to their concerns about what they say could be serious property damage resulting from ihe $11- million Dollarton Highway reconstruction project. By Surj Rattan News Reporter But a ministry spokesman in charge of the project said he has held several meetings with area residents and the homeowners who are complaining have elected to take their concerns directly to Transportation and Highways Minister Rita Johnston rather than deal with him. He aiso denied that there is any threat of property damage occurr- ing to the homes. Group spokesman Cynthia McLeod, who lives at 2107 Deep Cove Rd., said she and four of her neighbors fear landslides will occur in the area if improvements are not made to their properties. The highways ministry is cur- rently reconstructing areas of Dollarton Highway and Deep Cove Road. But the five area homeowners claim the construc- tion work has resulted in high, steep slopes that ‘‘make our fron- tages extremely unstable.”” “The ministry of highways was not willing to talk to us and basically said we either take what we were offered, which was a re- taining wall with the ioss of access to Deep Cove Road, our main street, or we get nothing,’’ : aid McLeod. “They were not willing to pro- vide us with stair access, as other residents along this project got, and they are not willing to discuss our front landslides, except to tell us not to worry.”’ In a letter to Johnston, the homeowners group said: ‘‘Ciearly, the treaument of the frontages has been unsatisfactory.”’ They also rejected a proposed ministry solution to the probiem to replace the top soil on their properties and plant ivy instead. “We feel this proposal will be totally unsatisfactory and will result in a recurrence of this dam- age. Any treatment of the fron- tages must result in a permanent stable structure, not a shoddy quick fix only sufficient to al! the department of highways to pass responsibility for future problems on to the homeowners or to the District of North Vancouver.*” McLeod said that in about six months, the highways ministry will turn over the responsibility of Deep Cove Road maintenance to the district ‘tand at that point, we five residents involved in this fias- co, will be looking to the district to repair, maintain and assume li- ability for our missing front yards.”” She added that the condition of Deep Cove area upset over fallout from $11-million Dollarton upgrade the front yards of the five houses poses a safety hazard to neighborhood children because the homes are located in a high traffic zone. “It has already become a disaster with small children wan- ting to play in the mud and larger children running across the street to see if they can climb this mud hill,’’ said McLeod. ‘It seems the province wishes to ignore us, hop- ing that we, like our front yards, will simply slide into mon-ex- istencé.”’ She added that she and her four neighbors’ properties are the only ones along the five-mile construc- tion project to ‘‘receive this unfair treatment.”” The other properties, she said, have all been stabilized. McLeod said telephone