6 - Friday, September 26, 1986 - North Shore News News Viewpoint ___News Viewpoint _ | ‘Style’ — and hope? he October 22 eiection is exactly needs nine days after Expo ends: the stimulus of a fresh start and a lift to the spirit from hope renewed. THE VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST + ANCOUVER ‘north shore . we Det NDAY ‘FRIDAY 1139 Lonsdale Ave. North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 what B.C. 57,656 Greeerage: Weerdnes stay Feiday 4% SUndave Economics, politics and human nature being the way they are, we may, of course, be disillusioned once more a few months down the road — regardless of which party wins power — and that’s nothing new, either. But certainly the worst thing, just as the Expo hangover begins to hit, would have been to drag on in- to winter with a shopsoiled government looking in- creasingly like a lame duck, headed by a ‘‘backdoor”’ THE NDP EAGERLY premier with no mandate from the electorate as a whole. What the province needs most, once the Expo party is over, is a period of stability and a sense of direction. Barring some extraordinary political accident along the short election trail, all the present signs suggest that Social Credit under its charismatic new leader will not only win but quite possibly increase its majority. British Columbians may not yet know exactly what Bill Vander Zalm is made of. But he’s impressed them enough for them to waiit to find out, by giving him at least one fair chance. His famous ‘‘style’’ to date is simply to make people feel good. As with Ronald Reagan, that style might ultimately prove as important as ‘‘substance’’ for inspiring B.C. to work its way back to prosperity. Hopefully, too, the opposition will emerge at least strong enough to keep Mr. Vander Zalm constantly reminded that government is for ALL the people, not merely for the party faithful. Point system to blame for continued speeding Dear Editor: A.R. Griffin’s open letter to the Attorney General of B.C. in the August 8 edition of your newspaper was read with interest. Radar detectors are an answer to the continuing at- tack by the authorities to control speeding. Mr. Grif- fin must not become confused by thinking the police are at fault. All the police do is carry out their duty by attemp- ting to enforce the law as laid down by, in this case, the government of British Columbia. The police, in my opinion are trying to do a first class job of controlling speedsters. The irue lack of enforcement must be laid on the government, or bet- ter still one of the past governments, who introduced the points system for infractions of the law, par- ticularly speeding. The points system is not a deterrnt to motoring offences. One forgets the ticket, because it has no immediate impact on your pocket book and therefore our senses. When you get a bill from ICBC on your birthday for the points collected during the past year, it is difficult to relate cost to offence. What is required is a quick return to the immediate monetary penalty. This penalty must be tied in closely with inconvenience. By inconvenience the offender must appear before the courts to listen to the charge and receive the sentence. Pleading guilty, and paying the fine, without discomfort does not have the same impact. Inconve- nience can take many forms, loss of income or time, which very quickly drives home the point that speeding is not permitted. The quality and quantity of the fine must also be an immediate consideration. In my opinion the size of the fine must be in proportion to the excess over the speed limit. The cost of the system must be self sup- porting, in that all costs, judge, clerk of the court, recorder, cost of the courtoom, policeman’s time and the like must be recovered. To achieve this, the size of the fine must be of suf- ficient amount to make an immediate impact. My recommendation is that the fine, upon conviction, and without option to the judge, be established as the square of the excess over the speed limit. As an ex- ample a 16 kph (1Omph) excess over the speed limit would generate at $1 per kilometer a fine $256 (16 times 16). This coupled with inconvenience by having to ap- pear in court would quickly drive home the point that speeding is not permitted. Result, speeding would decrease together with other violations caused by moving vehicles and then we would become law abiding citizens as so desired by Mr. Griffin. John C. Downard North Vancouver SHOOT THE HERONS NEXT? Sea lion shooting ‘inept’ Dear Editor: The unfortunate and inept shooting of the sea Jion near the Cannery on Burrard Inlet, August 19, was perhaps a_ bureaucratic blunder. This animal had been seen sev- eral times, over the past two mon- ths, by regular seawall walkers, from around Capilano. sunning itself on the rocks at low tide of f Stanley Park. Probably the only thing it was sick of, was all the fish it had eaten the mouth of the Maybe next, our experts will decide to shoot the herons near the Rowing Club. because they look messy grovelling in the tidal mud. Why does our government re- quire inexperienced chowderheads for this type of work, when there are plenty of native Indians, quali- fied and infinitely more knowl- edgeable available? John Tweedy Vancouver Peter Speck Noet Wrcht Barrett Fisher Linda Stewart Publisher: Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Advertising Director Display Advertising 980-0511 Classified Advertising 986-6222 Newsroom 985-2131 Distribution 986-1337 Subscriptions 986-1337 North Share News, Lae fe ae yg tans Entre contents «: 1986 North Shore Free Press Ltd All nights reserved CIPATING FIGHTING AGAINST VANDER ZALM INTHE UPCOMING BC. ELECTION... LS > i MU Ge Ve IN f 2 Funes Cant te <0 NIG os RECENT BEAR INFLUX Don’t shoot the bears! OPEN LETTER TO District of North Vancouver This letter of protest is prompted by the killing of bears on the { North Shore. The general public can do much to alleviate the problem of nuisance bears by simply removing the temptation — the food that is attracting the bears. Mr. Bill Hazledine, regional conservation officer, suggests that homeowners securely contain garbage bins. Also, remove wild berry bushes from their property, and pick fruit before it attracts bears. Also, how about our own North Shore Conservation officers, hired on a temporary basis as the need arises? It would help the unemploy- ment situation for some. In this way the bears could be humanely tranquilized, or live-trapped, and relocated to their own environment. This outright destruction of bears and cubs is absolutely barbaric when they are simply doing what we all are — trying to eke out an ex- | istence. I stress ‘humanely’? tranquilized as I recall an incident when,]! feel, a conservation officer did not handle the tranquilizing humanely. He shot the tranquilizers into a female bear and her two cubs which were taking refuge at the top of an evergreen tree. They fell from the tree top to the ground and were then trucked away for relocation, but | what condition could they have been in after the fall? Perhaps there is a greater issue here; it appears that there is not enough food for the bears in their own environment. That being the case, what about providing food for them, much as hay drops are | made to elk and caribou in winters of heavy snowfall? Or, would it be feasible to enhance the berry crops in the moun- tains. Surely there must be solutions to this problem short of destroy- ing the bears. j And, to those people who panic at the sight of a wild animal, and feel that they must immediately telephone and report it to the authorities (who usually come and kill it), they should realize that the animal means them no harm, as long as they leave it alone and do not threaten or antagonize it. We are all God's creatures and, hopefully, we can all co-exist ¥ peacefully. D. de la Mare North Vancouver