e yg A2 - Sunday, January 1, 1984, - North Shore News . Strictly personal by Bob Hunter Welcome to 1984 I first read the book with those numbers on its title in the late 1950s. I read it because 1 thought it was science fietion. It was in fact the first political book I’d ever stumbled across. it seemed to me then that George Orwell was one of the finest writers in the English language, and that he had an incredible imagination. There was nothing about the book | could quibble with — except the title. that ° There was no denying that the bleak and hopeless world Orwell envisioned could hap- pen sometime in the future, but surely not until at least the next century! Innocent youth that I was; I didn’t know then that in the Communist dictatorships, ex- cept for a few technical details, 1984 had already ar- rived That counted, and still ‘more than half of rla’s population. The masses ‘in the totalitarian countries might not have tele- screens in their apartments monitoring even their heart- beats, relaying every detail of their behavior back to Big Brother, but in most other respects, they have no more freedom than the ‘‘proles’’ in Orwell’s Dark-Age-without- end. As for the ‘‘free world’’ to- day, well, how free ARE we? Obviously, except for a hand- ful of democracies, the rest of non-Communist humanity toils under the whip of military dictatorships, religious tyrannies;” tribal cabals, one-party oligarchies and racist regimes. Of the democracies them- selves, it has to be admitted that many of them are thinly- disguised police states that call themselves democratic merely to preserve the capitalist perogatives of a rul- ing elite. The actual functioning democracies can almost be counted on the fingers of both hands. Canada, ob- viously, is one of them — otherwise I wouldn’t be able EVEN SOCREDS AGREE Private Insurance t Do It Better. As a matter of fact, auto insurance to write about whether it was or it wasn’t without being hauled away and tortured. Yet even in Canada there is a dangerous drift in the direc- tion of oppression. I refer, of course, to Solicitor - General Robert Kaplan’s 800,000 personal in- formation files on Cana- dians, gathered by RCMP agents behaving suspiciously like Orwell’s Thought Police instead of just plain good cops. I refer as well to the 1,500 databanks which the federal government has in its posses- sion with confidential infor- mation on individuals. In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother was ubiquitous. In Canada’s 1984, Big Govern- ment is appallingly ubi- quitous too. We are probably the most overregulated socie- ty among the industralized nations. Of course, it is most- ly benign regulation but the _net effect is to make us less free every year. The~power of the Party in Orwell’s grim vision was bas- would probably cost you a lot more privatize ICBC stating that to the province — but were unable to identify any’ that retaining ICBC, “will ensure that general insurance is available to all people in the province and jobs are retained in the province.” if we lost ICBC. Ask questions. Get the facts. Find out who profits and who loses if we lose our public insurance corporation. Then let your MLA know that...ICBC is better for British Columbia. EMPiLOYE With public auto insurance B.C. premiums are among the lowest in Canada whereas 10 years ago under private insurers British Columbians paid the highest rates in the country. Private firms retum only 74¢ of every premium dollar in claim payments. ICBC is able to return 95¢. This means that last year you paid an average of $125 less than private insurance would have had to charge you. ICBC is a non-profit crown corporation which turns its capital and any surplus toward benefitting its customers and our provincial economy. ICBC is one of the great business success stories of this province. Even Socred MLA, Angus Ree, who is a member of the Committee on Crown Corporations and chairs the sub-committee on ICBC, admits ‘in essence they were effective and efficient?” North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce has opposed the move to , we looked for any benefits that would flow é oS They further claimed wl UN? O ed on absolute secrecy, falsification of the record, destruction of the truth. The parallel in Canada today is the fact that provincial and | federal cabinets routinely hand down their edicts in the unchallengeable form of | orders-in-council that are passed behind closed doors. Ottawa uses the mentally handicapped td shred tons and tens of documents and hires public relations firms to spout glitzy gibberish. A fairly recent study of Orwell’s book showed that of 137 specific ‘‘predictions’’ he made, at least 100 had already come true. In his bureaucratic essence, ~ Big Brother looms larger in Canadian society than ever. This is a very good year to dwell on the degree to which our. freedoms have been erod- ed, because the truth is, no matter how much we con- gratulate ourselves on our relative liberty, it grows more relative every day. Welcome, again, to 1984. And good luck. N Se < Nek sat ne * detalis contact the: Humanities Division, _ Seet9tt, oral 502. | THERE ARE STILL ae