6 - Wednesday, June 24, 1985 - North Shore News Fiditorial Page Morals and law i Normer prime minister Trudeau held that government has no place in the edrooms of the nation. His point was that law-making should be concerned with civic duties and rights, crime and punishment, but NOT morality -- because, i ina democracy, one person’s morali- ty is ‘another person’s God-given liberty. North Van City council might be wise to con- uote sider Mr. ‘Trudeau’s warning when deciding _ what to do about escort services. Prostitution may be the latters’ real business, but prostitution in itself is NOT il- legal in Canada. Provided the premises of such firms are not used as bawdy houses and their employees don’t solicit in public places, they are presumably breaking no law. It could even be argued that they are assisting the law, whose primary concern (as oe in the case of the West End) fs to eliminate the co public nuisance and hazards associated with an the trade. In many ways, escort services are already akin to the ‘’cottage industry’’ con- -cept of prostitution recommended in the re- cent Fraser Report to Parliament. punitive business liceuce fees for such opera- tions are clearly discriminatory, as well as lay- ing councils open to the charge of pimping. However repugnant morally to many peo- ~ple, the. age-old selling of.sex for money is . : unlikely. ever to. be eliminated. Unlike sexual _ abuse, alcoho! abuse and drug abuse, it does othe, public. interest. And governments attemp- : ; Create more. problems than they ‘solve. more and more worthy causes grows fiercer. Typical is the cuvrent Eagles’ lottery to help buy au ultrasonic aspirator for ’ LGH. With only: three. days left, sales have lagged because. they’ve been crowded out of _ shopping malls by competing fund drives. Maybe the eventual answer is a North Shore . “United Way’ with all local service clubs “ pooling their appeals. Meanwhile if you want * to help the Eagles out and attend their draw . dance this Saturday, call 929-2877 or contact North Van RCMP. T= war for the charity dollar between wameumesmemeen olsplay Advertising 980-0511 forth shore . Circutation © 986-1337 - Subscriptions 985-2131 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 " ‘ ; : Publisher Peter Speck an , Generat Manager Roger McAlee Operations Manager Berni Hilliard Marketing Director Advertising Director - Sales Bob Graham * Dave Jenneson Circulation Director Advertising Director - Admin. Bill McGown Mike Goodsell Production Director Editor-in-Chief Chris J. snson Noe? Wright Photography Manager Classified Manager Terry Peters Val Stephenson North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent suburban newspaper and qualitied under Schedule tl), Part 111, Paragraph JI 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, Second Class Mail Registration Number 3885. Entire contents © 1985 North Shore Free Press Ltd. All rights reserved. Subscriptions, North and West Vancouver. $25 per year. Mailing rates available on request. No responsibility accepted for unsolicited material including Manuscripts and pictures which should be accompanied by a slamped. addressed envelope. an Member of the B.C. Press Council 56,245 (average, Wednesday Friday & Sunday) rn . SOA oar THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE Moreover, if escort services break no law, . “not'——' when conducted ‘in private-endanger . . ting to legislate private morality invariably : The charity war Classified Advertising 986-6222 . - Newsroom 985-2131" Time to try a few bums? IN HIS HOUR OF DEFEAT by Ontario’s new PC Liberal-NDP coalition after only 138 days as = |. ; premier, Frank. Miller may have left us: lastingly . ‘indebted to him. Not for what he achieved in his. brief reign at Queen’s Park, ‘which politically speaking was ziich, but for a lesson he’s left us about what’s wrong with Canadian politicians today -- and how, possibly, to improve the breed. The lesson is that open, Straight-talking, fun-loving guys finish tast in the politi- cal arena. All due to ideal- istic voters and the sensa- tion-hungry media. Mr. Miller, as you may have read, is a down-home Muskoka businessman who tates straight ‘A’s as an open; straight-talking, fun- loving guy fond of loud plaid jackets. In his four cabinet posts under former premier Bill Davis he prided himself on speaking his mind and having a special rela- tionship with the Fourth Estate. So it was charac- teristic that he delivered his lesson to the nation the other day in a free-wheeling inter- view with Kaye Fulton of Southam News. LETTER OF THE DAY Park & Dear Editor: I am handwriting this let- ter as there is insufficient vitriol in the typewriter rib- bon to vent my spleen on some members of North Vancouver City’s council and its planning director. The current furore over the zoning issue of the Park & Tilford site appears, due to personal’ grievances, to have reached a nadir in those planning values which are spposed to acrue to the public benefit. Ignorance of the public needs by an elected official is Four and a half months after being chosen to head Ontario’s seemingly in- destructible Tory Party, the man who led it to its first defeat in.42 years summed up his performance in three short words: “I’m a bum,”” Right away you have to start loving a politician who says that. Having acknowl- edged where the buck stops, Frank then offered the in- terviewer his own version of the catastrophe. How he’d tried bo modify his style after winning: the Tory leadership race last January. How he figured he couldn't, as leader, be quite the same jocular, easygoing fellow he'd been as a mere minister. And how the media wouldn’t. buy the new, sanitized,. more cautious Miller, so ganged up on him instead. “Why do politicians clam up?" he asked sadly, citing Bill Davis and Mulroney. Because it works, he replied to his own question. “There's no room to be yourself because there's always someone willing to use it against you ... Therefore. you go back to the ‘biand works’. It takes all the fun out of it for me. Indeed, now | know why politicians for years have learned to say something without saying anything at Tilford mall plan forgivable and able to be appropriately corrected by the electorate. Deliberate delay and obfuscation by appointed officials is un- forgivable and difficult to correct, but not impossible. The statement in council meeting June 17 by Mr. Morris ‘that council should not consider rescinding the previous directive on the basis that the, rezoning would be approved in four months, because it will not happen in four months, im- plies deliberate delay. It is blatant arrogance in the face of the unemployed of all categories who live on the North Shore. The issue of preserving the Park & Tilford Gardens is honest and sufficiently im- portant to warrant special consideration, because it makes good business sense. Tourism. 300,000 visitors per year. By his stultifying, sonorous and supercilious delivery Mr. Morris would have this little cocoon of North Vancouver City re- main just that and to hell with tourist attractions and decreasing the unemployed ros by some 2,000 souls. all”: Toa, Humor, éven “self. deprecating, he found equal- ly fatal in the top job. ‘“{It) is seized upon as an indica- tion of lack’ of depth or care - or concern.’ The message I. somehow get from Mr. Miller ‘is that the real trouble starts with us, the voters. We want our politicians to be! just too perfect. We want-them_never to make a single mistake. Never 1 - to cost’ us money): Never to lack the solution to any pro- blem. Never to hesitate over decisions. Never to: change their minds. And never to’ laugh at themselves (it makes us nervous), © | In short, we want. ‘them never to be human and we encourage our media wat- chdogs to pounce pitilessly when they show the slightest backsliding in that direction. As a result, we mostly wind up -- totally dissatisfied -- with exactly the kind of poli- ticlans we deserve. The country might be in far better shape with a few happy, talkative, _ human bums like Frank Miller in charge. At least they’d make suffering fun. af « g job-rich The proposed develop- ment would employ ten: times as many people as would a manufacturing in- dustry, More people work- ing, visiting and spending as consumers means more taxes? Come now, lady and gentlemen, why not remove the negative attitude, most patently obvious at the council meeting, towards such a positive, thoughtful and job-rich proposal by rescinding the Feb. 25th 1985 directive? David Wild North Vancouver