4 - Wednesday, December 17, 1986 -

I HAVE A feeling that the

Forget Commission report
will be forgotten rather
quickly.

Too bad.

Canada’s 12-billion-a-year
unemployment insurance pro-
gram is a farce, and needs badly
to be revamped.

But it is clear the Tories are
scared stiff to even go near the
report with a 12-foot pole. (Sic)

There are more than a million
Canadians who are out of work
and certainly they need all the
help they can get. Yet UI isn’t the
solution. With every passing year
it becomes more and more a part
of the problem.

I collected Ul once, many
years ago—for a week between
jobs.

It was a thoroughly depressing
expcrience. Quite apart from the
inherently demeaning process
itself—tining up, cap in hand—to
whine for your bread, it was
psychologically bad.

That is, 1 felt like toser. Well, t
was. And if you feel like a loser
long enough, you become one.

But this was back in the late
°$0s. Typical of my generation, 1
had been raised on horror stories
about the Great Depression, and
had a fetish—still do—about
standing on my own two feet.

Times have changed. | don’t
know how often in the last few
years I've heard people brag
about their particular UI scam.
The measure of the change that
had occurred is that ‘‘going on
UI’? has become almost a chic
thing to do, at Jeast compared to
anything so humdrum as actually
working for your money.

As a matter of fact, { think
much of the prejudice aimed at

North Shore News

Bob Hunter

strictly personal ®

immigrants stems from their
general willingness to work hard
at almost anything.

Part of the general trend
toward Jaziness is the new al-
titude toward government as a
whole, or, more specifically, as a
hole. To rip off the government
via UI is cool, | have been told
by youngsters.

Although | should quickly add
that it is not just youngsters with
this attitude. A neighbor of mine,
a woman in her 30s, recently quit
her job in order to stay home and
play house.

She had figured out that when
she added up all the costs of
working, which included paying
for a babysitter during the day,
fuel, clothes, taxes, et cetera, she
would make more money by go-
ing on UL.

So she’s home now, being paid
by the government. | mean,
that’s swell for her, But, mean-
while, the national debt gets big-
ger, productivity drops, and,
perhaps worst of all in the long
run, 2 corrupting message goes
out to the rest of the
neighburhood.

The message is: Why work?

We all remember the fable
about the grasshopper and the
ants. Canadians are increasingly
going for the grasshopper option.
To hell with worrying about
tomorrow.

{ noticed about a month 2go
that a lad who lives down the
road was hanging out at home
during the days. | asked if he'd
been fired.

Nope. He just figured he
wasn’t getting paid enough, so he
quit to go on UI. This way he
gets to watch the tide come in
and go out. Again, courtesy of
the government.

When I offered him some work

around my place he looked at me
as though | was an idiot, Why
would he want to do that? Get-
ting by just fine, thanks.

It is all very well for the likes
of Jack Munro to dismiss the
Forget report for picking on the
victims of unemployment. And
certainly it is true that at the
other end of the soc'al and
cconomic scale, big companies
and the rich alike bitk the system
methodically by dodging taxes.

Why deny a working stiff the
joys of milking the Ottawa
porkbarrel too?

Maybe everybody should quit
working and go on a paid holiday
courtesy of UI for the rest of
their lives. | mean, that’s 2 moot
point.

But the harsh reality is, we
wouldn't last long as a viable
society.

UI is a bit like abortion. That
is, everybody insists that abortion
isn’t just a form of birth control
whereas, in fact, it is so easy to
get an abortion that women use it
as a retroactive form of birth
control routinely, and the hospi-
tals could care less.

Similarly, there is a myth that
UI is an answer to unemploy-
ment. It isn’t. lt actually causes
unemployment, first because it
offers a free lunch to the
slothful, second because it takes
everyone off the heok, starting
with the politicians who should
be doing something serious to
create jobs, but who don’t need
to because the boys and girls
back home are getting their UI,
after all.

UI's main function may simply
be to shut everyone up so we all
pretend there isn’t a problem.
And after a while, we’ll just
Forget (sic) it.

NEWS photo Terry Petors

STUDENTS from the Holy Trinity School choir, made up of children in grades one to three, kept Lonsdale
Quay shoppers entertained with their singing earlicr this month. About one dozen local choirs are expected
to perform at the Quay, until Dec. 22.

Police seek help in murder

NORTH VANCOUVER Police are
asking for public assistance in
discovering the murderer of a
young female, found beaten and
dumped in a North Shore creek
nearly five years ago.

Police are also seeking help to
identify the woman.

The woman is described as hav-
ing native Indian features, but
Caucasian skin color, medium
«brown, shoulder-length hair. Sheis

“about 20 to 30 years old, weighs

120 pounds and is approximately
5-feet tall.

Tne victim’s body was found
Feb. 18, 198! in a Lynn Creek
tributary, near Bridgeman Park.

She was wearing brown strap
clogs and blue jeans at the time.

An autopsy report indicated the
cause of death as drowning, and
revealed the woman had = given

‘caesarian birth more than a-year :

prior to her death.

She was last seen in Vancouver’s
Alcazar Hotel.

Anyone with information
relating to this crime is asked to

contact Crimestoppers at 669-TIPS.
Crimestoppers will pay up to .

$2,000 for information leading to
the arrests of an individual involv-

ed ina crime.
Callers do not have to reveal
their-identity or appear in.court. .

SUITES

NV DISTRICT ILLEGAL

Resident pleads
for eviction halt

A CRACKDOWN on illegal suites in the Lower Capilano

area came to a
McGuire Aven.

head Monday with an emotional plea from a
single-family

homeowner imploring

district council to put an immediate halt to evictions served
against the neighborhood’s illegal suite tenants.

“The situation is a monster. It's
a 50-headed snake,"’ said Richard
Hannesson,

Hannesson favors retention of
single-family zoning for the area.
But close friends living down the
street have been served with an end
of January eviction deadline.

“We don't want our homes
down-graded, but this should be
dealt with in a humane manner. If
you can’t police it properly, just
leave them alone. We don't want
to throw people out into the
streets,"’ he said.

The Lower Capilano Ratepayers
Association (LCRA) filed 25 of-
ficial complaints against illegal
suites during the summer in
response to district stipulations
that complaints be lodged before
any action is taken.

LCRA president George McCrae
said there were five additional
complaints from the area where 70
out of 210 homes are duplexes.

McCrae says various petitions
conducted by the association over
the past year and a half show the
majority of homeowners support
the retention and enforcement of
single-family zoning for the area.

“We only complained about
half of them. We weren’t trying to
nail everybody. We took only the
most obvious infractions,’’ Mc-
Crae said.

Of the complaints lodged to
date, McCrae says 14 stand as in-
complete investigations and 16 are
closed due to lack of sufficient
evidence. Five suites have been in-
dentified as illegal and were served

by MICHAEL BECKER
News Reporter

by
to

with compliance notification
the district. Three complied
single-family zoning regulations,
But two families still face evic-
tion in January according to Mc-
Crac. ‘‘Council has the difficulty
of living by the current bylaw or
devising a new one. It will affect
everyone living in the district.”’

‘ :

NORTH VANCOUVER District
alderman Ernie Crist...suite evic-
tions a ‘‘time bomb.”’

Calling the issue a ‘‘time
bomb,”’ Ald. Ernie Crist said
revision of existing policy would
mean rewriting the North Van-
couver community plan. ‘The
ramifications are enormous,”’ said
Crist.

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