PS < NEWS VEWPOINT $s wk x & ete SE é Parental liability Wild youth parties in West and North Vancouver -- in one recent case with thousands of dollars in property damage and injuries to police officers -- raise pertinent ‘questions about responsibility in law. If'someone fs accidentally injured on your property, it is you, the property-owner, who is held legally responsible. If your car causes injury, death or damage, you are again held liable. Likewise when your dog bites the letter .carrier. If a swimmer diving off a municipality-owned float breaks his neck, the mux y is sued and censored. - It’s only with the kids that the principle of responsibility in law doesn’t seem to work. Punishment by the courts is traditionally mild, ranging in most cases from probation toa period of community work. Since young offenders ‘have no money of their own, restitution for damage or injuries they cause is normally. out of the question. : hat about the parents? Until their . ehildren reach the legal majority age of 19, ““gren’t they at least as responsible for their offspring-as they are, in-law, for their car, | their™cantankerous German Shepherd or their slippery porch steps? If parents faced the possibility of being hauled into court alongside their errant teenagers -- to face criminal charges or civil actions for the latters’ misdemeanors -- is it possible that youthful mayhem and van- dalism might rapidly begin to diminish? Interesting food for thought about a problem on which drastic action of some kind may eventually have to be taken. Enrichment... People addicted to the use of four-letter words often suffer from an extremely limited vocabulary -- but help is on the way. A U.S. professor has just completed a scholarly “Dictionary of Oaths, Curses, Insults, Sexual Slang, Racial Slurs, Drug Talk, Homosexual Lingo and Related Matters”. It contains some 17,500 words and 40,000 definitions. Hardly the ideal Christmas gift for Aunt Harriet, “but at least it may help the four- letter brigade become a little less boring! ‘sunday news north shore news NEWS 985-2131 1139 Lonsdale Ave North Vancouver B C V7M 2H4 (604) 985-2131 ADVERTISING CLASSIFIED CIRCULATION 980-0511 986-6222 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Editor-in-Chief Advertising Director Robert Graham Noel Wright Enc Cardwell Classified Manager Creative Production & Office Administrator Olrector Rick Stonehouse Bernt Hilliard Tim Francis ; Faye McCrae Managing Editor Andy Fraser News Editor Chris Uoyd Photography Elisworth Dickson Accounting Supervisor Barbara Keen North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent Commun ty newspaper and qualified under Schedule MW Part Ill Paragrapt: ill ot the Excise Tax Act. is puDlisned each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid and distrityled to every door on the North Shore Second Class Mat Registration Number 3665 Gubscriptions $20 per year Entire contents “© 1980 North Shore Free Press Ltd All rights reserved No responsibilty ac cepted tye betty, manuscripts and pictures which shout be scCOompamoed by oo stamped, addressed return envalope for unpoltiited matertal VERIFIED CIRCULATION 60,870 Wednesday 49,913 Sunday coy SN VF teens? THIS PAPER is RECYCLABLE A) Jo more By W. ROGER WORTH Here we go again. Less than six months after Ottawa approved $200 million worth of support for ailing Chrysler Corp., the federal govern- ment is now considering using taxpayer dollars to prop up farm machinery manufacturer Massey-Fer- guson. And the silence from Canada's corporate elite, who so solidly back the “free ‘ enterprise” ethic when they complain about government interference in the private sector, is deafening. That ethic: companies that can’t pay their bills should be allowed to fall. Even the banke.s who are so quick to act whe. a small or medium-sized business is in trouble are standing mute, perhaps because one . major chartered bank is also feeling the pinch after ex- tending too much credit to _Massey. ~The simple fact is that Masséy doesn’t deserve government support from hard-pressed Canadian taxpayers. The company’s troubles can be traced to. gross mismanagement at the highest levels over a long, long period of time. To add insult to injury, Massey is a Canadian J.H.SMITH handou s, p ease = company in name only. Fewer than 6,000 of the firm’s 40,000 or so world employees work in this country. While the big farm machinery manufacturer has been expanding in- ternationally, it has done little to produce more jobs in Canada. Meanwhile, Canadian farmers purchase a full 86% of their machinery from other countries, generally at high prices. To re-iterate our position before the Chrysler aid was approved: Ottawa should not be in the business of bailing out losers - the free en- terprise system should be allowed to work. A rising number of in- dependent firms have been forced to accept the standing rule that only the fittest will survive. It's time big businesses such as Massey and Chrysler called a halt to begging and played by the same ru_ss. Roger Worth is Director, Public Affairs. Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Coyotes eyeing the henhouse A peaceful week spent on a Cariboo ranch — contemplating the rhythmic march of Nature from one season to the next and the mastery with which the men anc women of the Big Country handle her thousanc little tricks along the way — brings the gut realities of life into proper per- spective. Especially when a daily newspaper means an 18-mile round trip over a dirt road; and a surfeit of fresh air and fine farm food sends one happily to bed long before the CBC’s 11 p.m. National. Up there they don’t bother much about the constitution. The after-supper talk is of the important things closest to home. The price of hay — and whether the sun will shine long enough to cut and dry the last remainder of it before the Hallowe'en snow. How many of the range catule will be recovered in the fall round-up? When can the pigs be turned loose into the remnants of the vegetable garden to economize on feed? So it’s hardly surprising. perhaps, that the city slicker returns to the media fleshpots of the metropolis with political realities — the things in the current political scene that are important closest to home — also in much sharpor focus HEAVY THREAT For this meotally refreshed city shcker there's Now no doubt whatsocver about the most vitally tm- portant issue of all for British Columbians at the present moment, as Canada waits for Emperor Pierre to drop the other shoc its the heavy threat of the federal government to impose an export tax on B.C. natural gas. If you think that sounds like a dull, difficult’ and remote subject” for the average wage-carner and housewife to add to all their other day-to-day worries, pray think again. And fast You may have very little time left before you receive a nasty jolt in your personal pocketbook. If the tax is, in fact, imposed by Ottawa, it will likely form part of the federal budget expected to be brought down later this month. The mathematics of the proposition are quite simple. Natural gas is one of B.C.'s major resources. We have so much of it that we presently export large amounts to the United States. The dollars camed from these sales make an important con- tribution to the cost of B.C government services for the citizens of the province — such as hospitals, medicare. denticare, education, pension supplements § and other social services. 8500 SURCHARGE The federal tax on gas exports which ts being contemplated could amount, in the very near future, to as much as $500 million a year Vhat’s around 11 percent of the BC government's total annual spending of about $4 5 bilhon How would you feel about your Big Brother suddenly scizing 11 per cent of your income? focus Noel Wright There are a_ couple of other ways of looking at it. A gas cxport tax of $500 million a ycar would be equivalent to an income tax surcharge of more than $500 a year for every B.C tax- payer. Putting it more realistically, the loss of revenue to the provincial budget would probably necessitate the immediate doubling of the provincial sales tax from four to cight per cent. Por oa family with an annual income of $20,000 the doubling of the sales tax could well cost an = cxtra $300-$400 ao year in hard over-the-counter cash alone — and that's not all. Even with an cight per cent sales tax it seems likely that certain government services (possibly denticare) would also have to be cut, leading to further demands on private B.C. wallets. This ts why the mooted gas export tax is not just a wrangle between two levels of government. It's of direct and immediate personal concern to you and me as individual British Colum- bians. Mr. Trudeau's government is in hock to the tune of over $14 billion a. yeax. and is desperate for money to reduce that deficit. In relatively prosperous British Columbia, with its budget surplus, Ottawa sees a henhouse just waiting to be raided — but in a devious, roundabout manner. MASSIVE PETITION The British North America Act, which Mr. Trudeau is aching to get his unilateral hands on, clearly specifies that all B.C.'s natural resources belong to the province, with revenues to be used for the benefit of B.C. people. A federal gas export tax would, in effect, negate these constitutional guarantees by levying 4A disguised and discriminatory form of supplementary income tax on every B.C. * resident. Meanwhile, if the idea of supplementary income (ax doesn’t appeal to you, North Van-Burnaby MP Chuck Cook and a group of other B.C. MP's are presently organizing a massive petition to the prime minister against any attempt to impose the tax. You can get copies of the petition form by calling 986-5381 -- but you'd better hurry. Signed petitions have to be returned to Mr. Cook in Ottawa before October 15. Make no mistake, the endangered henhouse this time is your own take-home pay. Up in the Cariboo they don't fool around with 8 threat so close to home. When the coyotes howl nearby, they grab their hunting rifle and get out into the barnyard