Becher-Hews 985-2131 (119) 985-2131 (147) Letters must include your name, ful address & telephone number. VIA Intemet: trenshaw @ direct.ca COMPUTER 885 - 980-8027 User (D:maiibox ¢ Password:letters North Shore Hews, founded in 1969 as an axependen Suburban ‘ewspaper and qualities under Schedde 111. Paragraph 111 of he Excise Tax Ad, is putished sah ‘Wednesday Friday and Sundtzy ty Hosth Shore Free Press Lat and destribured to every Goor ori the Nort Shore Canada Post Ganesan Publications Mad Sales Product Ageemat No 0087238, Maing rales avadale on request member. SR" Erdire contents © 1997 North Shore Free Press Ltd. Als rights reserved. CEI ARE URE Debt delusions ANGWAY, citizens! It’s budget time and Victoria’s zany band of NDP socialists are at the wheel. Danger at every turn. Dollars are fly- ing hither and yon. Too bad they’re all yours. Finance Minister Andrew Petter’s lat- est budget follows in the rip-roaring NDP tradition of fiscal fantasy and cco- nomic ineptitude established fast year in the now notorious budget surplus that became a budget deficit episode. For a start, forget the debt manage- ment plan: too complicated. Also too hard to deliver when you have no intention of managing the debt anyway. This year’s deficit is close to $400 million. In the 1997-98 fiscal year it is estimated to be another $185 mil- lion — pushing the province’s totai debt over the $30 billion mark for the first time in its history. Granted, there is a promised 2% income tax decrease that could save the average family $128 per year. But the new rage for fiscally chal- lenged governments everywhere is to dodge the deadly income tax increase bullet by jacking up service charges and user fees all over the map - such as ferry fares and fishing licences. All tolled, Victoria hopes to squeeze $168 million THE BC. BUDGET G Another appalling NDP appointment THE sheer eff-you snottiness of the Glen Clark government toward the despised mainstream, moderate majori- ty — ie., the non-socialist, non-NDP voters — has run right off the scale with the recent appointment of Mary-Woo Sims as B.C. human rights commis- sioner. Clark’s diluted Marxist apparatchiks must have sifted deep into many nights through every extre appli- cation in tke country to Had anyone with the par- ody of a leftist profile offered by Sins. BC. Report actually described Sims’ appoint- ment with understatement. But later Ian Mulgrew in the St pushed all the buttons in describing Sims as “rhe nightmare of every WASP Conservative who still rues the day when women got the vote: a leather-clad, rat-tail-sporting, motoreyele-riding lesbian ... in a stylish scarler jacket and ankle-cut cowboy boots. ... On her Honda Gold Wing, she’s a Nineties Marlon Brando in a politically correct remake of Te Wild One.” She is also, get this, born of a Chinese mother and Australian father and raised early in Hong Kong where, Mulgrew writes, other children avoided her because of her racial mixture. There was no native-born Canadian qualified for the job in this nation of 30 million people? Get off it. Think of how the Clarklings had to wring the demographics dry to come up with someone whe reflects point-ought-ought-ought three per cent of the people of this country — a mixed-race for- zign-born lesbian motorcyclist — to a job that by definition attends to the human rights of 100 per cent of the humans of Canada. Sims’ job record is, again, almost a parody of the lobbyist, activist, committee-member, round- table-attender, workshop-blah-blah-blah career leftist. And most of it of course involves anti-dis- crimination crusades, including her personal one against regional government in Ontario, (It would be a stretch to call her job record by the fancy title curriculion vitae, since she apparently hasn’t gore beyond grade school let alone had any formal legal education, read that again, 10 formal legal education tor what is clearly a quasi- judicial function.) Here is che classic example of why govern- ment, and especially this wretched New Democratic Party government, has fallen into dangerous — yes, dangerous — disrepute. Now, note this and underline it thrice, ve Clarknuts. Middle Canadians are large: hearted and large-minded enough to accept thar jobs shouldn’t be denied to peaple because they are members of minorities. Ther will never accept that jobs should be denied 1 people because they are members of the majorie. The real bigots here — and the real generators of inrolerance, which E think is indeed on the tise — are the reverse-prejudice crowd like the social engineers in Clark’s inner circle. By seeing society —~ and history — in the Fascist and Marxist ideological terms of group rights and interests over individual rights and interests, they are empowering the Joneses at the expense Gf suppressing Jones, the actual living, breathing, experiencing Jones. ‘The abstraction, the ideologically perceived, the collective Joneses, is mere important than the human being, Jones. ‘That is why Jones is so out of B.C. residents in higher fees and penalties. Well, how about reducing the size of government? Don’t count on it. Last year, the NDP promised to cut the gov- ernment payroll by 3,500 positions. As of March 1997, a grand total of 14 unionized civil servants had been put out to pasture. The NDP is so far out on the credibil- ity ledge now, that a few more budget whoppers will make litue difference. Too bad that one of the country’s most robust economies has to pay the price now. And that your children will have to pay it in the future. Get your guns back, Canada. Dear Editor: : As a former North Vancouver resident now living .in the United States, [am not at all surprised at all the recent gun violence. After all, gun control has been proven many times to increase vio- lent crime. It is so simple: you take guns away from honest law-abiding citizens, and the bad guys have no fear of their victims. cos 1 am proud to state that-as a pelice officer, in my state, law-abid-_ ing citizens can get a concealed- weapons permit. The: result: much, much lower violent crime. rate then ~ in Canada. Criminals fear the public. They may get shor! poe If Canadians would: just rethink there cherished “gun control” you |: would reaiize there is a much better way. : Mike Jenicken Colorado DSTEELE@orb.direct.ca - much more unhappy, angry, resentful, alienated - and absent from the political process than at any...’ time since the Reform Bill of 1832 (I have a long :;..- memory). us Unies, that is, Jones is a non-white lesbian motorcycle rider of politically correct racial back-".. ground whose one essential qualification is that: ..: she’s an NDP supporter and/or activist in areas: that the NDP relishes, encourages, funds, and’... uses as their farm teams. Then she has prospects: :- Encellent ones. : And have no doubt of this, reader: oa The David Stockell challenge in court of the -- legitimacy of the NDP election victory on the ground that the party knowingly and fraudulently misrepresented B.C.’s finances, and the long- creeping tribunal starting May 12 initiated by B.C.’s human rights apparatus concerning News . columnist Doug Collins, are no tritles. On trial is nothiag less than democracy in British Columbia. Each failure of thar test leads to great trouble ahead. 903 Meanwhile, [ suggest you attend a highly sip- nificant public hearing at West Vancouver Council Monday, April 7, regarding proposed upyrading of the Dundarave business block, 2428-2448 Marine Drive. West Vancouver's advisory design panel approved the plan, Council rejected it. The pro- posed renovanons would radically alter the pre- sent appearance and move the building’s north edge closer to the property line, narrowing the sidewalk, — The North Shore News believes strongly in freedom of speech and the right of ail sides in a debate ta be heard. The columnists published in the News present differing points of view, bur those views are not necessarily those of the newspaper itself: