4 - Friday, March 19, 1993 ~ North Shore News

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Trevor Leuterns

GARDEN OF BIASES VICIOUS SLANDERS fly through the air.

For example, some people believe, based merely on the fact that I lightly refer to them as the New Grinchocrats and haven’t had a good word to say about them for 20 years, that | hate New Democrats.

Not true. Anyway, I don’t hate all of them. The fact is that I'd rather stretch my biases in two hours of yarning with a New

, Democrat than let them go slack in an evening of head-nodding with people who think more or less as t do at the Drones’ Club.

Tuke David Schreck. i spent exactly that length of time -—- two hours — jawing back and forth with Schreck recently. And | liked hit inumensely.

, Schreck is of course the New Democrat member of the B.C. legislature for North Vancouver- Lonsdale.

And residents of that riding should rejoice that they are repre- sented by an MLA of such wit and intelligence. i

Of course ne politician can be déscribed as having wit and in- telligence unless he has some fairly detached, independent: views on his own party and of himself.

Fairly detached, You can't ex- pect disloyalty or naked front- — stabbing.

An unbranded maverick turns ° up in politics only about once a generation — like Chuck Cook, the late: member of parliament for

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North Vancouver, who embar- rassed the Conservatives because he was actually a conservative.

Whatever their gifts and virtues, Mary Collins, Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, least of all Kim Camp- bell, and countless others are definitely not conservatives,

They run gabbling with the rest of the nation’s ‘‘iberal’’ sub- intellectual elite in the bureaucra- cy, academe, and the media.

In contrast Cook proved the old adage which I've just made up: all the real mavericks are conser- vatives.

David Schreck, although a smil- ing and mild-mannered man hampered by being a bit too soft of hand and pink of skin, also has a touch of the outsider about him.

He lacks the crazed misconcep- tion that his career and today's burning issue are the most impor- tant things in the world — the lack of a scuse of proportion that creates big reputations in politics and journalism.

A small example. Schreck — Dr. Schreck, as he rightly could be called with his PhD — rejects the suggestion that his extensive experience, including 9% years managing the huge health insurer CU&C, should have automatically given him a cabinet post.

It’s plain that a lot of sincerely fifth-rate people have one in the Mike Harcourt government,

On that point: ‘1 think a whole lot of myself," he smiled, display- ing a most welcome candor, ‘and felt that } had a superb background. ... I learned very quickly that being an effective politician is a whole other school to learn.’”

(t's an entirely different experi- ence from being a top ad- ministrator, He'd run the Van- couver human resources board — about a quarter of the ministry of human resources when the minister was a man you may remember, Bill Vander Zalm.

He described himself as ‘‘a rag--

ing egomaniac’’ — there’s that self-deprecating honesty again — but “if egomaniacs think that they are more important than what we're working on together (as. government), then they’re in the wrong job."

Not that he’s merely hanging around the legislature and the

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Schreck chairs the legislature's health and social services commit- tee, and serves on the cabinet comtnittee on legislation and regu- lation, on the commission on parliamentary reform, and on the powerful! public accounts commit- tee — graciously, he praised the chairmanship of that committee of Fred Gingell, the new leader of the Opposition.

Schreck is also deputy house leader.

“So | can’t complain that my talents are wasted.’”

As one of the two-thirds of the MLAs who were rookies after the 1991 election, Schreck, who turns 46 next month, is fascinated by the exercise of learning politics.

He especially likes knocking on. doors. :

“It’s one of the things { find really important about working in the constituency.

“*There’s nothing like going door-to-door to take the hot air out of the balloon and get back down to what the job’s all about.’’

Spending too much time in Vic- toria tends to. make one ‘start thinking of oneself as a big shor or becoming a captive of the bu- reaucracy."’

A couple of months ago he let a large cat out of the bag when he revealed that 50 emplovees of the North Vancouver schol board

were enjoying total compensation of $90,000 or more a year.

. The board scveamed that that included benefits, screamed this, screamed that.

“They're trying to muddy the waters,"’ Schreck told me after the debate had gone on for weeks.

“And | didn’t back off one inch.”

As an old hand at CEQ-ing, he knows that the division between salary and benefits is arbitrary.

A revelation here: privately, he was told that the board struck a rich contract with the teachers (and in effect used it as the basis for their own administrators’ raises), confident that the com- pensation stabilization commis- sioner would roll it back. That didn’t happen.

The argument that other boards do something similar also doesn’t impress Schreck: ‘That doesn’t get them off the hook.’’ Managers should manage. Simple as that.

tasked about the proposed redevelopment of Lower Lons- dale, which | look upon with dark suspicion.

A municipal matter, he pointed out — fine if it preserves heritage buildings.

He and his wife, Vancouver School Board biology and science teacher Angie Burgess, themselves live in a pre-First World War heritage house on Windsor.

“There are also places like this

Anti-racism workshop scheduled

A ONE-DAY workshop, “Anti- racism: , Community Strategy,” will be held on Saturday, March 20, at secCentre Delbrook, 600 Queens Rd., North Vancouver, The event is being sponsored by the’ North Shore Multicultural Society. / The works hop will involve a

_morning purtel discussion on the , Nature and causes of racism.

§n the afternoon, a smail-group discussion called, An Anti-Racism

Strategy for the Community, will address issues concerning legislative redress, public education and community. responses to rac- ism.

The workshop will be held at the recCentre’s Cedar Room (north building) from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. |

Cost is $15 and includes lunch. To register, call 988-7115 (Local 75) or 583-4136,

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reck keeping sense of proportion

dump that used to be a restau- rant’? — at 3rd and Lonsdale — and “‘everybody in the neighbor- hood would give a badge to be the first person that bulldozes that, and puts anything livable on it.” A nice wit and a nice man. And yet he’s a New Democrat. Puzzl-

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