The. decision of West Vancouver council to examine the“pros. and cons of having municipal garbage collection:.carried out by a private contractor is to be applauded.

in other North Ame municipalities (including. locally, Surrey and Delta) where garbage collection has been put into. the ‘hands of private contractors the results have been beneficial to all concerned.

ome service has been more efficient. Costs

the taxpayer have been slashed

dramatically. in some. cases by as much as 35%. At the same time, disposal company workers -- including former municipal garbage collection staff who switched -- have antly. more than - equivalent employees of city: ‘hall.

This, in itself, indicates that there is no reflection on the performance of individual municipal employees. It is simply a restatement of the fact that free enterprise -- subject to the healthy qsciptines of the _ market place -- can usually do a job better and. more economically than a bureaucrat- ically ran monopoly.

One added bonus has been the protection - .of the: public against strikes. This has been guaranteed through corporate profit-sharing programs by the contractor and municipal insurance against service disruption or termination in the form of $250, 000 per- formance bonds. _ There are other municipal fields in which the contract option might be worth exploring in the interests of everyone involved. West Van has not yet committed itself -- but it may be on the right track.

Moonstruck

A French scientist has suggested the erection of 76,900 square miles of mirrors on the moon to reflect the sun's rays back to the half of the earth in darkness at any given time. This, he says, would turn night into day -- saving power and permitting 24-hour work on farms and construction sites.

The kindest comment is that he may have hit on the idea during the night of the full

moon.

aA

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North Vancouver, B.C.

In Italy ‘there is a giant state-owned holding company called I.R.E. This mammoth conglomerate has the muscle to direct virtually every business enterprise in the nation, and the policies of I.R.E. are directed by a partnership of the bureaucrats and _ the politicians. Politics being

what they are in Italy, the:

bureaucrats have the dominant say. , I.R.E. is divided into

PEIER AND T WOULD LIKE YOu TO FEEL PART OF THIS:

WE SIGN THIS WHY DON'T YOU SIGN THIS!

divisions, -» Just national corporations. like IT&T, EXXON, or General | Motors. Organizations © charts show there are‘I.R.E. : Divisions “for steel-making, '

for the. “petrochemical | in-- dustry, for communications, _

for elec tronics, for manufacture,” for tran- sportation, for, ship-building, and just about every possible business enterprise.

ER.E. operates in part-

One thing can be said with some certainty about West Vancouver's MLA, Attorney General Allan Williams. He doesn’t believe in pampering his constituents. When you hold just about the safest Socred seat in the province, I guess you

don’t have to.

Pampering is one thing. Simple justice — Mr. Williams’ special dcpartment — is quite another. But there wasn't much of that, cither,

‘am the message he brought . last

Friday to clected representatives of nearly half the province’s population.

Assembled in West Vancouver for the mecting with the Attorney General hosted by West Van Mayor Derrick Humphreys were the mayors of Vancouver, New Westminster, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Delta, Victoria, Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Saanich, Central Saanich and Matsqui.

All £2 of these heavily populated urban municipalities (Matsqui itsclf is rapidly becoming a suburb of Greater Vancouver) have onc thing in common: they all run their own municipal police forces, instead of hiring the RCMP to do the job. And their taxpayers foot the entire bill.

Not so the other 50 per cent or so of B.C.'s property owners whose municipalitics settle for the Mounties as guardians of law and ordcr Until secently these latter communitics have enjoyed police protection at a discount price — as much as 25 per cent of more below

cost. In unorganized territory, smaller com- munities actually get the

Mounties for free. PARITY SOUGHT

For over two years the 12 “independent™ municipalit- ics have been pressing Mr. Williams, the province's chicf law enforcement of- ficer, for parity in police financing with the RCMP municipalities. In other words, for similar relicf from mecting the full bill, They got nowhere.

This year the feds in Ottawa — gloomily con- templating their $14 billion deficit — decided they must work out a less cxpensive RCMP deal with = the provinces. This gave Mr. Williams a further cxcuse to stall on the pleas of the

independents for parity financing. The new deal finally

struck this summer between Victoria and feds means the current year's discount to RCMP municipalities will be reduced to 19 per cent — with a further one per cent reduction in cach of the next nine years until it gets down to a mere 10 per cent by 1990.

Even so, that's still a healthy saving to taxpayers

‘like: ‘the = operations of monster multi’.

nership with a few very, yVarge °

privately owned companies... “like, for example, Olivetti, “but because of the corporate — “structure of I.R.E., and because of the system which

has developed in Italy, no.

private firm can operate without doing business with the government, or. government-controlled — co- mpanies. No company can survive without the cooperation of government. " This may sound like a pointless exercise in describing the Italian system, but that’s not the case. Consider the growth which has taken place in the Canadian Deviopment Corporation. The CDC is rapidly developing into the largest corporation § in Canada, with an extremely diversified line of interests. It is a potential tool for government control of the Canadian economy. | Earlier this year there was some evidence that our political masters had ideas for the CDC which went beyond the corporation's original mandate. The CDC was designed to operate profitably in. Canada, with shares widely distributed among Canadian cor- porations and private in- dividuals, and with no political interference.

focus

Noel Wright

in’ North Van, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey and other communitics where the Gendarmerie keeps the peace. Which is why the 12 independents invited Mr. Williams to theet them last week on his home turf and tell them at long last — the RCMP matter now having been settled for a decade — what he was prepared to do for them

He told them. Nothing Zilch No financial con sidcration would be afforded to municipalities with their own police forces

“CADILLAC POLICING

As Premier Bill Bennet put it when he fielded the

same question at a press

The. government owns 49 per cent.of CDC stock and is

_showing..no signs‘ ‘of wanting -to do as was originally

promised and sell that stock to ‘private investors. The

when. the: CBC. refused to bow to. ‘cabinet -wishes and invest in Massey-Ferguson. The government: got’ ‘caught with its fingers in’ the cookie jar when ‘it: ‘became public knowledge ‘that. the. top political powers in‘the land were trying to get Liberal businessman and. pal of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Maurice Strong, appointed as chairman of the CDC.

So scared of government intentions are Canadian

“investors that CDC stock has

been pushed far lower than it should be, given the holdings of the company.

The potential is there for the CDC to become the I.R.E. of Canada, exerting near total control on the Canadian economy. It’s a concept that many Ottawa bureaucrats find extremely positive. It’s a concept which excites some of the high- powered Liberal politicians into raptures.

It’s something that would ‘be frighteningly destructive for Canada.

nto your kennels, creatures!

conference earlier this year, municipalities that choose “Cadillac” type policing “should expect to pay the difference.”

I don't know whether the premier meant the Mounties are “Honda” type policing. But there's not a shred of evidence that they would cost a cent less in West Van, Vancouver, Victoria and the

other independent municipalities than the present municipal forces

cost.

Which means, of course, that those “Cadillac” communitics — by being bilked of the discount they would automatically reccive by switching to the RCMP — arc in effect, subsidizing other Canadian taxpayers out of the pockets of their local citizens.

That's patently unjust. And because municipalitics

are “‘creatures of = the province”, debarred from negotiating directly with

Ottawa, only Victoria can take any steps to remedy the inequity imposed on nearly half B.C,’s population by the RCMP deal with the other half.

One might expect At torncy General Williams. the provincial justice minister, to be the first to recognize that responsibility to his “creatures”. especially when they include his own constitucats.

Instead, he scems simply to have ordered them back into their kennels.