” ® — Friday, Névember 22° 1991 — North Shore’ News

SMALL BUSINESS

SMALL BUSINESS AFTER THE.G.S.T.

NEWS VIEWPOINT

Halt logging

AYORS Murray Dykeman and

Mark Sager of North and West

Vancouver districts deserve sp- piause for their attempts to have logging in North Shore watershed areas stopped by the end of this year.

Unfortunately that applause was not forthcoming from cther members of the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s water cwamittee, who failed to support their effaxs:; logging in our watersheds will therefore likely continue to the end of 1992, according to ‘the committee’s rec- ommendztion to the GVRD board.

The recommendation comes despite in-

. creasing public pressure to halt watershed logging now, and appears to be based largely on revenues, specifically lost reve- nues to the GVRD.

According to GVRD figures, a halt in

logging local watersheds at the end of 1991 would cost the GVRD up to $4 million.

But surely the prime concern of the GVRD in its management of local water- sheds is water quality, not logging reve- nues.

The arguments for watershed logging — forest disease and insect control and fire prevention — no longer hold much water with the public.

The only evidence of the effects of wa- tershed fogging they see comes out of their water taps. And after heavy rains or dur- ing dry periods, that evidence is extremely unsayory: high turbidity and heavy chlo- rine tastes and smelis.

Logging local watersheds does not pro- tect local forests or local water quality. It should be stopped and it should be stop- ped now.

LETTER OF THE DAY

Language instruction not the issue

Dear Editor:

In reference to your article of Oct. 23 concerning enrolment overload at Dorothy Lynas School I would like to clarify one point. You list other possible options and include “changing the school from dual-stream French/English ... to an English-only school.”

Dorothy Lynas School has been designated a dual-track school

Publisher

Peter Speck

since at least 1986. For a consid- erable length of time before that North Vancouver District planners and school officials had been aware of plans for development in the Indian River area. To infer that the dual-track nature of the school is the problem is to mislead in the extreme.

The children living in that area have to be educated. The philoso-

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phy of School District 44 is to have students attend schools close to their homes. Classroom space is the urgent requirement, whether taught in French or English.

The need for permanent struc- tures housing classrooms is the issue. The language of teaching and learning is not.

Marsha Unheim North Vancouver

986-1937 North Shore

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Long wait ahead for the kind of gov t we want!

“DAMNED IF we do and damned if we don’t’? is a la- ment that must often occur to Brian Mulroney’s punch- drunk 15% government these days. To be fair, there’s

quite a bit of truth to it.

Mulroney is fond of boasting that the government’s job is to do the RIGHT thing for the country, even if it’s temporarily unpopular. On that basis he barged ahead from 1987 with three major policy decisions: free trade, the GST and Meech Lake — all three vigor- ously opposed by a majority of Canadians, including your faithful scribe,

There’s nothing wrong with the Mulroney theory provided you ARE right. In which case the voters will acknowledge at some future date that their elected ser- vants were smarter tan they were and will regret firing them so hastily — only to clect an even worse bunch in their place. As Brian knows, in politics anything is possible.

All the evidence continues to suggest free trade and the GST are likely to do Canada far more harm than good, and that Meech would have been a disaster. Somewhere down the rocky road ahead I suppose it’s just remotely possible that we'll realize what wise, farseeing moves they were —~ though three bucks on the 6/49 seems a safer bet.

But now, with an election ioom- ing next year, the Mulroneyites have landed in a still bigger mess ~— by panicking. Suddenly, the order from on high is: ‘‘Don’t go to the bathroom before consulting the public and getting a consensus on what you propose doing.”’

Hence Ottawa’s 1991 rash of travelling road shows throughout the land: the $27 million Spicer circuit; Joe Clark’s self-destruc- ting Castonguay-Dobbie commit- tee, seeking salvation for Canada in empty meeting halls; and hot on their heels Michael Wilson’s roving quiz-kids asking all and sundry how to make the country prosperous again.

Taday, alas, they’re being greeted with the most dangerous reaction of ail from a weary public —- a prolonged national yawn,

The truth is that we believe the government should heed every day what we DON’T want and stop doing it. It should automatically know what we DO want and pro- vide it efficiently without wasting our time. .

It’s too late, we’re saying, for government to dump its problems on US because it’s now running scared after years of ignorirg our beefs. We've too many pressing personal anxieties at the moment to write constitutions and eco- nomic blueprints, even if we know

JOE CLARK... constitutional

* quiz bringing yawns.

hew.

What we want, in short, is a government that makes Canada work for everybody ail the time by displeasing nobody any of the time. .

I’ve an idea we have along wait ahead! :

eae

WRAP-UP: Somcone (could it be North Shore Tourism?) is working hard to ensure the world doesn’t miss a single local visitor attrac- tion, as North Van's Lin Az- dington discovered on reading this “‘What's On’’ newspaper item: “Nude swim night, first Saturday each month 8;30-10 p.m. at William Griffin Pool, 851 West Queens Rd., North Vancouver. No nudist club membership need- ed. Ali welcome’’ — which she found in the Bellingham Echo! ...- Busy this weekend, like most. others, raising money for the North Van.Christmas Bureau is the “North Van Drinkers and Loose Change Seciety,”- acore, _ group of the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans Unit #45 who’ve donated thousands to the Bureau since {982 — and given suds ses- sions a good name doing so ... And today may already be too late for tickets to Willy and Mar--. tha Brueckel’s Symphony Dinner next Tuesday at the Ambleside Ian, but you can always try 929- 0101 — like right at this moment.

WRIGHT OR WRONG: Forget the past. No one ever became suc- cessful in it. ,

MICHAEL WILSON... asking everyone how to get rich.