Ontario is

THE NEXT provincial gov- ernment to face its moment ‘of destiny is Gntario’s NDP regime, which has to call an election within a year.

Bob Rae, the pale, ghost-like premier, seems to drift, rather than walk, through the air these days. It's fike his sovl has started to leave his bedy.

The polis show his party holding 17% of the vote. That’s where they bottomed a couple of years ago, and that’s where they've been grounded ever since.

Yet Rae himself has the aura of someone who has learned the trick of levitating. Listening to him, you'd swear he was right on course, that he had figured it all oui by Dead Reckoning, and that he was fully in control.

He has to be given some kind of credit for sheer endurance. This most ethereal of premiers has man- aged, during a turbulent first term in office, to keep smiling, despite gaffes galore by his accident-prone team, and not a few of his own.

. _ Turned loose on a piano at a

. fundraiser a little while ago, he

. played With A Little Help From My Friends, after about his dozenth cabinet minister had to resign.

‘A dour specialist with a sense of humor? No weirder than a deficit- fighting left-winger, I guess. It is the ‘90s.

. . While enacting very pro-labor

_ legislation, limiting the use of seabs, for instance, Rae out-Toried the Tories when it came to cutbacks and downsizing. He freely admits

“that it must seem like his brain has been transplanted.

-He pushed through a so-called social contract that flayed so much fat off the provincial civil service that each government employee had to'take a day off without pay. Either that or there would be mass sack-

, ings. Such days are known throughout ’ the province as Rae Days, and woe “be to the citizen or reporter who | tries to get through to a provincial- level bureaucrat who doesn’t want

STRICTLY PERSONAL

to be gotten through to any more.

Bob Rae himself has the aura this fail of John Paul I, the September Pope, the liberal sweet- heart who only lasted a month.

Unlike poor old John Paul, Premier Bob is chipper, feisty, even pugnacious.

He has pounded his chest and howled a few times. He gives the impression, good grief, of actually enjoying being premier.

Part of this is simply the royal jelly effect that all the stroking and being saluted by obsequious staff produces. It is a minor form of the experience of Godhood.

Part of getting to play God is making sure you appear humble, of course, but a modern provincial premier in Canada enjoys all the trappings of the lifestyle of a seri- ous desert potentate, starting with a small army of flunkies, fixers, spin doctors, plus actual goon squads.

Of course Bob Rae is enjoying his jcb. Big surprise!

It’s a good job if you can get it, being premier, so long as you can take the interminable meetings, power struggles and head games in your stride, and all the yassa-massa stuff.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Tory party is a good 10 pnints ahead of

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the provincial NDP, and the Liberals are way up in the high 40s, which is making for lively nomina- tion battles between various Grits.

In the riding of Scarborough East, a Liberal lady of long stand- ing in the party beat back an attempt to stack a meeting with newly-arrived immigrants, most of whom spoke neither English nor French, by having a team of inter- preters ready to talk to them in Mandarin or Somali or a Nigerian dialect, whatever, with literature in every imaginable language already prepared, convincing them to join her side.

It worked. But that’s how rough the Liberals are playing in their eagerness to vault into virtually guaranteed government posts.

The Tories have begun their nomination process too, but so far haven't sparked quite as much com- petition. They call themselves “Mike Harris’ Tones.”

They’ ve dropped the word “Conservative” from all their litera- ture, posters, propaganda. Mulroney? Never heard of him.

In stark contrast, although in keeping with the strangely serene spirit of their leader, the Ontario New Democrats seem hardly to have stirred themselves yet.

One theory is that most of the elected members plan to run again anyway, few of them having any other obvious job prospects, so there’s not much need to rush about fighting for nominations.

Party membership is down, and the union stalwarts who usually do all the dirty johs during a campaign are still pouting over the social con- tract, whereby Rue basically slam- dunked the collective bargaining process, and forced a top-down solution on the brothers and sisters. Who's going to knock on the doors? Who's going to put up the signs?

There is a palpable air of defeat along the corridors of power in NDP Ontario. Frienc's of the party are being rewarded with a flurry of patronage postings and appoint- ments and contracts and jobs.

Advisers have been offered their

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chances to switch (o the civil ser- vice side in order to have jobs after the election, which will probably be called for the spring.

Rae, according to his small but loyal bank of followers, has merely done what had to be done — that is, take the party off in a new political direction entirely. And if this has burned out traditional support, it just might translate into a new, up- to-date constituency, a hybrid breed of post-Yuppic necconservative socialists. Yikes!

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DEVELOPMENT VARIANCE PERMIT APPLICATION

OTICE is hereby given by the City of North Vancouver, pursuant to Section 980 of the

Municipal Act of British Columbia, that a Public Meeting will be held on-MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1994 at 7:30 p.m., in the Council Chamber, City Hall, 141 West 14th Street, North Vancouver, B.C., to receive representations in connection with following:

DEVELOPMENT VARIANCE PERMIT NO. 48 ‘

ARTIAN CONSTRUCTION has applied for a Development Variance Permit with respect to property | legally described as Lot 15, Block 132, D.L. 274, Plan 878,as indicated in hatched pattern onthe map | below, and located at 155 Zast 4th:Street, to permit the provisions of the “City of North Vancouver Zoning Bylaw, 1967, No. 3778” to be varied as follows: ¢ Section 532(2)(a) — to permit:

- 2 3.04m (10 feet) front lot line setback;

-a 1,.22m (4 feet) rear Jot line setback;

-.a 1.22m (4 feet) interior lot line setback for the south building

-a 1.22m (4 feet) westerly interior lot line setback, and

- a 3.65m (12 feet) easterly interior lot line setback for the north building

Section 510(2) (a) and (b) ~ to permit: - living and other habitable room windows 10 be 7.3m (24 feet) from an opposite building, to permit the development of a five unit residential townhouse project.

ST. GEORGE’S AVE.

A LL PERSONS who believe that their interest in property is affected by the proposed Development Variance Permit shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard — in person, by attorney or by petition. The proposed Permit and relevant background documents may be inspected at the office of the City Clerk between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.in., Monday to Friday, from September 19 to

October 3, 1994, except Statutory Holidays.

Sandra E. Dowey—Deputy City Clerk