4 ‘Terrace Review — Wednesday, March 23, 1988 OPINIONS Wrong target, folks The ‘howls of outrage emanating from Saturday’s meeting of the Kitimat-Stikine Regional Hospital District board, which took place only two blocks up the hill from this newspaper office, could be heard in here, but it’s doubtful they carried as far as Victoria. The issue was a substantial hike in regional property taxes to replace aging equipment in hospitals. The section 20(2) fund was doubled over the 1987 figure with a great deal of kicking and screaming on the part of Kitimat directors, who realize that Kitimat’s role in the revenue- producing aspect of the regional district is a substantial one. At the same time they perceive most of the hospital district funding being poured into Mills Mem- orial Hospital in Terrace. The real issue isn’t where the funds are going, but where they’re coming from. The Sec- tion 20(2) money was never in- tended for replacement of essen- Latter to the editor will be con- sidered for publication only when signed. Please include your telephone number. The editor reserves the right to condense and edit letters. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Terrace Review. Gu Terrace Review Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review is published each Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. Publisher: Mark Twyford ~~ Edltor . Michael Kelly . Staff Reporters: «Tod Strachan ": Charlynn Toews Advertising Sates: “... Marj Twyford —. Typesetting: _ Linda Copeland :». Production: oo Jim Hall, Alvin Stewart, * Arlene Wandl, Gurbax Gill, = Linda Mercer, Arlene Gaspar oe Office: Carrie Olson Accounting: > Marj Twyford, — . Rosemary McGettigan Second-class mall registration No. 6896. 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Phone: 635-7840 Pe os | One year subscriptions: In Canada $24.00 - Out of Ganeds $60.00 Sentore In Terrace and District $12.00 * Seniors out of Terrace and District $15.00 ae ’ illustration of a trend that’s been SOCRED LOM-NCONE HOUSING... tial equipment, but during re- cent years the Ministry of Health refusal to fund replacement costs has subtly shifted the burden of health care costs from Victoria to local tax bases, and this year’s massive increase in local taxes is simply a graphic around since the beginning: of restraint. Finance Minister Mel Couvel- ier will reveal the province’s 1988-89 budget tomorrow, and the health care system will prob- ably be one of. his primary targets for cost reduction measures. Last year’s budget was a maintenance effort for health, with an increase of about eight percent over the previous year. If it’s the same story this year, that will bea strong indica- i tion that the powers in the B.C. ; government either aren’t aware f° ous 0) Cau. continued on page 24 Coquihalla closet remains locked | for the bad terrain, that didn’t just appear overnight. It was there — Eager to fight what will probably have been his last political battle, Alex Fraser took his place in the B.C, Legislature last week, breaking months of silence. His silence hadn’t been by choice. Cancer of the throat had claimed his larynx, but with dogged determination, Fraser fought back. He learned to speak again, with the help of an electronic device. -Fraser’s appearance in the legislature after months of absence also wasn’t by choice. He had found himself the center of a controversy over the huge overruns the government had incurred in the construc- tion of the Coquihalla Highway. Hubert Beyer in Victoria Fraser had been fingered by the NDP as the prime suspect in con- nection with allegations that the government of the day had misled the legislature with regard to the true costs of the project during its construction. The opposition had succeeded in getting a motion on the floor of the House, asking that a special committee of the legislature be established to look into those allegations. The debate over whether or not Fraser had, indeed, misled the House was in its second day when Fraser stood up in his defence. The NDP was obviously uncomfortable at the thought of kicking a man when he’s down but did the best it could under the cir- . cumstances. If the NDP’s attack was somewhat reluctant, Fraser’s defence - certainly wasn’t. He spoke eloquently and with conviction. But he failed miserably at clearing the fog of confusion that surrounds the controversy if, indeed, he tried. Fraser blamed the overruns on a number of factors. Inflation, he said, accounted for much of the additional cost. Inflation and the forbidding terrain through which the highway was forged. _ Turning the tables on his accusers quite nicely, Fraser brought the Vancouver Sky Train overruns to the legislature’s attention. That project was originally estimated at $289 million and came in at $1 billion. ‘€ As the honorable members know, Sky Train was built on fairly level ground and under moderate weather conditions, compared to the Coquihalla Highway, which was built over mountain ranges in all types of weather,’ he said. And then he went on the attack. Everybody who took part in this ‘great project” should be congratulated for a job well done and should ‘feel proud of the part they played in the transportation history of our province,’’ Fraser said. As for the allegations that he had misled the legislature with regard to the true costs of the project, Fraser’s only defence was an emphatic denial. a “Mr, Speaker, I have never misled this House at any time in the eighteen and a half years | have been a member,” he said. And when he stated in the legislature in November 1985 that the highway would cost $375 million, he believed that to be the case, he added. And with that statement on the record in the legislature, the case of the NDP collapsed. There is no way the opposition can afford to pursue the matter any further. Pity. Closing the books on the Coquihalla scandal will not pro- vide taxpayers with any safeguards against similar disasters. When all is said and done, the important point was not whether Fraser ar anyone else misled the legislature, bad enough as that would have been. The really troubling question is how a government, which prides itself on fiscal expertise, could have mismanaged public funds that badly. 7 Being out half a billion on a project that was supposed to cost on- ly $375 million is more than inflation could possibly account for. As all the time the highway was being designed. a The truth is: the government of the day screwed up. It screwed up badly. The same government which always maintained the NDP couldn’t run a peanut stand, wasted half a billion dollars of the tax- payers’ money. . Unfortunately, the opposition has no tools left with which to pry open the closet that hides the Coquihalla skeletons. We will pro- bably never know why the gross cost overruns occurred. The op- position has been shut down. On the other hand, I can see election posters, showing a scenic - stretch of the Coquihalla overlaid in red with the figure $1 billion and a caption: NEVER AGAIN. , a It’s Not Enough 7 Give ’em an inch and they want a mile. Shocking. Last week government announced that it will clean up an abandoned mine at Mt. Washington on northern Vancouver Island. The ink on the government press release was hardly dry when the NDP came back with its own. Good move, the opposition said, but not enough by a long shot. The government should make the same commitment concerning, all abandoned mines in B.C. What do these people want? A clean environment or something? Give and Take Politics has its ups and downs. Just when the NDP was on a roll" last week, asking Education Minister Tony Brummet why the government was using taxpayers’ money for propaganda purposes, it was forced to retrench. It seems the government sent B.C. teachers a package of ‘‘infor- mation’, singing the praises of privatization. The NDP questioned the use of the teachers” mailing list and taxpayers’ money for such blatant propaganda.: Brummet, not to be outdone, told the legislature that was nothing. He remembered well receiving NDP requests for money in the mail, addressed to him in his capacity as a former teacher, Ad- ding insult to injury, those requests mentioned specifically that the funds would come in handy to defeat the Socred member for North Peace River; and that’s none other than Brummet himself. Those letters, according to Brummet, were also sent at taxpayers’ expense. Hallway Recycling There were some pretty lame excuses when confidential records from the B.C. social services ministry showed up in a hallway of an Ontario government building, but we're now assured that things could have been worse. Claude Richmond, our minister of social services, said last week that the records contained no list of child abusers. The minister said provincial governments, as a matter of policy, send each other ‘‘alerts whenever a family with a child at risk leaves one province for another,’’ The purpose of these alerts is to ask the other jurisdiction to contact the family’s social worker. Of Birds and Bees Could L interest you, perhaps, in a little dissertation on the sex life of the codling moth? No? Well, read on anyway. The little beggars are famous for ruining fruit crops in the Okanagan Valley, and to’ combat them, growers spend thousands of dollars every year. Enter the boys (and girls, 1 presume) from Agriculture Canada’s research station in Summerland. They've monkeyed around with the pests and come up with a sterile version. The sexually incompe- tent but not deactivated beasts are to be let loose to bring confusion to the breed’s biological reason d’etre. . But first, there’s to be a study on how best to release the sterile in- sects. To that end, the federal and provincial government have authorized the spending of $45,000, the °