AG Terrace Review — Wednesday, August 29, 1990 _ A boycott to end them all set It’s difficult to tell from here how ill-informed the European. Greens are about forest management and practices in Canada, . but if they’ve decided to launch a boycott of our forest pro- ducts information and facts are probably irrelevant. © - -. - Boycotts by nature have become a pastime that costs the boycotter little and buys in retum a feeling of vast moral rectitude. Whether the impact of the boycott is beneficial or even resembles the planned outcome counts for little compared to that warm, runny feeling of having Done the Right Thing. A prime case in point is the previous, European-based action against Canadian fur products that took such a devastating toll in the remote areas of the country. A proposal now to smarten up the woods industry shows an ironic sense of order: trappers S0 FAR WE HAVE NO ACCURATE NUMBERS ON CASUALTIES FROM IRAQS INVASION OF KUWAIT... HOWEVER, WE ESTIMATE AT LEAST 63 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN BORED 10 - DEATH BY OUR PANEL OF. INTER- NATIONAL EXPERTS. 7 _, \ S \ Ly - aay. g Y oN ; AG g a : SSrecens SS sae a ee Gy could have served as front-line troops in keeping an eye on things in the woods. As anyone acquainted with trappers is aware, they are the ultimate preservationist reactionaries when it comes to activities that disturb their prey. The difficulty faced by the industry and government if they are going to oppose a determined movement to hurt the forest products market is a macrocosm of the same problem they face at home: questionable credibility. The industry and its oppo- — nents here have come to that unfortunate point in public debate where the industry will not admit to any wrongdoing and its opponents will not give it credit for having done anything right, regardless of the facts. And those facts are another problem: has sustained yield become an elastic concept that will stretch to accommodate the requirements of industrial markets, or is it an absolute? The issuance of pulpwood offers under some rather spurious rationales — that the wood is required by industry to placate nervous financial backers, and that it will probably not be cut — appears to cast the ministry’s overall management role in doubt. Trying to justify its mistakes — and there are many — while expecting the public to respond uncritically to its triumphs has put both ‘xe industry and the government in a position of being suspect in everything they say. The comparison between Canadian forest management and Brazilian forest annihilation being drawn by the Greens is of coutse absurd, but it’s an absurd world. Like the boycott against Iraqi oil, a boycott of Canadian wood would be pain- less for everyone involved (except of course Canadians) because none of the participants would have to do without anything, wood from another country of origin being easily available. Moral rectitude comes cheap. If nothing else, perhaps this action from abroad that jeopar- dizes our collective welfare will pull together some of the warring factions at home. Established May 1,.1985 The Terrace Review Is published each Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. Publisher: Mark Twyford Editor: Michael Kelly Staff Reporters: Tod Strachan, Betty Barton Advartising Manager: Marj Twyford Typesetting: Carrie Olson Production Manager: Jim Hall Productlon: Charles Costello, Gurbdax Gill, Linda Mercer, Ranjit Nizar Office: Carrie Olson Accounting: Marj Twyford, Harminder K. Dosanjh Second-class mail registration No. 6896. 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VBG 1M7 Phone: 635-7840 Fax: 635-7269 One year subscriptions: In Canada $39.00 Out of Canada $100.00 Seniors tn Terrace and District $30.00 Seniors oul of Terrace and District $33.00 a pameaeramnainereirnsiel Letters to the editor will be considered for publication only when signed. Please Include your telephone number. The editor reserves the right to condense and edit letters. Opin expressed are not necessarily those of the Terrace Review. CSS SRS ere a » \ G5) NRASTASR ANS SNS TNT WEA SESS - SSS SS G4 B SERIO We ee i SSNS SS SSeS iy, we 4 a1! iS Socerce SSE This is one show you won't want to miss Royal Commission on Health Care in Terrace he cost of medical care : in British Columbia has grown in the past several years far out of proportion to the growth in population. The reasons for that appear obvious, but what can be done — and what we are willing to do — to prevent the health care system from consum- ing public budgets as fast as governments can raise fees and taxes is not at all clear. Members of the Royal Commis- sion on Health Care and Costs will be in Terrace for a full day, and possibly part of the evening, September 5. Even for those with no strong opinions on the current state of the system, it will make provocative listening. Why does Canada have the highest rate of institutionalizing the elderly members of its popu- lation? Why do people continue to smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, eat unhealthy foods, persist in nutritionally bankrupt.diets, drive their bodies into medical oblivion through stress and overwork, ‘court physical sysicm failure by neglecting exercise, and generally behave like unruly children who ‘know better when it comes to looking after themselves? Why do some people have such a compelling need to have some- thing wrong with themselves that they drive doctors’ secretaries up the wall with one pointless visit after another; while others of us refuse to consult a physician until we’re riddled with enough symp- toms to fill a supplement to a medical encyclopedia? When we view documentaries and read of patients wired up with such.a surfelt of technology that death seems not only inevi- table but preferable to the out- rageous efforts of science to preserve life at any cost, who among us has not shuddered at the prospect of being in that position, absolutely without the power to say, "That’s enough, thanks, I think I'll call it quits now." Should people be given the legal choice, recently taken by AIDS victim David Lewis, to do themselves in when there’s no, hope left? Should the hegemony of medical doctors over all aspects of medical ethics con- tinue? ll these questions have moral and ethical aspects, and they are also surrounded by factors of cost. Debate is likely to be fierce, and we learned from Royal Health Care commissioner Mar- guerite Ford that the commission is looking for views from every- one and their commission is a wide-ranging one. People who put their views in writing will get first priority on the agenda, but the commissioner says the panel will make time for those just who want to talk as well. . Ford says'there are many rea- sons for health care costs to be going up. Medicine is able to do a great deal more now than it could 10 years ago, and those new things ii can do are expen- sive. British Columbians work in dangerous occupations, drive on . dangerous roads, take risks in dangerous places and have proportionately more accidents than people in other jurisdictions. There is a lot in the prevention ~area, but there are also some painful choices ahead. Ford says the commissivi.’s mandate is broad, with the panel reporting to the Lieutenant Governor in Council, not to the ministry. With a population edging toward an older demo- graphic mix, with environment and lifestyle trends boding ill for our bodies, it looks as though we're facing an increasingly expensive health care system. How to keep the costs within the realm of reason is one side of question. Perhaps the other side is that we should accept those costs in good grace and take a look around the government money flow chart to see what can be scrapped, with a view toward moving portions of other expendi- tures into health. Making the government as a whole more efficient could help make the health budget easier to swallow if in the near future it accounts for half, rather than the present one-third, of provincial government expenditures. The royal commission hearings . in Terrace convene at 1:30 p.m. at the Inn of the West September 5, this coming Wednesday. The hearings break from 5:00 to 7:30 and are expected to continue until 10 p.m. Green but sneaky An alert local citizen informs us that he noticed some blatantly itlegal lawn sprinkling Aug. 26 at 11 am. on odd-numbered lots during an even-numbered day, The lots? Terrace City Hall and the RCMP detachment. So far as we know, the city hasn’t cut off its own water, nor was the watch commander ticketed.