AA - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, January 10, 2001 STANDARD ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 PUBLISHER: ROD LINK ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2 TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 « FAX: (250) 638-8432 EMAIL: standard@kermode.net A bad rep? FOR SEVERAL years now the Terrace and Area Health Council has been the favourite target of local health critics. Its members stand accused of not defending local health care and of not being aggressive en- ough in demanding there be more money for local health care. Health council members are also tagged as being government supporters because the provincial government makes council ap- pointments in the first place. That’s why a report for health council members written by Tom Novak makes for mandatory reading for those interested in local health care. Mr. Novak arrived in the spring of 1999 as the health council was facing a deficit of more than $600,000 and the very real danger that Mills Memorial Hospital and Terraceview Lodge would soon be all but insolvent. Although Mr. Novak’s arrival was couched in polite terms as one of offering administrative as- sistance, it was apparent he carried firm orders from the province to set right the health council’s spending. The health council really had no choice but to follow along with whatever Mr. Novak wanted to do, Mr. Novak left in the spring of 2000 and his re- port, presented to the health council last fall and released late last month, outlines his actions and thoughts on what he faced. _ Chief among Mr. Novak’s positions was that the council not take on any new programs or ser- vices unless it first had approval from the pro- vince to do so. Given that Mr. Novak operated under the authority of the province, one might as--"} sume that the health council would follow along. - Not so. No sooner had Mr. Novak left then the | health council began hiring. It added positions or hours to existing employees in crucial areas such as emergency and-intensive care. All told, the health council added about $400,000 in payroll for the new fiscal year beginning April 1, 2000, _ And it did so without having the faintest idea of what its budget was going to be. Indeed, the health council only got its budget last October, al- most six months into its new fiscal year. * Health council chair Bob Kelly called the addi- tional spending a gamble. It’s also a pretty clear Statement that the health council felt it wasn’t get- ting enough money to do the job it wanted to do. To be sure, the health council was getting indi- cations through the summer and early fall of last year that when it did get its new budget, there would be an increase. That increase worked out to $1.7 million. So perhaps the gamble wasn’t that much of a walk on the wild side. But it does indicate the general blanketing of the health council as a group of meek and mild, kow- towing, card-carrying NDP government suppor- ters isn’t fully deserved. PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach “TOMO. PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur. ~ BEERS 2 BLEES NEWS/SPORTS: Jeff Nagel “RUEBON, NEWS/SPORTS Sarah Zimmerman -~* NEWS/COMMUNITY: Jennifer Lang FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping & Carol McKay CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Carole Kirkaldy ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Sam Bedford, Mark Beaupre & Stacy Swetlikoff TELEMARKETER: Stacy Swetlikoff DARKROOM/COMPOSING: Susan Credgeur "AD ASSISTANT: Sandra Stefanik & Clare Hallock 7 SUBSCRIPTION RATES 3Y MAIL: * . $54.88(4+$3.85GST) per year; Seniors $48.62 (+$3.40GST); Out of Province $61.69 (+$4.32GST) Outside of Canada (6 months) $151.60 (+$10.61GST) MEMBER OF = IAC. AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCUTION, CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION oe AND G@cna axwiccere | BC. PRESS COUNCIL Sening the Terrace and Thomhil area. Published on Wednesday of each week at 2210 Canton Strest, Saotee poten Bucatone esis and pests inthe Teac Stata are propery of he copyright! holders, Including Cariboo Presa (1969) Lid, Its Mlusiralion repro services and advertising Reproduction: in whole or in part, withoul wilten permission, is spacticaly prohibited. Acsborized 28 second-class mad ponding Ihe Pos! Office Department, for paymndl of postage in cash. Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents - "> for thelr time and talents eee ‘Seth Sotewian oul Fotos wiTe WE To peter “1 Know GOTTA, Tuem / KNOW! MAKE IT How ‘gouT NLEGAL Foe E DEATH Kips UNDER \\.\ TH 18 fo Smoke Wh PENALTY? |Z LU. A REALLY STIFF PENALTY NAH, FORGET IT. WE ALREADY HAVE THAT ye ti WA yi i Valls TARGA Addy SNA 4 ha WNMPERI “TOBACCO 7 We need a forestr VICTORIA - The war in the woods of British Columbia should have been settled long ago, but it appears that it will continue to rage into the new century, What serves British Colum- bia,s forests best is, at the same time, the greatest hurdle to ending the confrontations between various stakeholders over how. our forests should be managed: public ownership. Ninety-five per cent of our forests are Crown land, owned by the people of this pravince. That’s good because the forests can’t fall victim to the whims of private owners to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for whatever might strike the owners’ fancy. On the other hand, the pub- lic wants in on whatever deci- . sions affect the future. of the cf ‘province,s forests, And since “most British Columbians know Jess about forestry than they know about the love life of the tsetse fly, that’s bad. So we leave the field to the combatants — the logging companies and the environ- mentalists. Trouble is that neither side can be trusted to be truthful. Both sides have too much at FROM THE CAPITAL HUBERT BEYER stake to level with the public. The companies tell us that unless they get to cut down more trees, British Columbia will descend into the dark ages, economically speaking, while the environmentalists speak darkly of our green for- ests turning into an arid ‘waste- land Focus groups studies have shown that people only trust information when opposing in- terests come to agreement, which doesn’t accur to often, Which leaves Gord Rattray wondering just how the public tan be expected to understand the complex issues of forest management. Rattray is Director of Com- munications and Public 5 mi Awareness of the Association of British Columbia Profes- sional Foresters. “Forest management is a provincial responsibility. Should the provincial govern- ment be doing more to educate the public about forestry? What role should the federal government have in this area?” he writes in the latest issue of Forum, the associa- tion’s bi-monthly publication. “How should our school system address forestry educa- tion?” he asks. Good question. An acquaintance of mine, a logger, was confronted one day by his then eight-year-old daughter, telling him that he was “killing our forests.” She’d picked that from her teacher in school. True, there _ ds now a. forestry component jin - the curriculum at many grade: levels, but the teachers:are not given adequate training and resources to deliver a well-bal- anced picture of our forestry, And finally, Rattray asks whether the association should perhaps play a greater role in educating the public. What, I wonder, was his first clue that this might be a capital idea, We have environmentalists, ranging from responsible, ¥ @PRILEDD y education mainstream advocates for bet- ter forest management to out- right nutcases and eco-terrorists bombarding us with information we can’t trust. We have forest companies, ranging from responsible ste- wards of the forests to oppor- tunists who don’t think twice about destroying a. salmon Stream if it saves money and they can get away with it, tell- ing us we are going to hell in a hand basket if we don’t allaw them to increase their cut. And Rattray wonders whe- ther his association should play a bigger role in educating us, Of course, man, you should. Your members are the experts. They have spent years studying forest management. They know more about environmental im- pact.of forest practices on our ‘ forests:than. most. environmen= 'talists “chs Given a choice, I trust the information coming from a pro- fessional forester any day over that coming from a company president, an environmentalist or a politician. So get with it, Gord. Beyer can be reached at: E-mail: hubert@coolcom.com; Tel (250) 381-6900; - Web Attp://www.hubertbeyer.com Three incidents cause OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD seems friendly, safe. Until a weekend such as 2000's Jast. Three incidents made me fear we're only a notch below TV news headlines. Each occurrence had all the ingredients for a major disas- ter. Fortunately, none achieved crime level. The earliest highway inci- dent happened Saturday fore- noon as we returned from town, A shortbox Chevrolet, red with black outlines, heaped with firewood zoomed north on Crescent Street, ig- nored the stop sign, veered right on to Highway 16 and sped east like a wood fibre bandit. As the truck swung on to the highway, a chunk of hemlock tumbled sideways across the load, bounced onto the high- way pavement, rolled across the centreline and teetered just short of the front wheel of an oncoming pickup towing a THROUGH BIFOCALS- CLAUDETTE SANDECKI welder, followed by three more vehicles, Only providence braked the eight-inch diameter block cen- timeters before it could strike a tire, The second incident mi- -micked an accident last winter when a six pound rock thrown off an overpass near Vancou- PERRY: Empig! ver through a motorist’s wind-— shield resulted in major recon- structive facial surgery for the unsuspecting driver. Two kids hiding in their backyard lobbed snowballs at evening traffic on Haaland Avenue. One driver, shocked when a snowball smacked his windshield, toured the homes looking for the culprits. Failing to find them, he returned to Haaland only to have a second snowball strike his windshield. Truly angry by now, he circled the block, identified the house of origin, and poun- ded on the kids’ front door. Mom had been oblivious ta her kids’ amusement. But the incident most threa- tening to me oceurred mid- night New Year’s eve while I was walking the few blocks home from babysitting my grandchildren. As I turned right off Walker on to Clore, four tall teenage. girls walked abreast toward-me on the left side ofthe deserted Hi tome! es ngewe You ean You THER MAMES! # GuYS |JEAR OTHER MEN'S NAMES ON YOUR CLOTHES? No! tmean! wef) TISLKESTYLE! worries Street. Unbidden, Reena Virk’s mur- der at the feet of marauding teenage girls flashed through my mind. To avoid confronting the four, I stayed on the right. The girls reconfigured into two pairs, crossed to my side and halting inches in front of me, blocked my path. “How are things?” asked one leader. She looked back at her friends and gigeled. Each pair fitted snugly toge- ther, arms around each other’s Shoulders, Was this the school- yard bully taunting a lone se- nior? Busy reading their body lan- guage, 1 heard myself say, “What do you mean, how are things?” “What have you got there?” She giggled apain. “Nothing,” | said, sidestep- Ping to the left and walking Past them carrying my ball of _ knitting wool. . . AND.. vA. SEEMS OEAY ATLEAST.