A4- The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, May 1, 1996

“TERRACE.

STANDARD

ESTABLISHED APRIL 27. 1988

ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2
TELEPHONE: (604) 638-7283 * FAX: (604) 638-8432
E-MAIL: terrace.standard@sasquat.com
MODEM: (604) 638-7247

EVERYBODY’S GOT an angle in the 1990s.
Rising costs, tightened budgets and general
spending controls have caused many people and
organizations to explore ways of adding revenue
to their operations.

So it’s no surprise the Nisga’a Tribal Council
has joined the money raising parade. By its own
admission, the tribal council has spent $30 mil-
lion over the past 20 years in pursuing its land
claim with the federal and provincial govern-
ments.

That’s a fairly serious chunk of change and it is
enough to make a sizeable dent in the estimated
$190 million the Nisga’a will receive from the
provincial and federal governments as part of the
tentative land claims dea] reached in February.
The Nisga’a will pay the $30 million back from
the $190 million it gets due to a government
policy which deducts land claims negotiations
costs from treaty settlements.

In an attempt to whittle down the debt, the
Nisga’a next week in Vancouver are hosting a
three-day seminar to explain its agreement in
principle to interested parties. The cost is a cool
$1,000 a head,

Topics to be covered include land and
resources, the Nass fishery, environmental pro-
tection, Nisga’a government and economic de-
velopment opportunties.

All of this is based on the long standing Nisga’a
principle of being open for environmentally, eco-
nomically and socially sound business on land
that Will come wider their. conligh"""”
That’s fine and dandy for southern businéss in-
terests who can fork over the $1,000 for the three
days. They will get their money back several
times over in terms of information. And a key
foundation to the three days is the setting aside
of 16 question period times covering seven hours
and 15 minutes.

All of this is nifty for well-heeled southerners.
What isn’t so nifty is the absence of anything
close to that being offered by the Nisga’a for the
rest of us who live up here.

To be sure we have been subjected to what the
federal and provincial governments think of the
agreement in principle and why we should buy
into its provisions.

Those federal and provincial meetings are
handy but are conducted by people from far
away who won't be here when the final treaty is
concluded and who won’t have to go through its
growing pains.

But the Nisga’a have yet to give us their vision
on how their treaty will work, how it will involve
the rest of us and how it will establish a new and
worthy working relationship for the generations
ahead.

Obviously we can’t afford the $1,000 the
Nisga’a are charging for their southern seminar.
Yet they must be prepared to bring us a slimmed
down version of that event if the coming treaty is
to be fully accepted by all.

Gana PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link
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: MEMBER OF B.C. PRESS COUNCIL
Serving the Terrace and Thornhill area. Published on Wednesday of ach week by Cariboo Press (1969)
Ltd. at 3210 Clinten Sireet, Tenace, British Columbia, V8G 5R2, ae :
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Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents

a” .
Sty ys

NOT BAD...
NOW WATCH ME
AGAIN...

It'll be

VICTORIA — The new ses-
sion of the legislature, called
by Premier Clark last week,
will be one the shortest on
record.

It will have nothing to do
with legislative approval af the
course the government plans to

chart for the province during |

the coming year. The budget,
which will be introduced by
finance minister Elizabeth Cull
a week after the session opens,
will not dictate government

spending during the current 7

fiscal year.

This session will be a grand-
Standing prelude to the election
that is likely to be called
within days. It will be the start-
ing shot for an election
campaign th

For thé NDP; thé session will”

be an opportunity to draw the
lines between il and the oppo-
sition parties. Clark put it this
way:

“Tm really looking forward
to this. This gives the govern-
ment a chance to show the
really dramatic differences be-
tween our party and our
government and the two oppo-

‘sition parties.

“We'll be talking about jobs
first and foremost We'll be

q

short b

-FROM. THE CAPITAL
HUBERT BEYER

at promises to be

talking about protecting health
care and education and the best
way to do that, and we'll also
talk about crime and safety
and [ think it’s a good op-
partunity to see the dramatic

‘differences between us and the

opposition.”” -

The opposition parties, how-
ever, have a different agenda.
They will be ruthlessly attack-
ing the government on all
fronts. They wiil mercilessly
lay into the NDP during daily
question period with issues
ranging from the bingo scandal
to the B.C. Hydro affair, to
government spending which
‘they say is out of control.

Under normal circumstances,
the opposition can shine during

question period, but circum-
stances are anything but
nomnal.

The Liberals have yet to ef-
fectively embarrass the
government and put it on the
run with razor-sharp questions,
something the NDP had devel-
oped into a fine art during its
years in opposition.

And both the Liberals and
the Reform Party are at a dis-
advantage because of the muth-
less spending cuts of what are
perceived to be their soul
mates in Ontario and Alberta,
Mike Harris and Ralph Klein
will be the NDP’s biggest al-
lies in the upcoming battle for
the hearts and minds of British
Columbians.

Some time ago, when the
NDP ‘was just beginning to
récover from ‘its slump in the
polls, I warned Liberal leader
Gordon Campbell that the light
he saw at the end of the tunnel
might be an oncoming NDP
train, And that’s exactly what
it was.

The latest MarkTrend poll
placed the NDP in front with
38 per cent of decided voters,
followed by the Liberals with
32 per cent and the Reformers
with 22 per cent.

That’s quite a recovery from

the 22-per-cent support the

NDP had been relegated ta .
only a few months ago, anda -

whopping drop for Campbell’s

Liberals who used to enjoy -

absolute majority support,
It appears that Clark has

managed to largely defuse any
potential bomb that might have ~

ut very nasty.

exploded in his face during the .

campaign.

He ordered the long-overduc
public inquiry into ‘the
Nanaimo

Commonwealth -

Holding Society scandal, and ‘
he derailed attempts to link his °
govermment to the B.C, Hydro ~

affair by firing the Crown cor-
poration’s chief and appointing

Brian Smith, a former Socred '
cabinet minister as his succes- -

sor,

“As for the NDP's' propensity.
“to! spérid money, ‘the public

secms to be mofe swayed by
the government’s record, than
the opposilion’s atlempts to
discredit it.

It isn’t over until the weight-

challenged person sings, but
the NDP’s remarkable rise in
the public's esteem should

give the opposition parties -

some concerm.

Beyer can be reached at Tel:. .

920-9300; Fax: 385-6783; E-
Mail; hbeyer@direct.ca

Bombeck’s death mourned

IN 1995, while working at a
New York hospital, it was my
lunch time custom to buy a
woman’s magazine. That's
when I met a self-deprecating
humourist named Erma Bom-
beck.

She poked fun at her own
foibles, housekeeping, watr-
drobe, child-rearing, and
weight, She once said, accord-
ing to her weight, she ought to
be seven feet tall,

Bombeck got her start fresh
out of college writing
obituaries for a newspaper. As
ber humour clicked with
teadcrs everywhere, reprints of
her articles began popping up
in Reader’s Digest, a sure sign
of public acceptance. Soon her
weckly column became syndi-
caicd nalionwide In approxi-
mately 600 newspapers.

Eventually ber husband Bill
gave up his career as a school
principal to manage her busi-
ness affairs; they moved to a
sprawling house in Paradise
Valley, Arizona. .

AH! MONSIEDR. MAREN!
BACK IN ZEE CITY AGAIN 7

THROUGH BIFOCALS-

CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

Over the course of 30 years
she published 11 books, many
of them best sellers. One of
them, “‘The Grass Is Always
Greener Over the Septic
Tank’’, was tumed into a
movie.

Yet she remained so average
she even titled one of ber later
books when ‘‘You Look Like
Your Passport Photo, It’s Time
To Go Home,”’

She continued to be one of
my favourite authors, with her

me

YEP! WE'LL
HAVE MY
USUALT!

WHAT'S YOUR

knack for wriling funny about
everyday family events, and
though she had a college de-
gree, she wrote in simple lan-
guape never referring to classi-
cal literature or other beyond-
tie citations,

Her family was her topic; she
wrote about them at every
stage from diapers to dating to
her first son’s wedding. She
looked forward to becoming a
grandmother but never lived to
Share that experience with her
readers,

She died last Monday at age
69 of complications following
a kidney transplant that proba-
bly came too late lo save her
life. She had waited months for
a kidney. Several years earlier
she'd undergone a modified
radical mastectomy for breast
cancer.

Despite years of educating
the public about the benefits of
organ transplants, only about 3
per cent of available organs are
donaled, Perhaps’ if. funeral
homes gave deductions’ to

organ donors, sort of like
Premier Clark's $750 for every
polluting clunker taken off the
highway, we'd see more
organs donated.

For years she was a regular
contributor ito Good
Housckeecping. The magazine
will now be searching for a
worthy successor. The search
won't be easy.

Her passing will create a gap :
Every:

in my bookshelves.
Christmas my family has given
me Bombeck’s latest book.
Next Christmas there won't be
a new Bombeck to buy unless
her publisher produces a com-

pilation.
Her articles were as plotless
as oa = Johnny ~——s Carson

monologue. Each. paragraph
stood alone as a joke, You

could delve in anywhere and |

be laughing within the span of
three lines. coe,
Maybe. we could all have
laughed at her humour many
more years had she-golten that
kidney transplant sooner,...-

SMOKED HAM, SMOKED OYSTERS , Viees
SMOKED CHEESE, SMOKED SALYION,
SMOKED TEA, SMOKED TURKEY...

CRUHA A T-

for their time and talents -