‘A4 - The Terrace Standard, Wedhesday, January 13, 1999
TERRACE |

STANDARD

ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988

PUBLISHER: RCD LINK
ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C, * V8G 5R2
TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 * FAX: (250) 638-8432 .
EMAIL: standard@kermode.net

Costly wienies

CHILDREN DREW cartoons, adults wrote let-
ters and Skeena NDP MLA Helmut Giesbrecht
went toe to toe with environment minister Cathy
McGregor. The issue was doing away with fire-.

‘wood from certain provincial parks to Save.
money and it caused a lot of opposition. In the.

end, the government backed down a touch and so
was saved a time-honoured ritual — the ability
to roast wienies and toast marshmallows.

But this year the provincial government has
something more sinister in mind when it comes
to provincial parks and the consequences are
deadly.

Dubbed the parks legacy project, the provincial
government is creating a stand alone agency to
manage and finance provincial parks. A provin-
cial panel established to create this agency is
recommending that budgets be established over
five years, removing parks from an annual politi-
cal budget battle where competition is fierce
from al] other government ministries.

That’s fine as far as it goes. The problem is that
should the agency need any more money, it’ll be
required to get it on its own. This will be accom-
plished by user fees, marketing agreements and
the like.

And here is where the evil genius of the provin-
cial government is exposed. By creating a sepa-
rate agency and giving it some money, the pro-
vince can thereafter wash its hands, saying any
other budget and management decisions are up
to the agency.

In other sectors this is called off-loading, the
passing along of costs to somebody else. In this
case, that somebody else is the camper — the
person who already pays taxes to support provin-

cial parks in the expectation ofa weekend.in the |.
wilderness. “Phat: ‘person already. pays.a fee.on.top J.
of their taxes but now will be subject to yet more

fees, Note that governments routinely employ
user fees which are simply taxes in disguise.

So in the end, the province will be able to
freeze or trim the amount of tax money going to
parks, and campers will have to pick up the rest
through user fees. It looks like that wienie roast
is going to get a bit more expensive.

Tax news

THE ROUGH rule in journalism is that the more
trouble somebody is in, the more information
they release in the hope of convincing people
otherwise.

That was the case last week when provincial
government kicked loose a 13-page document
outlining decreases in personal and business
taxes as of Jan. 1 and other measures it says will
stimulate the economy.

Buried in the onslaught is an interesting tidbit
regarding personal taxes when compared to rates
in other provinces. Four per cent of B.C. tax-
payers carn more than $80,000, paying the sec-
ond highest tax rate in the country. The remain-
ing 96 per cent pay the second lowest tax rate.
Only in Alberta would they pay less. Not a bad
statistic in the midst of troubled times.

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Serving the Terrace and Thornhill area, Published an Wednesday of each week at 3210 Clinton Street,
Terrace, British Columbia, VaG 6R2, '
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ERBC criticized for waste

‘VICTORIA -— When Premier
Glen Clark retumed to his Victoria
office after the Christmas and New
Year holidays, a nasty little surprise
awaited him.

The surprise is in the form of a
letter written by Paul Scrimger, a
man who was hired by Forest
Renewal B.C. in December 1996 to
establish systems and procedures

that were to make the outfit more.

accountable, and was fired in March
1997 when the FRBC brass didn’t
want to hear what he had to say.

But Scrimger said it neverthe-
less, albeit a year-and-a-half later, in
a letter to the premier. A copy of the
letter came into possession before
even the premier received his, not

because Scrimger wanted it that

way, but because the fax machines
in the premier’s office woulda’

“work during the weekend. ; fore
» After reading the. fou pag Iet- | -

“tet it bedame pretty clear to me why
ithe Forest Renewal brass weren’t
too enamored with Scrimger’s take
on the Crown corporation’s way of
handling the millions of dollars that
flow into its coffers by way of
stumpage fee surcharges on forest
companies,

Scrimger paints a horrific pic-
ture of waste and mismanagement at
Forest Renewal B.C. Millions of
dollars, he says, have been squan-
dered as a result.

FROM THE CAPITAL.
HUBERT BEYER

Scrimger was contracted by
Forest Renewal ta provide long-
term professional project manage-
ment expertise and to co-ordinate
several FRBC initialives, the most
important of which was a financial

reporting system kriown as..the...

_ Project Tracking System.

The importance of such a
reporting system working well is
self-evident, considering that by the
end of February 1997, the corpora-
tion’s inadequate tracking system
had recorded more than $4 billion
worth of funding request, every cent
of it public money,

During the first few months of
his 13-month contract with the cor-
poration, Scrimger prepared a num-
ber of project status reports at the
request of senior management. In

these reports, he identified what he
called “outrageous financial
abuses.”

He found, for instance, that
multiple contracts had been
awarded to the same contractor by
different corporate executives for
the same work. He found thal some
contracts were awarded to hand-
picked contractors.

“Selected contractors, despite
their failure to deliver the informa-
tion systems that they had been con-
tracted for, were still submitting
invoices for payment at rates of
$26,000 2 month even though no
contracts existed to charge these
invoices against,” Scrimger says in
his letter to Clark.

He found and pointed out that
by February 1997, FRBC had com-
mitted annual expenditures of more

_ than $650. million, with March
expenditures yet to come, when: the.
target was ‘to have been $275 ©

million. -

Rather than achieving a pro-
jected $183 million surplus for the
1996-97 fiscal year, the corporation

" was headed for a $200 million defi-

cit. And FRBC was still without an
adequate reporting system that
could tell it what had and had not
been spent and received.

When his reports became more
and more alarming, the corporation
responded with stone-walling and,

eventually, dismissal.

“All contracts my company
held with the corporation were can-
celled and 1 was banned from any
further contact with corporation
staff,” Scrimger says.

“Rather than confront the diffi-
cult problems I was bringing for-
ward, senior officials had apparently
decided the safest approach was to
silence me, circle the wagons and
confine all unflattering information
within a closed loop.”

I asked Scrimger why ‘he
waited so Jong to blow the whistle
on FRBC. He replied that as a pra-
fessional, he wanted to exhaust all -
other avenues before going public,
He also said he’s still owed more
than $100,000 which, despite four
meetings with the premier’s staff,
Forest Renewal refuses to pay.

In‘closing ‘his letter to the‘pre- -

., migt,; Serimger has ‘this to-:say:

“Those entreached (FRBC) execu-
tives believe they are totally within
their mandate to use public funds to
bless their friends and castigate their
enemies, meaning anyone who
dares to challenge them.

“They have been presiding
over a reign of confusion and
incompetence that has cost the tax-
payers of this province hundreds of
millions of dollars.” .

Beyer can be reached at: Tel:
(250) 920-9300; Fax: (250) 356-
9597; E-mail: huber'@coolcom.com

a eae

SPICes, rerlizer soark fear

WHEN BCTV news
reported two drug raids by
SWAT teams on innocent folk, I
choked on my coffee,

Seems an honest citizen
cooking Thai food for a New
Year's get-together had his door

kicked in because an informant .

smelled whal he thought was a
marijuana grow operation.
Condensation on the house win-
dows and several big bags of fer-
tilizer in the backyard convinced
the cops.

The second SWAT team
burst in on 15 children at a birth-
day party, and shot the host fam-
ily’s bull terrier ... after sur-
veilling the home for two hours:

Spluttering, I hurried to the
kitchen where I plunked down
my mug hard enough to alarm
my snoozing husband. As his feet
hit the floor he called, “Are you
all right?” His voice rose higher

THROUGH BIFOCALS:
CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

than that of a Vienna choir boy.
“Fine,’ I coughed.

Once he’d settled back to’

watch Wayne’s weather, [ yanked
open the door of the spice cup-
board and frantically lobbed
glass bottles and plastic contain-
ets of seasonings into the par-
bage. The plink of breaking glass
flushed him from the living

room.

“What the hell are you
doing?” he roared, stomping into
the kitchen, Chunks of window
putty clattered on the sill behind
him. .

“Raid-proofing our home,” I
said calmly. J couldn’t believe his
lack of comprehension, unless
he’d napped through the news.
“If salt and pepper were spices
enough for Ray Forbes’ mother,
they’Il do for you.”

“Geez, woman, are you out
of your mind?!”

“It’s a fact. I heard Roy say
so.” Squatting to protect my
back, I hoisted the garbage in a
weightlifter’s clutch and stag-
gered toward the door,

Next 1 hauled in the 55-litre
bag of potting soil, and snatched
half’a dozen veggie bags and a
quart sized mixing bowl from the
corner cupboard.

a

] thrust the bow] at my hus-
band. Then, feet braced like a
Winnipeg sandbagger, ] held
open the first baggie.

“Dip!” [ barked.

My husband’s brows col-
lided in a menacing frown,
“Who're yau calling a dip?”

“No one.” I nudged the bag
of topsoil. “Dish the dirt. If those
Abbotsford cops couldn’t read a

' Happy Birthday banner a wall °

long, how can we trust any cop to
distinguish between potting soil
and fertilizer? Divide it up.”
“Whatever you say,
Bonnie,” he said mockingly. But
he dipped steadily as though
ladling life-saving gruel for
starving refugees. ;
I twist-tied the first baggie.
“And from now on when. you
cook, switch that kitchen fan into.

high. ”

TS 18 GONNA BE ONE

HECKUYA PUBLIC MEETING!)

i. (ROTI T—