A4 - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, March 16, 2005 . a _ *. ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 : '. PUBLISHER: ROD LINK ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. - V8G 5R2 | TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 + FAX: (250) 638-8432! © Boo, _. WEB: www.terracestandard.com EMAIL: newsroom@terracestandard.com: Wine war. woe “THERE ARE more than a few people locally who, ‘ » when they walk into a grocery store, won’t buy. | fresh fruit or other prodicts grown or produced i in the United States. | It’s their very own mini-boycott aimed at the continuing stubbornness of the United States over the issue of punishing tariffs imposed on our soft- ~ wood exports. Now. provincial forests minister Michael de | Jong has gotten into the spirit of things, as it were, e » with his call for banning the importation of Cali- ' fornia wines into B.C.-Wine’s a big commodity _ In. California. That state’s wineries made up 90° ;- per cent of the 59 million litres of American. wine | shipped to-Canada in 2003. | : : Mi. de Jong’s import ban suggestion came from his. frustrations after nearly four, years of unsuc- cessful attempts to halt the system of American | ‘tariffs’ on Canadian softwood. i despite countless rulings in our favour at NAFTA mined that Canadian softwood producers are not ye _ imports into the United States do not harm Amer- ‘ _ ican producers, - _ The current flashpoint i is the: $4, 1. billion-plus in tariffs: the American government-has ‘tucked “stolen” from us. lf negotiation hasn’t worked and neither has hence Mr.deJ ong’ s-wine.ban- call. tional trade agreements: provide for retaliation, a mega-form of tit for tat. But it is a chancy game. Boosting import du- ties on American products would only cost Ca- nadian consumers. Outright bans would seem to go against the spirit of international free trade, a serious step in that Canada’ s economy depends upon international trade. ~-further trade measures on its part. As it is, we per- » petually seem to be fighting a battle with both ‘hands tied behind our backs. (Heaven knows that. our willingness to sacrifice the National Hockey League hasn’t had any impact on the United States through the loss of ticket or television rights re rev- -enues south of the border. ) ~ Still, there comes a time when taking a moral . Stand against an immoral activity is all that’s left. ‘Mr. de Jong and his federal and provincial coun- " terparts should continue to test the retaliation wa-. “ters. As‘ for the rest of us, resist t that California red. “Tyo one from B.C. instead. PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach , PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur NEWS: Sarah A. Zimmerman COMMUNITY: Dustin Quezada a NEWS/SPORTS: Margaret Speirs. - _ FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping a - CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Alanna Bentham ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: _ Bert Husband, Susan Willemen AD ASSISTANT: Sandra Stefanik _ PRODUCTION: Susan Credgeur’ SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: . $57.94 (4$4.06 GST)=62.00 per year; ye Seniors $50.98 (+$3.57 GST)=54.55; ' Out of Province $65.17 (+$4.56 GST)=69.73 _ Outside of Canada (6 months) $156.91(+10.98 GST)= 167.89 MEMBER OF ( @CN, A eet _ B.C. AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION, CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION AND B.C. PRESS COUNCIL (www.bcpresscouncil.org) Serving the Terrace and Thornhit! area, Published on | Wednesday of each week at 3210 Clinton Street, Terrace, - British Colurnbia, V8G 5R2. Stories, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in the Terrace Standard are the property of the copyright holders, including Cariboo Press (1969) Ltd., its illustration repro Services and advertising agencies. Reproduction in whole or in part, without written permission, is specifically prohibited. Authorized as second-class mail pending the Post Office Department, for payment of postage in cash. Speciai thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents | a The.United States has basically ignored Canada | and international ‘trade. panels which have deter-. unfairly subsidized and that Canadian softwood . " away-in a trust account and now won’t pay back. ~ A good chunk of that has come from B.C. lumber : - producers. Mr. de Jong refers to that money as litigation, ‘than retaliation remains as one weapon, — -_.Antagonizing the United States might only draw SUCH A LOSS. Pod w SO UTTERLY SENSELESS & AND PREVENTABLE. MAYBE NOW WE’ LL ~ GET ToUGH AND START _ CRACKING DOWN — } /~ on GROW-OPS? ON KNOWN, ARMED, VIOLENT } PSNCHOPATHIC cri M INALS. 4 Heard of STV? Please read on. VICTORIA - It would be lame to’vote against a new way of electing MLAs just because you couldn’t understand it. So here, in a few hundred words, is how the single-trans- ferable-vote (STV) works, The issue of whether it’s _a good change or’not —.and I a ‘think it would be — can wait for another column. First, the number of MLAs in the legislature stays the, - same at’ 79. No.change there. “But the number. of rid- ings would fall to somewhere ‘ around 20 larger ridings. ‘Each riding would be repre- " sented by two to seven MLAs. pect the Liberals and NDP to- _ lifetime of cattle farming near “|. , Prince Albert, Saskatchewan: * he began writing poetry about Two current sparsely populat- ed northern ridings with 65,000 people, like Skeena and North Coast, might be combined into Mr. de Jong is not acting in isolation. nterna-’ a fiding with to MLAs. Four urban ridings, with 130,000 people, might be combined into a new riding with four MLAs. ; Clear enough so far, right? So the election _ rolls around. Each party can nominate any number of candidates, up to the number of seats in a rid- ing. - a a So ina four-seat riding, ex- nominate four candidates. But ‘the Greens might decide they just want to have one candi-, date run, or ‘independents’ may’ emerge. .On election day you stride _into the polling booth. ' All the candidates names are on the ballot — four Lib- erals, four New Democrats, Greens, DRBCers, Marijuana. system | FROM THE CAPITAL ; PAUL WILLCOCKS Party, Libertarian. But you don’t have to mark an ‘X’ beside your single choice, consigning all the oth ers to irrelevance. Instead you rank them - a 1 beside your first choice, 2 be- side your next favourite, and so on. You can stop anytime. If you think one candidate is worthy and the rest are scoun- drels, you can place a X beside her name and leave. ~ If you want the maximum impact, you can rank everyone on the ballot. You can rank Liberal candidates 1,2,3 and 4, if the party is the most im- ‘portant factor in your decision; you can mix and match if you admire ceftain individuals, or want broader representation in the legislature. — ‘The polls close. And things |. do become a_little more com- plicated than the current. sys- tem when it’s time to count the ballots. Right now, whoever ‘gets the most votes wins. The aim in the STV system is to ensure more faithful rep- 2 -ber, _ resentation. . ‘The Green Party was supported by one in ev- | ‘ery eight people who voted in 2001; they ended’ up with no one. speaking for them in the legislature. © . Many people. believe it’s a problem for democracy when ‘!."some voters feel silenced by the system. Under ‘the: new system there’s an accepted mathemat-. ical formula for determining the number of votes needed to be elected: eo ond place choices of his sup- ; porters are counted, but at half ” their raw value, reflecting the success his supporters have -already had in electing him as their MLA. , ‘And so the process con- tinues, until four MLAs have been elected. Each has been the first, or second, or third, . choice of enough people to: . - emerge as their representative.. And that is how the system would work. Elections. BC. counts the: ballots once, and anyone who has that number of first-place. choices is elected. Simple. But all the riding’s seats won’t be filled, so there’s a second count. The candidate = who with_the lowest support is dropped, | “but those ballots _ aren’t tossed away. Now Blec-""' tions BC counts them again, this time looking at the second choice of those voters. ‘In the same way, the ballots of people whose first choice was elected aren’t tossed, but are counted again. (Remem- four MLAs are being elected and everyone’s prefer- ence should be reflected in all four choices.) -OK, this next bit is a bit headache inducing. It would be unfair simply to move to the second choices of all those people. Their views have al- ready been reflected»in the legislature with the first candi- date elected. So the next count .includes their second choices, but on a discounted basis. If Joe Bloggs got twice as many first place votes as he needed to be elected, then all the sec- Footnote: ‘It’s - still a bit head-spinning, terest, visit www.gov.bc.ca/” referendum _: info. Of if you are simply seck- . ing comfort, know that Ireland | and other jurisdictions have successfully used the system for. decades. If you have. AS; sues, email me. And things gota bitrude; but Montana Senator Max ‘Blame Canada’ Baucus earned his, rough ride when he showed up in Fernie recently as: part of his campaign against a po- tential coal mine near the U.S. border. MLA Bill Bennett led the charge; New: Democrats’ quickly said they don’t like’ . Baucus either. Dialogue is always ‘wel- come. But Baucus has led the fight to close the border to _ softwood and Canadian cattle, and never found it necessary - to come up here to get any in- formation until it suited him to grandstand on the.coal issue. ‘He deserved to hear how an- . gry many British Columbians are with his position. willcocks@ultr "ane. ca NINE YEARS. ago when Ken - McConaghie retired from a everyday events in his life. His humor captured audiences at cowboy poetry events. Today ._he’s invited to headline the en- tertainment at fundraisers be- yond his home town. But until last fall, he was un- able to deliver his down home rhymes himself. His wife, daughter, or a friend took over . for him. Because McConaghie stutters. Then he saw Oprah intro- duce a young stutterer who was able to speak: fluently through the use of an ear “aid”. called a SpeechEasy. Worn like a hearing aid, the SpeechEasy with its built _ in-microphone, amplifier and speaker, is worn in one ear and et’s the stutterer hear his own . voice only slightly delayed. “It’s like interrupting your- self,” McConaghie says. The SpeechEasy has an ef- fect similar to choral speech. For instance, repeating the Lord’s Prayer with other pa- THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI rishioners in church, McCo- naghie speaks effortlessly. - After only a few months using the device, even with- out the SpeechEasy in his ear he can now talk fluently. He attributes his new fluency to feeling more relaxed about his impediment. Whereas before he tried to hide his speech difficulty, he has adopted a So what? Atti- tude which lets him relax. He was .also taught to breathe differently. Non-stutterers fill their talk - with lots of ums and ahs which. give them time to breathe. The stutterer. tries so hard to get out his words, he runs short of wind. Then he can’t say a word. . . At the time of Oprah’s show, the device. was new. -McConaghie -went to Boise, Idaho for an assessment Now Island Hearing Services in. Vancouver has become a.Ca- nadian distributor for the aid. - Patients are given a hearing test using a computer which méasures the severity of their stutter, and determines the proper settings of the device to deal with volume, delay, or pitch, =. \ The assessment is con- ducted by a specially trained speech language pathologist or SLP. The U.S. has 120,000 trained SLPs and 65,000 dis- tributorships of the device. The patient, after assess- ment, is fitted with a demon-. strator device tuned to his mea- surements. He is taught how to use the SpeechEasy before be- ing sent out for an hour’s trial Carolina. Ear aids can help stutterers- _ under normal conditions such as ordering a restaurant meal. Following the one hour tri- al, the device is fine tuned to. the patient’s needs and a “pre- scription” arrived at. A cus- .tomized device is then manu-. factured in Greenville, North’ The personalized device may take as little as one week to delivery. A fitting ap- pointment follow, and the pa- tient is further instructed in the, use of the device. Often fol- low-ups can be done by phone: where travel isaburden. For McConaghie, the Spee-. chEasy lets him be the star of his own poetry, to the delight of audiences. For an-assessment appoint- ment, reach Janet Gibson af, 604-926-9434 or jgibson @ihs., ca. Depending upon.the style, model, size, and technologi-, cal. complexities to meet the. patient’s requirements, the de- vice costs between $3,600 to $4,900 Canadian. ‘Speech pathologist fees for an assessment - $90 per hour B.C. scale - are separate. An assessment takes two hours, a fitting one hour. I know. For - . more detail, if that is your. in- >