Paga A4 - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, November 18, 1992

"TERRACE STANDART) ©
| j

Rod Link

' BSTABLISHED APRIL 27,1988

Registration No. 7420 4647 Lazelle Ave., Terrace, B.C., V8G 158

Phone (604) 638-7283

Fax (604) 638-8432

Serving the Torrace area. Published on Wednesday of each week by Cariboo Prass (1969) Ltd. at 4647 Lazelle Ave., Terrace, British Columbia.

Storias, photographs, Iilustations, designs and typastylas in the Terrace Standard are the property of the copyright holders, Including Cariboo Press (1969) Ltd,, Its i.
'

lustration repro services and advertising agencias.
Reproduction in whole or In part, withoul written permission, is specilically pronibited,

Authorized as second. class mail panding thes Post Oltice Department, for paymeet af postage in cash,

& CNA

Publisher/Editor:

Advertising Manager:
Mike L, Hamm

Production Manager:
Edouard Credgeur

Jeti Nagel — News/Community, Malcolm Baxter — News/Sparts
Rose Fisher — Front Office Manager, Carolyn Anderson ~~ Typesatter
Arlene Walls ~ Typesetter, Susan Credgeur —
* * Janet Vivairos — Advertising Consultant, Sam Collier —
Charlene Matthaws ~- Circulation Supervisor

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VERIFIED
CIRCULATION

Special thanks to all
our contributors and
correspondents for
their time and
talents.

EDITORIAL __

Risky experiment |

The dispute between the federal and
provincial governments over the Nisga’a
land claim is a good thing.

At stake is what is called an interim pro-
tection measures agreement. This will give
ihe Nisga’a a say in resource development
leading up to a final settlement.

But the federal government won’t sign
the agreement until the province provides a
letter saying in its opinion, it has discussed
the agreement with those it'll affect. That’s
important because the agreement concerns
provincial jurisdiction over land, wood and
minerals.

It?s been apparent for some time that a
settlement of the Nisga’a claim could be in
trouble simply because the rest of us who
live here do not know what is going on.

Even though the federal government can
be considered to be holding up progress in
the claims talks, it is telling the provincial
government that more must be done to

build public confidence in the negotiations.

The public confidence will be tested
when the federal and provincial govern-
ments and the Nisga’a reach an agreement
in principle. This will be the broad outline
to a final resolution of the claim.

Both governments must know that there
is wide ranging support for the agreement
in principle before they nail down the final
one.

The Nisga’a land claim will be the largest
of its kind to be settled outside of the
Northwest Territories in terms of having an
impact on people who aren’t natives. This
makes it almost an experiment in finding a
resolution that fits natives and others.

Experiments in laboratories take place
under controlled conditions. In real life,
experiments can go wrong and can have
devastating impacts. Having confidence in
the land claim scientists and their various
methods is one way to prevent this.

It’s a range war

It's a showdown at the academic corral
between the Northwest Community Col-
lege here and the University of Northern
B.C. Riding into town are the university
hombres, well armed with degrees and
studies, from their growing concrete ranch
just outside of Prince George. ‘Arrayed
against them are the embattled college
homeboys, hunkered down behind circled
textbooks at their bunkhouse on the bench.

Even the most casual observer could have

seen this, range, wat coming, There ain’t.

{eas |

enough.money.or.students for the both Of...

them. The question is, who will win. -~

Way back when the university was
promoted as an institution for the north. It
was to offer specialized instruction in spe-
cialized fields relevant to the north. That’s
changed, however, to a university setting
similar to that of other places.

And this is a direct attack on the colleges.

in the north. They began as places of tech-
nical Jearning, expanding into academics to
serve a steady even if small demand.

What could happen is a stripping of the
colleges’ academic portions to feed the
university’s need for students. Third and
fourth year university courses have fewer
numbers of students in them than do those

” courses.

That would make the university happy
but gut the colleges. It does make some
sense for this to happen. But it doesn’t
make a lot of sense to have this problem
fester until the university and the college
hardened their positions. Any solution now
could very weil be painful and bitter.

Bridging the gap

March 1994 is the target date
for awarding the first scholar-

ship funds from a provincial
bursary set up to help cash-
starved women pursue training
in non-traditional trades.
Called Bridging the Gap, the
bursary will be administered
through B.C. Institute of Tech-
nology in Burnaby.

Through
Bifocals
by Claudette Sandeck

PS

The bursary was suggested
by Angie Gregson, a teenager
who was discouraged by her
school counselor from training
as an auto mechanic because
"she was too smart and too fe-
male to go into the field." She
took night school courses in
welding and mechanics be-
cause she wasn’t allowed to
take mechanics in high school
for fear she would distract the
boys.

Brainchild of two women
who heard Angie in a panel
discussion led by Penny
Priddy; Minister of Women’s
Equality, the self-sustaining
bursary was set up last spring.
It has-a goal of $50,000, this
amount:to be matched by the
provincial government.

So far about $7,000 has been
donated, mostly by individual
women. Presently, trade
unions are being solicited for
donations. To date, nol one of
the province’s 100 top private
sector companies has contrib-
uted a dime.

Bursaries’ are great en-
couragement, but too late. And
money. alone can’t bridge 18
years of sexual stereotyping,
of being told to play with
Babies, keep clean, and act

like.a lady...

Girls “need to be. guided
toward open career waters

from. the. moment they poke.

stereo controls, try to fit a nut
on a bolt, or choose Dinky
cars over doll carriages.

Let’s give Black and Decker
wedding gifts, but tools not
toaster. (A niece — now a
lawyer — treasures a red box
of bicycle wrenches her Dad
gave her of her 12th birthday.)
A bride in possession of her
own kit of tools doesn’t have
io wait for her husband to con-
vert a beetle into a dune
buggy, re-roof the garage, and
fibreglass the deep hull of his
buddy’s 28 foot boat before he
puts up three clothes hooks.
She can do it herself.

We can give girls a claw
hammer. Pliers. A screwdriver
with various tips. An assort-

ment of nails and screws. A 12

foot steel tape measure... With
so many  not-quite-right
household gadgets on the

‘market, a tape measure is as

essential as a wallet for shop-
ping. Otherwise you can buy a
broom with a handle so short
you have to adopt a tango
knee bend to sweep.

"People must take individual
responsibility for creating pos-

itive change," says Sylvia

Porter, founding co-chair of
the bursary. |

“Those of us,
minded, who’ve made our
living in a non-traditional
trade must find ways to famil-

equality-

jarize young women with the
nature, benefits, and income
potential of our fields. Then
reassure them beauty and
brains needn’t stand in their
way. They have my word on
that.

We could offer to speak at
high school Career Days. Give
selected students a taste of our
daily routine by taking part as
an employer in the high school
Work Experience program. Or
make a Bridging the Gap
donation.

Contributions payable to
BCIT Bridging the Gap Bur-
sary Fund can be sent to Susan
¥. Walters, Development Of-
fice, BCIT, 3700 Willingdon
Avenue, Bumaby, B.C, V5G
3H2. Tax receipts will be sent
to contributors.

For further information
phone Susan at 432-8868.

“WAIT Now!
WAIT Now!

x e
PPT

Ber

VICTORIA — The debate in
the British Columbia Legisla-
ture of Bill 84, the NDP’s new
Labor Relations Code, has
been droning on for weeks,
Both government and oppo-

_Sition MLAs have been pull...

ing out-all.the rhetorical stops, .
and I’ve been wondering if
they might have missed a
cliche.

The entire debate produced
only two worthwhile and
meaningful contributions, one
from NDP back-bencher
Corky Evans, the other from
independent MLA Peter
Dueck.

The difference between the -
speeches Evans and Dueck
made and the political claptrap
that emanated from the rest of
the MLAs was personal expe-
rience. They didn’t just talk
about political ideology. Nor
did they try to score cheap
political points that matter
liltle to anyone outside the
chamber.

Evans and Dueck are on op-
posite sides of the debate
about the new Labour Code,
but both offered valid reasons
for their stand by recalling
events that actually happened
to them, events that profound-
ly influenced them, events that
helped shape their views.

Dueck expressed concern
about the bill’s provisions
regarding secondary boycat-
ting, a union practice to pre-
vent a unionized company
from doing business with a
non-union firm.

He told the House that when
he in his late twenties, he
gambled all his savings and
borrowed hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars trom the bank

‘to open a Ford dealership.

A few days after work had
begun on a body shop addi-
tlon, "five burly fellows" came
into his office and told him
that some of the firms supply-
ing the contractor were

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Opinions differ _ |
on labour code —

From the
Capital

by Hubert Beyer

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unionized, while his contractor
wasn’t. As a result, Dueck’s
firm was declared "hot."

He was given a choice: pay
off the non-union contractor fo
the tune of about $50,000 and
hire a unionized firm or
unionize himself. If he did nei-
ther, they threatened to break
him.

He recalls being very scared
at first and then getting angry.
He called the union’s bluff,
and no sooner was his place
was picketed than other con-
tractors, including B.C. Hydra
and B.C. Tel left, refusing to
cross the picket lines.

A good personal friend of

Dueck’s even had his car,

which was in for repair, towed
off the lot, saying he had no
choice. In the end, Dueck
won, but he said it was a long
and tough fight.

Evans, speaking on the bill’s
provision which would ban re-
placement workers or scabs,
was equally convincing in his
defence of the legislation.

He told the legislature about
he time he worked in the
forest for a non-union con-
tractor. One day, the con- |
tractor announced that every-
body’s wages were cut in half.

"So the men had a meeting
in the evening in the
bunkhouse. In the moming we
said to the boss we didn’t it
was O.K. to cut our wages in
half in one day, so maybe we
should consider joining a
union.

_. “By that night, that particular

individual had fired every

single one of his workers, and
there was another crew at
work."

He also recalled with consid-
erable passion a time when the

postal workers were on strike

and the post office hired sa-
called replacement workers.

"They hired children, people
my children’s age, 17, 18, 19
years old, people who had
never had a job before," he
said.

And to get the mail into the
post offices, he said, the post
office hired replacement
workers in the karate’ clubs of
Vancouver. The result was a
bunch of scared kids, trying to
cross picket lines and others
inciting violence. One young
boy was trying to get a track
through the picket line. | ~

"There was a young person
my son’s age, sitting.in a cab,
driving a machine tht must
have weighed 15 tons. His’
legs were shaking on the

"clutch because he was scared

as we were, and a boss was
screaming at him to drive.

"I was sitting behind the
truck, and I was thinking .
about my dad, because my
dad’s generation made scabs
illegal. It wasn’t O.K, inthe
forties and fifties to break
picket lines with
provocateurs."

No-one can deny that both
Dueck and Evans have valid
points. The question is: will
we find solutions that address
their valid concerns? Bill-19,
the previous Scored legislation
didn’t. Time will tell whether,
Bill 84 does.

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