Page A4 — Terrace Standard, Wednesday, March 11, 1992 Red Link " ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1968 a "TERRACE STANDARD) Registration No, 7820 4647 Lazalte Ave., Terrace, B.C., V¥8G 1S8 Phone (604) 638-7283 Fax (604) 638-8432 Serving tht Terrace area, Published on Wednesday of each week by Cariboa Pies (1989) Lid. al 4647 Lazolle Ava, Tenaco, British Columbia, Stories, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in Ine Terrace Standard are tha property of tha copyright holders, Including Cariboo Prass {1 969) Ltd, its it cy Publisher/Editor: Advertising Manager Marlee Paterson Production Manager: Jeff Nagel — Sports, Malcolm Baxter -- News, Arlene Watts — Typesetter, Rosa Fisher — front Office Manager, Carolyn Anderson — Typasatter, Susan Credgeur — Composing/Darkraom, : alanet Vivelros -- Advertising Consultant, Sam Colliar — Advertising Consultant, : Charleen Matthews — Circulation Supervisor : ane ~ ear ort Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents. lustration iapro Services, apd advertising agencies. Reproduction in whole ot in part, without written parmission, is specifically pronibited. Authorized as second-class mail pending the Post OMice Department, for payment of postage in cash. Goya Edouard Credgeur f Ve Ae} a ad ETT a twepapeas Co EDITORIAL, | Forest storm. Canadians are correct if they’ve spent the last few days asking themselves what benefit there is in the free trade deal with the United States. For the third time in the American commerce department has decided that our soft- wood exports to that country are sub- 10 years, sidized. The result is a general 14.58 per cent increase in duty on Canadian softwood going into the United States. This is on top of a 15 per cent increase in costs to forest companies that came from an earlier dispute on the issue. It also doesn’t help matters much that this is an election year in the United States, Politicians there, like anywhere else, act in any number of ways to make sure they are gain or retain elected of- fice. Last year it was Desert Storm. This year call it Forest Storm. On the surface American lumber pro- ducers say Canadian governments sub- Plannin There’s a growing demand for land development and that requires planning on the part of the city to make sure that what is going on makes sense. The problem is that the city doesn’t sidize companies here. They say that gives Canadian lumber a price advantage when being sold in the United States. In reality, the American companies want a. higher Canadian price so they can better compete with an acknowledged superior Canadian product. That’s hardly what we would call free enterprise. The irony is that Canadian lumber will stil] be in demand in the United States because that country can’t supply enough to meet its own market re- quirements, This means American con- sumers will be paying for the extra duty. And that means the price of American homes will be going up. In effect, the American consumer is being penalized. All of this points to the simple realiza- tion that the United States regards itself as above the intent of the free trade deal. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would provals until be justified in serving notice that Canada is bailing out of the deal. because an overall philosophy is missing. Council can shelve all development ap-— the new plan is in place. That’s just as dangerous because it would stall growth. have,enoush people.to,.do,the, planning... ,,, 30, what the city needs to do is perhaps job-elfectively. It-doesshave an official’ --delay or-ishelve some of the spending plan that is supposed to set out what should happen where and why. But it’s old and insufficient. The stuff in the plan doesn’t meet the image council wants the city to have — that being the service centre for the northwest with op- portunities for businesses as well as a de- cent quality of life for its residents. All of this leave the city in a quandry. Council wants a new community plan. But it also wants developments to go ahead. It can’t have both. To handle developments piece meal is dangerous ’ priorities it has already established in favour of allocating more money to its planning department. This would be done with the understanding the extra help is for a fixed period of time. The idea would be to concentrate on the new community plan and to meet those development needs. It makes little sense for the city to continue on the way it is. Not only is it in danger of losing out on some growth opportunities, but residents will have to live with whatever hodge-podge that may result. An easy way « For an unusual kids’ contest, Skeena Mall could try Thor- nhill’s pastime — shortcutting. Any age or size can play. The pros and cons of being puny balance those of being oversize. It appeals to ‘all ages; it universally annoys adults. Only vandalism has equal appeal. Despite its name, shortcutting is not intended to save time, or to conserve energy for strenuous games such as street hockey, It’s done to thumb the nose at touchy old codgers, peo- ple who have invested six .mon- ths’ pension into fencing. Non- chalantly hurdling their fence is akin to torching gunpowder. Yelling contests -can take place in the mall;. shortcutting needs yenues just as the Albert- ville Olympics did. It is scored in five categories: fence, dogs, visibility, excuses, and effect. While any fenced yard can be a venue, the higher and sturdier the fence, the greater. the challenge. The best.venues have exceptionally high, quality fences with vertical rather than horizontal boards, ‘or ‘small mesh, offering few toe or han- dholds, Yards with trees, out- buildings or duck blinds rank as bunny slopes. : Look for yards zealously patrolled by agile, alert younger dogs. There should be signs posted warning of. their viciousness. Allot ten points for each guard dog, to a: maximum of thirty points. More than three dno: should tell you your out Through Bifocals by Claudette Sandecki I ta venue is the dogpound's exer- cise run. The degree of difficulty is compounded by backstop fences, pit bulls, and grounds smooth as pudding skin. Bonus points are awarded to any trespasser who triggers a Mount - St. Helens explosion in the resi- dent. Upsetting a married cou- ple beats tormenting a lone bachelor. Granted, provoking arthritics to hobble from the house bran- dishing a cane and screaming, “What: the hell do you think you’re doing in this yard?’ or rudely inquiring into the short- cutter's mental and parental background, not only breaks the monotony of a senior’s day, It. gives the intruder satisfac- tion. _ - But bedevilling oldtimers so their next meal gives them heartburn rates a bronze medal. Stirring them up to. the brink of heart attack earns a silver. Pi- queing them to lay. trespassing _ charges claims gold. . Shortcutting forces juveniles to think on their feet, with as- tounding results. Even inex. “perienced shortcutiers, once in- tercepted, reel off excuses faster than Danny Kaye cornered in a castle. The absurdity of their alibis is usually lost. The contest would grade alibis for inven- tiveness and believeability. Now, there’s a gap. It’s hard to surpass shortcut- ting as an on-the-job training leg up in our competitive economy. Youngsters who risk life, limb, and Levis to pare their route by mere meters deserve more than a pat on the back. Even a hard pat, ad- ministered by parents, low down. So long as parents withhold their praise, Skeena Mall can give shortcutters prizes. Take this one MP behind wood shed VICTORIA — The thick envelope, addressed to me, ar- rived by courier in the press gallery. Pages one and two of the contents featured two smil- ing faces, those of Jim Fulton and Bob Skelly, both NDP MPs representing British Col- umbia constituencies in Ot- tawa. The contents, however, were nothing to smile about. The ~ package consisted of two in- treductory letters by above- mentioned politicians, and a 4-page document titled Share Groups in British Columbia, The document was prepared by the Parliamentary Library in Ottawa which, I suppose, is to give it the legitimacy its contents sadly lack, The document tries to discredit B.C. Share groups by linking them to the Wise Use movement in the United States which, in turn, is supposed to have connections with numerous ultra right-wing organizations in that country. In a covering letter, smiling Skelly waxes wise and poetic about the need to manage our forests for everyone’s benefit, not just a few corporate monsters, and having to ensure the ‘‘survival of our planet and to guarantee a future for our children,” Share groups, in Skelly’s. view I suppose, are bent on the destruction of our planet and making sure our children don’t have a future. That, at least is the implication, The document is question was written by Claude Emery, a researcher with the Library of Parliament. He should try his hand at something else, because his paper is pretty small on research, which doesn’t make it any less devastating, at least to the un- suspecting reader. Emery bases his conclusions on newspaper and magazine articles. Nothing suggests that he did any original research, Quotes are extracted from publications, not from per- sonal interviews. Just by way of brief ex- planation, Share groups exist From the Capital by Hubert Beyer es | in numerous communities in British Coluinbia. They were’ formed mainly ‘as a self-" ©.” defence measure in response to the activities of environmental organizations. All Share groups are community-based, a descrip- tion Emery surrounds with quotation marks to indicate that they are anything but. Some of the names are Share the Forest, Share our Resources, Share the Stein, Share the Carmanah, Share the Clayoquct. Share group tactics, Emery says, don’t appear to have originated in rural British Col- umbia, but in the Wise Use movement in the U.S. He bases that assumption on the fact that some members at- tended a national Multiple Use Strategy in Reno, Nevada, in August 1988, and because a number of B.C. organizations, including the Cariboo Lumber Manufacturers’ Association and the Mining Association of B.C,, were listed as affiliates in the Wise Use Agenda. Let me ask Emery a ques- tion. If you were a forestry of- ficial, wouldn’t you send so- meone to a conference called Multiple Use Strategy? But more important, if Emery had taken the time and the trouble to do some original research, he might have found out that the people from British Columbia who attended _ the Reno conference came back with the conclusion that the Wise Use approach wasn’t for them, ‘Their approach is confron- tational, and we wouldn't have anything to do with that,’? says Tom Waterland, president of the Mining Association of British Columbia. Why is it that environmental organizations promoting inter- national boycotts, blockading ; roads,-sabotaging equipment; ‘ are the good guys, while-peo- | ple wanting to keep their jobs in the forest are the bad guys? I must be missing something here. I have met and talked to dozens of Share group .. members. They are neither stooges for the industry, nor: do they want to destroy the planet. They work in the forest and want to continue doing so. Emery describes Share groups as presenting themselves to the public as “reasonable, objective, con- ciliatory, neutral and middle- of-the-road.'? He leaves little doubt that he knows better, Well, I got news for Emery, and Skelly, and Fulton. Like I said, I know a lot of Share group members personally, and I can assure them they are more reasonable, objective, conciliatory, neutral and middle-of-the-road than a lot of environmentalists 1 know. Skelly says in his covering letter that the Share groups use ‘language, rhetoric and pro- paganda styles’’ that are similar to Wise Use groups in the U.S. “They all depend, in part, on corporate funding and tend to support a corporate ap- proach to forest management, which. has come under intense criticism both in Canada and internationally, in recent years.”” - The Share group members I: have met wouldn’t know an American ultra right-winger if - they found them in the lunch box. In fact, many of them are. union members in good stan- ding who have a good mind to take Skelly behind the woodsh- ed for a serious talk. BuT THE “DAMMIT “a TOOK A LoT oF PATIENCE