Ad - The Terrace Standard, FRRAGE August 6, 2003 - ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 PUBLISHER: ROD LINK ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. « V8G SR2 TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 © FAX: (250) 638-8432 ' WEB: www.terracestandard.com EMAIL: newsroom@terracestandard.com Dear Mike IN THE war movies they are known as “Dear John” letters, correspondence from home to sol- diers serving overseas, The news was never good for a “Dear John” letter was from a girlfriend or spouse telling the soldier their relationship was over. While not as final or definitive as a “Dear- John” letter, recent words from Skeena MLA Roger Harris regarding stalled changes to provin- : cial forest policy come close. Call it a “Dear Mike” letter, as in forests minister Mike de Jong. “Get on with it. Don’t piss around any more,” says Mr. Harris of the stalled policy to take back 20 per cent of the timber from large licence hold- . ers and make it available to smaller processors. Mr. Harris is understandably upset. Elected just - over two years ago, Mr. Harris entered office ina, riding that had one working pulp mill and three working sawmills. This month, the Eurocan pulp ° mill in Kitimat, Skeena Sawmills and New Skee- na in Terrace are closed. Still open is a small mill © in Kitwanga. Mind you, none of the above can be tagged to provincial forest policy. Eurocan and Skeena Sawmills have the same corporate owner, West Fraser. Eurocan is on strike and with no place to send its chips, Skeena Sawmills shut down. And. we all know the New Skeena story. But that is also Mr. Harris’ essential point. Too much wood is locked up by too few large proces- sors. When something affects those large proces- . sors, the impact is massive, profound and ugly. The 20 per cent take back — combined in the northwest with reclaiming the wood New Skeena |. hasn’t been cutting — would provide volume for , somebody else. Mr. Harris doesn’t presume to have a master plan once that wood does become available. But : freeing up the volume, he expects, will give rise to creative juices out there. That’s the essence of business and entrepreneurship. What makes Mr. Harris particularly irritated is - his suspicion is that the majority of the problem : of freeing up the wood isn’t foot-dragging on the part of Mr. de Jong or his government. It rests, he believes, with the bureaucratic process that has been put in place to accomplish the task. Interest- ing words from an MLA whose government was elected to diminish the size and impact of the civil . service. Whatever it is — policy makers who can’t pull the trigger, reluctant civil servants, summer holi- days, the weather etc. — the northwest needs some — movement. Chainsaw through the mounds of pa- ' perwork, shred the planning documents. The onus is on this government to follow through on making wood available for those who may have an idea of what to do with it so that the ; word ‘new’ in New Era still means something. r a ‘ PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur NEWS: Jeff Nagel NEWS/SPORTS Sarah A. Zimmerman 7002 WINNER NEWS/COMMUNITY: Jennifer Lang CCNA BETTER FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping & Carol McKay NEWSPAPERS CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Terri Gordon COMPETITION ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Bert Husband & Denise Young TELEMARKETER: C.J. Bailey COMPOSING: Susan Credgeur AD ASSISTANT: Sandra Stefanik SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: $57.94 (+$4,06 GST)=62.00 per year; 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 B.C, AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION (CNA von D Watast Eeisas tal tata B.C. PRESS COUNCIL (www bepresscounel org) ‘WE IN THE HEARTLAND =~ DECIDED To CHANGE OUR MONIKER Jo ONE THAT BEFTER REFLECTS A) HOW VicTORIA TREATS US. y Liberal deficits not a pretty sight VICTORIA - British Columbi- ans elected the Liberals by a landslide because the NDP was spending the taxpayers’ money like a bunch of drunken sailors. For the benefit of the politi- * cally correct crowd, no slight against sailors is intended. Just an old saying. And judging from what Gary Collins, the finance min- ister, tells us in his never-end- ing stream of press releases, the Liberals are doing a Her- culean job of putting British Columbia back on a solid fis- cal footing. But wait a minute. What about the $3.169 billion deficit _for the fiscal year 2002/03? What's that? It’s the biggest deficit in the province’s his- tory? How can that be when the honourable minister of finance assures us that the Liberal government has made signifi- cant progress in restoring sound fiscal management.” That’s what aroused the cu- riosity of Cristobal Young, a graduate fellow in the depart- ment of Economics at the Uni- versity of Victoria. “For Collins, | fiscal prudence means talking about it a lot,” Young said in an op- ed piece in the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper the other day. YOU go’ EIGHTY PER cent of products are designed without the user in mind, according to a report aired on CBC Radio last spring. That might explain Korean- made shirts with narrow shoulders and tight sleeves. women’s anklet socks with li- gature cuffs, and B.C.’s educa- tion system. It would also account for the tea kettle with a spout that wouldn’t fit under any tap and a steam vent that shot scald- ing steam over your hand as you poured; inflexible spatu- las; and brooms with handles so short you have to stoop like a refugee using a bundle of twigs to brush sand from her tent. The best products are de- signed by. users who set out to solve a personal problem. This must be how upholsterers’ tools derived, since the trade has few tools but each is spe- -cialized, “Go do one thing, and do it very well,” as Major Winchester of MASH said about his surgical skills. The next best products re- SOtTMIS is. Garving tha Terrace and Thomhill area, Putlised on Wednesday of each ivook it 9210 Clinton Strest, : : Bele Tarace, Biltish Columbia, V8 " Steries, photographs, INustrations, designs antl ty copyright holdars, including Carlboo Press (1868) Lid., its litustralion repro services and advertising agancles, Reproduction In whole or in part, without written permission, ls specifi aly profit, Authorized as second-class mali panding the Post Office Da; nt, for mi cash. Special thanks to all our contributors and. Ser eonondenta for thelr time and talente = Jones ¥8 race Standard are the prope bl He ae Y FROM THE CAPITAL, HUBERT BEYER To get a clearer picture of how the current Liberal and previous governments of vary- ing political stripes acquitted themselves of their fiscal re- sponsibilities, Young exam- ined the records of the past 24 years. To be sure, none of them get stellar grades. “The first thing budgetary history has to say is that defi- cits are an ingrained part of the B.C. government financ- es,” Young says. “Only five out of the past 24 years have seen a balanced or surplus budget in B.C.” The sécond thing Young observes is that the economy plays a large role in fiscal management, not exactly a new discovery. It is no easy task to balance THROUGH. BIFOCALS. CLAUDETTE SANDECKI sult when a need is identified by an enterprising manufactur- er who then assigns a team of engineers to the problem, backing their efforts with labo- ratory testing and user trials. User feedback guides fine tun- ’ ing of the product. Perhaps this is how Zellers ended up with one of the few plastic shopping bags that have handles on either side of the load where one hand can grip both handles. Most stores pack your pur- chases in bags with a handle SAY ' decade, ST NEAR VAND eerore SC IEAR. SAY SAME TING HI! the budget during a recession. Tax revenues naturally fall during a recession, and social safety net spending automati- cally kicks in. And slashing spending or raising taxes only makes the recession worse.” Now Young comes to his third point, which consists of finger-pointing: “who were the (relatively) good fiscal man- agers and who were the bad?” And here is where it gets interesting. Young’s examina- tion reveals that the Socreds were the worst fiscal managers in B.C. history. Between 1981 and 1991 (on Bill Bennett's and Bill Vander Zalm’s watch), B.C. had a de- ficit in eight out of 11 years. On average, the deficit repre- sented 4.3 per cent of total government spending,” says Young. “Indeed, between 1983 and 1987, the Socreds brought in five massive back-to-back de- ficits, the largest accounting for more than 14 per cent of spending.” During the 1990s, the NDP seven out of nine budgets showed a deficit. However, the average deficit was considerably lower, name- ly 2.3 per cent of government spending. Now, Young cautions that having been better fiscal man- agers than the Socreds is not ta love this Cal at either end. Try hauling your newspapers to the recycler in one of those bags. You can carry only one bag at a time using both hands. Two of my favourite pro- ducts, probably suggested by a baltered wife, are the Caller ID and a voice activated tele- phone cassette recorder. The Caller ID because it records phone numbers and the time of incoming calls, acts as an answering machine without messages. Yet it helps me screen welcome calls from those who would intrude upon my family’s privacy or good nature after business hours. And ] don’t have to pay for a second phone line. ] bought the recorder specif- ically to record telephone in- terviews when [ research non- fiction articles. The recorder leaves no doubt in my tran- scription of conversations with anyone, and records spelling of names and titles of people working in official depart- ments. But it comes in handy for sharing family phone calls, When I hang up from chatting SAM vNNY? IT Wi ON THE IT WURKED in itself very impressive. “But to be fair, the NDP’s unique notoriety for fiscal reck- lessness is not deserved. Indeed, the last NDP budget showed the largest surplus in B.C. history. We now come to Young’s assessment of the current Lib- eral government's fiscal perfor- mance. It ain’t pretty. “The Liberals acted swiftly to undo that (the NDP’s) pro- gress. For all the chatter to the contrary, their performance to date has been a complete dis- aster. For the two budgets the Liberals have tabled so far, the deficit has averaged 8.9 per cent of government spending. “This is twice the average Socred deficit of 4.3 per cent and almost four times the size of the average NDP deficit of 2.3 per cent,” Young says. “And the Liberals cannot blame their fiscal blundering on dismal economic weather. Two-thirds of the current budget deficit is a consequence of the massive corporate and personal income tax cuts. “If B.C voters were hoping for a dose of sensible budgetary management, they have been sadly disappointed,” Young says. Amen to that. Beyer can be reached at: E-mail: hubert@coolcom.cam. Or phone him at (250) 381-6900. er ID with my sister I can replay both ends of our conversation for my husband to hear. A tape is per- fect for checking details. Often in the exchange of family news, I miss a detail or can't remember, “Did my sister say Tuesday or Wednesday?” Because the recorder begins ‘taping the moment I lift the phone receiver. It’s a model of- ten used by women protecting themselves from harassing calls by an ex-boyfriend or ex- husband. This was a selling point emphasized by the sales- man who recommended this model to me. Coupled with the Caller [ID which supplies an exact time of the call, RCMP can petition Telus to trace harassing calls to the originating phone number, even if the Caller ID tegisters ‘Private.’ Unless interviewing, I acti- vate the recorder only when I'm expecting a complicated call — instructions from 4 cus- tomer, a supplier calling to dis- cuss a botched shipment, Unlike socks, it’s a product where one size does fit all. SES s) Ba - LO LAST WEEK: I)