Railroad to nowhere e ”.. and get rid of those pointy-headed bureaucrats.” | — George Wallace, 1968 U.S. presidential campaign To say, as Skeena MLA Dave Parker did recently, that the ultimate authority for all decisions in government rests with Cabinet, is to justify a tyranny of the majority. Western economists have been known to speak with envy of the Soviets’ ability to establish 20-year economic plans, knowing there will be no change in government during that lengthy period, and otherwise intelligent people bave expressed admiration for the unfetlered manner in which things can get done under a military government. That Mussolini, ch? Sure made the trains run on time! Parker admitted without apology last week that as Forests Minister during 1988 he and his Cabinet colleagues ignored the law of the day and ordered a top administrator in the ministry to award a major forest licence to a group of Prince George forest companies. Every evaluation, with one exception, of the licence applications done by ministry staff — the primary function for which these experts are employed at large public expense — called for the timber to be awarded to companies in the Northwest. Cabinet’s decision looked bad at the time from every viewpoint except Prince George, and in retrospect it looks even worse. The Sustut-Takla decision has caused untold suffering in Parker’s own riding, and over the 20 years the agreement will run it’s going to cost B.C. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in lost timber royalties alone, without even considering the cost of rebuilding a large part of the defunct Dease Lake B.C. Rail line. The argument that the decision was justified because it was made by elected officials indicates a basic misconception of the democratic process. People are elected to represent the will of the electorate and act intelligently, not to make stupid decisions. The Sustut-Takla agreement is the antithesis of representational government, made worse by the fact that a purportedly free-enterprise party undertook - an illegal act that no credible market data could possibly support. With the government having retroactively changed the Forest Act to make such a process legitimate, the awarding of forest licences now lies totally in the hands of politicians, meaning that forest policy is now subject to political considerations completely unrelated to the health of the resource or the economy. As if to prove it is the product of a flawed process, the agreement itself is not doing well. The companies who got the licence filed a management and working plan nearly 18 months late, and although harvesting is due to -begin Jan. 1, 1991, not a single spike has been driven on the railway into the harvesting area. This licence should be revoked, retendered, and awarded {o some- one who will get the job done in line with the stated objectives of the Crown in these matters. And the decision-making powers should be. returned to the Chief Forester, where they belong, or at the very least put a safe disiance away from political interference. Second-class mail registration No. 6896. All material appearing In the Terrace Review is protected under Canadian copyright Registra- tlon No. 362775 and cannot legally be rapro- duced for any reason without permission of the publisher, Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review is published gach Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. Publisher: Errors and omissions. 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Carrie Olson om Yeanede san0o Accounting: - sent Out of Canada, sim0.c0 $20.00 eniors in Terrace an airict ! “ Mar] Twyford, Harminder K. Dosanjh Seniors out of Tarraca and District $33.00 | _ Letters to the editor will be considered for publication orily when signed. Please Include your telephone number. SHS Use = The editor reserves the right to condense and edit letters. Opin expressed are not necessarily those ot the Terrace Review. ws CHANNEL 1.THE FINANCE (MINISTER : PRETING TOTAL DISASTER FOR THE CHANNEL I2..THE PRIME MINISTER Sapir fe CHANNEL 21 NRWS,_AN INVESTIGATION f a, INTO WHY NINE OF THESE CLOWNS § ; Hd od Ai RIGHT IN The view from _ Victoria — by John Pifer VICTORIA — Former attor- ney-general Bud Smith says he felt “empty and violated’’ to discover that some of his calls on his automobile telephone had been intercepted. I believe him... and after listening to other recorded con- versations between him and a now-former colleague of mine in the press gallery, I know ex- actly how he feels. This whole sordid affair has made all of us in this jour- nalistic profession review our inner feelings and thoughts about how we deal with politi- cians, and with our peers. Just as every individual in B.C. and beyond must ex- perience a gut-wrenching jolt at the mere thought that their private conversations could be, or might be, recorded, my in- nards have been on auto-churn since the discovery of just how close CKVU-TV reporter Margot Sinclair was to Our Bud. Hearing them discuss gallery reporters, including me, in a derisive manner, and hearing her coaching him on how to perform in front of the camera and in speaking to audiences is not something I want to have to endure again. Was she un- professional? Hell, yes... and were such acts unethical and unconscionable? Yes, again. And that’s without even getting into the evidence of the close personal relationship between them. . As this story continues to un- fold, there likely will be more unsavory revelations about the former attorney-general, which will. give the ravenous public © sel oa otk much more insight than they could ever want to know into his political and personal style and methods. Also, we in the media must not let the fact that friends and colleagues were, or may have been, involved in the whole af- fair impair our normal duties, either. For us not to pursue all angles, especially as it relates to involvement of any journalists, would be just as unethical as the aforementioned actions of Ms. Sinclair. Questions also must be raised — and answers given — about other instances in which queries arose of whether or not there was political interference in the dispensing of justice during Bud Smith’s two-year reign as A-G. One other point: given the staggering political damage that the whold affair has caused the government, perhaps it is not surprising that its initial ap- proach has been to make that invasion of privacy the main issue, rather than what Smith, the province’s chief law en- forcement officer, said and did. I believe that the.outrage ex- pressed by many of the MLA’s at the prospect of a systematic interception of a politician’s private phone conversations is genuine, without doubt. But it is also true that Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his damage-control advisers believe that that outrage should be milked to the last drop, in an effort to gain political ad- vantage. Why else the grandstand play of calling for police to conduct electronic sweeps of Cabinet offices for bugging devices? I say grandstand, because if such sweeping isn’t already done as a matter of course, that is palpably stupid in itself! The premier then lowered the ‘debate in the Legislature last week into the gutter, repeatedly accusing the NDP of a criminal offense of wiretapping telephones, and then refusing to withdraw or to apologize. He wouldn’t repeat it outside the House, nor would he ad- dress the devastating content of ’ the tapes. Don’t forget, dear readers, that what has been released so far shows two of the province’s top three law officers laughing about their power, and ap- parently discussing ways to dis- credit publicly the lawyer pro-| secuting one of Smith’s former cabinet colleagues, Bill Reid. Damning stuff, I suggest, with more to come. I believe that the NDP’s handling and timing of the tapes and transcripts should continue to be questioned for their use for political purposes. But this Socred damage-control strategy is equally questionable. They would be well-advised to change it, to admit how shat-. tering Smith’s actions were, and try to show they care about such things. And indications are growing now that, when all the truth is out, the motivation for the per- son who taped the calls is likely to prove to be personal, not | political. _ Stay tuned, prea 6! veberan a yneampena nmi Bee te phonies OMAR coe eect ee ie att cnt tee eae 5 Ei 2