Stress expense _ Last night while I was sleeping I woke from a terrible dream I called up my friend Jack Daniels And his good buddy Jimmy Beam ..And we drank alone. George Thorogood Provincial budgets are big targets that tend to attract a lot of ran- dom and often inaccurate artillery. Finance Minister Mel Couvelier’s 1988-89 B.C. budget announced last month is no excep- tion, but he deserves credit for nearly doubling the alcohol and substance abuse treatment allocation to $48 million, -_ Even with the funding doubled, area still represents only 10 percent of the profits the government realizes from the state-controlled liquor concessions, and those pro-. fits do not include the recently increased social services tax on the sale of alcoholic beverages. Questions remain regarding the regional distribution of the newly dedicated funds. | The Liquor Distribution Branch annual report ending in March | 1986 indicates total revenue from the four stores in the Skeena region served by Northwest Drug and Alcohol Counselling services came to $13,683,653. With the rule-of-thumb 35 percent profit ratio used for such operations, that means that after all costs including wages for employees the Skeena liquor stores remitted a net of about $4.8 million to Victoria. NADC’s budget for the following year was in the order of $300,000 - the outflow from this region is CL Letter to the editor will be con- sidered for publication only when signed. Please Include your telephone number. The editor reserves the right to condense and edit letters. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Terrace Review. ERu Terrace . Review Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review Is published each Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. Publisher: Mark Twyford Editor: Michael Kelly — ._ Staff Reporters: Tad Strachan Charlynn Toews os Advertising Sates: Marj Twyford '. Typesetting: Linda Copeland pels Production: -. dim Hall, Alvin Stewart, “Arlene Wandl, Gurbax Gill, “Linda Marcer, Arlene Gaspar Office: ‘Carrie Olson Accounting: Marj Twyford, Rosemary McGettigan Second-class mall registration No. 6896. All material appearing In the Terrace Review is protected under Canadian copyright Reqistra: jlon No. 382775 and cannot legally be repro- duced for any reason without permission of ihe publisher, Errore and omissions. Advertising Is accepted on the condition that in the evant of typographicat error, that portlon ol the advertis- ing space occupled by the erroneous item will not be charged for, but the balance of the advar- tisament will be pald for at the applicable rate. Advertisers must assume responsibility for er: rors In any classified ad which Is supplied tothe Terrace Review in handwritten form. . In compliance with the 8.C. Human Rights Act, no advertisement will be published which discriminates against a parson dus to age, race, ratigion, color, sex, nationality, anceairy or place of arigin. 4535 Greig Avenue, Terrace, B.C. V8G 1M7 Phone: 635-7840 oo One year subscriptiona: tn Canada $24.00 Out of Canada $50.00 eniors in Terrace and District $12.00 Saniora out of Terrace and District $15.00 ~ FW SENT OF SERIE CORES. ee however, the expenditure in that . conti,uad on page 23 Intelligence and fairness punched out ~ I said before that the budget brought down by Finance Minister Mel Couvelier a couple of weeks ago isn’t half bad, and Pd say it again if it weren’t for a couple of items that insult one’s intelligence as well as one’s sense of fairness. First, there is the Budget Stabilization Fund,. already referred to with ample justification as.the. B:S, Fund. Couvelier tries to tell us that he put $450 million into -that fund to stabilize future budgets. The idea is to put money into the budget when times are good and draw from it during bad economic times. oo Hubert Beyer in Victoria According to my home-grown economic model, you can only put ‘something into a rainy day fund when you've got it in the first place. In other words, if you want to salt a few thousand dollars away for future use, you have to save them first. . Couvelier doesn’t appear to be bogged down by such simplistic logic. He created a $450 million fund out of nothing. In fact, he doesn’t expect to have enough money to pay for everything the government will do over the next 12 months — with or without the B.S. Fund. mo , You should try it with your own budget. It’s a neat trick. Suppose you expect to earn $30,000 after taxes next year. Plan on spending $35,000. Then establish a $5,000 fund to balance future budgets. Where will you get the extra $5,000 when you already will be spending more than you earn? Don’t ask me. Ask Couvelier. He’s the creative guy. The money in that fund doesn’t exist, except on paper. A real fund can only be financed from a budget surplus, but the 1988-89 budget is expected to have a $295 million deficit. If Couvelier ever wants to produce the money in that mythical fund, he’ll have to borrow it, which is exactly what he intends to do, during an election year. All the fund does is give the government the power to borrow an additional $450 million for unspecified pur- — poses. And that will come in handy prior to the next election. If you feel that your intelligence has been sufficiently insulted by Couvelier’s mirror magic, you’re ready for the assault on your sense of fairness. The following is an excerpt from the budget speech: “Over the mext two decades, the proportion of seniors in our population is expected to increase significantly. To provide for that growth, and increased costs, government will increase user fees for clients receiving extended and long-term care as well as those receiv- ing long-term mental health and alcohol and drug treatment.” ‘The fees will be increased from 75 percent to 85 percent of the combined old-age security and guaranteed income supplement payments. These new rates, however, will ensure that even the most needy clients will continue to have more disposable income than those in seven other provinces.’’ That means long-term care patients whose only income is the maximum old age security pension and the maximum Guaranteed Income Supplement will have their disposable income reduced from $178.87 a month to $109.31 a month. And the only excuse the government could come up with was that seven other provinces are even greedier and more callous in their ap-. proach to seniors needing long-term care. Perhaps realizing that this squeeze on the poorest and most helpless British Columbians might make the government look bad, which it does, Social Services Minister Claude Richmond announc-' ed a few days later that long-term care patients will now be eligible for Guaranteed Available Income for Need (GAIN) payments. That latest move will bring the disposable income of long-term care patients relying on the two previously mentioned sources of in- come back up to $158.31. In other words, the government took a hefty chunk from them and then gave them back a bit. They’! still get $20 a month less than before. . The message: Getting old is bad enough for most people, but get- ting old and sick is something you had better not become in British - Columbia. . The move defies logic. The additional revenue the government — _will derive from confiscating another 10 percent of long-term care patients’ disposable income is a few million at best, a drop in the budgetary bucket. For the individual, however, that tax grab could mean the dif- ference between keeping and losing self-respect. The whole scheme sounds like Plan B in case the public doesn’t buy euthanasia. oe A Natural Right For reasons unknown, Socred members of the legislature have. ~~ spent a lot of time recently attacking the NDP government of a. decade and a half ago. The most noteworthy quote came from Finance Minister Mel Couvelier, commenting on the 1975 Social Credit victory. “Sanity was restored to the province and Social Credit once more _ eo reasserted its natural right and assumed leadership,” Couvelier:. said. One more victory and it'll be a divine right. Robbing Peter ... Former forest minister Jack Kempf last week accused the govern- = ment of robbing the people of Fort St. James of their future timber — supply to pay the piper in the Prince George Timber Supply Area which is suffering from a serious sustained-yield problem. The proposed allocation of 400,000 cubic-meters of timber a year for the next 20 years from the Sustut-Takla Timber Supply Area to « . Prince George will, according to Kempf, assure disaster for Fort St. James. “Unless a good portion of the Sustut-Takla wood is earmarked - me for plants in Fort St. James, I predict a serious shortage there within - - 20 to 30 years,”” Kempf said. Computers In Schools oe A chicken in every pot and a computer in every classroom, Education Minister Tony Brummet provided the first detailed” — mah glimpse last week of the government’s computers-in-schools pro- gram, promised in the budget. During the first year of the open-ended program, the government will allocate $15 million for the purchase of hardware and software, | the training of teachers and the establishment of a new technology centre. More than $11 million of the total will be used to buy hard- ware and software. ~ The overall aim of the program is to train a largely computer- _ fou illiterate student generation in the skills that will be necessary for tomorrow’s business leaders. re Popular Premier When they're not busy attacking each other, political parties are os taking polls to find out where they stand with the public or, more important, where their opponents stand. - A‘recent poll by the provincial NDP showed that despite or perhaps because of his confrontational style, Premier Vander Zalm enjoys great popularity with the public. Seems the abortion and privatization issues are hurting him less than first suspected. RA eR ae Since are