Page A4 — Terrace Standard, Wednesday, January 22, 1992 © Registration No. 7820 4647 Lazelle Ave., Terrace, B.C., V8G 188 a Phone (604) 638-7283 Fax (604) 638-8432 "TERRACE STANDART) " ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 _ Rod Link Serving the Terace arta, Published on Wednesday of each week by Cariboo Press (1969) Lid. at 4647 Lazelle Ave,, Terrace, Gritish Columbia, Stortes, photographs, illustrations, dasigns and typestyies in the Terrace Standard are the MSITRIION negra Services and adverlising agencies, Reproduction it whois or in part, without written permission, is specilically prosubiled. Authorized 1s second-class mail pending the Post Ofkce Department, tor payment of postage in cash. property of the copyright hoWers, including Cariboo Prass 41969) Lid., its it (echa Publisher! Editor: Advertising Manager Marlee Paterson Preduction Manager: Edouard Credgeur Jett Nage! — Sports, Malcolm Baxter —~ News, Arlene Watls ~ Typasetter, flose Fisher — Front Office Manager, Carolyn Anderson — Typeseltter, _ Susan Credgaur — Composing/Darkrcom, -Janat Viveiros — Advertising Consultant, Sam Colller — Advertising Consultant, . Charleen Matthews — Circulation Supervisor Ry noian SOM UAT . Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents. _EDITORIAL _. Feed the kids It's a wonderful thing for a public body to have a surplus. Kind of rare, too. It demonstrates any number of things, not the least of which is that nag- ging notion that perhaps taxation levels are too high. In this area we have two such ex- amples — the city and the school district. There’s ‘no word on what the city council wants to do with the estimated $750,000 it has stuffed under its mattress but the school district has decided how to spend the $1.3 million it has tucked away. The majority of that $1.3 million is going to computers for schools and for the district’s administrative office. There’s a further amount to electronical- dy connect the schools and a chunk for more phones so teachers can better speak with parents. Those may all be valid expenditures. But where the school district has made a wonky decision is setting aside $90,000 provincial election. The new government has announced it will provide $7 million for such a program. It would be folly for the school district ‘to ignore any program offered by the provincial government to improve the quality of the service it provides. Yet the school district should be just as prudent in husbanding and utilizing the resources at its disposal. The district should have considered using some of the surpius for its own school lunch program or to subsidize the one of the anti-poverty group society. It may be dandy for the school district to wait for the provincial government to give it money. But it would have been just as dandy for the school district to tell the provincial government it didn’t need the money this year. to improve the entrances to schools and the $15,000 to subsidize the purchase by teachers of personal computers. Instead, the school district should have con- sidered spending that amount ona lunch program for those children who may not get enough to eat at home. This is a touchy topic. It admits that while we consider ourselves to be one of |[thesaere. advanced societies in the world, - ye fail:sto provide the basic necessities to * “a segment of our population. For years, individual schools have developed informal and admirable pro- grams ranging from teachers quietly en- suring hungry students are fed to students sharing lunches. Now the Ter- -race Anti-Poverty Group Society has a lunch program designed for students from the city’s inner schools. It gets no money from the school district. Last year the former Social Credit government announced it wanted to br- ing in lunches. The idea slumbered and eventually fell away in the events of the Spending money just because it’s there isn’t the kind of thing any public sector body should be doing these days. Vandals There are very few people nowadays who don’t have some kind of story on an act of vandalism. There are as many reasons why, vandalism. takes place as.. there aré‘péople who‘have been’ affected — a slackness in the kinds of laws need- ed to punish offenders, social problems, the general lack of respect in the first place by those who commit damage. To start soon is a chamber of com- merce promotion to encourage people to report vandalism acts. It'll be accompan- ed by a reward program to help catch and convict those responsible. It’s a program that has the potential to cut down on the tremendous cost of van- dalism. Better yet, it just may represent people taking a bit more pride in their surroundings. Talking Doorbell Luckily, our dog Doorbell " can’t read. If he could, I would - be hoarse from boosting his self-esteem. He would piunk the Province at my feet and point an accusing . paw at the headline, Mountie ’ Lauded for Rescue Role. ‘‘How ‘ come,” he would pout, ‘‘for sniffing in the snow, Echo gets ' his picture in a Vancouver dai- ly? [ guard this place around the ‘clock and all I get is chin _ calluses, **As well as a daily hike in summer, and loads of praise. _ What more would you like?" ‘Public recognition?” **‘Doorbell, everyone on the street knows you, The paper- ’ boy. The dogcatcher,.,”’ Echo rode 20 kilometers on a . snowmobile. You don’t take me riding.” : “We. don't have a snowmobile. Anyway, you : gefused to sit on the kids’ wooden toboggan. Now you dream of straddling a wild adult toy with only. static cling for a seat belt?’’ ‘It says here the Mountie put his arms around Echo to hold him safe. You never hug me.’ . “I do, too. I Lift you in or out . of the truck for a visit to the vet. ae ’ “But you don’t hug me for two hours.’’ “If hugging you was part of my job description ... Echo risked hearing loss riding that skidoo. You hate noise. You Through Bifocals by Claudette Sandecki wriggle under a sofa when snow rumbles off the roof. “Altitude doesn’t faze me, Remember, when you were tear- ing down the porch, | walked on top of the eight foot wall?” “With Wallenda panache, A natural aerialist. Echo’s trained -fo climb ladders, balance on narrow walkways, leap high fences. Trained to respond to hand signals and whistles.’ “Don’t: 1 come to you when you slap your thigh?” “Yes, But the only whistle that moves you is the tone of CBC Radio's time signal. Then you scoot into your house quicker than an Israeli under Scud attack. But consider the down side of Echo's job.’' “The 1,000 foot drop?” “That too. No, the hairy trek atap a rugged ridge in subzero temperatures and 70 kph winds in ten foot.visibility, Echo must have wallowed to his eyes in ing my blue sock. I would milk his silky ears. “You help Echo whenever your vigilance and barking persuades a potential criminal to avoid our neighbourhood. That’s one less crime Echo has to investigate. One less burglar he has ta track. So even if your efforts don’t make the news, we appreciate your good work, That’s why we buy you milkbone treats and dog hamburger for cold days."’ "Ts it cold today?’ “Cold enough. Feich your dish. I'll get the hamburger,” AND THAT'S AGLE HEAD PEAK ! snow; at 130 pounds, he’s no snowshoe rabbit, With your stubby legs, you'd have tummy frostbite.” Doorbell would sigh, nuzzl- i) D. VeQUAART ee More honesty, fewer promises VICTORIA —]'m not par- ticularly surprised to see most of the NDP promises go cut the window. A government hasn't been elected that didn’t renege very quickly on most of the promises it made during the election campaign, I would like to make the point, nevertheless, that not even the sanctimonious New Democrats are immune from . “acute: snéthory loss the. momerit they’re in power, ‘ Only a few months ago, the NDP attacked the Socred -government with a fury over its university tuition fee policy. A disgrace, they called it, demanding an immediate freeze, lest only the children of the rich be able to attend higher institutions of learning. That was before the election, Two months into their man- date, they’re singing a slightly different tune. Gosh, says Ad- vanced Education Minister Tom Perry,.the money situa- tion is really tight. Freezing tuition fees may be awfully difficult, if not impossible. The students feel cheated, of course, and so they should. they believed the NDP pro- mise, because they are not yet cynical enough to know that in the world of politics a promise is merely another weapon ta achieve power. The environmentalists are equally browned off at the government, What was it Premier Harcourt said during the election campaign? '‘It’s time to stop the valley-by- valley battle between en- vironmentalists and the forest industry,”’ . Sensible people, he said, could surely sit down and work out their differences. | tried on a number of occasions to get him to tell me just how he was going to make loggers and environmental activists happy at the same time, but he just kept saying that it was time to stop the ‘‘valley-by- valley ...”’ and so on, Needless to say that quite a few environmentalists are mad- der than hatters over what they perceive to be a government BuT MY Good char! THE MAP CALLS IT MOUNT PALYRYMPLE !? From the Capital by Hubert Beyer sellout to the forest industry. _‘They expected,an immediate, yee moratorium on the logging of sensitive areas, but got nothing. I’m not advocating the im- plementation of all the pro- mises the NDP made during — the election campaign. I’m say- ing they shouldn't have made any of those promises to start with. oO How can you speak of honest government when the - first thing you do is break pro- mises? Alas, there’s one promise that hasn’t bitten the dust — the school meal program, laun- ched last week by Education Minister Anita Hagen at an in- itial cost of $7 million. ‘Funding for a school meal program for elementary schools, expected to reach up to $0,000 children, will cost $5.9 million, while an addi- tional $1.1 million has been allocated For pilot projects in secondary schools during the current school year, Milking that one for all it’s worth, Hagen said “‘the health and education of our children are top priorities of our government. Good nutrition is fundamental to a healthy lear- ning environment,” The program got a good reception from the Liberals. ‘‘you can’t feed the mind on an empty stomach,” concluded opposition education critic Doug Symons. ‘I must add, however, that this program must be no more than a stop-gap program to meet an immediate need. The government must tackle the long-term root causes of hungry children — poverty in our society,’ Symons added, Ah, I can already make out the dim contours of a Liberal $action promise next.time . aibavia -around, Fight poverty, better yet, “‘let’s do away with pover- ty." Has a nice ring to it and is less specific than those darn promises the NDP made in the last election campaign. So, what other promises will be going out the window? In.a nutshell, anything that costs money. No tax increases? Forget it. Doubling the size of park land? No way. Forbid logging in sensitive areas? Right. The only thing that'll be left is the sunshine package which includes tighter conflict of in- terest laws and access to infor- malion legislation. ' Come to think of it, guaranteed access to govern- ment information and protec- tion of private information held by government may not even become law this year. The implementation of-such an act will cost an estimated $30 million a year, and that may be too rich for Finance Minister Glen Clark’s cash- strapped coffers this year. The government may, therefore, bring in what is call- ed an exposure bill, something of a white paper, that would invite input from all interested parties. That way, the actual cost of implementing the legislation could be delayed by a year. I'd like to stress again that I'm not faulting the govern- ment for putting most of its promises on hold. The last thing we need is a government that gets us deeper into the red (han we are already. But I'd like to make a plea for more honesty and fewer promises before an election, WELL , TO vs) “TRAN THE QUEEN) oF ENieL AN IT Looks MORE | \POMPOUS WIMPY NEPHEW-: Lik Ke AN EAGLE LT? No | H