A4- The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, October 23, 1996 ‘TERRACE STANDARD ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C. * V8G 5R2 TELEPHONE: (604) 638-7283 * FAX: (604) 638-8432 MODEM: (604) 638-7247 Racist? RACIST. FEARMONGER. Doomsayer. If words are used as ammunition, this batch ranks. right up there in the high calibre category. These words were used liberally during the recent ap- pearance here of the provincial legislative select standing committee on aboriginal affairs which is touring the province to hear comments on the tentative Nisga’a land claims deal and what it might mean for the many other treaty negotia- tions going on around the province. They were used against any individual or group which either opposes treaty negotiations, has a question about why we’re negotiating treaties or has a question about some of the details of the negotiations. The problem with using them is they immedi- ately and forever lump the wide variety of people who have questions about land claims as sheet- wearing charter members of the Ku Klux Klan. Once this happens, any attempt at an intelligent discussion about land claims is finished for there are very few people out there who, no matter how they feel about land claims, wish to carry such labels. It’s one reason why the structure established to settle land claims is effectively flawed. We've established a cozy and comfortable mini-United Nations format to handle land claims. Negotia- tors, lawyers, consultants and hangers-on operate in an insulated world of their own language, customs and habits, Anybody who tries to in- trude gets smacked with a label and is parked off to the side. The provincial government has come to this realization fairly late in the game. Sending out the select standing committee on a tour of the province is apparently its way of recognizing that. there’s a long way to go between settling Jand claims and gaining the understanding if not acéeptancée by the majority of its citizens. If land claims are being viewed as one way of including natives with the rest of society, then there must be an equally effective way of hearing how society views land claims. To slot people as racists, fearmongers and doomsayers freezes any attempt to do so and the end result won’t do any- body any good. ia ee Doing more DOWN IN Victoria there’s a group of people getting ready to hack and slash $750 million from the provincial budget. One of their key phrases no doubt is ‘doing more with less.”? It’s a circumstance any number of private companies have faced at one time or another and there’s no doubting the enormity of the challenge. One possible way is considering Saturday open- ings for some government ministries. We’re al- ready paying the cost of construction, heat, light and office equipment for five days a week so having offices operate six days a week makes those expenditures more efficient, The same is true for night time openings where this makes sense, At the very least, the government will be seen to extend its services to those taxpayers who now have either to cram all of their government busi- ness into lunch hours or take time away from their jobs to fit into the government’s Monday to Friday schedule. ; ee a a PUBLISHER/EDITOR: Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Rick Passmore PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur NEWS Jeff Nagel * NEWS SPORTS: Dave Taylor COMMUNITY: Cris Leykauf OFFICE MANAGER: Kalhleen Quigicy ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: - Sam Collier, Janet Viveiros, Karen Dictrich ADVERTISING ASSISTANT: Emma Law, Kelly Jean, Shannon Cooper TYPESETTING: Sylvana Broman DARKROOM: Susan Credgeur CIRCULATION MANAGER: Karen Brunette ateecineren Matted Colombia aad Pahew MEMBER OF B.C. PRESS COUNCIL Serving the Terrace and Thornhill araa, Publishad on Wednesday of each week by Cariboo Press (1909) Ltd, at 3210 Clinton Street, Terrace, British Columbia, VAG 5F2, Stories, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in the Torrace Standard are the property of the copyright holders, including Cariboo Prass (1969) Lic., its itustration repro services and advertising agencies, Feproduion in whole or in part, wilhout written permission, is speciically prohibited. Authorized as second-class mail pending the Post Office Department, for payment of postage in cash. Special thanks to all our contributors and correspondents for their time and talents poll, PM SOHONGRY, . ICOULD EAT A HIGHWAY, Cut out meetings, cut costs VICTORIA — Since the NDP government is hell-bent-for- leather to save its sorry hide by reducing the deficit, which so naughtily sneaked up on them, right out of the blue, of course, without any fore-knowledge of Premier Glen Clark and his financial quasi-gurus, | would like to offer a piece of advice or two on how to get out of the mess. Abolish meetings. ‘That’s right, circulate a memorandum instructing the public service, specifically the upper echelon, to forthwith cancel any and all meclings. Failure to comply will resull in severe punish- ment that may include the strict enforcement of the 15- minute coffee break. Meetings is what imbues senior bureaucrats with a sense of reason d’etre. [t gives mean- ing to what might otherwisé be * an empty life. Meetings are to senior bureaucrats what a chat at the walter cooler is to lesser morals, There are countless meetings taking place every day from Victoria to Golden, to Fort Nelson to Prince Rupert. Wherever there are bureaucrats, there are meet- ings. Without meetings om a Tegular basis, bureaucrats would feel isclated, uscless and abandoned. Meetings are FROM THE CAPITAL. HUBERT BEYER the stuff bureaucracy is made of, Now, to have meetings, one must have a clear definition of groups of people who can be rounded up for meetings. Staff meetings are an obvious category, Once a week, the ‘staff of just about any adminis- ‘trative unit in the public ser- vice will be rounded up for a meeting that may last any- where from an hour to half a day to talk about what they might be doing if they weren’t meeting, Lest meetings be confined to the inner office circles of the public service, other categori¢s are invented, There’s the coun- cil of deputy ministers. They meet once a month, aad since they cam in excess of $100,000 a year, such meet- ings are expensive. And just as there are officers’ messes and petty officers’ messes in the armed forces, associate deputy ministers of the public service have got to have their own meetings. Twenly years ago, there were hardiy any associate or as- sistant deputy ministers: today there are scores of them, Further down the Hine less well-known categories such as senior financial officers who, of course, have to have meet- ings as well to discuss finan- cial matters. Personnel direc- tors meet regularly to discuss, well, weighty personnel issues. Administrative units in the various ministries have, of course, payroll clerks, and what would their professional lives be without regular meet- ings? Ministries have pecple whose specific job is to pay ac- counts. Ergo, there are meet- ings of financial officers. Then there are the folks responsible for electronic systems, known as information services branch directors and, you guessed it, they meet regularly. Public servants who are in charge of making travel ar- rangements - for senior bureaucrats, attending mect- ings out of town, meet, I sup- pose, to discuss how to book flights. Ministry financial of- ficers meet with treasury board analysts, the people tooking after a ministry's premises meet with folks at the B.C. Buildings Corporation, Minis- try reps meet with bureaucrats at the Public Service Employee Relations Commission. And on it goes. There are people in the public service who do little else than attend meetings from morning till quitting time. I’m not making this up. I say, enough is enough. As I am writing this there’s another high-level meeting going on. The cabinet is in session, and I can only hope that they will do something about the meeting mania that afflicts the public service. Perhaps all the above- mentioned public servants could come together one Jast time for a gigantic meeting to figure out the price tag of incetings and recommend to ‘cabinet to ban all meetings un- Wil further notice, To get the above advice from a firm of consultants would have cost the government a bundle, I have given it free of charge, What a deal. Go to it, premier. Deyer can be reached at Tel: 920-9300; Fax: 385-6783; E- Mail: hubert@coolcom.com Wanted: hi tech doghouse LATELY I'VE been preoc- cupied with doghouses, We have two. One for an old dog with short arthritic legs who would prefer a cool, com- fy house all his own. Another for a younger taller dog with the flexibility of a prepubes- cent gymnast, who exhibits to- tal disrespect for the old dog and his digs. She litters her house — and his — with chunks of two-by-four, puck- sized hemlock discs leftover from sawing firewood, and rocks. Because the two houses are identical, the dogs occupy them interchangeably. Now that the older dog has special needs — rest, comfort, peace — constructing for him a custom-fit house she cannot enter seems prudent. But how to do it? We know something of doghouses that don't fit. Qur dogs once had houses built ina hurry to fanci- ful dimensions, Both were so low, short, and narrow neither dog could sit up in them or THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI ‘turn around without chiroprac- tic treatment afterward, A dog’s house should fit him just as a man’s suit should be tailored to his measurements, But without the advice of an occupational therapist, how do you decide on the threshold’s height and the opening’s cir- cumference, The door should accommodate the old dog without giving the pesky pup access, A dandy design would have AT THE CANDIDATES PEGATE AND WHAT ABOUT. ¥ WILDLIFE. HABITAT 7 r RiGir! wHo CAN WE SELL rt Ta! money 1H | PROGRE BE BAT Nol Nol i MEAA How) Po WE DESIGNATE. (T for PROTECTION: Psimple! AFTER LOGGING, MINING, OILAND HYDRO DEVELOPMENT-:- walls and floor bolted together for easy packing, a ramp and a hinged roof. In case of emer- gency, you could reach in and lift owt your dog, Insulation panels should-saap into place like the Hleece lining of an all- weather raincoat. Siding could match that of the family’s home to blend into a fastidious Street of Dreams environment, if that were one of my priorities. If I was keen to grow golf course turf in my backyard, I'd want the doghouse set on four low wheels. Definitely, it should be light enough to move without a loader, I'd paint the interior in a con- trasting colour so J could tell at a glance if my dog was ‘‘in??, Often when a family relo- cales any distance, we abandon the doghouse as too cumber- some to take up precious space in a U-Haul. At our new ad- dress we may be too busy to build a replacement doghouse. As a result, a dog’s first weeks at a new location often eee L te " FULLY PROTECTED! resemble bicycle camping, huddling under a leaking plastic that crackles in every breeze and does little to make the pet feel wanted. Even if we have the time, we're not all handy with car- peniry tools. We may not have any. We may lack lumber and how many of us have the luxury of working in a spa- cious workshop with the pro- ject at a convenient height on sawhorses? Which suggests there’s a market for well built but affor- dable made-to-order doghouses. Some enterprising young carpenter, perhaps a high school carpentry shop grad, could cam himself a sideline income crafting one- of-a-kind pooch palaces. For now, our old dog shuttles between his familiar duplex atid his new cottage, where the door opening is so low the pup has to kneel to poke her head in, Hardly an intimidating pase, YOU SEE VIC1. FOuTICS ISN'T AS HARD AS iT Looks !!