4 Terrace Review — Wednesday, March 2, 1988° _ OPINIONS | - The north loses again Whenever someone starts fiddling around with the elec- toral map, politicians tend to get nervous. But the recent visit to Terrace by Judge Thomas Fisher, who is charged by the government with the task of rearranging the riding boun- daries to average out popula- tions, should truly be cause for alarm to anyone who lives in the Northwest. ; One of Fisher’s duties is the eradication of two-member rid- ings, all of which presently exist in the densely populated parts of Greater Vancouver and Victor- ia. Increasing the number of MLAs from the present 69 to a proposed 75, put forward by Fisher ‘‘for discussion purposes’’, would result in a net gain of six members in the areas that already have the most repre- sentation in the legislature. Another proposal, to subsume the riding of Atlin by reducing the number of ridings in the Northwest from four to three, adds insult to injury. All four Northwest ridings are monumentally difficult for one member to serve, and Atlin is the most outrageous of the group. Several proposals to re- design the boundaries were heard, all of them engineered to satisfy a numerical formula and _ Letters to the editor will be considered for.. publication only when signed. Please include your telephone number. The editor reserves the right to con- dense and edit letters. Opinions ex- pressed ore not necessarily those of the Terrace Review. One year subscription: In Canada $24.00 Out of Canada $50.00 ee _ Terrace Review ~ Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review is published each - Wednesday by | . » Close-Up Business Services Lid. Publlsher: .. Mark Twyford fee Editor: ==.” Michael Kelly + Staff Reporter: cous, Tod Strachan 2 Advertlsing Sales: of) Mar] Twyford -.. Typesetting: - Linda Copeland Froduction: ~ Jim Hall, Alvin Stewart, Arlene Wandl, Gurbax Gill, Linda Mercer, Arlene Gaspar Office: _ Philip Musselman me, Accounting: Marj Twyford, Rosemary McGattigan Second-class mall _ ragistration No. 6686. All material appearing in the Terrace Review ls protected under Canadian copyright Registra. tlori No. 362778 and cannot legally be repro duced for any reason without permission of the ubliaher. Errors and omisetons. Adveriising Is accepted on the condition that In the avent of typographical error, that partion of the advertis- ing space occupied by tha erroneous Item will not be charged for, but the balance of the adver- tlaement will be pald for at the applicable rate. Advertisers muat assume responsibility for er rora In any clasaified ad which te supplilad to the Terrace Review In handwritten form. in compllanca with the 8.C. Human Rights Act, no advertisement will be published which discriminates against a person dua to age, race, religion, color, 86x, nationality, ancestry or place of origin. 4535 Grelg Avenue, Terrace, B.C. V8G 1M7 Phone: 635-7640 all of them geographically un- workable, It is perhaps an in- dication of southern thinking (if it can be called that) that one proposal prior to Fisher’s arrival here involved combining the Atlin and Prince Rupert ridings, an area that would have covered ( OK.0K.... | PROMISE... wlF YOU DEFECT, WONT RELOCATE. You TOBRITISH COLUMBIA. eight full degrees of latitude with a straight-line longitudinal dimension of nearly 1,000 kilo- meters. As a remedy for isolated voters to rarely have direct con- tact with their elected represen- tatives, another proposal came forward to establish a toll-free telephone line to Victoria - for a riding that has the fewest tele- phones per capita in the pro- vince. a Fisher’s commission needs to hear from the people that live in this region, but the question is, will anyone listen? How did we get into this dilemma? The best guy to place our bets on is Couvelier. He has said he'll: . Happy days are here again. Government revenues are up, expenditures down; Finance Minister Mel Couvelier wants to balance the next budget, and prosperity for all British Columbians is just around the corner, Well, not quite. True, the provincial = government spent less than anticipated and _ took in more than expected, but we still went further into debt during the first nine = months of the current fiscal year. AS aa _ When the budget was introduced last Hubert Beyer March, the government expected to add in Victoria y another $731 million to the province’s total debt load by the end of December. That’s what’s referred to as deficit financing. You spend more than you earn. Individuals get into a heap of trouble doing it, but govern- ments get away with it.. ‘When the end of December came around, the government had overspent its budget by only $369 million. In other words, the managers of our money didn’t pile up the debts quite as badly as they planned to. The finance minister must have felt a little sheepish about the whole thing, because he buried those figures on page two of the press release that accompanied the third quarterly financial report, -The first page was reserved for different nuggets. We were informed that economic growth for the nine-month period was three percent, that unemployment was down to 10.1 per- cent, that retail sales increased by 9.4 percent and housing starts totalled 29,000, up 40 percent from the previous year. While all these wonderful things were happening, inflation was kept at 3.1 percent. The debt load, however, increased. Total provincial government ‘debt is now creeping up towards the $7 billion mark. If you roll in the Crown corporations, such as B.C. Hydro, it’s closer to $14 billion. Paying the interest on direct government debt alone takes more than $500 million out of the annual budget. — If you and I were to find ourselves in such a dilemma, our banker would politely ask us what the hell happened, and no matter what the answer, he’d probably start foreclosure proceedings on our homes. Since nobody will foreclose on the Parliament Buildings, we can safely pop the same question to the government: what the hell happened? How did we get into this mess? I’ve asked that question so many times that I could fill a book with the answers. Bill Bennett usually blamed it on the world reces- sion. We have a resource-based economy, and nobody wants our resources anymore, the former premier used to lecture, as the debts kept mounting. Well, there were some other reasons Bennett didn’t really want to talk about. There was the bill for Expo; there was the cost of building the Skytrain; there was the Coquihalla Highway boondog- gle; there was B.C, Place Stadium; there was Northeast Coal. Those five mega projects contributed more than half to the total debt load. And what have we got to show for all the money? A lovely stadium that will never make money, coal fields that constantly operate on the brink of financial disaster, a great transportation system for Vancouver that uses money for fuel, a highway, describ- ed by a colleague as the most expensive shortcut in the universe, and fading memories of hosting the world at great cost. Not the world’s greatest cost-benefit ratio, I would say. So now we look to the new Socreds for a way out. If promises count, things will improve. I’m not talking about Premier Vander Zalm’s promises. All we got from him so far is the prediction that “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” | _ balance the next budget and pay back all debts within three years: 1 mentioned that in a previous column, you say? Damn right, I did.. And [’ll mention it again. It’s one promise.I1 don’t intend to let the finance minister forget, because I can’t see how he can possibly keep it. Then again, he may surprise us all. The acid test will come when Couvelier brings down the 1988-89 budget some time around March 20. If the two figures — one for total expenditures, the other for revenues — are the same, bingo, we got a balanced budget. If in addition to that, somewhere in the rows of expenditures, there should be a figure indicating repayment of past debts, not just interest, we can yell ‘‘bingo’’ again, because he will have taken the first step towards making British Columbia debt-free. If, on the other hand, none of these things come to pass, it’s time to shout ‘“‘enough is enough’’, Another Look Ait Abortion Premier Vander Zalm is nothing if not stubborn and committed — to his principles, but when the big cabinet guns started lining up against him on his abortion policy, he gave in — ever so slightly. According to David Poole, the premier’s principal secretary, the government will now pay for abortions in cases of incest or rape. Vander Zalm, who recently returned from Europe, has said previously the government will not pay for any abortions, no matter what the circumstances. The change of heart came shortly after Economic Development Minister Grace McCarthy joined seven Socred backbenchers in publicly opposing the premier’s intractable position. . There’s one hitch with the relaxation of the government’s abor- tion policy. Abortions for rape or incest victims will be paid for by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund. That raises the problem which Poole didn’t seem to grasp. In most cases, only a court can decide whether the alleged rape or incest actually took place. By the . time that’s established it’s too late for an abortion. That means the Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund must pay for the abortion before the alleged perpetrator of rape or incest has been found guilty of the crime. In other words, the abortion will be © funded on the mere assumption that a crime has been committed. Whatever happened to the all-important principle of. our justice system which considers a person innocent until found guilty by a court of law? oe Premier David Poole? Noticed that David Poole featured prominently in the two recent news items? In the first, Poole announced an important change in government policy; in the second, he fired a deputy minister, Some reporters already treat Poole’s role in this government as a joke, referring to him as Premier David Poole. Unfortunately, it’s no joke when bureaucrats assume the role of elected politicians. The abortion announcement should have come from Health Minister Peter Dueck and news of MacEachern’s dismissal from Agriculture Minister John Savage. If neither was available, the cabinet chairman would have done just fine. If Poole wants to play premier, he should run for the Socred - leadership. In the meantime, he should stick to the job he was hired. to do — advise the premier. | Gambling for Health | ee So you don’t like gambling. Neither does Premier Vander Zalm,. but he says if people want to gamble that’s fine with him. Similar sentiments must warm Health Minister Peter Dueck’s heart, He ani- | nounced last week that the B.C. Health Care Research Fouridation will receive a $150,000 grant out of the province's lottery income, —