4 Terrace Review — Wednesday, April 27, 1988 ~ Rites of spring — ..and I can’t sail my yacht He’s taken everything I've got Ail I’ve got’s this sunny afternoon. - The Kinks | a eee | A watchdog organization in the United States recently released its annual calculation of the median ‘‘tax holiday” for the American wage-earner. The tax holiday is the point during the calendar year when average working people-quit working for the government (earning taxes) and start working for themselves. Making some minor adjustments for differences in the Cana- dian tax system and economy, the tax holiday here is going to fall somewhere during the third week in May. That’s when, on an average, most of us will have earned enough to pay all the pro- vincial and federal taxes levied through income tax, sales tax and other points of revenue for the year. With the deadline for filing federal and provincial income tax returns only five days off, taxpayers are single-mindedly occupied with the accounting exercise of determining exemptions, deduc- tions, tax credits and all the other hoops that income-carners gladly jump through in order to keep the government’s share of their wealth to a minimum. It almost seems that this time of the year is deliberately engineered to focus our attention on what we are able to hang onto rather than what we do in fact pay and how it is used, The- system of having employers act as conscripted tax collectors through the witholding of payroll-deducted taxes makes the an- nual tax filing exercise a rewarding one for many employees who receive tax returns. The system leads people to ignore the fact that the government has had interest-free use of their money over the past year. Concentration on tax breaks transforms taxation into a sort of board game for others. In recent years even Revenue Canada personnel, who were characterized as bureaucratic ogres with unlimited powers of in- timidation, have somehow become user-friendly. Call the toll-free assistance line, and.nine times out of ten you'll get a voice on the other end that sounds like the pleasant whiz-kid in high school who occasionally helped you out with a math problem. All this tends to divert attention from the real issue: what do they do with the tax money that we do pay?. Voters go to the ballot box at infrequent intervals to elect the governments that dispose of those tax dollars, but it is worth bearing in mind that every tax dollar paid is a vote for the manner in which it is spent. Good-bye Hubert, ~~ Hello Mark | With this issue we have to bid farewell to an old friend, our Victoria columnist Hubert Beyer, and introduce our new cor- respondent in the provincial capital, Mark Collins. In a recent letter Hubert advised us that due to contractual obligations with Black Press Ltd. he has been forced to withdraw his weekly column from the Terrace Review, or alternatively lose the income from 20 Black newspapers in which he is currently published. In order to keep our readers informed of developments in the B.C. legislature, we have secured the services of Mark Collins, a freelance writer with seven years experience in the legislative press gallery. Terrace Review Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review is published . aach Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. All material appearing In the Terrace Review is protected under Canadian copyright Registra- tion No. 362775 and cannot legally be repro- duced for any reason without permission of the publisher. Publisher: Errors and omissions. Advertising is accepted Mark Twyf . d on the condition that In the event of ark Iwytor typographical error, that portion of the adveriis- . Edltor: Ing space occupted by the erroneous item will Michael Kell not be charged for, but the balance of the adver- ooo Che ny tisement wilt be paid for at the applicab'e rate. te > Staff Reporters: Advertisers must assume responsibility for er- eS Ted Strachan rors In any classified ad which is supplied to the De eS Terrace Review in handwritten form. ; “ec. Gharlynn Toews in compliance with the Bo. Human Rights Act, Tg! . no advertisement w publis whic ae Advertising Sales: discriminates againat a person dus to age, race, oo Mar] Twyford religion, color, sex, nationallty, ancestry or place “oo. Typesetting: of origin. ~ - Linda Copeland 4535 Grelg Avenue, oe ces. ” Productlon: Terrace, B.C. oe dim Hall, Alvin Stewart, V8G 1M7 oo Gurbax Gill Phone: 635-7840 Linda Mercer, Arlene Gaspar sts ; ES Offlce: Pes Carrie Olson 7 Accounting: One yee sae Marj Twyford, . Out of Canada $50.00 Rosemary McGattigan Seniors in Terrace and District $12.00 7 Seniors out of Terrace and District $1 5.00 Second-class mail ragistration No. 6896. Fe Letter to the editor will be con- ‘The editor reserves the right to sidered for publication only when condense and edit letters. Opinions signed. expressed are not necessarily those Please include your telephone of the Terrace Review. number. OPINIONS HER AND A. CON By-election may mirror — divisions among Socreds — by Victoria correspondent Mark Collins The Boundary-Similkameen by-election is starting to look a lot more interesting now that Bill Vander Zalm has made such a mess of privatization of the B.C. Enterprise Corporation lands. _ The premier displayed amaz- ing naivete by coming to cabinet with a proposal for purchase of all the assets of BCEC a few weeks after the deadline for ex- pressions of interest in the former Expo lands had expired on October 15, 1987. There’s no ‘question that the half- billion dollar proposal from the premier’s friend Peter Toigo is worthy of consideration, but it is . not the sort of thing one puts together in a short period of time. If Toigo or the premier had let BCEC know what was in the works, a public statement asking for expressions of interest in the whole corporation as well as its parts could- have been issued before the October deadline. As it now stands, the people who made their bids for the prime downtown Vancouver property have reason to question the honesty of the process, but the decision to sell even the Expo lands to a single buyer raises more questions, It has excluded most of the loyal Socreds in the: development business in this province because the value of approximately $300 million is too big for them to handle. Even Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing had to involve two other men of great wealth in his bid. The local talent is being kept away from what should prove to be most significant urban development in B.C. of the 1990’s and the profits that will go along with it. The premier seems to be showing the strain of carrying so much responsibility for running the province on his own shoul- ders. His-grumblings about lack of enthusiastic support during the abortion controversy led to more internal bickering. His disagreement with Economic Development Minister Grace McCarthy over how the Toigo bid was handled has the poten- tial to upset the large group of committed McCarthy loyalists in the party. That opens the door for some of the candidates for the 1986 Social Credit leadership to do some scouting around for support. It is not unusual for Finance Minister Mel Couvelier to decide to travel around the province to promote his budget, but the in- volvement in this month’s trip of political strategist Pat Kinsella ‘in that process makes one wonder whether there is some- thing else on the agenda. The public exposure Couvelier has: received and the confidence he has gained in one and a half years in cabinet would allow him to gether much more support now than he did in 1986. Trans- portation Minister Stephen Rogers has also suggested he would eventually like another run for the party leadership, but he is young enough to be in less of a hurry. What we have seen so far is not quite enough to assure an NDP by-election victory like the 1984 by-election in Okanagan North which sent Lyle Mac- William to the legislature. NDP support in that Vernon area riding had been steadily increas- ing for years and the gap be- tween Socreds and NDP was narrow. A significant part of the reason for MacWilliam’s victory was that Socred supporters didn’t bother to vote. In Penticton and the other communities. which make up Boundary-Similkameen, past NDP support has not been strong enough to let them take the riding just because a few . disenchanted Socreds may de- — cide not to vote. It is, however, shaping up to be an evenly mat- ched contest rather than an easy Socred victory. The premier may wish he had called the vote right away when Jim Hewitt resigned to run the Farm Credit Corporation in Ot- tawa. The election must be held ‘between now and August 11. Pool project haunts Ironworks Dick Ladouceur of Ironworks Gym and Fitness Centre con- tinues to be haunted by the plan- . ned expansion project for the Terrace Aquatic Centre. He calls it “a Cadillac facility at Volkswagon prices’’. Ladouceur told city council April 11 that he had come to an agreement with the Community and Recréation Services Com- mittee last year after he com- plained about unfair competi tion from the expanded weight lifting room proposed in the swimming pool expansion. - According to Ladouceur, he agreed that the present weight room is too smail and needs to be expanded, but the committee had also agreed not to add any new equipment for two years. Now he says that the city has added $2,500 worth of new equipment plus a new sun tan- ning bed he believes to be worth about $7,000. He thinks it’s un- fair. Ladouceur says that com- pared to other facilities in North America, he offers good value at. his gym with 10 tanning sessions at $30, but he fears the city, by - offering the same thing at $2 per — session, is going to force him out of business. Council told Ladouceur they were unaware of any new equip- ment being purchased, and city administrator Bob Hallsor told him that the sun tanning bed isa used unit purchased for $3,900. Ladouceur was then invited to attend the next committee meet- ing to discuss the matter and decide for himself whether new equipment had been bought or old equipment simply replaced. a 1 ————— =