Ad. - the Terrace Standard, Wednesday, November 23, 2005 TERRACE ~ STANDARD ESTABLISHED APRIL 27, 1988 ‘PUBLISHER: ROD LINK | ADDRESS: 3210 Clinton Street Terrace,.B.C. * V8G'5R2 ~ TELEPHONE: (250) 638-7283 - FAX: (250) 638- 8432: ‘WEB: www.terracestandard.com EMAIL: newsroom@terracestandarel. com Our money | OF COURSE it? -S good news that the federal gov- -emment wants to cut income taxes as outlined 1 1n finance minister Ralph Goodale’s economic up- date released last week. | : ‘Briefly, the amount of money people « can. earn before paying income tax rises by $500 and the amount of tax middle income earners-will pay af- _ ter that drops from 16 per cent to 15 per cent. “These proposed changes are back-dated to the start of 2005, meaning those reductions come will L take hold when we file income tax returns next 7 spring. : Figures ‘released by Mr. Goodale indicate that a family of four with two income earners bringing ‘in $60,000 a year can expect a savings of $499. ‘Better yet is. the impact on low income earners. : ‘The increase by. $500 in the basic personal. ex- 7 emption ‘will remove several hundred thousand ‘people from the federal tax rolls altogether. Mr. Goodale says he can do this based on. the strength of the national economy. It’s generating ' far more in federal revenues than expected and '»Mr. Goodale ‘is anticipating this will continue. But before Mr. Goodale and others get carried ‘away, thére are a few things to consider. ‘One is that the federal surplus i is due in part to - increased corporate profits and subsequent rise in 7 federal tax revenues driven by the spike in energy \ prices. We s consumers “who. are responsible for ., .. those profits because of the.increased energy pric- es in the first place. ‘So in effect the higher prices - we are now: paying, for gas and the higher prices ‘we will be paying this winter to heat our homes will be returned to some extent by the promised - tax reductions. Money in, money out. The most important thing to remember is that the promised. tax cuts are still a proposal. They have to survive the current minority Parliament _ and given that there is going to be a federal elec- tion one way or another early in the new year, that’s easier said than done. If the tax reduction proposal doesn’t survive, than count on it to be the focal point of the federal Liberal campaign platform. It'll be placed against the other proposals mounted by the other politi- cal parties, all promising to do more than Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mr. Goodale will do if . they are re-elected. The Liberals will prefer this because they can “now point to the Goodale plan and combine it with years of previous surpluses and previous tax - reductions as proof they are better managers than ~ any other political party. . ‘It. makes for great political theatre and cam-_ paign chest thumping ‘but we should not forget ~ the essential element at play. And that is that our political system is based on political parties brib- ing us with our own money. It’s a heck of way to runa country. _ PUBLISHER/EDITOR: a , Rod Link ADVERTISING MANAGER: Brian Lindenbach PRODUCTION MANAGER: Edouard Credgeur _ NEWS: Sarah A. Zimmerman - COMMUNITY: Dustin Quezada, - NEWS/SPORTS: Margaret Speirs JF _. FRONT OFFICE: Darlene Keeping, Carolyn Anderson CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR: Alanna Bentham ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS: Bert Husband, Susan Willemen — AD: ASSISTANT: Sandra Stefanik PRODUCTION: Susan Credgeur - SUBSCRIPTION RATES BY MAIL: $57.94 (+$4.06 GST)=62.00 per year; ae Seniors $50.98 (+$3.57.GST)=54.55; Out of Province $65.17 (+$4.56 GST)=69.73 Outside of Canada (6 months) $156. IU+10. 98 GST)=167. 89 : MEMBER OF og YONA... Commun - - 2005 WIN HINNER ~ ECNA BETTER NEWSPAPERS COMPETITION B.C. AND YUKON COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION, CANADIAN COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION AND B.C. PRESS COUNCIL (www.bcpresscouncil.org) - Serving the Terrace and Thornhill area. Published on Wednesday of each week at 3210 Clinton Street, Terrace, British Columbia, V8G SR2. Black Press Stories, photographs, illustrations, designs and typestyles in the Terrace Standard are the property of the copy- right holders, including Black Press Ltd., its illustration repro services and advertising agencies. _ Reproduction in whole or in part, without written permission, is specifically 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 PAUL MARTIN Suits uP FoR THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: ‘i SES — = My sy 1%, AN ty Newspaptns . Log exports will spur innovation | . HERE’S AN argument for. why having the ability to ex- port logs actually works ‘in " opening up value added busi- ness opportunities. This prospective always: gives environmental groups: fits because the'implication is: _ that their campaigns for to tie wood to mills in the area the wood comes from works for ‘major licensees by maintain- _ ing cheap access to domestic logs. - Not ‘a bad thing for them _ when lumber prices are climb- "ing like they are. Recently at a Chamber of. Commerce meeting in Smith- ers, NDP MP Nathan Cullen made the comment that “when you see two trucks fully load- ed with logs, pass each other on the highway then there’s something wrong.’ _ He went even “faiths and said that rescinding the appur- ; tency clause, which required sawmills to harvest and pro- — cess logs in their immediate area, has been harmful to the economy. Let’s step back and look at this with a little more clarity. The fact is that even with — appurtency twenty-seven mills in the province closed permanently between . 1997 and 2001. : ‘On Haida Qwaii as an ex- ample,-it was those same tim- — ber processing agreements that required logs harvested; on the islands be manufac- tured in mills in the south, not something that supports local manufacturers. There is no doubt the pub- lic wants to see ev ery log har- vested in the province manu- factured i in the province. — MY VIEW . ‘ROGER HARRIS . This concept even goes ‘further than that, The public wants to see logs harvested - within a region milled within the region. This should be the objec- tive of any forest policy, but history has taught us that ap-. purtency doesn’t get us to this goal. One look at the effects of appurtency clearly shows that it has worked for the primary “milling sector but not for the development of a secondary manufacturing industry. . By limiting the movement of timber, one of the effects of appurtency has been the creation of a two-tier pricing system for timber — domestic and market. By establishing a lower domestic pricing model, our milling industry has devel- oped , around volume rather than value. Our resistance to. allowing wood to be. sold at the world . price has continued to. see logs that could be used for higher valued products turned into two by fours.» I don’t think anyone would © _ disagree with the concept and notion that we should be get- ting the highest and best value from every log harvested in, the province. I can. still. remember the public outcry when during some very healthy pulp mar- kets, mills were chipping lum- ” ber.as the value they received for chips was higher than the price they could get for lum- ber. But why is it that our mill- ‘ing industry has developed around the: dimension lumber industry ; and for the most part -not gone further down the val- ued added stream. ~ There is no doubt our soft- wood is well suited for con- struction and in good demand around the world especially in the US. But if the decision is to restrict the movement of logs, then a domestic pricing model will continue and we shouldn’t be surprised that our milling industry will continue to be built around volume not value. We will through our pub- ‘lic policy maintain ‘a two- tier price system that en- courages the milling sector not to look for the best end. use, in fact quite the oppo- site. . _ The same groups that call for less export and more value added keep forgetting that it isn’t governments that build sawmills and furniture facto- ries its private individuals and companies that make those in-' vestments. . No one will invest in a a mill or start harvesting activities on the ground if there is little to chance of being economi- . cally successful. One look at difficulties be- ing experienced in the north- . west in attracting investment into this region should drive this point home. Not all logs are alike. Not all mills cut the same profile of timber. Not every ‘manu- - facturing plants sells to the same customer. When you see two loaded | logging trucks pass each other ‘it is a sign that forest policy is finally starting to. work. That logs are moving to the mills fo. that require that profile of log, ‘for the product they are pro- ducing, for the marketplace _ they are serving. It is the first - signs of an industry moving from a volume to value based system. . By restricting the move- ment of logs ‘we will ‘only restrict the access to ~ fiber that specialty mills r ,uire to meet their product and cus- tomer needs. The same groups that are trying to legislate. economic success will only continue to put at risk those operators they are trying to protect. . The objective of any for- est policy should be to reach a point in time where the in- dustry is internationally com- petitive and the need to export. logs no longer.exists. . Our history of restrictive "measures imposed by govern- ments and ill-informed politi- cians has in fact been one of the contributors to limiting - the. growth of the value- added forest sector not ex- panding: it. Maybe it’s time - we looked at this wooden — ‘box a tittle differently. Faded C TO ANYONE. younger, the - clipping retrieved from acrev- | ice in a 1940s sofa chair as it was being stripped prior to re- upholstering was no more than a playing card-sized rectangle of yellowed newsprint glued to _Cheap lined paper. But to my sister and me, the clipping un- locked a childhood memory. Anyone raised on the prai- ries would recognize the print as coming from The West- — ern Producer, a weekly most’ farmers subscribed to. It car- - ried farm news and ads, house- keeping hints and recipes, craft _ ideas, a novel chapter, and sto- ries and poems written by and for teenagers. As a teenager, I clipped in- teresting poems and the words _ to popular songs and with a _ mixture of flour and water — we couldn’t afford mucilage except for school - glued them into a scrapbook. The scrapbook was always ~ abig five cent pencil scribbler. Even that was an indulgence - gluing clippings over unused pages. I had one scrapbook for songs, another for poems and interesting photos of animals. I still have the scrapbooks. When this poem fell out of the chair; so did an envelope — containing a thank you card for a wedding present. The en- velope was postmarked 1947. In 1947 I was 12 years old and bought my first bottle of nail polish. Cutex. Candy apple . red. It cost 19 cents. The poem from the chair was glued only. around its edg- es. While my sister separated the poem from the scrapbook page, the poem tore, revealing an advertisement on the re- verse. We could read “Comes THROUGH BIFOCALS| CLAUDETTE SANDECKI in 5 pound packages, 75 cents each. Fourteen colours to choose from, One package covers 250 square feet.” In unison my sister and I ‘concluded, “Calcimine!” Calcimine was a white. or _ tinted wash consisting of glue, _ whiting or zinc white, and water used especially on plas- tered surfaces” according to Webster. The interior walls of our home were plastered lath. Each spring Mom mixed a pailful of calcimine and fresh- ened one room.: She usually stuck to green, blue, or white. One year she ventured into lemon. . Calcimine called for a spe- cial brush, eight inches wide, with bristles stiffer than’ to- day’s paint brushes. By the time the room was painted, the bristles were. worn to half their beginning length from the rough plaster. Spills cleaned up . eas- ily with soap and water. In 24 hours the calcimine was dry; pictures and furniture could be moved back into place. Despite its cheap advertised price, Mom’s calcimine al- Ipping unlocks memory ways cost $21 more. Whenever Mom _ bought calcimine she also ordered one. — J hundred. baby chicks from a . Saskatoon hatchery. Chicks ‘and their bus freight raised the cost.of her interior decorating. The chicks were Mom’s permission to blow part of a cream cheque on painting a room, whether the room.need- ed brightening or not. « Mom’s chicks would arrive -before the end of March, often © in a final blizzard, when it was too cold to.-house them in any barn. She would pick a second floor bedroom (we had three), evict its occupants (either my brothers, or my sister and. ‘me) and set up and eight foot Square pen made from. three tiers of 10 inch ship lap. This room became a private sauna for the fowl as she stoked | the coal fired basement furnace until the chicks fanned their _ wings as they belly-flopped on layers of newspaper. A cloud of down, later - feathers, blanketed the stairs until they moved to their coop in May.