Ad - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, May 29, 2002 TERRACE | PUBLISHER: ROD LINK ADDRESS; 3210 Clinton Street Terrace, B.C, * V8G 5R2

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Cruise control

MASSIVE cruise ships may start to arrive in Prince Rupert next year, and could tie up at a brand new dock by 2004,

The federal government is putting up $3 mil- lion, the crucial contribution to begin construc- tion of the $9 million Northland terminal for large cruise ships,

It may not sound terribly exciting right now.

But this is not the sort of project where any- one will wonder 10 years from now whether or not it was money well spent.

It will unquestionably revolutionize tourism in the region. In the words of the port author- ity’s president, it means more to the northwest than the Olympics in 2010 would mean for Vancouver and Whistler.

Anyone who doubts that ought to check in five years from now and talk to someone who today runs a gallery, gift shop, or restaurant in troubled Prince Rupert.

Or talk to anyone who runs a similar business right now in Ketchikan, Alaska, A six-hour sail north from Prince Rupert, Ketchikan is similar in size to Rupert. The city has reinvented itself after its old pulp mill closed down and today cruise ship tourism is the engine of its economy.

A steady stream of these gleaming white floa- ting cities now pull into town and pump passen- gers and their wallets through the streets.

Last year, 700,000 cruise tourists visited Ket- chikan — one of the Alaskan destinations experts say is nearing saturation.

Ketchikan’s cruise traffic is close to half the 1.5 million tourists who visit all of northern B.C. — from Mount Robson to the Charlottes.

If just a fraction of those passengers come ashore to visit the north coast, it will be signif- icant — Rupert hopes for 250,006 cruise visitors a year within 10 years. :

Spur trips to take cruise tourists to Terrace and other destinations have already been tested, and Alaskan stats show close to a third of cruise visitors return again, often by other means.

The vision showed in reeling in cruise ships is in stark contrast right now to the province’s de- cisions to cut spending on provincial parks and forest service recreation sites and trails.

Closing around three dozen provincial park campgrounds or picnic sites was to save $400,000. Interpretive programs and free pro- vision of firewood are also gone to save $1.5 million. And another $1 million is saved by cut- ting off money for most rec sites and trails.

Saving money is important. But this is small potatoes compared to the extra $392 million the province plans to find to pay B.C.’s doctors.

Chopping parks will only irritate tourists — something the northwest needs like a hole in the head right now.

It’s penny wise and pound foolish.

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OURACE on

The myt

VICTORIA — Repeat after Premier Gordon Campbell: “We must increase productiv- ity to become competitive in today’s global economy.”

Now repeat after him: “Sorry, | was wrong, We are already the most competitive and all the changes we made, such as the $6 minimum wage and the labour code amend- ments, weren’t really neces- sary.”

OK, dream on. He didn’t say that, nor is he likely to.

But someone else did, namely KPMG, a global net- work of professional services firms with more than 100,000 people worldwide.

KPMG member firms pro- vide assurance, tax and finan- cial advisory services from more than 750 cities in 152 countries. So this is not some

_ neighbourhood social activist group.

In a recent study, KPMG compared international busi- ness cosis in-85 cities in‘nine industrialized nations.

Guess which country turned out to have the lowest cost to do business.

Canada.

Canada, it turns out, is the jurisdiction with the lowest cost to do business, followed by the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Au- stria, the United States, Ger- many and Japan.

We're the cheapest juris- diction, the U.S, comes in se- venth.

The study also compared to

LIBERAL LOGIC must be better understood by card-car- rying party members. It sure makes no sense to me,

For example:

Because transportation and other costs of doing business are higher in this region, busi- ness persons meeting with Campbell asked him ta lower the minimum wage in the northwest to help them make a profit.

But if the business person’s costs are higher, aren’t the employee's living costs also proportionately higher? 27

Our MLA understands Lib- eral logic,

He tells the teacher’s asso- ciation president he’s willing to go back to Victoria to argue for more funding for our school district if teachers can shaw our students will be hurt by Campbell’s downloading on this school district,

Make a case?!!

Kids will be crammed into classrooms lacking courses, equipment, supplies and one- on-one teacher tlme so vital to every student, special needs or not.

For years we fought and

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FROM THE CAPITAL HUBERT BEYER

cost of doing business in seven of British Columbia’s major population centres with seven major cities on the U.S. West Coast.

The study found that the most significant factor in doing business was labour cost, hardly a surprising dis- covery,

What is surprising or ought to be to our New Era Liberal

_ government is that the seven

B.C. cities have significantly lower overall labour costs than their U.S. counterparts.:

The cities in question are Vancouver, Victoria, Chilli- wack, Kamloops, Nanaimo, Prince George and Kelowna.

The cities in question south of the border are Seattle San Jose, Riverside-San Bernard- no, Sacramento, San Diego, Las Vegas and Portland.

But the parade of whiners, of maybe the should be wic- ners, led by the premier and his 76 MLAs, took the axe to

THROUGH BIFOCALS CLAUDETTE SANDECKI

paid taxes to lower the number of students in a classroom.

Yet the Liberals, in one year, have us back to 1970 class sizes of 30 to 35 students per teacher.

Liberal progress.

Minister of Education Christy Clark gazes doe-eyed into the camera as she says, “Education has to be better. We gave school boards more tools to make decisions closer to home. And their budgets have not been cut.”

Budgets not cut?

If someone increases your

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B.C. labour laws in the interest of making British Columbia compelitive.

There are some real beau- ties in the changes,

Employers can now “negotiate” with individual employees over the length of the workday, without the pay- ment of overtime.

I can see it already, em- ployers saying, hey Jim, I’m kind of thinking we should ne- gotiate 14 hours a day before overtime kicks in.

What do think?

A look at the bleak employ- ment opportunities isn’t going to make the poor bloke put up much of a fight in this one- sided negotiation.

Meanwhile, our business leaders keep egging the gov- ernment on to make more sweeping changes. _

The ones introduced recent- ly were referred to as a good start.

The changes are in effect a

Subsidy to business on, the

backs of workers. _

Having ended the practice of direct subsidies to business, the Campbell government had find more creative ways to keep its backers happy.

The KPMG study flies in the face of the government,s and business community's claims that our excessive la- bour standards have chased away investment and jobs.

What has cost jobs is the government’s massive public service reduction, originally an easy sell in a society that

mandatory expenses but your income remains the same, isn’t that the equivalent of a revenue cul?

School boards are expected to pay salary increases to tea- chers, plus a large increase in medical premiums for staff, without any extra funding.

Another example of Liberal logic has to do with shipping raw logs out of B.C. though nothing is gained locally by deforestation and the export of raw logs,

Campbell says, “Logs are shipped out of B.C. to protect’

jobs in B.C. Those loggers de- |

serve to have work. My job js. to try and keep those 4,000 people at work.” 7

So sawmill workers and: workers in secondary industries . such a Terrace Precut don't deserve to have jobs?

Campbell. has no respons- ibility te help keep them <at work? _

But the best example of Liberal logic comes form Campbell's 30 minute visit with Interior News staff in Smithers, quoted from the May 15 issue of the paper.

The reporter had a few

of B.C.‘s oricey labour

hates bureaucrals, but now that the effects are felt by families all over the province, some folks are beginning to wonder why they voted for the Liberals.

Just today [ taiked to an old

acquaintance who held a senior.

position in Bill Bennett’s So- cial Credit government.

He told me that Bennett, like his father W.A.C., who was premier before him, knew you didn’t brown off the small com- munities.

Vancouver and Victoria was

‘fine, Bennett used to say, they

don’t vote for us anyway, but don’t alienate the small. up- country towns.

Of course, the Bennetts were up-country people. They knew what made folks north of Hope tick.

Bennett Jr. came up with the restraint program, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of clos- ing court houses in Central and Northern British Columbia.

’ Campbell wouldn’t find the bathroom,in, Billy, Bajker’s or The: Zoo, two great smali-town

‘drinking éstablishments, if his

political life depended on it.

But he sure knows how to dismantle labour standards that have helped. make B.C. the best and least expensive place to do business, It’s something I guess. ;

Beyer can be reached at: E- mails hubert@coolcon.com.

Telephone (250) 381-6900; or on the web Attp:/iwww.hubertbeyer, com

Making sense of Liberal logic

questions about legal aid be- cause a woman was in the newspaper office earlier that day and her case was interest- ing.

She lives in the phoneless community of Fort Babine and has a legal issue with the local band office - where the only

available phone happens to be. --

She cannot obviously take advantage of legal aids’ toll- free number, and it costs her

$50 per round trip to Smithers,

She is-a single mother on a lotal income of about $400 a month,

How does this woman get

. justice?

Closing the Smithers office will make it even harder for people in similar situations to

use, legal aid if they have to” ‘drive!'to Prince Rupert or ‘Prince George.

Premier Campbell, deter- mined not to let this woman, -

whose difficulty is a result of

not having access to a phone, -

fall through the cracks, said if she has a challenge with legal aid and needs some help with it:

“I’m glad to have her call me_on the toll-free number,”

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