OPINION Castlégar News PAGE A4, WEDONESDAY,.OCTOBER 17, 1990 MEMBER OF THE 8.C, PRESS COUNCIL ‘ ESTABLISHED AUGUST 7, 1947 TWICE WEEKLY MAY 4, 1980 INCORPORATING THE MID-WEEK MIRROR PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 12, 1978-AUGUST 27, 1980 LV. CAMPBELL — PUBLISHER, AUGUST 7, 1947-FEBRUARY 15, 1973 PUBLISHER — Burt Campbell EDITOR — Simon Birch PLANT FOREMAN — Peter Harvey ADVERTISING MANAGER — Wayne Stoiz OFFICE MANAGER — Linda Kositsin CIRCULATION MANAGER — Heather Hadley EDITORIAL Rural schools should be open The Castlegar school board’s decision Monday to support in prin- ciple the reopening of Blueberry el y school in S ber 1991 is good news to parents of that rural area whose children have been bused into Castlegar for the last four years. It is, we hope, an indication the board will eventually reopen three Wn tie me <= SST NS R NA ui other rural schools — Pass Creek, Sh and O; elemen- taries — which were closed in September 1986 in the wake of reduced funding from the provincial government and declining enrolment. It was difficult to argue with the board’s logic at the time for LETTERS TO THE EDITOR October 17, 1990 Castlegar News AS ENVIRONMENT + READY FOR ADVENTURE 2 ’ Michael’s Nuggets Charming loft home on “% acre, $2,000 down a @pprox. $380 per manth 2 bedroom home on large 90'«100' lot in N Castlegar, $2,300 down and approx, $480 per montl The best buy on a lot in town! ! A 95° wide lot close to schools, shapping and tennis courts, $16,900! | MICHAEL KEREIFF 365-7825 365-2166 olumbi: | «Castlegar | = REALTY utp. A BIG WELCOME! From All of Us at Kootenay Computers Inc. at the Playmor Junction in South Slocan To all of our customers during the past five years we give our thanks. Your valued business has helped us develop - a- closing the schools — although many rural parents did quite vociferously — since the move saved the district some $100,000 a year and allowed the board to maintain programs in other areas. r places like Raspberry Hill school, Pass Creek, Support wanted fishing in the Columbia, early morning hockey We are students who would like to introduce practices and catching butterflies on Robson does the opposite. A good first step for city council would be to buy a street sweeper that really works. That is, one Twenty-five students in Grades 5 and 6 at Robson el: school are g for an all-day hike that will cap off @ unit of study on outdoor education. The students, who will be accompanied by four adults, will identity trees and cook their own meals on homemade hibachis. knowledgable and dedicated staff, backed up by reputable lines of products and service Still, the closure of the schools has remained a sore point with parents in the four rural areas affected by the closures. Parents in Pass Creek especially must grit their teeth and say a prayer every morning they pack their children off on the bus for a trip down Pass Creek Road which in winter is often best described as treacherous. But besides the dangers and inconvenience of busing, there’s the disturbing aspect of wrenching young children out of their neigh- borhoods for their schooling. In these rural areas now, children who would have started kindergarten in September 1986 have gone through their primary grades without knowing what it’s like to go to school where they live. That’s sad. But hopefully times are changing for the better. Enrolment in the Castlegar school district is up unexpectedly and potentially could boom with approval of the Celgar pulp mill expansion and if other major projects get underway. Faced with overcrowded classrooms, as the Castlegar trustees were at Kinnaird elementary this year, the board may have no other choice but to reopen the rural schools to accommodate the overflow. The only stumbling block might be the vagaries of funding from the provincial government, especially in light of Finance Minister Mel Couvelier’s order to provincial ministries this week to submit 1991-92 budgets that are five per cent less than their allotments for the current fiscal year as the province faces an economic slowdown and possible recession. the newly formed environmental action group of Stanley Humphries secondary school. We have a lot of issues we would like to address during the course of the school year. We meet every Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. and we would like as much support ++ possible as our group is still small and is just getting off the ground. We would like to make public our efforts to recycle in our school. The first concerns we would like to address as a group are the recycling of waste paper and pop cans. Our intent is to place a jing box in every and students and staff to recycle rather than trash their paper. We intend to publicize our activities and hope that members of the community will support our efforts. Ken Skibinski Sara Robichaud Graeme Basson Rae Carter Tenille Austin Past recalled Just recently my husband and I visited Castlegar, Robson and Trail. hillside. I will never forget the fruits, vegetables and a jar of borscht, left on my doorstep, and we recall vividly our ski trips to Red Mountain. Oh yes, I did improve my skiing skills. We visited all the old spots and most things are still there, but of course many things have changed with the growth of the town. I would like to thank the two women of the Castlegar and District Heritage Society for helping me find a T-shirt that says ‘‘ Hooked on Castlegar.”” It’s for my 25-year-old daughter born in Castlegar. You're doing a great job ladies! Thanks. Irene Johnston Canim Lake, B.C. Streets dirty 1 am in complete agreement with your editorial (CasNews, Oct. 6) that the fall cleanup campaign is a good idea. I believe that the City of Castlegar could make a major contribution to the fall cleanup and the appearance of the city at any time by sweeping the streets. An outstanding characteristic of the highways and byways of this community is the amount of sand and gravel that occupies their that actually picks up the dirt rather than merely moving it around or adding it to atmospheric pollution, as the present apparatus seems to do. Regardless of its source, grit and gravel on the road is i and unsafe. It is parti ly the latter for those of us who ride bicycles around town; cornering can be akin to trying to find traction on a field of ball bearings. So, how about it, city council? Have the streets Swept more than once a year, whether they need it or not. Robert Jackson Castlegar Please address all letters to the editor to: Letters to the Editor, Castlegar News, P.O. Box 3007, Castlegar, B.C. VIN 3H4, or deliver them to our office at 197 Columbia Ave. in Castlegar. Letters should be typewritten, double- spaced and not longer than 300 words. Letters MUST be signed and include the writer's first and last names, address and a telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The writer's name and city or town of i only will be Only in exceptional cases will letters be VIEWPOINT Twenty-five years ago, we arrived with 32 children to Castlegar to work on the Arrow dam ide dam). We were impressed with (now K Canadian Navy behind the times By PAUL MOONEY MANAMA, Bahrain — When Ot- tawa ordered the Canadian Forces to send three ships to the Middle East in August, officers hastily retrieved a Bofors anti-aircraft. gun from a museum and bolted it to one of the ships. The old gun is sturdy and reliable but analysts say it is stark evidence of the depleted state of its warships. “The politicians have refused to make the necessary investment over the years but they keep adding com ** says Dan a Strategic studies expert at Halifax's Dalhousie University. “The navy simply isn’t ready for them.”” Alex Morrison, executive director of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies in Toronto and a retired colonel, agrees. “When the navy has to go into warehouses and take equipment meant for frigates under construction — the frigates are long overdue and would have been welcome on this mission — something’s very wrong. “This operation has brought into sharp focus the continual neglect of the Forces by successive Canadian governments.”” The men and women assigned to the naval task group have been resourceful — often ingenious — as they coped with the problems of old equipment and ironed out the kinks in new systems added for the mission But the safety of the three grey ships plying the calm, green waters of the Persian Gulf depends largely on allied firepower around them and a canopy of air cover above. “The bottom line is — on their own in a conflict — our ships would be in trouble,"’ says Middlemiss. Among the complaints: * HMCS Protecteur, a supply’ and fuel ship, conducts regular patrols with the warships — something exper- ts say would never happen in a well- equipped navy . © The Sea Sparrow anti-air system, one layer of defence, is more than 20 years old and a poor match for Iraqi missiles. *© The 503 Marconi air warning radar used on one ship has been out of service more than it’s been fun- ctioning sincé the ships left Halifax. ° The 27-year-old Sea King helicopters are well maintained but will need major repairs during the mission. Canada will have to ask the U.S. military for heavy transport air- craft to ferry in replacements because the Canadian Forces have no heavy airlift of their own. © The Forces’ Hercules and Boeing 707 transport aircraft have been over- taxed ferrying in tonnes of supplies to the Canadian CF-18 fighter base in Qatar. That leaves one flight a week for the naval task group — insuf- ficient to transport the spare parts needed to keep the ships sailing. “It’s the baling-wire and bub- blegum scenario,” says one officer. “The government sends us and we do the best we can with what we have. “It’s the navy’s old can-do ny ginal ae titude."” Middlemiss is critical of several aspects of the operation. “*You don’t use an oiler like Protec- teur for patrols. “An oiler is supposed to stay out of harm's way while-warships sail to it for fuel and supplies. It’s a big target and carries a lot of gas. **But they had to go with what they had.”” Canada bought the Sea Sparrow system when Britain decided it no longer wanted it. In trials off Halifax in August, the system missed one rocket fired from shore. It then hit a second rocket just as the target was about to disappear into the ocean. “They should have bought Sea Wolf systems and put them on all three ships,’’ says one officer. ‘No serious navy uses Sea Sparrow any more — certainly not the model we have."* A technician from Marconi Canada sits in a Bahrain hotel room in case there’s more trouble with the radar on one ship. “It’s a piece of garbage, absolute garbage,"’ says an officer. Paul Mooney writes Canadian Press. for the Castlegar’s natural beauty and, along with hundreds of other people moving into Castlegar, we all settled down for the next five years. I’m sure the town was never quite the same since. My children still recall with fond memories surfaces. It waits in ambush at intersections, sprawls along the edges of traffic lanes, and overflows from construction sites. Some of this dusty debris arises naturally from unpaved shoulders, or spreads out of driveways. A good deal seems to be fallout from construction. Unquestionably, some of it is the remains of what was spread last winter to improve traction. Now it published without Nevertheless, telephone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The Castlegar News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. the writer's name. the name, address and Survey shows small-business owners pessimistic about economy By TERRY O'SHAUGHNESSY Small-business owners are worried. Results of a recent survey, com- piled by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, show that the country’s small business community is Pessimistic, and getting more so, every day. The ‘‘Small Business Barometer’ survey, conducted at six- month intervals, attempts to measure the overall economic outlook of small- and med: ed i business owners’ views on the economy have been growing in- creasingly pessimistic since the first survey was conducted in 1988, this recent survey shows the most abrupt decline to date. And, adds Swift, as smaller firms tend to feel the pinch of adverse economic conditions earlier than their larger counterparts, the implications of these results for Canada’s economic outlook are not With fully 71 per cent of respon- Pi iB. “*For example,’’’ says Swift, “‘last den the to get r (a startling increase from r 1989 which showed 47 per ce imistic about » 31 per cent of small business owners said they expected to increase full-time employment in the the _ecopior uture), the June 1990 Important signal that the economy fs, at the very least, in trouble. Catherine Swift, CFIB vice president of research and chief economist, says that although small ing six months. However, this has now dropped to only 15 per cent who have similar plans for the last half of 1990s.’" Swift points out that the three top reasons cited by respondents for their pessimism are lower sales expec- tations, the Bank of Canada’s high in- terest rate policy, and the federal government’s proposed goods and services tax. “While high interest rates are a traditional enemy of small business,”” says Swift, ‘‘this survey marks the fir- st time that the GST has been among the top three concerns for small business owners. The state of small- and medium-sized business expecta- tions as outlined in this survey in- dicates that there could not be a worse time to introduce such a sweeping tax change as the GST.”” Swift adds that it’s always significant when the small business ic the economy has a large bearing not only on the futrue employment situation, but on the health of the economy overall.”” And while it’s true that some of the economic variables damaging business prospects — notably interest rates and the exchange rate — are not completely under the control of Canadian policy-makers, there is one important exception: the GST. A delay of one year, Swift points out, would permit economic con- ditions to stabilize, enable consumers and businesses to become better in- formed about the tax, and allow for y about the future state of economy. “These people are by nature op- timistic — a key factor in making this sector the major job creation force in the country,’’ she says. ‘‘How these men and women perceive the state of the the i degree of har- monization between the GST and Provincial sales tax regimes. Business owners are signaling their distress. Terry O'Shaughnessy writes for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Tory minister spearheads sales By CLYDE GRAHAM OTTAWA (CP) — The sale of Petro-Canada will bring privatization minister John McDermid one step closer to his ultimate goal — putting himself out of a job. McDermid is the Conservative minister in charge of selling Crown corporations the government believes belong in private hands. Last week, McDermid introduced legislation that will give him the power to sell Petro-Canada, the giant oil company with about 3,300 gas stations across the country. Since 1984, the Mulroney gover- nment has sold 18 government businesses, including Air Canada, a munitions manufacturer, two electric builders, telecommunications com- panies, a mine, an electric company, @ fish plant and freight companies. “I guess the idea of the office of privatization is to work itself out of business,’’ the junior finance minister from Brampton, Ont., said in his downtown office. But with more than 50 federal Crown cor i still in ie But others that operate more like a commercial business, such as CN Rail, could eventually be sold. McDermid, who first entered cabinet in 1988 as junior trade minister, was groomed for cabinet as with more than 100 subsidiaries, Mc- Dermid isn’t worried about job ing federal Crown cor- porations — ranging from Canadian National Railways to the Canadian Dairy Commission — have an estimated value of $58 billion and employ about 169,000 people — roughly the population of Regina. McDermid acknowledged he can’t sell every Crown corporation. Many, like the dairy commission or Canadian Wheat Board, administer government policies. y secretary to Pat Car- ney, who held several portfolios in the Mulroney government. He took over the privatization job early in 1989. He wouldn't list the Crown assets he thinks may be ripe for Privatization. But Canada Post and Canadian National have long been thought to be potential candidates. Pieces of both have been sold or, have had some of their services contracted out. But McDermid said there are no Plans in the works to sell either one. With an estimated $6.8 billion in assets, the sale of Petro-Canada would be the largest privatization in Cariadian history. Opposition MPs have already vowed to fight the sale, calling the move sheer folly at a time when the world is facing an oil crisis. But McDermid said Petro-Canada is operating like a Private company and would be run more efficiently in Private hands, with foreign ownership limited to 25 per cent. The first slice of Petro-Canada shares — about 15 per cent of the company — is expected to go on sale next year, depending on the time it takes to get the legislation Passed by Parliament. Another 7 Crown corporation already earmarked for the auction block is Telesat, the satellite com- munications company, Federal hearings on pesticides hear from B.C. farmworkers VANCOUVER (CP) — Far- mworker Vijayrani Jaspaul doesn’t know the names of the chemicals she is exposed to — but she has learned to fear them. “When I am picking berries and I touch my face, I get a rash right away,’’ Jaspaul, 42, said Tuesday through an interpreter. “Pesticides should be banned and they should hire more labor to look after the fields.’” Jaspaul was one of 40 seasonal fieldworkers at a federal. hearing on pesticides. WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW = 9 (ZAGIGANTIC Tremendous Savings On Brand Name Ladies Wear Dresses, Panty-hose, House Coats and Lingerie . Coats, Jackets, Bulk Selected Sandwash Si WWWWWWWWWWWWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW =WWWWWWWWWWWW Sleepwear, Jewellery, Purses, Accessories, « 30c: Selection of SWEATERS & EXERCISEWEAR .. The cross-Canada hearings are being held to get public input into Proposals to regulate pesticide use. Jaspaul, a mother of four who has spent 18 years in the fields, fears chemicals are harming her health. She said she often works in recently sprayed fields or is covered in spray drifting from nearby fields. She said she often has to eat lunch in a sprayed field and seldom gets to wash her hands first. Two years ago, she said, she got so sick from pesticides she had to take two months off. Kuldip Banwait, of the Canadian Farmworkers Union, said B.C. far- mworkers are paying the price for Pesticide use. A 1982 federal study showed that half the workers exposed to chemical sprays got headaches or rashes and that 70 per cent became ill after direct spraying. “‘We are the frontline workers in the struggle against pesticides,’’ Ban- wait told the 12-member review panel. As well, 80 per cent of the provin- ce’s 23,500 farmworkers are women from visible minorities, she said. 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