PAGE | = = = Op Dave McCullough Publisher Scott David Harrison Editor Mickey Read Composing Room Foreman Warren Chernoff Accountant Mary Ann Fullerton Circulation Manager Burt Campbel OurViEWS Canada for Canadians ho says Castlegar doesn’t care about Canada? Not Bruce and Nancy Ketchum that’s for sure. The Castlegar couple have just completed their exhaustive cross- country tour to promote Canadian unity. The tour — the mastermind of the Ketchums and the Castlegar Kiwanis Club — came at a critical time. A time when our very nation struggles for an identity. With politicians at loggerheads over how, why and where to dot the ‘Is’ and cross the ‘Ts’, it’s refreshing to see ordinary Canadians taking the initiative needed to unite our fragmented nation. The Ketchums had no political motives, only a sincere message: Our Canada Includes Quebec. Thanks to the Ketchums and similar grassroots projects cropping from coast to coast, Canada may survive into the next century. But to leave that decision up to | kind-hearted Canadians like the Ketchums would be a mistake. If we care — really care — about this nation of ours, we must start speaking up. Silence will be the death of a nation. On Oct. 26, the federal government will hold a referendum on its latest — but far from greatest — constitutional package. As Canadians we must endorse this package. It may be our last chance. Street WALK This is for all those You make the call! armchair umpires out there (with apologies to Blue Jay Baseball’s “You Make The Call”). It’s February, 1990 and as a member of Castlegar council you ‘have just finished studying the draft copy of the Report on Organization and Management Review prepared by the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse. (For those who have been on Mars for the last two Ron NORMAN Comments from the Crossroads We all know what the council of the day chose: b). There may have been any number of reasons for that. Since the report is harshly critical of city staff and procedures, there may have been a tendency to shield staff from the glare of public criticism. Or council may have been reluctant to make the report public because large weeks, that’s the 35-page study of the city’s operations that was, to say the least, less than flattering. You: a) close your eyes and hope it will all go away. b) keep the report under wraps and resolve to implement the recommendations. c) request the study’s public release along with the action council intends to take to remedy the situation. chunks of it deal with personal information about staff, information it rightly judged did not belong in the public’s hands. Or maybe it was something more basic. The mayor and six aldermen are elected to provide direction for the city and are accountable for its operations. Maybe they didn’t want to stand up to the world and say: “city hall’s in a mess and we’re responsible.” please see Norman page 7 Publisher Emeritus L.V. Camp Question: Do you feel prepared enough to vote on the constitutional referendum in October? Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 ~~ fan Harrower Vanderhoof “Not yet. I haven't read enough about George Gallant Kamloops “No, because I don’t know a lot about it it.” yet.” ; Francine Bruce Castlegar “I don’t know, politics.” Roy Coleman Castlegar “Yes, because you because I don’tfollow get to have your say.” Noreen Nicholson Castlegar “Yes, because from what I’ve heard it’s a good thing.” @ Saturday, September 12, 1992 OtherVIEWS | Please address all letters to: Letters to the Editor Castlegar News P.O. Box 3007 Castlegar, B.C. V1N 3H4 or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave. 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 residence only will be published. Only in exceptional cases will letters be published anonymously. Even in those cases, the name, address and phone number of the writer MUST be disclosed to the editor. The News reserves the right to edit letters for brevity, clarity, legality, grammar and taste. Letters oWHE EDITOR | Co-operations from councils appreciated I would like to thank the mayors and councillors of Warfield, Rossland, Trail and Castlegar, as well as members of the public who contributed to the recent safety review of Warfield Hill conducted by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways. As a result of this input, along with recommendations from ministry traffic engineers, I have instructed Transport Ministry staff to begin work on some short and long term improvements to Warfield Hill. These include installing additional signs at the truck brake check area, as well as schematic drawings to indicate downhill gradients and distances. In addition, we will gather information from other jurisdictions and from the trucking industry on the practicality of constructing specialized runaway lanes, know as arrestor beds. We will ‘also study the possibility of rerouting the waterhole gravel pit, located three kilometres downhill from Rossland. MLA Ed Conroy and I plan to meet with representatives from the affected municipalities and trucking associations again to discuss the results of our findings. Every effort will be made to provide the necessary safety improvements in the most cost effective way. Again, thank you to those people who took time to respond to our request for information. Art Charbonneau Minister Once again, we are saddened by the news about children being killed while playing on train tracks. Four fatal train accidents have occurred in Eastern Ontario in the past two weeks, two of these involved children. From Jan. 1 to Aug. 26, 86 accidents involving trains claimed 23 lives and caused 55 injuries in Ontario. Unfortunately, children are drawn to trains, and accidents such as this happen all too often. There is no foolproof way to prevent children from staying away from the tracks, but there are measures that parents can take. One of these is conducting a Safety Walk. Safety Walk is part of The War Amps Playsafe Program. It was initiated when we saw far too many children enrolling in Safety Walk promotes awareness our Child Amputee (CHAMP) Program each year after losing limbs in accidents that could have been avoided. Safety Walk involves taking their children, or groups of neighborhood children, on a walk around their neighborhood to point out dangerous areas that should be avoided, such as train tracks, busy intersections, hydro lines, and so on. A Safety Walk is very simple to do and could prevent a serious accident. Anyone interested in conducting a Safety Walk can contact The War Amps at 2827 Riverside Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1V 0C7, to get a Safety Walk kit, which includes instructions and important safety tips. H. C. Chadderton, OC, DCL, O. Ont. Chief Executive Officer Yellowknife mining dispute rages on I am writing this letter to inform you of the labor dispute happening in Yellowknife, N.W.T. at the Royal Oak Mines Inc.; Giant Division. It’s important for the people of Canada to be aware that Giant Mine and Royal Oak Mines are the same operation. There are residents of Elliot Lake and Sudbury, Ont., that people are accepting work at Royal Oak Mine thinking that it is a new mine opening in Yellowknife, N.W.T. This is not true, people are being misled. Some people from Elliot Lake have been told they are being hired to work at Lupin Mine farther north replacement workers arrive they are told Royal Oak is their place of work. The replacement workers have signed a six week contract and after they arrive there is no recourse, and they have to work to find their own way home. June Roberts, CASAW Ladies Association TV series hurts fallen bombers Earlier this year, the CBC aired a TV series titled The Valour and the Horror. One of the episodes, called Death by Moonlight, dealt with Bomber Command in World War II. The series is now under examination by the CBC Ombudsman and the CRTC. Three hundred former RCAF prisoners of war, at a reunion in Vancouver in early August, passed a resolution supporting these initiatives. To say that our members — and their families — were disturbed, would be a serious understatement. The program on Bomber Command distorts any rational version of why it was necessary for our bombing crews to strike back at Germany in 1941, at a time when we were losing both the Battle of the Atlantic, and the land war from Norway to the Suez. The Bomber Command program portrays bomber crews as murderers of innocent victims and goes so far as to say that the moral high ground belonged to the German fighters who were attempting to protect their country. The CBC, NFB and Telefilm spent approximately $4 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money to create a program which contains inaccuracies and a bias against the 1,000,000 Canadians who volunteered, and the nearly 10,000 bomber crews who lost their lives. Donald R. Morrison, DFC, DFM rumors from former of Yellowknife. After the Support System President, RCAF POW Association Norman continued from page 7 And make no mistake: city hall was in a mess at the time the re- port was conducted. (Whether I agree with the report’s recommen- dations on how to clean up the mess is another matter). In pro- viding an overview of the situa- tion, the report does a good job. At the same time I’m guarded about the report’s individual find- ings. Here’s why: any place I’ve worked — and I've had more than a few dozen jobs on the railways, sawmills, several newspapers, canning factories and the like — has never operated at 100 per cent Quite simply, nothing runs per- fectly. And I’m willing to bet that if you went. around any workplace, you would get complaints on how i are run and suggestions on improvements. Whatever its reasons, the coun- cil of the day decided to quietly tuck away the Price Waterhouse report. It seemed to forget that as a publicly-elected body it had a duty and obligation to keep the citizens of Castlegar properly informed. It was bad enough the report wasn’t made public when it was submitted to council. Citizens shouldn’t have to be vigilant in order to obtain infor- mation to which they have every right. That information should be luctance when faced with a re- quest to make the report public. After much pressure, council fi- nally turned the matter over to Victoria lawyer Murray i Using the new Freedom of In- formation and Protection of Priva- cy Act as a guideline , Rankin de- termined what parts of the Price Waterhouse report the city should make public and which should be held back. The Information Act, which has not yet been proclaimed law but will not cover municipalities even when it is, expressly states: “The head of a public body (like Castlegar council) must not refuse to disclose... a final report or final audit on the performance of a pub- lic body or on any of its programs or policies.” Rankin also notes that the act says public bodies MUST refuse to disclose personal information as it relates to employment history or if it consists of personnel evalua- tions. It’s pretty clear that the Act is just good common sense: you don’t disclose personal information about individual employees, but there’s nothing wrong with telling people if city hall is working or not. Unfortunately, like the umpire who didn’t know the infield fly rule, the council of the day didn’t make the right call on the Price Waterhouse report. Let’s hope it has learned from its mistake.