PAGE at S OurWiEWS Castlegar’s brat pack sweep last week’s mess under the carpet, it better find a bigger broom. Jt appears that council can’t escape the rage of a fair number of citizens, none the least of which is a small handful of people calling themselves the Concerned Citizens Coalition. - Not happy with short answers to long questions, the coalition has city council on the defensive. Right or wrong, this newly established brat pack has city council checking and double checking figures to ensure that a prolonged brouhaha is avoided: Sorry council, but it appears your open and honest actions have come that much too late for the coalition. Last week’s gathering of the collectively concerned clan may just be the beginning of a full scale grassroots rebellion. Not satisfied with city council’s replies during the everything-you- wanted-to-know-about-city-council- but-were-afraid-to-ask session, the self-appointed citizens group has put pen to paper again. Turning up the municipal heat, the newest thorn to city council’s side has issued another 12 questions. Twelve very poignant questions designed to dig that much further into city. council’s suddenly clouded record. Because city council saw fit. to answer the original 17 questions, it has no little choice but to answer the newest set...and the ones after that. All this raises the question of just who is running Castlegar? I: city council was hoping to: Convention, what convention? My oh my, how things have changed. Three months after becoming the laughing stocks of provincial politics, the Social Credit party has come out of hiding The party that once owned British Columbia held its post-election wake over the weekend, attracting a little less attention than the Osmond family reunion.’ Yup, the once-mighty \ .D.HARRISON | « Harrison “” Comparison Political poverty aside, if it wasn’t for my own keen interest in the wild and wacky world of B.C. politics, I may have missed the fact that a convention even took place. And you? Well, a convention did take place, complete with the resignation of Rita Johnston as Socred leader. Also gone is Hope Rust as the party’s president, replaced by former cabinet Socreds are on the outside of B.C. politics looking in. As strange as that sounds, it was even stranger to hear Pamela Martin’s low-budget. report on the BCTV News Final. Amid the one-line reports. on Ottawa tax hikes and Prince Edward Island meningitis shots, the Socred convention was all but lost. It’s tough to come in third in a three- party race. low-scale convention during Sunday’s | minister David Mercier who won the once-prestigious title on the third ballot. Little more than a shell of its former self, the convention was an unusually cruel example of a political party on its last oh- so-wobbly leg. The sad fact is Social Credit now finds itself just one bad leader away from going the way of the dodo, dinosaur and McRib. please see HARRISON page 7 Street WALK Burt-C; np Publisher Emeritus L.V. Campbell Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973 Question: Are you satisfied with the job ony council is selng? Bill Berkey Castlegar “It seems like they are doing alright.” Joy Ramsden Castlegar “[’'d like to see more results.” ' Mike Silva Castlegar ~ “I'm not happy with it at all.” Kinnelon rahi pit lar pees 8 Winn te SP teargen et lm Wednesday, January 15, 1992" valine EWS i 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 lastnames, address anda telephone number at which the writer can be reached between 9 a.m. and5 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. Everi 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 toWHE EDITOR Council not responsible The recent public meeting with city council was both inspiring and enlightening. Most of the questions asked were valid. However, with a few exceptions, the answers given by the mayor and council were either eva- sive or incomp The mayor’s statement of being involved in long term planning brings up more questions. Just a few years ago, two members of our city council and I vigorously argued that the new library then planned should be built on va- cant land available in town. The then existing library building which was built and paid for by the citizens of Castlegar, could be used for oth- er municipal purposes. Home Support Services wanted space there and the city engineering and other depart- ments could have been accommodated there as well. This was a well built, well maintained and functional building. In a tie-breaking vote, the mayor made the following statement: The city does not need and will not need additional office space. With this decision, the city works crew pro- ceeded to demolish and destroy a valuable city asset. This decision was always morally wrong and has proven to be economically stupid. Today, the alternate proposed sites for the library are still vacant. Meanwhile, according to the mayor, our city is paying over $50,000 per year for a place to hold council meetings and would like to spend about $666,000 of our money to accommodate the engineering and other departments of the city. This type of long term planning we can do without. Since there are no provisions for recall of our elected officials for incompetence, perhaps pub- lic involvement in our municipal affairs will in- still some common sense into the decision mak- ing process at city hall. N.T. Ogiow -- “Castlegar Walk ’n’ Chew wisely I am writing in response to Mr. Lang’s let- ter of Jan. 11, 1992. : Since I made the Walk ’n’ Chew Award, I feel I should answer for it. . The award was presented to Mr. Harcourt for his silence on the Robson ferry issue since forming government on Oct. 17, 1991 and for his reneging on a promise to reinstate the Rob- son ferry. Do we speak for the majority of Robson res- idents? At the last two hall meetings regarding the Robson ferry, the Ferry Users Ad Hoc Com- mittee was not givefi a majority but rather a unanimous vote. The motion was for the com- mittee to continue to lobby, negotiate or legal- ly pressure the government in anyway possible to have the ferry reinstated. The committee has no direction or authority to jethy or do anything else regarding the pro- posed bridge, so on this issue I am speaking on- ly for myself. Mr. Harcourt has shown that he will not keep his promises, so why id he feel obligated to keep a promise made by the pee vious government? The government will be reviewing all major highways poe prior to March 1992. In a press release, Art Charbonneau (Minister of Transportation and Highways) says there will be three things taken into account during this review process: 1) safety, 2) traffic congestion, and 3) whether the project will connect large urban populations. Based on that criterion, I feel our bridge may be in more jeopardy than our ferry has even been! So you see Mr. Lang, I, for one, will not won- der why. If Mr. Lang feels we are ill advised then per- haps he should call a town hall meeting and as a community we can decide how to proceed from here. Les Schultz Robson, B.C. One big power struggle - The response of West. Kootenay Power’s Di- rector, Community & Public Affairs, to the Castlegar News’ story of a proposed rate in- crease itself demands a response. Whether or not a rate increase is required or how great it should be is always to some ex- tent a matter of opinion, the opinion being in- fluenced by the side of the increase on which we find ourselves. Differences of opinion are to be expected and these differences are resolved by the British Columbia Utilities Commission after listening to arguments presented by both sides ata ‘foenial public hearing. My involvement in the story to which WKP’s director has objected began when I was phoned for verification of some figures. I had the infor- mation at hand and I read directly from page 128 of the Globe and Mail Report on Business of July 1991. This page is from the section re- porting on Revenue Ranking by Industry and shows WKP as having achieved the highest re- turn on capital of all Canadian electrical utili- ties. Soméhow in our conversation “capital” be- came “equity” — the director’s criticism of the confusion between capital and equity is under- standable and justified and to the extent to which I may have contributed to the confusion I must apologize. To set the record straight we must look at pages 66 and-67 of the Report on Business in which WKP is shown in its position on the list -capital is 17.41 per cent as reported of the Top 1,000 Rankings of Canadian compa- nies. Here, we learn that WKP is No. 216 on the list with a profit of $10,458,000; return on where; and return on shareholders’ equity of $844,703,000 is 13.64 per cent. The director goes on to point out that B.C. Hydro is not required to pay income tax and that TransAlta has its federal income tax re- bated to it by the province of Alberta First, B.C. Hydro. It is true that B.C. Hydro asa Crown Corporation does not pay income tax. However, by Order in Council No. 1417 of Oct.’5, 1989, our provincial government issued a special direction to B.C. Hydro demanding “annual payments to the provincial govern- ment of an amount specified in this directive commencing in the 1989-90 financial year... The payment’shall be not less than $130 mil- lion for the financial year ending March 31,. 1990.” This annual payment has become known, euphemistically, as a dividend and for all prac- tical purposes is being paid by B.C. Hydro with borrowed money. I do not know how much money has been paid to the government as dividends up to now by B.C, Hydro but I can see no reason to doubt George Cady, Chairman of the RDCK, when he says in a letter published last October that some $400 million has been paid up to the time of writing. ‘WKP is correct, though: technically this levy is not income tax. TransAlta presents a-different and complex situation, only one aspect of which we need go into at present. The federal government does collect income tax from TransAlta and from other privately owned electrical utilities. In the past the federal government has re- turned to Alberta the money collected from TransAlta and the province has passed it on to a utility, but early in 1990 a change took place. At that time the federal government capped * the amount being returned to all electrical util- ities so that as time goes on a smaller portion of ine ad collected as income tax is being re- In August of last year, TransAlta sent letters to all ofits ratepayers telling them (among oth- er things) that of the 36 per cent increase in their bills that has taken place since 1986, 6.5 per cent is directly attributable to the provin- cial government’s having eliminated a “portion of the Income Tax Rebate.” To the best of my knowledge the record has now been set straight and we can all get offtoa ' fresh start in a new year. Fred G. Marsh Castlegar Harrison continued from page 6 If Social Credit is to survive, it must pick a leader free of any past prejudices. Oh sure, Rita Johnston was an able politician, but let’s face it, she was nothing more than the sacrificial lamb ordered to suffer because of the absolute arrogance of Bill Vander Zalm. A quick look through the Social Credit caucus leaves the party with next to no one to lead it in this legislative session. difficult. True, Jack Weisgerber — one of seven elected Socreds — has taken up the battle to restore party respectability through his open letters to British Columbians. But Weisgerber is a part of the old wave and if Social Credit is to look ahead it must sever ties with its past. Instead of viewing the likes of the Vander Zalms, the McCarthys, the Smiths and the Reids»-as martyrs to the capitalist cause, look at them for what they were — hacks. ’ If Social Credit has any hope, it can’t rely on past glories to provide the foundation for this reworked party. Instead, in this desperate hour, it must free itself from excuses and work towards respectability. I suggest it start this painfully-slow process with the election of Graham Bruce as party leader. The recently- defeated Bruce is perhaps the only shining star among the bleak, still-willing-to-admit- they’re-Socreds crowd. Bruce, who chose not to attend the convention, has been collecting his thoughts since the party’s defeat. No. doubt he’ll run for Cowichan Valley hill when the party: comes aknocking, but he must realize he iis Social Credit’s last hope. Bruce isn’t a miracle worker and there are no guarantees he can throw the party a life line, but it’s certainly worth trying. He is, after all, Social Credit’s only choice.