After ’s toria, it was jnadres Caren it was highly Stressed) that the minister would not be making a decision on neither bridge nor ferry while visiting the Robson-Castlegar area. & According to his assistant in Victoria, Charbon- editorial comment Just how close is “close?” So, the date of Art Charbonneau’s visit to this area has been postponed from February 4 to Febru- ary 24-25. It’s actually a good thing. Now, the residents of this area have some extra time to prepare them- selves for the minister's visit, and—what do you know, he plans on remaining in the area long enough to do some real listening. Obviously there are a lot of people who are anx- iously waiting for Charbonneau to step off the plane. Judging from the letters and phone calls we have been receiving, Charbonneau will be asked a lot of tough questions—especially during the town hall meeting which he has agreed to attend in Rob- son. However, if local resid will be giving a yes or no answer to the big, big question—they ‘re think Charb iy end |. all like to emulate. Our i We all have skills to be shared Seniors today are likely to live longer than any previous generation. Seniors now are healthier, more active and more independent than at any time in our history. These categories include our much venerated pioneers whose efforts we would P seniors are through- Out our community, lifestyles as seniors since their activities are as varied as the general population. You will not find them at the health clinics or other government agencies, for they pride themselves in being able to take care of themselves in every way, We applaud their resourcefulness and their independence and would not wish to change this in any way. At some point in life we all get involved in an interest group. It is a natural human instinct to seek out others who are most like ourselves. As a group, more weight is added to actions than would be from a single individual. That was how “Grey Power,” or “seniors working together,” began. Who would better understand the needs of our senior citizens than the seniors themselves? Traditionally, seniors lived productive lives through care and attention provided by younger members of the family. Through war, the depres- sion, and dislocation of families, many of our seniors do not have children upon whom they can now rely, Many live on in the family home with few or no close relatives. Even when family members remain close, the lack of time and money may not always permit younger people to provide ongoing help to older family and expensive. Many of our seniors who find themselves in this situation would dearly wish to fix up their homes, but the costs are daunting, especially if have not had work done for some time and now are suddenly aware that such costs have risen dramatically: Also living in our com- Most elderly parents do Not wish to live with their children. They fear being an added burden to a young, growing family unit. Everyone has skills and potential others need or can use. Sometimes you just have to let others know you are available! When you do something, whatever the activity, you feel better. Volunteers know doing something for others makes you feel better about yourself, By “doing,” often the feel- ings of loneliness and fear of not being wanted disappear! In our local communities, there are many seniors living in a family home that is falling into disrepair. The ravages of climate and whether can soon be all too visible and, often , dangerous as ingly more difficult are retired i with skills and tal- ents who perhaps find they have more time than needs and would be Prepared to help other seniors in return for other services. The Senior Citizens Action Committee are looking for skilled individuals to join into a shar- ing of talents. It is anticipated that a service board may be established by seniors for seniors in our area. If you are interested in this concept, and have a skill to offer, whether it be carpentry or cooking, plumbing or preserving, electrical knowledge or sewing skills, please get in touch with any member of the Senior Action Commit- tee. They will be actively seeking skills of all kinds. It’s the season for skill sharing. Elma Maund is a communications consultant, a facilitator, administrator and a writer. Elma has travelled throughout North America, Asia and the South Pacific and has coordinated numerous pro- jects. She is presently coordinator of the local Seniors Action Committee. Even more reasons to turn backs on Canada Despite its troubles, Keith Spicer’s Citizen’s Forum did a lot of good work. Example: Its research showed Quebecers trusted provincial politi- cians more than federal ones; and looked to their provincial govern- ment rather than Ottawa to protect their interests. After hearing Don Getty’s blatant appeal to Albertans’ worst side last week, is it any wonder Spicer’s study Canadi: in the other nine in Vic- neau will be deciding ‘where’ on a priority list the Castlegar-Robson bridge will be placed. This magical priority list, decided with all the wisdom and knowledge Victoria can muster, will give us cause to celebrate—or once again curse those who govem us. Here’s something to think about, just how close to the top on the minister’s priority list must the link be before it is recognized as a definite go. The top? The top three? Undoubtedly, these questions must be seriously considered by the Ferry Users Ad Hoc Committee. If the decision on whether or not a bridge is going to be built will be made in March, it’s only natural to assume then, that by holding the meeting near the end of February, the minister will be in a much better position—to take a position. S.1. By Don Addis ie HOW WE KNOW FISH ARE STUPID a The ter sn IS POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT AND A MEMBER OF THE STERLING NEWS SERVICE 465 Cohimbia Ave., Castlegar, B.C. VIN 1G8 Provinces tend not to trust provincial premiers but look to Ottawa for lead- ership. NOW THEN, WHO WANTED COPIES OF MY SPEECH.. When he was p of New Brunswick, the late Richard Hatfield used to say ip meant telling voters the bad news, — not Positions. Jacques Parizeau must be killing tained a list of constitutional just what they wanted to hear. In those days the “bad news” was telling English-speaking New Brunswickers they had to make room for the “other half” of the population, the Acadians. As a result of his leadership, New Brunswick is Canada’s only official- ly bilingual province, and Hatfield goes into the history books as a politician who did the right thing, even when it would have been easier belief that we're more in need of real leaders than at any time in memory. It’s easy to say scrap it. Official bilingualism isn’t worth the hassle and hardship it has caused. After all it has resulted in 404 of Alberta's, more than 13,000 federal How would a unilingual Albertan feel if he or she found themselves unable to find someone who could speak to them in English in a federal government office in Quebec? It all boils down to the Golden Rule. Don Getty knows all this. After all was born in Montreal. ‘And because he was born there, Getty, of all people, must know how his comments will be used by the enemies of Canada — the separatists — to try to break up our country. It was sickening to watch the glee with which some members of Parlia- aes, Press cone, who work for transmitted tei 1690 Teports on Getty’s speech back to Quebec. Stop the presses! We've got another bigot for the front page! reason for Quebecers to tum himself laughing Whenéver I urge tolerance on the language issue, I get a ton of nasty il. Mike Duffy Syndicated Columnist Yes, I know there are bigots in Quebec who boo O Canada at sport- ing events and so on. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and demands most ardent Quebec nation- alist could identify with and support: + Albertans will support the idea of economic union, as long as that does not mean control from the centre. + Albertans must own and control their own natural resources. + Albertans want limitations on federal spending in areas of exclu- sive provincial jurisdiction. + Albertans even accept the idea of “distinct society” as long as that “doesn't mean a preferred or special place for one province or group over the others.” The theme through much of Getty’s speech was “respect”. Feder- al respect for Alberta's Tights asa , and Ci to people's lowest i leads to the kind of politics they've got in Lebanon and Yugoslavia. Interestingly, not every’ g in Getty’s speech was as crasy’as his ” respect for Albertans and their contribution to this nation. Sounds a lot like Quebec's cri de couer to me. civil service jobs being declared their backs on Canada. attack on bilingualism. I con- eee Long-term committment to free market prices for the necessary inputs, the more of them they will receive, and the more of the desired good will be On the very first day of price reform in the for- mer Soviet Union (the “CIS”), according to Cana- dian newspaper headlines, citizens were angry that price had not cheap goods immediately. I have no doubt that this is an accurate depiction of the mood in the street in the cs, but there was also a worrying undertone of This is why the market is “efficient”, and. effi- cient in the sense of producing what real people actually want. Since the most valuable thing most people possess is their own labor, price measure the value of things by taking what is almost a pub- lic opinion poll as to what they are worth. The dif- ference between this and the more conventional kinds of polls is that in this one people may not give dishonest or inaccurate answers when asked if were put, were not determined by summing the preferences of its citizens. And therefore its econo- my was inherently incapable of satisfying those preferences. And it still is, although prices have now been freed, because those prices have only just begun conveying information. One thing they have revealed — but not caused, popular discontent and the Western media notwithstanding — is that the CIS is desperately poor. They will now begin to improve the distribution of what can be produced with existing facilities; this will be most effective in the case of agriculture, if it lasts at Russian people may be excused such igno- rance after 70 years of Communist educa- tion, but I hope we will not fall into it here. Whether or not popular opinion in the CIS forces a change of course, we should that freeing prices in the .. . Citizens were angry that enormous price increases had not produced cheap goods immediately least a year and if the farmers can be made to believe it will continue. But it cannot wash away the conse- quertces of 70 years of socialist planning overnight. What is really needed in the CIS is for new productive facilities to be established that will satisfy the wishes of CIS is Il. And what is is not that their absolute level should change, although it must, be that they should be free to change relative to one another. The reason for this is that prices function in a market economy as extraordinarily effective con veyors of i Tt is that the higher the price of something the less of it service is currently much desired. If people are willing to pay a high price for something, this sig- nal then washes back through the production pro- cess, because the higher the price of the final product the more its producers can and will pay for the necessary inputs. And the more they can pay something is worth their working for, because the way they answer is to work for it or not to. Economic systems that do not rely on free mar- ket price formation. by contrast, refuse to measure the worth of things by whether or not real people actually want them enough to work for them. The consequences of this can be very clearly seen in the former Soviet Union. lis economy was in impor- tant ways very productive; it won the race Khrushchev declared that it would win, ing America by 1980 in such heavy industrial products as steel, cement, oil, machine tools and so on. The problem is that it won the wrong race. For the proportions in which various things were pro- duced in the USSR, and the uses to which they the people, and this can only happen if the price system is allowed to reflect and inform would-be producers of those wishes. That requires a long-term commitment to free market prices. The problem with the old Soviet prices was not their absolute level but their relative level, not that they made everything too cheap but that they failed to determine what should be relatively expensive and what relatively cheap. The price reform now occurring should not (and generally does not) involve moving from a set of low, administratively determined prices to a set of high, administratively determined Prices, but from a set of adminsitrative- ly d prices to market d prices. Nothing else, quite literally, makes sense. The price hike is right. Wednesday, January 22, 1992 The Castlegar Sun Page 7A Letters to the Editor Editorial right on target, let’s get involved Dear Editor: I see by last Wednesd: The Mayor has called on both Castlegar Sun that Highways Min. ister Art Char is sched- ies to work h Recent sleight-of-hand, where one uled to visit this area on Fe! 4. The editorial in that issue is right on target, in that we must use this opportunity to convince him that a Castlegar-Robson link is an absolute necessity. turned a request from the Castlegar Hospital Board to support the interim operation of the Robson ferry into a resolution to sink the ferry, is a peculiar way of demonstrating a cooperative behavior. Hopefully this time Buying groceries? Dear Editor: Last Wednesday someone pointed out to me that a current grocery charges 1.95 percent; Master- Card, 1.66 percent and enRoute, 3.73 percent. hrs restaurants iP pape advertisement carries the announcement “WE NOW ACCEPT [two designated credit cards.]” What will this policy mean to us? No doubt some will see it as a convenience, which at times it may be. But every convenience has a cost. A January 14 Globe and Mail story on American Express’ dispute with some restaurants tells us that for its credit card use American Express charges restaurant operators 4.65 percent of the check; Visa must P these charges in their prices and pass them on to their patrons: grocery stores will have to do the same. What will this mean-to the Consumer if the acceptance of credit cards becomes widespread in the gro- cery business? The effect will be that when customers use their credit cards the merchants will pass on the credit card company two to four percent of the price of the gro- ceries. When the customers pay cash the merchants will keep this two to four percent, which, in a Castlegar City Council will be on- side in their support of the link. If the counselors can get past their paranoia over moving the chip trucks out of Castlegar, perhaps they will recognize that the wel- fare of people on both sides of the river is the real issue Mister Charbonneau indicated in a recent news release that he was considering a visit to Robson. We have no difficulty in sharing the Minister's time with her work- shop and her entourage. But we will not be pushed aside by so- called “heavyweights”, and risk another sleight-of-hand. The result this time could be that the bridge gets traded away for the less- expensive 14th Avenue Bypass Just say charge it! low-margin business is a signifi- cant amount. You might say that the customers who pay cash will be subsidizing those who use their cards. In fairness, the merchants should grant a discount to those who pay cash, or alternatively, should keep their prices low and charge the credit card users a pre- nium. If enough of us speak about this we will get our discount, or the use of credit cards will be dis- continved, or not inaugurated, and prices will be lower than they otherwise would be. If we remain silent we will, all of us, soon be paying more for our groceries that we do now — in addition to the inflation-driven increases that ‘we have come to accept as natu- ral. I have been told that a family of four can expect to spend $150 or more per week at the grocery stores. If we thke for an example proposal The Minister's appearance on February 4 will be the first visit of any of the five Highways minis- ters since the ferry closure. This may be your only opportunity to write or phone Minister Charbon- neau in Victoria (387-1978) and express your support for the “Castlegar Connector”. I'll even pay for the first three minutes or the stamp. As the Sun's editor so aptly put it, GET INVOLVED! Yours truly, George Stein, Robson Editors Note: Since the article was published on Jan. 15 Mr. Char- bonneau indicated the date of his visit has changed from February 4 to February 24/25. We felt it nec essary to publish this letter because it reflects the positive atti, tude which all citizens on both sides of the Columbia will need in orger to secure our link. the rate given to the used VISA card, the second low- est of the four quoted by the Globe this 1.95 percent charge will cost the four-member family $152 each year. Think about how useful this $152 would be next Christmas. Fred G. Marsh Robson Council spending seen as ‘wild and reckless’ Dear Editor: The wild and reckless spending spree that our City Council is planning on embarking on, will surely create an intolerable finan- cial situation. If all their Capital Projects are allowed to proceed, we can be sure that all our tax dollars and our childrens tax dollars will have been committed to a continuing debt. The people of Castlegar and the new City Council that is elect- ed next year, will face a financial situation far worse, in relative Postponed visit gives committee time to prepare Dear Editor: The Robson Raspberry Ferry users Ad Hoc Committee is in agreement with The Castlegar Sun editorial of January 15 which urges that Castlegar and Robson come together in pressing for a ferry, a bridge or even a tunnel to restore the direct link between our communities. The reasons presented are sound and are com- pelling. That the Honourable Art Charbonneau will be here not on the fourth, but on the twenty- fourth of February, will be an advantage in that it will give us three more weeks in which to pare The Committee must take issue with the editor, though, when she says, “We have every- thing to lose if either the bridge is not built or if the ferry is not restores. Mr. Charbonneau has got to realize it’s got to be one or the other...” The Committee has never taken an “either [bridge] or [ferry]” position. Before the Strong opinion strongly put Dear Editor: After having read the colum on ‘Smoking in public places,’ Jan- uary 15,1992, I agree on the basis—not on the details. Marilyn, I think it was a little too ‘STRONG.’ Monique (Goonies') A Bad-Bad Smoker political promise of a bridge was made the Committee argued for the restoration of the ferry that had been stolen from us. When the bridge entered the picture everyone recognized that a bridge (or now possibly a tunnel) would be preferable to even the best of ferries. But a bridge will take three years or more to put into place; a ferry will take three weeks or less. Clearly, the only reasonable position to take was, and is, “Bring back the ferry, as you said you would, immediately, and build a bridge that has been promised as soon and as quickly as possible.” Fred G. Marsh Robson Silver Rattle Antiques 301-11 Ave. Castlega (in Tulips Building) 365-5191 rene recur needed immediately for the 2700 block of 5th Ave. If interested please phone Denise at 365-5266 Re a ; Celgar & Cominco meal tickets accepted Call us today! 365-5304 Cee Us Celebrate the Start of ‘1992’ with a 1992 Barrel Sale 20 Pieces of Golden Delicious Chicken - $24.99 Now Only $19.92 Save $5.07 All the month of January Don’t forget the Salads and Fries 2816 Columbia Ave. terms, to what Mike Harcourt inherited from the Socreds in Vic- toria. (note the new ICBC rates and other provincial cutbacks) We must face reality, pay our present obligations, set aside rea- sonable sums of money in a reserve fund, and only then estab- lish priorities on what Capital Projects we can afford to under- take. ~ We must do away with all the special outside consultants, high priced Vancouver lawyers and useless litigation which has cost us thousands and thousands of dollars — for what? The money saved will more than pay to main- tain our streets in a reasonable state of repair. We don't need outside consul- tants to tell us which pot holes need filled, and we don't need outside lawyers. Celgar, with it's international connections and multi-million dollar business, is using a local law firm to represent them. It's an insult to our local legal profession to suggest that they cannot do a job for a little town like Castlegar. Nick Oglow Castlegar You are cordially invited to an open discussion concerning the renewal of Canada’s prosperity. It’s a question that touches all of us, Say you saw it in the Sun! Letters Policy Letters to the Editor are wel- come on any topic of local or general interest. Letters should be double-spaced, typewritten, or legibly handwritten, and no more than two pages if possible. Let- ters will be edited in the interests of brevity or taste if necessary. All letters must be signed, with address and telephone number, although names may be witheld from publication for valid reason by the approval of the editor. Send letters to: The Castlegar Sun, 465 Columbia Ave., Castlegar, B.C., VIN 1G8, or drop them off at the office. Annie’s Gold Jewellery Lobby-Fireside Hotel On Jan. 29th make your opinion count! so come out and make your opinion count Refreshments will be served at an informal reception from 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. Following this, participants will break into small groups to discuss how we can revitalize the economy and safeguard our standard of living. Mark your calendars and we look forward to seeing you. Castlegar and District Recreation Center, 2101 6th Avenue, Castlegar COMMUNITY TALKS DEWDNEY TOURS 1355 Bay Ave., Trail - 368-6666 February 1... February 22 . -Riverboat Comstock COMPETITIVENESS / LEARNING Sponsored by Castlegar and District Chamber of Commerce, Kootenay Regio Development Assoc n ‘Commu Campus and the Government of Canada y Futures of Central Kootenay. Sethirk Castlegar