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Saturday, July 11, 1992 @

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Op

Dave McCullough
Publisher

Scott David
Harrison
Editor

Mickey Read
Composing Room
Foreman

Warren Chernoff
Accountant

" - Heather Hadley
Circulation Manager

Burt Campbell
Publisher Emeritus

L.V. Campbell
Aug. 7, 1947-
Feb. 15, 1973

OurViEWS

Kudos to
Kristiansen

o Lyle Kristiansen has had
Gencuee with Ottawa, who
hasn't.

The Kootenay West-Revelstoke MP
officially announced Wednesday that
he’s packing his bags and heading for
the hills. Frustrated by the stagnant
nature of the Canadian political
scene, Kristiansen couldn’t find it
within himself to seek re-election in
the riding he has represented twice.

It’s a shame to see a good man
admit defeat. And that defeat likely
came on June 4 when Kristiansen
voted with his heart instead of his
head.

Breaking party lines, Kristiansen
endorsed the Tory bill allowing the
federal government to _ hold
referendums in any or all the
provinces on such issues like the
constitution.

A defiant Kristiansen — one of five
NDPers to endorse Bill C-81 —
defended his vote, saying the federal
government shouldn’t “have to face
the problem of national unity with its
hands tied behind its back.”

Despite Kristiansen’s show of
compromise for the sake of a nation,
he landed in the New Democratic dog
house. One day after Bill C-81 was
approved by a 138-33 margin,
Kristiansen was hauled into New
Democrat leader Audrey
McLaughlin’s office like some
uneducated school boy and read the
riot act.

It all leaves one to wonder if
Kristiansen’s decision to leave

Ottawa was entirely his own.

7

Castleview gambled ant lost

At first glance there

‘

it had when it operated as

doesn’t seem to be much in
common between the
provincial government’s
battle with B.C. doctors and
its decision not to fund 25
additional beds at the
Castleview Care Centre —
other than in both cases the
government is_ being
surprisingly tight-fisted
with our tax dollars.
(Surprising because this
is an NDP government after
all and New Democrat

Ron NORMAN

Comments
from the
Crossroads

Raspberry Lodge.

But when it was
finished in April 1991, it
had built 61 beds — 25
more than the Ministry of
Health had approved.

Now, in the Okanagan
and the Lower Mainland,
privately-owned
intermediate care facilities
like Castleview are able to
fill beds not funded by the
government with patients
who are both willing and
able to pay privately.

governments have the
reputation for being free
spenders. The NDP under Premier Mike
Harcourt is quickly coming to mean the No
Dough Party).

But beneath the surface of both items
beats the very heart of the health care
issue.

Take the Castleview Care Centre first. A
privately-owned facility, it received
approval for provincial funding for 36
intermediate care beds — the same number

Castleview Care Centre
wasn’t able to do that here — one of the
reasons being we just don’t have the same
population base as the larger centres. So
Castleview’s owners started lobbying for
provincial funding — through the media and
local government. Victoria took another
look at the proposal and said no dice.

It couldn’t have been an easy decision
because Castleview indicated that unless it
please see NORMAN page 7

Street WALK

Question: Do you think city council should put more money into developing Castlegar’s parks?

Gay MacDonald
Castlegar

“We have enough
nice parks.”

Bob Wright
Castlegar

“Yes, especially the
area behind the
courthouse.”

Dana O’Brien
Blueberry

“Yes.”

Sheree Czechowski

“They should fix up
the ones they already

Del Cunningham
Castlegar Castlegar

“No, the economic
situation insists we
have.”

@ Saturday, July 11, 1992

Other VIEWS |

Please address
all letters to:

Letters to the

ditor
Castlegar News
P.O. Box 3007
Castlegar, B.C.
V1N 3H4

or deliver them to
197 Columbia
Ave.

Letters should be
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and not longer
than 300 words.
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include the
writer's first and
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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 toWHE EDITOR

Christina Lake logging must be addressed

Open Letter to the
citizens and taxpayers of
Christina Lake:

As the majority of you are
aware, we as a community have
been struggling with the issue
of private-land logging on the
southwestern - shores. of
Christina Lake for a year and a
half.

In an attempt to stop the
logging of this very important
piece of land many options have
been pursued.

We lobbied the previous
government for help, they
turned us down. We have
lobbied for a land exchange and
been turned down as the
present government does not
want to set themselves up to
have to rescue every sensitive
piece of private land in the
province.

What the present
government has done, is provide
a framework for the community
to attempt to settle this conflict
on a local level.

We were fortunate that both
individuals and our local tourist
association had been actively
lobbying the Tourism Ministry.
The Ministry of Tourism helped
us set up a facilitation process
to sit everyone down at the
table and work together to find
a solution that would
accommodate rather than
compromise everyone’s needs
and concerns.

We have also been fortunate
in having a private-land owner
who has invited the community
into the planning process on
how he will manage his own
property. This is a generosity
that I suspect most of us would
never even consider, let alone
pay for.

What the community has
here is an opportunity to

achieve something that could
have long term ramifications for
future similar situations... This
process also offers us something
we have always said we wanted
— more local control of our
destiny. For once we have a
chance to make the decisions
concerning our community right
here in Christina Lake,

According to Stephen Owen
the chairperson of the new
Commission On Resources and
the Environment “a new
provincial forest policy and local
resource boards are the keys to
solving B.C.’s forest conflicts.”

The negotiating process, used
by the Lot 10218 Planning
Team has been at the forefront
of this new approach to conflict
resolution. The basis of the
process is that by working
together to solve a jointly
defined problem, each party will
gain more than it could by
relying on traditional
bargaining techniques — where
a gain for one party is seen as a
loss for the other.

Working within this process
has been a very educational and
worthwhile exercise. We worked
as a team.

At the end of every meeting
we agreed as a team that we
were making positive progress
towards an agreement that
would meet everyone’s
interests.

It takes a huge leap of faith
to give up the old style of
hidden agendas and strategies,
in favor of a collaborative effort.
It has the potential to reward
all of us, if we can remain
honest and straightforward in
all our endeavors. Sitting at the
table in good faith is crucial to
the success of this process.

When the community
originally took its no logging

stance, it did so from a belief
that a clear-cut on the slopes of
Christina Lake was a totally
unacceptable idea. I support
that position wholeheartedly.

There is a serious lack of
legislation on both the local and
provincial levels to enable us to
make that position stick.

The land owner had in a
public meeting stated that he
wanted the community’s input
before proceeding with his
proposal. He said he wanted a
chance to show us what he
could do and try and make us
happy. With no other door open
to us, I felt we were faced with a
choice of either, logging with
our input or logging without it.
We as a community, agreed to
enter into the process to ensure
all our concerns and values
were addressed.

The Lot 10218 Planning
Team felt it inappropriate for
the team to pursue the option of
purchasing the land as the land
owner is a member of the team.
We discussed the fact that the
planning process did not
preclude others from making a
purchase attempt and, at many
times, I have urged concerned
community groups to consider
directing their energies towards
a purchase.

To my knowledge, none of
them have done so.

In an attempt to establish
some long overdue legislation to
address the issue of logging on
private land, I have worked on
both the local and provincial
levels of government.

Last fall, I took a resolution
to the Union of B.C.
Municipalities for their area of
jurisdiction and if they
wouldn’t, to please give that
authority to local government.
The province has _ just

introduced a Bill to that effect,
only they give the power to
municipalities alone, excluding
rural areas.

I have also been working on
the Regional District’s proposed
Tree Cutting Bylaw, but in its
present proposed form it is
toothless-in-respect-to visual
values and it wouldn't affect the
property in question.

Along with other Boundary
area representatives I attended
a provincial workshop on
establishing a new ‘Forest
Practices Code. I attempted to
ensure that private land be
covered by the new code so all
land would be treated equitably.

A strong and well-organized
lobby by the B.C. Cattlemen’s
Association again raised my
awareness of individual
property rights.

Both sides of the issue were
addressed and we reached an
accommodation by suggesting
that if private land were left out
of the code in the beginning,
that it be addressed again once
the code is in place. Other
efforts have included personal
lobbying of the Premier and
other cabinet ministers.

No one person that I have
talked to in this community is
in favor of seeing the hillsides of
Christina Lake logged

It is unfortunate that there
are no laws in place that can
help us. I believe the report
prepared planning team is the
best we could come up with
under the circumstances. I urge
you to give it a fair chance and
then make up your own minds,
not on rhetoric, but based on
the information available.

Margaret Maximenko
Regional District of
Kootenay Boundary

Area C Director

Norman

continued from page 6
got funding to open more beds it
was in danger of going under.

That would mean the end of
52 jobs and the loss of 36
intermediate care beds.

But look at the government’s
position. Castleview Care
Centre is a business like any
other. It took a gamble that it
could devciop 25 additional
beds, just as a real estate
developer might gamble-on
opening a 61-lot subdivision
instead of a 36-lot subdivision.

But unlike Castleview Care
Centre, the realtor can’t go to
the government and ask it to
bail him out.

Add to that the fact that
Mountainview Lodge opened

only two months after
Castleview with 35
intermediate care beds of its
own and you can see Health
Minister Elizabeth Cull’s
reluctance.

The province is funding 70
brand new intermediate care
beds in Castlegar when just two
years ago it was funding 35.
That’s a 100 per cent increase.

Not many communities can
boast that. And we want more?

But Cull’s refusal to fund the
25 beds isn’t what Castleview
Care Centre has in common
with B:C. doctors. It’s the fact
that Cull was forced to make _
such a decision at all.

She had to make the decision
because there is only so much

money in the Health Ministry
budget to fund intermediate
care beds. Not everyone who
applies for a bed gets one.

Mountainview Lodge has a
waiting list of 48 and
Castleview 46 (though many
are likely on both lists because
applicants must give two
preferences).

It’s called rationing and it’s
been going on for years in our
health care system. There’s no
unlimited, universal access to
intermediate care beds, just as
there isn’t to long-term care
beds or to home care services or
to a whole range of medical
services that fall under the
health care budget — including
hospitals.

Not so for doctors. They had
no ceiling on their budget.

Until now.

Now the province is saying
that like all other aspects of our
health care system there will
only be so much money
available to doctors.

There are other issues in the
doctors’ dispute, such as their
pension plan, the fee schedule
and the salary cap, but none
goes to the heart of our health
care system like the ceiling that
has been plated on total
billings.

Doctors are being asked to
live within a budget like
everyone else.

Like the Castleview Care
Centre.

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