Saturday, March 7, 1992 @ ewsFOCUS _ An interview with British Columbia’s leading man Ed Note: The Castlegar News is delighted to bring our readers this sp ial interview between veteran political columnist Hubert Beyer and British Columbia Premier Mike Harcourt. BEYER: Your government has been if office now for four months. I have criticized you in one of my columns for not having called at least a mine-session earlier to get away from the God- awful practice of special warrants. Was that increases, necessary or otherwise? HARCOURT: Well, the finances that we inherited were a mess. We're cleaning them up, not just in the Crown corporations like ICBC and the ferries, which we dealt with already, but as far as this year’s deficit is concerned, I asked the new ministers to get on top of it in the first week, to cut out unnecessary spending, and start getting down the expenditures in this fiscal year, let alone the next one. _ In the election campaign, I said we’re committed to reducing the deficit systematically, in an orderly way, over the next three or four years. x We thought. it would take three years. when the deficit was $1.2 billion. Now it’s probably going to take four years. And we don’t want to cut the basic services, health, education, social services. We're going to trim, and we are going to use money better, but we don’t want to cut. Now, the financial framework that we set out not possible? HARCOURT: No. The government was in such a mess that the estimates for this spring session coming up were three months behind. The other 21 estimates, 18 of which had not been put through the previous legislature by the Social Credit government, were distributed in a bunch of new ministries. To have put those estimates before a mini-session, the earliest we could have done it was mid-January. And to prepare the new estimates and deal with the financial mess we had, all at once, would have resulted in the government bureaucracy suffering a melt-down, equivalent to Chernobyl. BEYER: You mentioned the financial mess. The two firms that did the independent audits came up with some pretty heavy-duty information. But there is still a perception out there that you didn’t suffer politically from that information. How about an occasional similar audit while you’re in government, let’s say in a couple of years. Would you be prepared to put your administration on the line and have someone come in and look at the books? HARCOURT: Oh, I think there has to be internal and external auditing, through the auditor general and maybe have Peat Marwick come back and have another look at it. BEYER: You're prepared to do that? HARCOURT: I'm totally open to that..I Premier Mike Harcourt with son Justen and his “parnter in life”, Beckie : in the election campaign said there would be some revenue measures, not to add new programs, but strictly to deal with the federal off-loading of the cost of welfare, for example, and to cap and reduce the deficit. BEYER: No new programs, you said? HARCOURT: Not unless it’s within existing budgets. You change priorities or you cut out waste. The revenue measures are strictly for two purposes, to cap and reduce the deficits and not leave that slippery slope of increasing deficits, where you add interest on, and it compounds, and you get into the mess we're in federally. And secondly, to deal with the federal off- loading, like $20 million in extra welfare costs this year alone. ; BEYER: If I may put that into a different perspective. Am I correct that given a shortfall of about $2 billion the last government left behind, plus a $2 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year, we'll be payirig $400 million a year at 10 per cent just to finance those two deficits? HARCOURT: It’s down to about seven per cent. BEYER: ight, seven per cent. That still makes for $350 million a year. Can you, under those circumstances, still achieve a balanced budget towards the end of your present mandate? HARCOURT: Yes. BEYER: You still stand by that? think there should be a totally open system of accounting of the public’s tax money. BEYER: As a first step, the powers of the auditor general should be strengthened, should they not? HARCOURT: They will be, to do value-for- money audits. We’re going to strengthen board, too. We'll have people set better priorities. All the new programs that we are looking at this year are coming from re- allocating existing, reduced budgets. I think that fiscal reform and open accounting are extremely important. BEYER: In about three weeks, we'll get the really bad news when the budget comes down. i mewhat of a layman in fiscal matters, I still came up with something in the order of a $2~ billion-plus shortfall that the previous administration left behind. And, no doubt, in the first year of your administration, you'll be facing some in the coming budget. Just how big are we going to be hit with tax We, of course, had the shock that the budget deficit wasn’t $1.2 billion, as we were told by the previous government. They lied, because they had the figures that the deficit was $1.7 billion back in August. They misled the people of British Columbia for four months. Since then, we found out that it’s approaching $2 billion. Meanwhile, the deficit of the coming fiscal year was projected at $3.3 billion. That was totally unacceptable. So, during the estimate process, I set some very tough targets for treasury board members and the ministers, and in 21 days, they chopped: over a billion dollars from the estimates. BEYER: That still leaves a $2 billion-plus —deficit-in-the next budget. dies __waste. HARCOURT: No, I said we would cap and We think through the estimate process we | - reduce the deficit. We're going to get the deficit down to about $2 billion. So, we’re looking at revenue measures of about $500 million to $600 million. HARCOURT: Yes. BEYER: How? HARCOURT: We are going to do it. I’m not promising any miracles, but we’re got to do it, because if you don’t, you'll end up with 35 per cent of your budget going into interest payments, as they are federally. We are going to do it by changing spending priorities. We reduced some areas, in education and came up with $7 million for the,school meals program for hungry school children. We shifted some other resources to come-up with $1.5 million for immigrant reception societies. . We'll continue to do that within existing and, in songe cases, reduced budgets. We'll cut out . discovered a whole series of areas where we can squeeze more value out of tax dollars. We have to spend better, not more, and do more with less. [SB z . é — SS ee @ Saturday, March 7, 1992 OurPEOPLE To serve and protect He’s no Dirty Harry, but this Castlegar cop gets the job done. Glen Freeman NEWS REPORTER Castlegar is a unique little city, with it’s share of good and bad. Here one can easily find friendly neighbors and chatty postal carriers. Even the mayor finds time to sit and speak with the average person off the street. Clearly Castlegar does not have much in common with such huge cities.as Vancouver and Toronto, where people are constantly concerned for their safety, and crime is rampant. However, crime is slowly but surely on the rise in our sleepy city. We may not see it, but it’s out there. While the majority of residents here seem to be honest and sincere, there is a pocket of people who have little or no respect-for the law. ‘Sangster’s fair. At least he’ll listen to you then bust you.’ — Castlegar youth It’s when those two groups meet head-to-head that the fur can sometimes fly. And it’s at those times that one can take comfort in the fact that people like Const. Russell Sangster of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are on duty. “Const. Sangster is compassionate when dealing with the good guys, and considerate when dealing with the bad guys,” said Cpl. Al Hudema of the Castlegar RCMP. “He understands that people sometimes make mistakes.” But local residents make no mistake in mentioning that they appreciate Sangster. In fact, their like for Sangster may be the only thing some people have in common. Perhaps no two groups in Castlegar are more polarized than the kids of Wizard’s Palace and the people who live in the aréa, yet they do have that common bond. “Sangster’s fair,” said one leather laden youth who didn’t-want to be identified. “At least he'll listen to you then bust you.” Another man, who has been petitioning to get Wizard’s closed down, agrees. “When Const. Sangster comes by, Const. Russell Sangster may deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly of Castlegar, but he still finds his job as a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman rewarding. News photo by Glen Freeman I know that he is going act on what I’ve told him. He takes my complaints very seriously.” : “Sure I take complaints seriously,” said Sangster, “and I don’t mind walking up to the Wizard’s kids and making conversation. “I like people to know that they can talk to me about anything.” But according to Sangster, the quality of being accessible is not an exclusive one. “No way is that restricted to me,” he said. “The officers here in Castlegar and in most small detachments are —all super.” = Se In fact, the RCMP are known world wide for being super men and women. Not too long ago, Canada’s mounted cops were known to ‘always get their man’. “And the RCMP still has international respect,” said Sangster. “We are known to have a high quality of policing almost everywhere.” Sangster was a second-year psychology student in Lennoxville, Que., when the RCMP caught his eye. He applied for the force, passed the exams and interviews, and then marched into a cop’s equivalent of boot camp. “Some people think that the physical training in Regina is hell, -but_others wish they didn’t have to. leave,” said Sangster of the rigorous six-month training. “I didn’t mind it, but I can see that there is room for improvement.” Even though he didn’t mind the training, Sangster was happy to see civilization in the form of Castlegar. “We came from a city much bigger than this, so my wife and I needed time to adjust to the pace of life here,” said Sangster. “But we have really grown attached to this community.” And the community has grown attached to Sangster, too. In his four years in Castlegar, Sangster has been involved in such local activities.as the Block Parents program, the Victim’s Assistance program and the Boy Scouts of Canada. So even if Castlegar does grow up and start to look like it’s big brother Vancouver, local residents can take heart. Const. Sangster and the folks at the Castlegar RCMP station are on duty.