Dave McCullough Publisher

Scott David Harrison Editor

Mickey Read Composing Room

OurWiEWS

AdrianRAESIDE

Braced for the worst

race yourself British Columbia, B Day has been announced.

Finance Minister Glen Clark has slated March 26 as his day in the spotlight. On that day, the tough- talking minister will prove that his hard-line words pack a punch.

Unlike the please-elect-us-again budget just soft-pedaled by the federal government, British Columbia can expect the worst. —

The provincial deficit is an embarrassment and the New Democrats have promised to bring it under control. With that, we can expect taxes, taxes and more taxes.

The deficit is running a cool $2 billion. The new government has set a lofty goal with this first budget, saying it will cut $1 billion from that monstrous total in the first year alone. Ouch-h-h!

Before Clark decides to slash and hack his way to zero-deficit financing, perhaps he should remember who he is taxing.

British Columbians are already taxed to the hilt. Between the GST, PST, IUC, CPP and even ICBC, are heads are spinning: and our bank balances hurting.

- Why, governments of the day have turned a widely-used phrase like ‘disposable income’ into an oxymoron.

If the government is so concerned with the deficit, perhaps it should take a serious look at its own house before it starts taxing ours.

British Columbians can’t take anymore.

Cattlogar News

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understanding what lies ahead for the Coalition Unaccepting Rash Bureaucracy.

The fiery citizens group has been uncharacteristically silent these past few weeks.

It leaves me wondering what has happened to that Brat Pack fever that swept across our fair city just three short months ago. Take the open house on the municipal budget, for

i} Harrison “2 Comparison

members of CURB regrouped for a regular meeting of Castlegar city council. Sitting quietly, CURB watched the two hour session come and go without a word.

It was a strange thing to see.

So what’s up with Castlegar’s boisterous watchdog group?

Has the flame began to fizzle?

I, for one, hope not.

example. One by one,

members of CURB paraded up to the podium, ready to grill city council on expenditure Y or capital project X. Just when I thought the roof was going to blow off the Castlegar and District Community Complex, the three hours session ended.

In fact, the only heated words to be uttered on this night were the ones CURB president Michael O’Connor vented News columnist Ron Norman’s way.

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See, I'm a firm believer in citizen groups.

While I don’t always agree with CURB’s — dare I say — venomous approach, I believe that it has a place on the Castlegar political scene.

Sure, CURB may be a thorn in some elected representatives sides, but through its constant badgering Castlegar city council has become that much better.

please see HARRISON page 7

Stree( TALK

Aug. 7, 1947- Feb. 15, 1973

Question: Do you think the government is taking too long to decide on Westar’s sale?

Stewart Mack Fruitvale

“Yes, definitely.”

Tim Schmidt Castlegar

“Yes, I think they ”

Vicki. Tarasoff Barry Martin Castlegar

“J think they still

are. need to be given a

chance.”

;

Nelson

“Yes, I think they should speed it up.”

@ Wednesday, March 11, 1992

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— X —

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Please address all letters to:

Letters to the

or deliver them to 197 Columbia Ave.

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

p.m. The writer's name and city or town of residence only will be published.

Only in

Letters :coWHE

EDITOR

Editorials need explaining

I am writing in the hopes that you can clarify your views on fiscal responsibility by both the provincial and federal governments.

In the editorial entitled “Conroy to take heat” dated Feb. 26th, you deprecated the fact that Art Charbonneau would not heed the pleadings of our community and reinstate the Robson ferry while we wait on a postponed _ bridge Charbonneau clearly stated-— so many times that I lost count — that. his government was unable to afford these projects and that by borrowing money to do so would be fiscally irresponsible.

For his stand on this matter, you stated, “The minister’s decisions are wrong- headed.”

Three days later I read the next editorial — “Budget a triumph” — where it states, “The 1992 federal budget is a triumph of reason over emotion...” and that “the federal government has learned the lesson of fiscal responsibility well.”

You went: on to say that, “It achieves these goals in spite of the fact that Finance Minister Don Mazankowski was being

project. Mr.

7

Somehow I gather from your first commentary that, in your opinion, Mr. Charbonneau was “hard-hearted” and yet you seem to praise Mr. Mazankowski for doing exactly the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong — I want an alternate route in this town just as much as the next person, but being one who tries to run a balanced budget in our home I also know that when the money isn’t there — you employ patience and make do until you can afford whatever it is you want.

Political partisanship should not cloud the issue. Quit fence-sitting — what’s good for one is good for the other!

Alison Jollimore Blueberry Creek

Greed hurts us all -

The troubles that we see in our forests are but examples of a larger, systemic problem.

The story of the “Tragedy of the Commons” helps to put it in perspective.

“In a certain village 20 families live, and they share a common pasture for their

If, however, one family puts two cows there, none of the cows will get quite enough to eat. The difference won't be large. None of the animals will starve, but their reduced diet means that each one of them will produce a little less milk each day.

The total volume of milk the village’s cows produce altogether will be pretty much the same, but it will be divided by 21 instead of by 20.

What’s the effect of this change? It’s an immoral one: selfishness triumphs. The selfish family that has put an extra cow on the commons now has nearly twice as much milk as it had before . . . but each of the other families has to get along with a little less.

So enlightened self-interest causes each of the other families to put in a second cow as well.

And the ultimate effect is that now there are 40 cows on a pasture that can’t support more than 20. It isn’t just a matter of lowered milk yields now. After a while the whole herd starves to death.

Each family, you see, has acted rationally according to its own best understanding of © what will serve its interests. The tragedy . that results is that the effect of all this

begged by many special interest groups to plunge the country ever deeper into a frightening black hole of debt” and . . knew better than to

“Mazankowski . comply.”

household milk cows. The commons is just big enough to support exactly 20 cows. As long as each family puts just one cow out to pasture there, there will be plenty of grass

for all of them and all will have milk.

“rational” collectively ruined them all.” (World Monitor, Dec. 1991, P. 61).

individual behavior has

Jim Pine Victoria

Socreds mismanagement simply criminal

Ifbad fiscal management were an offence under the Criminal Code, the Socreds would spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

The first results of the indepen- dent review of the province's fiscal position are in, and they are worse than anyone might havé expected.

It’s difficult to read through the summary of sins committed by past Socred administrations with- out getting teed off, even for a sea- soned political columnist like my- self. After all, as a taxpayer, I, too, helped finance the ineptitude and deceit that turn out to have been the Socreds strongest suit.

It'll cost the taxpayers $975,000 to have the Socred shenanigans exposed in glaring detail by two respected, independent firms of accountants, but to quote our own auditor general, George Morfitt, “every dollar you pay to an ac- countant, saves you 10.”

That would make for a re- spectable future savings of close to $10 million a year. And if the new government takes the accoun-

Report from

Victoria

Hubert BEYER

tants recommendations to heart, the potential savings could be much greater.

The review was commissioned by Finance Minister Glen Clark last November, and was conduct- ed by Peat Marwick Stevenson & Kellog, and Deloitte & Touche. The first report was released last week. Two more will following in the near future.

The most damning parts of the first report concern the fiscal smoke-and-mirror games the So-

creds played, above all the infa- mous Budget Stabilization Fund or BS Fund for short.

“The Budget Stabilization Fund was ineffective in stabilizing the operating revenue of the gov- ernment and was used:to obfus- cate the financial results of the General Fund,” the report says.

Next indictment: Shadow gov- ernment. Remember when former premier Bill Bennett announced that he will trim the public service by 25 per cent or 10,000 people? That wasn’t what happened.

True, about 10,000 people were let go, but the public was never told that most of them were hired back on contract. The report says that today, about 2,200 more peo- ple are working for the govern- ment than in 1984.

Over to the revenue side, where the previous governments han- dled things no better than on the expenditure side. The report says that the government’s failure to properly look after revenues has contributed to an increasing

provincial deficit.

“Insufficient resources and at- tention have been devoted to rev- enue collection, resulting in the missed opportunity for millions of dollars in public revenues,” it says. Great, just great.

The report goes on to say that personal tax revenues have grown while corporate rates have gone down, on a comparative basis with other provinces. That's called helping your friends.

I don’t like the next part too much, but the accountant suggest, nevertheless, that B.C. tax rates are low, compared with other provinces, and that “there is some tax room available to address the province’s serious deficit problem.”

The finance minister will, no doubt, take comfort in that state- ment, considering the near-cer- tainty of tax increases in the bud- get next month. But perhaps tax- payers won't mind all that much paying more taxes, as long as the money is really used to reduce the deficit.

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

Harrison

continued from page 6

Some people may think that that is a stretch, but I don’t.

The day CURB — or that rea- sonable facsimile known as the Concerned Citizens Coalition — began kicking up a fuss, council became more accessible and ac- countable.

The open council session two

months ‘ago was the first step to- wards opening the doors of city

The doors were swung wide open two weeks ago when council put its reputation and budget on the line before some 100 onlook- ers. A well-studied city council an- swered even the toughest of ques- tion to almost everyones satisfac-

tion. trying as these past months have been for both CURB and council, the fact remains that Castlegar will be better for it. The ranting and ravings of CURB has forced council to check and double check its decisions. Po- litical - expediency has been shelved in favor of thorough

thought and discussion.

Don’t get me wrong, despite what some elected officials may say behind my back, I believe that Castlegar city council has always acted in the best interest of its cit- izenry.

T also think that city council has become that much better because CURB has forced it to.

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