Page 4, Tha Haratd, Wednesday, Seplember 24, 1979

PFERRACK/KEITIMAT

daily herald

General Otfice - 615-4357
Clreulation - 635-4357

Published by
Starling Publishers

GEN. MANAGER - Knox Coupland
EDITOR: Greg Middleton

CIRCULATION - TERRACE - 635-6357
KITIMAT OF FICE . 632-2747
Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum Street,
Terrace, B.C. A member of Varifled Circulation.
Authorized as second class mall. Registration number
1201, Postage paid !n cash, return postage guaranteed.

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT

The Herald retains full, complete and sole copyright In
any advertisement produced and-or any editorial or
Photographic content publishad in the Herald.
Reproduction Is not permitted without the written
permission of the Publisher.

EDITORIAL

Terrace welcomed three new families,
16 new residents on Tuesday.

Radio and television crews were on -

hand as was the press. Some lacal
residents turned out as weil.

The refugees from the war-torn
country of Vietnam found they were the
centre of attenilon at a short briefing
session at a local restaurant.

These people have come fram times of
trouble and are looking to bulld a new
life for themselves here. For the older
members of the families it will be hard.
They will want to keep some of their
customs and traditions. We should ac-
cept that and welcome It. These people
add a richness to our community.

The younger members of the families
will be busy both learning a new
language and culture as well as trying to
gain the education all children growing
up here require.

It will be a trying time for the new
Canadians. Let us continue to make
them, and all new Canadians, welcome.
That Is how our land grows stronger.

CONSUMER
COMMENT

Now that the kids are heading back to the
classrooms, parents are heading to local shopping
centres, with their lists of the young students’ required
gupplies. Though readily available throughout the
year, school supplies take a1 anew meaning towards
the end of the summer holiday, when the demard for
them reaches its peak, and they are heavily ad-
yertised and displayed. The difficulties associated
with shopping in the large crowds that are typical at
this time of year, are minor when compared to the
choices and decisions faced in purchasing the sup-
plies. With such an assortment of products available
in a wide variety of sizes, colours and designs, and at
varying prices, haw can you ensure that you're
shopping wisely and getting good value for the money
you spend? Here aresome pointsto consider:

Before you go on your shopping trip, check the
supplies left from last year, and cross off anything on
the list your child already has.

Rememberthe retailer sets the prices, so what you
pay for an item can vary a little or alot from one store
to another. Check the ads and watch for sales and
specials.

When purchasing supplies for classes such as art,
home economics, industrial arts, or physical
education, find cut if discounts are available on
student purchases, either by school board
arrangement, or as a matter of store policy. Before
purchasing such iterns, find out the store's return
policy, so that you'll know where you stand if goods
purchases are defective or, for some reason, unac-
ceptable to the teacher.

Shop when crowds are at a minimun, if possible and
when you are not pressed for time. If you are relaxed
and uncrowded, you can shop comparatively and
make wise purchases without too much time and ef-
fort.

+ Tf buying supplies for more than one child, consider
buying items such as loose leaf paper, note books or
pencils in larger packages, oreconopaks”, dividing
therm among the children as ired. But before you
buy remember te first use a litle arithmetic to make
sure that buying in quantity really does represent a
saving over buying individually or in smaller sizes.

If your child wili be accompanying you, remember
that the array of school supplies abounds with cartoon
characters and novelty items, which will undoubtedly
be the preference of most children. To avoid buying
unnecessary items, and added expense, stick to your
list, and counsel your child about wise buying habits in
a manner that her or she can understand. Use the
shopping trip as a learning experience, demonstrating
how you compare prices and quality, and pointing out
the added expense of such features as elaborate
packaging and novelty designs. Letting your child
participate In comparing and choosing the school
supplies, and guiding him or her towards the best
choice, could be a very valuable exercise, providing
you don't let your child guide you!

LETTERS WELCOME

The Herald welcomes its readers comments.
Ail letters to the editor of general public interest
will be printed. We do, however, retain the right
to refuse to print letters on grounds of posalble
libel or bad taste. We may also edit letters for
atyle and length. All lettera to be considered for
publication must be signed.

patel

‘Honest dear, | was just getting immunized!’

VANCOUVER (CP) — The
interruption of traditional
cultural patterns is
responsible for the high rate
of suicide among young
native Indians in British
Columbia, members of the
Canadian Psychiatric
Association’s section on
native pecple’s mental
health said Monday.

Drs, Wolfgang Jilek and
Harvey Armstrong made the
comment al the end of a
three-day conference which
brought together about 20
psychiatrists and 200 nalive
Indians to discuss native
mental health.

Health and Welfare
Canada statistics for 1978
indicate a B.C. Indian under
30 years of age is six times
more likely too die by suicide

NATIVE SUICIDES

Dealth of culture blamed

than white persons of the
same age.

“One cannot say that it is
part of Indian culture,” Jilek
said, “It has very much to do
with the dissolution of native
eultttre.”

dilek, a University of B.C.
psychialry professor, said
Indian youths suffer from a
loss of cultural identity and
their parents are unable to
help them because Indian
customs such as initiations
have been repressed for at
least the last two gener-
ations.

Armstrong, a University of
Toronto psychiatry
professor, said the education
system contributes ta the
deterioration of Indians’
mental health.

He said the failure rate
high among Indians in
secondary schools because
they are sent to schools
which take them out of their
environment and in-
doctrinate them with alien
values,

For those who are suc-
cessful in high school, it
remains difficult to deal with
the discrimination and
isolation they face at
university and still malntaln
their identity and culture,
Armstrong said.

He said the jack of
education has at least two
significant effects on Indian
mental health.

* Environmental factors
leave formerly — self-
sufficient Indians unable to
provide for their families by

hunting and fishing, and
personal identity is to a large
extent based on how one
earns a living, Armstrong
said,Because they do not
have an education sufficient
to work In nonIndian society,
they suffer the humiliation of
collecting welfare.

He said the second factor
is that the lack of universily-
educated Indians means that
Indians in distress are forced
to go for help to non-Indian
professionals who doa not
understand their cultural
background.

Jilek said the best solution
to that problem would be for
the government to offer
scholarships inareas such as

‘medicine ta native people

who have already proven
their capabilities in com-
munity work.

OTTAWA
OFFBEAT

BY _RICHARD_JACKSON |

By JOHN FERGUSON
OTTAWA (CP) — The

Progressive Conservative
economic and = social
policy that have emerged
this summer will give
opposition critics some
good targets in the new
Parliament opening Oct.
9

On one side there is the
lightfisted, practical
Conservative policy
designed to get the most
out of the taxpayer dollar.

on the idea that Canada
can no longer afford

universal social pro-
grams, .
The Tories have

decided, for zxamplz, that
the unemployment in-
surance system! should be
redesigned to provide
bznefits on the basis of
need, and have appointed
Toronto MP Paul Me-
Crossan, a professional

contradictory faces of.

This approach is based .

insurance actuary, to look
at the problein.

McCrossan said last
week that one proposal he
will make is that
unemployed without de-
pendents should get lower
benefits than those with a
family, .

And Finance Minister
John Crosbie hinted last
week that government
spending may be cut by
implementing a form of
means test for
beneficiaries of some
government social pro-
grams.

But conflicting with this
approach is the costly
mortgage interest and
property tax plan an-
nounced by Croshie last
week to help homeowners
with mortgage and
property tax payments
aven if they don't need it.

That
estimated

program,
to cost the

Critics to have ammo

federal treasury at least
$2.3 billion a year when
fully implemented in 1982,
would give tax credits for
payments of property lax
and mortgage interest up
to certain limits, Those
limits would be $375 this

_year, rising by that
-amount each year to
$1,500 in 1992,

But, it will offer litle or
nothing to the elderly on
fixed incomes who have
paid off their mortgage or
to homzowmzrs who earn
s0 little thaththey pay no
federal income tax,

And it will nothing for
renters, including more
than 500,-000 senior
citizen and low-income
households who pay out
more than a quarter of
their incomefor rent each

month,

The Conservatives alse
appear undecided about
whether to use tax cuts to
pump money into the

tates prompted by in-

economy to help get the
vountry through an ex-
pected tough year ahead,

Prime Minister Clark
said during the May 22
election campaign that
the mortgage plan and a
promised $2 billion tax
cut for low-and middie-
income taxpayers would
be a “major economic
stimulus."'

But the benefits of the
mortgage assistance plan
havebeen put in doubthby
the recent rise in interest

creases in the Bank of
Canada lending rate.
Mortgages have risen
almost two percentage
points since the Tories
took power in June and
are close to 13 per cent.
+ That has added about
$500. year to the cost ofa
$40,000 mortgage, more
than wiping out thz first
year benefits of the
mortgage plan.

Dy BRUCE LEVETT

LONDON (CP) -~ The
splintered Rassemblement
pour la Republique party in
France |s showing signs of
new unity as Jacques Chirac
breaks his tong silence to
return to the political slage,

Chirac projected an
unusual, for him, can-
cjliatory image in his ad-
dress to [he party's central
committee. It marks his first
major appearance since his
Gaullist held their painful
post-mortem an the
European clection three
months ago.

His new quiet approach is
seen as a bid to bring the
Gaullist movement and
public support behind him,
with a view to providing a
credible Ganilist candidacy
in the presidential election to
be held in 18 months.

It contrasts markedly with
his eariler fierce attacks
aimed directly at the Franch
government, for which the
Gaullists provides the
largest body of voling
support in parliament.

Chirac lost the support of
influential party members
who distrusted him,

Now, he concedes that

errors tay have heen made
in the party's campaign for

FRENCH POLITICS

old pro reappears

the European election, The
Gaullists hit rock bottom
with only 16 per cent of the
votes, fewer than any of the
country's three other major
parties. ‘

After the election, he jetti-
soned two of his closest ad-
visers, Pierre Juillet and
Marie France Garaud, who
were influential within the

party. Chirac was confirmed
as leader but his tactics were
sharply criticized. -

. Chirac, whe was President
Giscard d’Estaing's first
prime minister, says his
parly. needs reform in its
structures, habits, methods
and language to reinforce
internal cohesion.

TODAY IN HISTORY

Sept, 26, 1879

The Queen Mary, first
British liner to exceed 1,00)
feet in length, was launched
after a royal christening in
Glasgow, Scotland, forty-
five years ago loday — in
1934, The 81,235-ton ship won
the Atlantic Blue Riband
from the French vessel
Normandie four years later,
crossing the Allantic in 442
days, at an average speed of
‘11.59 knots. In July, 1952, the
American liner United
States captured. the Blue
Riband, making the crassing
at 15.59 knots in tree days,
10 hours and 40 minutes.

i815 — Austria, Prussia
and Russia formed the Holy
Alliance,

197 — New Zealand at-
tained Dominion status.

1935 — Composer Bela
Bartok died.

1950 —- A blue moon over
various parts of the United
Kingdom was sald to have
been a result of forest fires in
Northern Alberta and British
Columbia.

1968 — Prime Minister
Diefenbaker arrived at
Whitehorse to become the
first prime minister to visit
the Yukon while in office.

His campaign toward this
end, however, will not be di-
rected against the govermn-
ment in parliament, he says.

“The political changes we
seek cannot come from a
political menoeuvre in which
the Socialist and Communist
opposition would participate
In pursuit of different ob-
fectives,”’ he now says.

However, there Is no in-
dication that Chirac and his
party will ease their
pressures on the government
insofar as policy is con-
cerned.

He speaks of rising ex-
aperation in France and

. warns that this could
provoke some “brutal
reactlons.”

Chirac's new appeal goes
directly to the people.

Through his chief
economic adviser, Jean Meo,
he outlines an economic
program te replace the
austerity plan followed by
the Gaymond Barre
government.

It involves reviving in-
vestments and exports and
abandoning the principle of
gentle growth,

Such a program, Chirac
contends, would be cheaper
in the long run that paying
unemployment benefits.

Ottawa,- Say this much for the Conservatives--at
least they're fying to talk English in the big federal
shop.

They're actually calling members of their staff

le,
Pouring the Trudeau yeors when the Liberals
allowed the burgeoning bureaucracy to run the
government instead of the government running the
bureaucracy , those on staff were officially designated
as “man-years.”.

The when women’s lib became the high fashion in
federal emplyment--especially in the Ottawa
departmental headquarters--thdse “‘man-yeara’'
naturally had to become known as “person-years.”

But now, proclaims Treasury Board President
Sinclair Stevens in trimming the fat of 60,000 “‘person-
years,” at an annual rate of 10,000 through 1982, from
the grossly obese public service, people who work for
the government are again just that: people.

Now this sounds mad-and it is, which explains a lot-
-but during those wild what’s-money-years when the
bureaucracy had the government bit in its teeth-the
mandarins talked the Trudeau cabinet into giving
them what they called “discretionary staffing and

spending powers.” .
Results:

The public service leaped some 33 percent in fat to
about 500,000 on the federal “person-years” payroll,

The federal budget blew up from a modest less than
$20 billion to a current $52 billion.

So Sinclair Stevens slapped a freeze on all staffing—
not just the ‘discretionary kind” that got anyone into
the public trough who knew the right channels and the
“people to see”~but all hiring, for two months.

With the staff freeze was a moratorium on
“discretionary spending" by senior bureaucrats,
’ This, explained Sinclair Stevens, was imposed to
assist the government in “attaining its clearly an-
nounced objectives that any and all unnecessary
expenditures be avoided.” .

Which in plain English meant no more dipping into
the Treasury on whim to finance some pet program
which might but an ambitious bureaucrat the
reputatim as a “big thinker,” or best of all ‘an
imaginative innovator.”

So it looks like just perhaps the government will
take the spending reins back into its own hands and
stop the ever-expanding and free-spending public
service boffins from running us all even deeper into
debt. “ pose

The senior public service, of course, doesn’t care for
this at all.

With the public service unions it has been so long in
charge of the federal shop it’s painful to have to
surrender the keys to the cash register.

Together the unions and the service seniors
dreamed up that wonderful gimmick "person-years"
that resulted in giantism of the bureaucracy.

They thought not in terms of policies and positions
and demanded the cabinet rubber stamp the required
number of “person-years” to cover them.

You can build up a big staff-an empire, in fact-that
way, with few questions asked, especially when
staffing and spending was “discretionary.”

The Official Languages Act, too, piled up a lot of
saff fat. A “person-year’’ who failed language
tralning had to be given another position, created for
him or her, in the same salary bracket, regardless of
the lack of need or even work for a unbilingual person
at that level, while another “person-year’’ was
provided todo the job he or she had occupied.

That sort of nonsense was successfully defended for
years by the unions and the bureaucrats.

Now the heat is on, the unions are spending $250,000
in an advertising campaign to tell the taxpayers what
great people public servants are.

It’s sure to backfire as a campaign.

For the Conservative cutback on the public service
was one of their biggest selling points in the election.

In Ottawa the campaign wil] be directed at the
converted, the public service population dominating
the city. Elsewhere in the country it will be ignored,
laughed at, or arouse hostility.

It has no even forlorn hope of success, for what new
government whould dare go back on one of its most
basic election promises to bring staffing and spending
into some sort of line?

LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR

Dear Sir:
On Friday, Sept. 14 1979,

shortly after supper, a.
porcupine left the safety of

lis wild environment and
visited a residential area of
cur city. Anarea filled with
children The visitor was
first noted when a group of
children were standing in a
drele‘around a small animal
in the middle of the road.

The porcupine then sought
refuge, quill ever at the
ready under a pissup. The
neighbourhood — children
maturally were curious and
several threw stones and
poked with sticks,

In 4 effort to find out how
to safely dispose of the
mimal, the RCMP were
called, who in turn, con-
tacted the game warden. The
game warden, whose
responsibility it is to dispose
df such intruders, stated that
he was onhis roof and was
rot coming down before
dark. The game warden did
suggest, hawever, we could
try to capture the creature
by placing a garbage can
upside down over it, then slip
asheet of plywood under jt
and thereby belng able to
turn the can over and
transport it out of the city
ourselves,

While contemplating the
pitfalls of the proposed
Wrocedures, and preparing
the can, our prickly visitor

cided it had had enough of
cur staring and trotted off,
up 8 tree far out of reach of
any would-be captors, It
seemed he planned to(and
did) remain there until well
ater dark.

The procupine was again
aighted at about Li p.m., but
was still not receptive to our
fulile attempts to evict him.

Feeling frustrated and
disturbed that there was

. body who could dea) with

cur problem, one family
retired for the night.

We don’t knew what
happened after that, as our
friend was never deen again.
However, we shydder to
think what could have
happened to our children or
my dozen or so children, in
the neighbourhood. We also
cringe at the thought of the
many loved pets, which
could have fallen victim to
Ita quills,

We wonder what the game
warden’s response would
have been had our visitor
been a bit larger, Would his
roof have been equaily
important if it had been a
bear or a wolf? We can
appreciate he has a personal
life to live outside of his work
responsibility, however, we
also feel that there should be
somebody available to deal
with these occurances in a
personal, professional
manner,

Yours truly,
DG. Wyper