4 Terrace Review — Wednesday, September 2, 1987 | GONG TO CHANGE QUA LIFESTYLES. bye My _WELHNE D BW THE NO- NAME 008 Foe, ipa ¢ | ¥ Ke ee er § wl bh seine E Treading If the rivers in the Northwest were Sensitive to political heat, they would have been boiled dry Over the past month. During that period we have seen the rather curious spectacle of such disparate interests as the region’s NDP Member:of Par- liament,. Chambers of Com- merce from Kitimat and Ter- race, the B.C, Wildlife Federa- tion and Steelhead Society, an environmental group from .the GEE Letters to the editor will be con- sidered for publication only when. signed. Please include your telephone number. The editor reserves the right to condense and edit jetters. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Terrace Review. G CNA Terrace . e ‘ a Review — Established May 1, 1985 The Terrace Review Is published each Wednesday by Close-Up Business Services Ltd. Publisher: > Mark Twyford Ediier: Michaet Kelly Staff Reporter: * Tod Strachan Advertising Sales: Dennis Lissimore, Marlon Schiegel Production: ; Jim Hall, Alvin Stewart, Arlene Wandl,. Gurbax Gill, Harminder K. Singh, Linda Mercer, Arlene Gaspar Offlee: Linda A. Copeland, Philip Musselman ~ Accounting: Mar] Twyford, Rosemary McGettigan Second-class mail registration No. 6898. All materia) appearing In ihe Terrace Review Is protected under Canadian copyright Registra tlon No. 362776 and cannot legally be repro- duced for any reason without permission of the publisher. Errore and omissions. Advartising [s accepted on the condition that in the event of typographi- ca! error, that portion of the advertising space occupied by the erroneous ftam will not be chargad for, but the balance of the advartise- mant wiil be patd for at the applicable rate. " Advertisers must assume responslbitity for er. rors In any classified ad which Is supplied to the Terrace Aeview In handwritten form, In compilance with the 8.C, Human Alghts Act, advertisement will be published which dis- criminates againat @ parson dua to age, race, religion, color, sex, nationallty; anceatry or place of origin. 4535 Greig Avenue, Terrace, B.C. V8G 1M7 Phone: 635-7840 water at Editorial © Bulkley. Valley, guide-outfitters associations and a coalition of. sports fishermen all ‘clamoring, for different reasons, for the same thing - to have federal: Fisheries. Minister Tom Siddon’s hide nailed to the wall, . There appear to be two issues here, the control of water flows into the Nechako River and the Preservation of the wild steel- head population in the Skeena River system. At heart both of these issues call into question the Purpose of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. ~ Small developers in the area will testify to the fact’ that Fisheries regulations are enforc- the top ed to the letter, yet a proposal from a giant industrial concern to reduce water discharge from a massive reservoir. into a major river by 50 percent is considered to be negotiable by:the federal agency charged with protection of fish. After seeing a group of what must be the best technical experts in Canada dutifully holding public meetings on the Alcan proposal, one has to wonder what these people could possibly learn from the. general public that they haven't dis- covered for themselves in the three decades since the Kenney ‘Dam became operational. The alarmingly low levels of returning steélhead ‘in the Skeena this year may be a cause ; continued on page 19 Commentary unions in. by Frank Howard It seems to me that credit unions in B.C, are doomed. There has been a uni-directional move from the concept of work- ing together towards the concept of acting individually for one’s own purposes without regard for the effect-on others, The change -in attitude within the credit union movement has been gradual, but inexorable. . The credit union movement Started with the Christian Philosophy of loving thy neighbor as thyself. Those who joined credit unions did so with the idea that they could assist their neighbors as they themselves would like to be assisted if the need arose. Greed was not a fundamental part of credit union ideals. Greed, though, is part of the make-up of humans. The more that greed, by whatever name, is extolled as a plus, the more ‘it will come to the forefront. Greed is a fundamental part of the capitalist system and is morally pestilential. Greed, with the assistance of government, has infected the credit union movement. It may well be a fatal Changes put credit danger _ Credit union members vote at annual meetings on the basis of one person-one vote. By con- trast, annual meetings of banks are conducted on the basis of one share-one vote. Ten shares in a credit union gives'a person oné vote. Ten shares in a bank gives a person ten votes, The law says that, in a bank, it’s money ' that counts: in a credit union it’s - people that count. At least it was that way, A government bill, currently before the legislature, ‘will lead credit unions to the one share- one vote scheme. This scheme is simply the growling and snarling of money. Money talking is greed talking. Money has no allegiances, no morals; no ethics, no conscience, no soul, no Christian principles. One of the proposals in this government bill will allow credit unions to convert into trust com- panies, It will allow them to own trust companies, insurance com- panies, and stock brokerage companies, The next move will be to have credit unions owned by trust companies, to be continued on page 6 "Welfare cuts Show fiscal desperation _ | Hubert Beyer Victoria Correspondent The latest government move on the welfare front is Obscene and, as sure as God made little green apples, one of the more addle-brained decisions Premier Vander Zalm’s Socreds have made since they assumed Bill Bennett’s restraint-splattered mantle. Following a B.C. Supreme Court ruling which said the govern- ment had violated the Charter of Rights by paying different welfare rates, based on the-recipients’ age, with a solution. It lowered rates for some categories and will use the money it saves to raise others, mS ; - At issue were the welfare payments to single people and childless couples under the age of should get less than those 26 and over. . ; _ The two-tier rate system was challenged by a young welfare reci- pient. The outcome was Mr-:- Justice John Spencers ruling that the practice violated the Charter of Rights. The government’s response was to replace a discriminatory prac- tice with a morally shaky and politically unsound one by deciding to take from other welfare recipients what it now has.to pay, by law, those under 26. | , So In accordance with the Supreme Court Tuling, about 22,000 single people and childless couples under 26 will ‘have ‘their welfare payments increased in stages from $334 to $378. To fund those rate increases, some 50,000 welfare couples aged 26 and over — will have their payments chopped by an estimated $6 a month. oS , That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when your budget:is stretched _ to the limit, as it is bound to be when you have only $384.a month to pay the rent and keep yourself housed and clothed, a six-dollar cut is a substantial one. The scheme can only be interpreted as the - Socred version of redistribution of wealth: take from the poorand . give to the poorer. - Social Services Minister Claude Richmond excuses himself by saying there is no money. To simply increase welfare rates for ‘Singles and childless couples under 26, he says, would cost $4.6 million, money thé government doesn’t have, Begging your pardon, Minister, but if the supply of money is so tight that you must rob some of the poorest and most defenceless people to comply with a B.C. Supreme Court order, I'd like to know where your government found the money to cover the horren- dous overruns on the construction of the Coquihalla Highway. Nothing wrong with having built that highway or the Alex Fraser - Bridge, to use another example. Nothing wrong either with having built B.C, Place Stadium or having hosted the world at Expo 86. Those projects provided jobs, which British Columbia needed bad- ly, . But there’s everything wrong with a government that hasn’t got enough business sense to keep tabs on huge public expenditures and tries to make up for its incompetence by putting its hands into the pockets of the poor, , Apart from the questionable morality of the decision, it is also likely that a lot of people will find it increasingly difficult to have confidence in a government that would.act so stupidly. Vander Zalm did not win the last election on the strength of the committed Socred vote. Without a lot of province-wide support from the proverbial working stiffs, the Socreds wouldn’t have won 10 seats. | The important point the Socreds seem to miss is that those same working stiffs expected different results from their vote of con-. fidence in Vander Zalm. They about a new era of prosperity, These reluctant Vander Zalm supporters will not be impressed by 4 government that is so desperate that it has to take food out of the mouths of the poor to make ends meet. . really believed that he could bring Most working people feel no longer secure in their jobs. They - have a nagging fear that but for the grace of God, they could well be on unemployment insurance tomorrow and 12 months later on welfare, They have no difficulty imagining themselves in the same both slightly _ the government quickly came up. 26. In 1984, the government decided they recipients — singles and childless . circumstances as the 50,000 welfare recipients who had their meagre _ income chopped: by $6 a month. Six dollars isn’t much for those fortunate enough to have an ade- quate income, ‘but social assistance isn’t adequate; it’s way below the poverty line in every category. Judiciously spent, $6 will buy a breakfast and a lunch for a childless couple. A lot of British Columbians will have second thoughts about the compassion and, perhaps more important, the competency of a government whose claim to fiscal responsibility is to have snatched a couple of meals from the destitute. = core — : or . : .