The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 19

0 0 W(D1 Thursday, June 22, 1995 A19 FACES CANADA FAIR AND SQUARE 77 v' I Where does this trip to downsized government end? On Tuesday, Canadians took another step to smaller government with the introduction in Parliament of the Canada Transportation Act. This legislation will accelerate the downsizing of the national railway system and the privatization of Canadian National; complete deregulation of domestic air travel, and remove unnecessary economic regulation of motor carrier transport, northern marine resupply services and mergers and acquisitions. KATHLEEN O'HARA, an Ottawa journalist and broadcaster, wonders if Canada's middle class is giving much thought to the consequences of smaller government and privatized or commercialized government services. fit iy Vi'i ASHOK CHANDWANI Doubly cursed by duality MONTREAL the summer of 1973, 1 found myself lying on a stretch of grass across from the fenced compound of the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi. In an hour I would pick up my immi-j grant visa, the culmination of a cumbersome, year-long, nail-biting process.

That piece of paper would give me the right to enter and set-" tie in Canada. However, with 60 minutes to kill and the nearest cafe miles away, the hot grass under a hot sun was the only public place that I could be ij private in. i. All my thoughts were on Canada and the friends waiting for me "there. In scant weeks, I would be joining them to begin a new life.

The past 12 months had been occupied in chasing documents, swearing affidavits and cursing bureaucrats, Indian and Canadian. What with the other demands of life, there had hardly been any time r.for contemplation about the future. Sure. I had learned all about (Canadian geography years ago in secondary school. Even drawn maps and located prominent physical features.

But that made me as vmuch a Canadophile as studying algebra made me a mathematician. Now, an hour from receiving the magic papers, it all seemed so overwhelming and anticlimactic in the We pay taxes so our trains are affordable and run on time, our mail is delivered to our door and our roads aren 't covered with potholes. When these services are eroded or sold off, we lose our desire to fund such things. With less funding, government services continue to deteriorate and disappear. Excellence, Attendance Management and Universal Job Evaluation Plan are popular in the new, depersonalized and, supposedly, more efficient public sector.

However, when we need the services, many of these slogans can be translated into Pay More For Less. I was shaken from my state of blissful ignorance about the future of all our public services when I attended a two-day workshop for women in or formally in public-sector jobs. They came from every province nurses, librarians, janitors, ticket agents, correctional, postal and welfare workers. They had stories to tell about the delivery of our services that would make the average, sedate taxpayer's hair curl. We're not just talking about cost and so-called efficiency.

We are also talking about public safety. Our prison, system is being downgraded. Our once-professional correctional and parole officers are being replaced by volunteers and individuals on contract. That sounds good, but what does it mean in terms of security? For one thing, the mishmash of workers private, public and volunteer in the case of a riot could be dangerous. The nonprofessionals will just have to run for cover.

What about us? Our security should be in the hands of trained people, but that is becoming increasingly rare. The electronic monitoring system for parolees is now being handled by private companies. That means a company employee with little training and no real connection to the justice system must respond if a parolee goes missing. Is that something we want novices to deal with? The New World Order can also be experienced in simpler, less threatening ways. It is creeping up on us so quietly that we hardly notice.

At the workshop for public sector women, a librarian pointed out that she is no longer given the time to help the public; she misses the "personal contact" she once enjoyed in her job. She's right. You are pretty well on your own in the public library these days. Throughout the two-day workshop, it became evident that there TREVOR LAUTENS Driven to Orwellian state Readers who venerate me as the last living 18th-century liberal will be chagrined to learn that in a certain respect I advocate nay, demand an impatient leap over the mere transitional interventionist state of today to the Orwellian totalitarianism that inevitably awaits us tomorrow. I speak of the wretched, intolerable, viciously unfair, and indeed by its own goals ineffectual, AirCare program.

Yes, the very one that the editorial column on the page opposite criticized Tuesday only for being too soft on what it crudely called, picking up the argot of the street, "beaters." I speak with the complete objectivity of a man who has recently had two distinguished automobiles of mature vintage failed by the soulless and, as discovered by crafty persons who have had their cars tested at two different AirCare centres within minutes of each other, unreliable testing devices of this humorless arm of the state. The first is a convertible of 1964 vintage which I acquired as recently as 1966. It received some shiny paint perhaps seven years ago. I have since noticed that it draws great admiration, which makes me uncomfortable. I simply do not think of this chariot as old.

And, more preposterous, that it and the lad of 31 who bought it to impress a new blonde friend have grown old together. The maximum allowable carbon monoxide emission at idle for this handsome machine is 6.5 per cent It produced 6.77. Failed. Yes, reader, by slipping less than four per cent over the bureaucratic Berlin Wall separating Social Virtue and Social Wickedness, it was consigned to Pollution Purgatory-It was redeemed scant hours later through delicate mechanical interventions at a nearby large dealership whose front man clucked sympathetically about AirCare's out- rages and produced a bill for $357. What a fine and profitable symbiotic relationship between these two institutions.

The second car is a small vehicle of sporting characteristics, a coltish 40 years old, driven perhaps 800 miles since it passed a year ago. Failed. I expressed my views. The manager appeared. He stated he had a 1955 car that always passed AirCare.

Surprise, the guy who works for the system knows how to work the system. He offered "tips." I suspect that the accurate word is "tricks." Now, in a common-sense village, the common-sense chief tester, named Jeb, would have chuckled: "Well, here comes old Trev with his old car. Ha, ha. Bet it hasn't gone more'n 1,000 clicks a year for years. So, boys, ease up on it, okay? If it's over the hump, just kinda jiggle the needle a bit.

"He ain't pollutin' worth a tinker's damn compared with that young salesman, Hustlebux you know, guy from the city who built that Spanish Morocco addition on to the Glebe's old farmhouse? Probl'y drives that expensive new company car of his at least 70,000 a year. So who's really puttin' more poison in the air, eh?" Right, Jeb. Common sense, and owner surveys, tell you that old cars are driven much less distances than new. The new "cleaner" engines pollute far less. But, balancing that, cars driven further produce more tire and brake-lining pollution.

So the fair thing is for Big Brother to put great wacking computers in every vehicle, linked to Big Brother Central in Victoria. Each would run up a pollution account showing its actual contribution to pollution unlike the AirCare test, which is only a dirty snapshot of the moment. It's called polluter-pay. And my elderly conveyances won't complain a bit. Most of us see the restructuring of our public services as an issue affecting civil servants and the poor, but its major impact will be on the lives of middle-class Canadians.

It's time we realized what's happening so we can do something about it if we want to. When Paul Martin boldly stated in his budget speech that government would no longer run things if it didn't need to, what did that mean for the average taxpayer? Our public services are sometimes wasteful and inefficient, but do we really want to do without government-run hospitals, schools, roads, homes for the aged, post offices and so on? These are the services that are at stake, not just welfare, in the government's reforms. Take hospitals, for example. Medicare or no medicare, they are already being referred to as "corporations." They are run by people with degrees in business administration or management rather than a background in health services. These people are inclined to refer to cancer and other diseases as "product lines." Often on the advice of highly paid, U.S.-based consultants, our hospitals are changing their requirements for the licensing, training and accreditation of their workers emphasizing the use of lower-paid, less-skilled, health-care staff.

The so-called experts talk of "quality merchandising" while they toss out our once highly respected health-care professionals. Homes for the aged are going in the same direction the bottom line is supreme. Many are being run by managers who know little about health care. Registered nurses are being replaced by practical nurses, previously known as nursing assistants. They are paid less while residents pay higher fees for a lower standard of care.

Many homes are acting as if they are private or profit-oriented even though they aren't yet! Phrases such as Total Quality Management, Continuous Quality Improvement, New Accountability Relationship, Customer Service CANADA Warning Hidden cameras have been snapping photos of speeding drivers in Ontario since August. In the recent election, the voters snapped back. They voted for the guy who promised to remove the government eyeball on roadways around the province. Premier-elect Mike Harris intends to have police officers in cruisers replace the four blue minivans that carried the photo-radar equipment. And so, the beam now switches to British Columbia where Premier Mike Harcourt's government is preparing legislation to enable the highway ministry to set up a photo radar system, starting in January.

The goal is to reduce speeding and prevent 60 fatalities a year. Spying cameras are to be set up at 30 locations in the province where the most accidents occur. And along curving roads bordered by ocean or steep cliffs areas that are hard to police. The cameras will be mounted in vans or on posts, and signs will be erected nearby warning motorists of their presence. Every car exceeding the posted limit will be photographed, but tickets will be mailed only to the fastest 15 per cent.

In the first year, the highways ministry expects to punish a million speed demons and bag $100 million. That's $100 a ticket. It hasn't been decided whether drivers will be dinged for demerit points as well. speeding unsafe for governments same breath. I would be in my new country in a few weeks! Wait a minute so what? Each year, when it gets really as it has in Montreal, I find myself back on that hot grass, reliving that confused hour-long inward look about unfolding destiny.

Now, it could be that even though I didn't feel the heat on that day, body did and uses the memory to torture me in vengeful ways. Then again, it could also be that the first hot days strike Montreal about the same time the temperature rises on the two hot, albeit annual, issues of summer St. Jean Baptiste Day and Canada Day. The mind and body play so many 4 tricks for adult, first-generation immigrants, whether they have left voluntarily or fled in desperation from wars or oppression. Most of us find ways to cope with the fallout from the curse of duality.

Some of us even learn to blank out these tricks of memories and sensation, experience and nostalgia, past impulses and present realities. But not in June in Quebec. For this is the month when, whether or not it's a referendum year, newcomers are made acutely conscious their recent entry into the fabric, Doomed to duality, we are faced a second layer of conflict. Are we among the rhetorical seven million Quebecers panting for freedom as the sovereignists have us believe? Or are we the treasured pioneers of a kinder, gentler Canada that federalists -rhapsodize about? Whoever we are or might 1, become, one thing is certain. In June we get noticed.

We also get Iscolded. Cherished. Wooed. Shunned. Studied.

Scrutinized. Is it any wonder then that some of us pack up and leave again? Or that others get stony and silent? And yet others scour the past for clues to today and find themselves on a hot stretch of grass 10,000 miles away? Sadly, if there were answers then, they've been swallowed up by time. What generally comes through these decaying filters are mere fragments of bygone dreams and -intentions. Bits and pieces that have splintered further or merged into new, shapeless forms. Lamely, feeling sheepish, you a piece of this flotsam of migration.

Look, you say to no one in particular, I didn't leave the old country to come to two new ones. I'm content with just one, y'know. The one I came to. But, when it's June in Quebec, it's often too hot for anyone to lis-, ten. Or care.

Aslwk Oxanduiani is a Munlrval tle edi- 4ot and columnist. The Faces column focuses primarily on cross-cultural issues. was something more at stake in the commercializationprivatization game than the way services are being delivered. A sense of national pride based on our public institutions is also being eroded. A postal worker from Halifax mourned the loss of the Canada from Canada Post literature.

She resented the use of the generic title of "MailPoste" and the corporate flag described by some workers as "the shredded envelope" that has replaced the Maple Leaf. An Air Canada ticket agent felt the same about the de-Canadianization of that former national symbol not private. She pointed out that the new Air Canada uniforms, to be introduced next year, will be teal not the red, white and blue that made them so distinctly Canadian. She the program, up from 16 in the same time period in 1993. B.C.

government official Betty Nicholson says she's puzzled by the Ontario numbers. She points to positive experience with photo radar in parts of New Zealand, Australia and England. The B.C. Automobile Association is giving only lukewarm endorsement to the B.C. plan, pointing to lack of evidence both in Ontario and Calgary that photo radar achieves desired results.

And before photo radar is introduced in B.C., the association wants "artificially low" speed limits on highways around the province boosted. Other legitimate grumbles are surfacing in relation to the B.C. plan. Tickets are to be mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle who may not have beeji the culprit actually driving the car. The owner can point the finger at the driver but if that person refuses to take responsibility, the owner is stuck.

It's also conceivable that a camera could malfunction. The highway ministry awkwardly intends to play judge and jury in cases where drivers deny guilt. Another complaint about the system is that it represents one more big-brother intrusion into citizens' lives. B.C.'s Reform party considers the hidden cameras "an unreasonable invasion of privacy." Reform in third place politically in B.C., just as Mike Harris' Conservatives were in Ontario could only guess that the airline want- ed to be more international. It's a vicious circle.

We pay taxes because we are proud of our nation-' al institutions. We pay taxes so our trains are affordable and run on time, our mail is delivered to our door, and our roads aren't covered with potholes. When these services are eroded or sold off, we lose our desire to fund such things. With less funding, government services continue to deteriorate and disappear. Sadly, any national debate over the health and the future of our public services has been drowned out by the voices of those for and against welfare reform with some discussion of medicare on the side.

It's time we broadened the debate. The middle-class has a lot to lose. Issues Network has already announced it will zap photo radar if it wins the next provincial election here, which must be called by next year. Reformers are telling the Mike Harcourt government to hieed the Mike Harris example not to spend money now on a program that possibly won't survive a defeat of the New Democratic Party government. The party argues, quite appropriately, that voters should have the right to pass judgment on the program in the election.

Typically, the government appears prepared to take the risk with the taxpayers' dollars. It is proceeding full speed ahead with photo radar. There is but one paltry consolation B.C. probably will be able to buy up some cameras, dirt cheap, from Ontario. Investment promoter Ian Tootill has formed a group to fight photo radar in B.C.

His group, SENSE or Safety by Education, Not Speed Enforcement, has gathered 500 names on a petition. The 35-year-old Vancouver man says, based on research he has done, he is unconvinced that photo radar is worth the effort Speed, he asserts, is less a factor in accidents than driving without due care and attention, failing to yield and tail-gating. Those opposed to photo radar can contact Tootill at 200 -1687 West Broadway, Vancouver, V6J 1X2 or fax him at 734-8484. www. BARBARA YAFFE The program to cost $22.5 million next year is certain to be a tough sell in B.C.

Photo radar is used in Calgary. But now that Ontario has nixed its program, the sales pitch is going to have to be mighty creative on the West Coast. In Ontario, Harris aide Peter Varley is adamant: There remains no conclusive evidence in this jurisdiction that photo radar saves lives. We view it as a cash grab, another revenue vehicle for government." Varley elaborates: "Photo radar, because of its passive nature, does nothing to stop drunk driving, unsafe lane changes, mechanically defective vehicles, tailgating or any other driving habits that have been linked to highway accidents and fatalities. Photo radar just doesn't tackle the fundamental root causes of unsafe driving." If anyone needs more convincing, Varley has numbers.

In an area of southern Ontario that had the most concentrated use of photo radar, fatalities increased to 27 during the first four months of 2" WwVl.