Thumbs Up

UPLIFTING B.C. PROVINCIAL QUARTERLY REPORT DESERVES ROUND OF APPLAUSE

To Finance Minister Gary Collins and the B.C. Liberal government for
delivering a first quarterly report that has exceeded fiscal expectations
in a number of key areas. This year's budget surplus, for example, is
forecast to hit $865 million, which is far higher than the estimated
$100-million surplus contained when the 2004 budget was tabled in February.
Higher surpluses are also predicted over the next three years. Government
revenue, meanwhile, is expected to be $1.2 billion higher than original
budget forecasts. And the total provincial debt is estimated to drop to
$37.2 billion by the end of the 2004/05 fiscal year. That debt is still far
too high, considering that neighbouring Alberta is debt-free, but the
reduction is over half a billion dollars higher than original estimates.

Cynics could argue that Collins' good news springs in large part from
low-ball estimates included in budget 2004.

The government's numbers also benefit from higher than expected natural
resource royalties, over which it has no influence, and increased revenues
from taxation, which represent the blood, sweat and tears wrung from the
province's citizenry. And the BC Liberals have posted their share of fiscal
blunders over the past three years, but they have also made some hard
decisions that are now beginning to bear economic fruit for the province.
Government deserves brickbats when it blunders; it likewise deserves
bouquets when it succeeds.

Thumbs Down

CURBSIDE PHARMACARE ERODING CITY'S BUSINESS AND SOCIAL FABRIC

To the peddlers of Vancouver's increasingly pervasive drug culture who
place the desires of the drugged and those seeking to be drugged over the
rights of merchants and other business people in the Lower Mainland to earn
an honest living. Flash point recently was centred on a Commercial Drive
cafE where marijuana was being sold contrary to the laws of the land, but
the issue is spread far wider than the seemingly innocuous trade in B.C.
bud. Vancouver, with its safe injection site, its official tolerance of
aggressive panhandlers and consideration of drug-friendly programs such as
administering free heroin to addicts, has bent over backwards so far for
the drugged minority that it has forgotten those upon whom its society is
built. So we have merchants in various areas of the city besieged with drug
addicts and threatened with violence by drug dealers when they try to clear
the drug trade from their streets so legitimate business can be conducted.
And we have visitors to the city aghast at the state of Vancouver streets
and a property crime rate that's now the highest among 354 major
metropolitan areas in North America and a mayor who wonders "what's the big
deal" with open marijuana sales.

The big deal, your honour, is that we have forgotten which end is up in our
social order. That's bad for more than business.