Editor:
rnTo: Friends of Desert ParkrnI support your idea!rnMy name is Dakota Mitchener and I am eleven years old. I would love it if we can save Desert Park so riders can have a nice place to ride our beautiful horses. I have practically grown up on horse back, and I would like to save our race track.
Horses are very good for children, and in Osoyoos we don't have many farms so we need a facility like Desert Park to be able to ride.
I like to barrel race on my horse Bailey and it is very important to me to have a place to ride and to have a place for horse shows and events. I also like the trails and the big green infield for playing sports.
Dakota Mitchener, Osoyoos
rnAccording to a recent Globe and Mail article, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale is considering more tax cuts.
This is good news for the newly elected, big business crowd of Conservatives and is designed to keep the minority federal government from falling.
The downside is that the Federal Conservatives hold the balance of power; meaning that as long as they prop up the existing government the income gap between rich and poor will keep growing. To emphasize this point; our tax-cut government in BC, in just one year, the year of 2001, increased childhood poverty from 17% to 19.6%. Despite the rosy picture that Gordon Campbell (using our tax money) has recently painted, BC has the third highest poverty rate of all provinces. Even worse, according to the CCPA (a non-partisan research organization) BC's poorest families earn 10,000 dollars less per year, per family than those of all other provinces in Canada. What a legacy for BC's Liberals!! But, I have digressed again, let's go back to federal politics:rnIt was just so close; how many readers realize that the difference between homelessness with its food banks versus tax breaks for the wealthy was just a matter of a few hundred votes in our Southern Interior riding. With only one more seat in parliament the balance of power could have shifted to the NDP. The Liberals then would have had a progressive choice. Just think, Canada could have again taken the North American lead in social justice.
HP ToewsrnPrincetonrn
