ANGUS REID-SOUTH AM NEWS POLL
Canadians’ optimism hh^I grows about economy
Q Over the next year, do you think the Canadian economy will improve, stay the same or get worse?
■j Improve QStay the same QGet worse Ollnsure March 1991 2*/
November 1990
14 Over the next year, do you think your own economic situation will improve, stay the same or gel worse?
■l Improve QStay the same E3 Get worse □ Unsure
March 1991 2%
November 1990
What impact do you think the government's policies have had on the economy?
H Improved □ Weakened O Not much effect □ Unsure 4.^
The telephone poll of 1,503 adult Canadians was conducted March 12-20 and is considered accurate within 2.5 percentage points 19 times in 20.
The Prince i^eorge
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Things are looking up, new poll figures show
by Southam News
OTTAWA — Maybe it’s spring fever, or just that Canadians, mired in recession for almost a year, have been down so far that everything looks up to them.
Whatever the reasons, they arc more optimistic about the outlook for the economy and for their own finances than they have been in three years, virtually a complete reversal of their bleak mood only three months ago.
"Canadians’ current outlook for the country’s economy has improved dramatically since late last year,’’ according to the results of the March 12-20 Angus Reid-Southam News poll released today.
But Canadians aren’t giving the Conservative government any
credit for what has been a sea change in their mood.
The poll, conducted after last month’s federal budget, found "marked dissatisfaction’’ with federal economic policies.
"Fully half of all Canadians believe that the federal government’s economic policies are exacerbating the country’s current economic problems,” Reid said.
Only 13 per cent feel those policies are "helping the economy get stronger and recover from the recession more quickly.”
That negative attitude is widespread and in no region did Tory policies get the support of more than 16 per cent of the population.
Furthermore, Canadians opt for either the Liberals or the NDP, at 25 per cent support each, over the
Conservatives, at 17 per cent, as the party which they feel would best lead Canada out of the recession.
The surprising burst of economic optimism, for both the national and provincial economies, has infected all regions of the country, though some more than others.
Almost four in 10 persons expected the national economy to improve in the coming year, while roughly one in three expected the economy to worsen and about the same proportion who expected no change.
Only four months earlier, just over two thirds of Canadians were pessimistic about the economy’s prospects — more than double the current proportion and the most
pessimistic reading since Reid began tracking the economic mood of Canadians in October 1987.
“The public’s economic outlook has not been as positive as it is today since fully three years ago, in April of 1988,” Reid said.
And it’s in Ontario, hardest hit by the recession, that the optimism is strongest with 42 per cent expecting an improvement, compared with only 27 per cent who expect a deterioration.
Residents of Quebec and British Columbia are also more likely to expect an improvement than a deepening of the recession. But even in Atlantic Canada and on the Prairies, where pessimists still outnumber optimists, the mood has improved markedly.
TREVOR JOHNSTON/Southam News Graphics
INDEX
Students to pick their tests?
by Canadian Press VICTORIA — S tressed-out students cramming before the big exam may be nothing more than memories when changes to B.C.’s education system are in place, an Education Ministry official said Tuesday.
With the shift toward a school system that emphasizes individual skills, standard exams that test only specific skills are no longer suitable, Derek Sturko told an informal session leading into the Canadian Association of Principals conference.
One proposal is to replace the 17 subjects that now are tested with as many as 200, from which students would pick 10 or so, said Sturko, ministry director of information management Students would also pick when they would write the exams and could even opt to "get it over with” at the beginning of the school year if they felt they were ready, he said.
"We’d move from a fact-based, knowledge-based, Victoria-administered program to one where students demonstrate what they can do,” he said. "It would be almost exams on demand.”
"I’d like to see students being taught ‘thinking,’ teaching independent thought rather than fact,” said high school student Chris Tilly.
“Right now, it’s what teachers said that you get tested on, rather than what you should have figured out from what they said. ”
Tami Veerkamp, another Victoria high school student, said the current system is set up for people who may not be that intelligent but have good memory skills.
"I went into a (gifted) program and didn’t do that well, because it was all about learning and what I’d been taught to do was memorize,” she said.
School administrator Ann de Lair of Abbotsford, B.C., said basic skills will be learned in the context of learning about something larger.
Long wait for overpass finally over
by BERNICE TRICK Citizen StafT
Traffic began flowing across the newly-completed Continental Way Overpass at 6:15 a.m. today on Highway 97 South.
It marked the reopening of the highway just south of Prince George which has been closed since late summer.
The B.C. Ministry of Highways project was scheduled for completion by late November or early December, but was delayed due to design changes, delay of materials and a severe winter.
Ron Wiebe, public information officer in Prince George, said although he’s happy to see the traffic moving, he’ll breathe easier when the four-laning is finished from Simon Fraser Bridge to Sin-tich Road "and the entire project is complete.”
It was a nip-and-tuck race to make today’s deadline with the surface layer of paving being applied Tuesday.
Following that, traffic barriers and signs had to be removed as well as medium barriers put in place.
"It took up to the final hour to make it,” said Wiebe, admitting relief that the highway is finally open.
"It’s just the fact it has been so prominent with close media attention.
" Every project we do has a number of hiccups, but it seemed Murphy was at our side on this one. It was like Muiphy’s Law — anything that can go wrong will.”
The next step of constructing four lanes should get started this year, but nothing is definite until the province’s 1991 budget is approved.
The total cost of the project won’t be known until final paperwork and tallying is complete, but Wiebe expects it to be close to the initial $1.3 million quoted.
Work on the lower municipal road being constructed by the city still requires subgrade and paving work, but cannot resume until the frost leaves the ground, says city engineer Ernie Obst.
He estimates June as the completion date of that road, which had been constructed as far as possible until the overpass was complete.
When complete, the project will offer a municipal road below the overpass to accommodate traffic from the BCR and Danson Industrial Parks, crossing under the highway, and turning right to access Highway 97 at Terminal Boulevard.
The purpose of the province-city project is to alleviate traffic congestion between the industrial sites and the downtwn core.
The cost of the lower road is estimated at $1 million.
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Huu Lam, who was imprisoned by the Vietnamese, Is reunited with his daughter, Mary Lou, and his wife Nga Tran at the airport.
Meakin, let the tears she had been holding back flow when her husband Huu Lam appeared at the top of the airplane steps and waved.
Tran and her children Khoa, 18, and 19-year-old Mary Lou, who clutched a warm winter jacket to give to her father, had found out only five days earlier that he would be on that plane.
The family was allowed out on the tarmac, away from the crush of arriving passengers, for their reunion.
Inside the airport, about 30 family friends, faces pressed against the window, stood watching. Many had grown to know Huu through his family, and he had come to recognize them through his wife’s letters.
"Thank you all for coming to meet me,” Huu told the crowd that gathered around him and his family as they entered the terminal building.
Nga had escaped from Ho Chi Minh City in South Vietnam with the children 10 years ago. Huu, who worked with the international police agency Inteipol, and opposed the communist regime in North Vietnam, was a political prisoner at the time.
Family reunited after 15 years
by DIANE BAILEY Citizen Staff Family members tom apart by political strife in Vietnam embraced one another again for the first time in 15 years in an emotional reunion Tuesday at the Prince George airport.
A trembling Nga Tran, supported by family friend Gordon
"I saw him once in five years,” said Nga, recalling the three-day and three-night train trip she took to get to the place where he was being held.
"They let me just talk to him for half an hour and they were watching us too, sitting close and listening to what we were saying,” she said earlier Wednesday.
When the guard left for a short cigarette break, Huu told her to go to Canada, which he had visited once.
"He said I must find a way out of the country because they looked at us like an enemy.”
Nga was not sure where to turn because "all our friends were in prison.” After one failed attempt, during which she was shot at as she was chased through the jungle, a friend of a friend got them places on a boat to Malaysia.
The boat and its passengers, lost at sea for 12 days without maps, charts and food, almost didn’t make it.
"It is terrible when I was thinking about it,” said Nga, her voice emotional still as she talks about the experience.
"The children would just yell because they were so hungry and thirsty.”
The boat finally landed in Malaysia, where the family stayed four months before emigrating to Canada. They landed in Montreal and remained there a week.
"The Canadian government asked me to stay in Prince George.”
Once here she enrolled in an English language class and, trained as an X-ray technician in Vietnam, was soon out looking for work.
"I had two kids and I was anxious that I had no job to do and I didn’t know how I was going to take care of them.”
She found a job at the Victoria Medical Building, where she still works as a darkroom technician.
Five years ago Huu was released from prison, said Nga, but the government would not allow him and other former political prisoners to leave the country until two years ago.
Five months ago he got the necessary papers to leave. Three months ago, Nga sent the plane fare.
Today he is back with his family, in time to watch his children, who were 2 Vi and 3 Vi years old when he was imprisoned, graduate from high school this spring.
"The doctor said to walk on it as much as ___________________possible."___________________
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