Well, it's 14 years late but George Orwell's 1984 has arrived. You will recall that the byword was of his Classic 1984 was Newspeak" where good was bad, hate was love and so on. The theory is that if you repeat a piece of nonsense long enough and often enough it becomes as good as the truth itsel;f because it's believed.

The idea scarcely started with Orwell - politicians, priests, executives, labour leaders, professors and the list goes on have been practicing it for years. Think back to when you were a kid - you were taught mere theories and often not very good ones at that, as incontrovertible fact. You were required to repeat them not as hypotheses but facts carved in granite.

It was social pressure that did it. Political correctness, like Newspeak, is not new. And it kept us from having to think and, more importantly to the elite, asking awkward questions. There were some things, some values which you simply didn't question ., or else.

Then, as now, there were prices to pay. We lost a lot of lives in overseas wars because we went along with Britain - in the First War a better educated and more forceful Canada might have let Britain, France, Russia and Germany fight it out if they were so keen to kill each other. The Second World war was clearly one which had to be fought but what sort of difference would it have made if the Americans and Canadians had asked serious questions of the British Government in the appeasing thirties instead of going along? Our timidity wasn't born of stupidity but out of the nonsensical notion of "at Britain's side, whate'er betide." The war was fought, it was a just war, and Canada was right to put a million men and women into uniform to fight it. My point is simply that we deprived ourselves of any chance to help before the real grief began because it wasn't politically correct to support wild men like Winston Churchill when the London Times was counseling that he should be vigorously ignored.

There was a time when it was politically incorrect to defend minorities and demand justice for them. I remember when Orientals and Indians couldn't vote or be members of professions. I remember it well because it was my generation which fought with its parents - often viciously - about such things. I remember working for Allstate Insurance in the 50s where insured's records had a "c" marked against it if the insured was coloured. When I was a young lawyer, there were still land titles with restrictive covenants upon them restraining sale to orientals, blacks, jews - indeed anyone who wasn't white.

But we were the post war kids and things were going to change. And they did. Dramatically and it was long overdue.

The reforms, official and unofficial, are by no means complete. There is still discrimination against minorities, some subtle, some not so subtle .. some intended, some unintentional .. but all there nevertheless.

What has happened is an overlap. As we proceed to eliminate discrimination against traditional minorities we are applying them to others. These new discriminations are pretty tame, it must be admitted, compared to how minorities were once treated but they are very real nevertheless and betray a fundamental flaw in our society - we don't understand basic principles. We don't comprehend that freedom is indivisible except in extreme cases of public safety. We don't understand that you don't make up for past sins by committing them anew against someone else.

Think of the "Newspeak" which has developed.

Those who oppose a fishery based upon the race of the fisherman are racists.

Those who oppose rights being denied people because they are a minority in a certain area of the province are racists.

Those who see governments set up with special rights and privileges based upon race are racists.

Those who cry for nothing more radical than a public vote on a substantial change opposed to our social contract are racists.

The new official, self appointed non racists have even learned all the tricks of my parents' generations. If they're afraid to call someone a racist, they refer to him "of that ilk" or they compare him to well known and dangerous racists. I'm surprised that some people like Stephen Hume, Premier Clark and Allan Garr haven't got permanent tics from all the nudge, nudge, wink, winking they're doing.

The province is split down the middle between those who would end racism by having more of it but applied to new victims and those who want no racism and are therefore branded racists because they want no privileges based on race. And I don't see the end of it.

I have no doubt that this government will cram their treaty down our throats and, in itself, little harm will be done except to a few non natives and some probably outdated notions of democracy, federalism and the social compact by which we live together. But there is more to come - much more. We in the big city have been just watching the warmup match. Wait until the issue is appropriate compensation for those overlapping claims to Greater Vancouver. That this compensation will be mostly money, not land isn't much consolation because here again the Nisga'a deal sets the rules. As Premier Clark in a moment of unguarded honesty said on this program, it is the template for all other deals. Native leaders like Joe Mathias, very bright, very tough, and very skilled, can do their arithmetic. If the compensation in cash to Nisga'a takes into account land claims they gave up, how much cash must be paid where there is not going to be any land compensation?

We have forgotten a basic principle. You cannot compensate perfectly. You can't even come close. And in some cases, because of circumstances which have intervened between the initial wrong and the date of compensation, you cannot even come close to treating one victim as you do his brother or sister.

We're paying and paying very dearly for not coming to the bargaining table with a set of principles and the cost has been made much higher by those in authority doing it all out of public scrutiny.

What to do?

I do not claim authorship for this idea - I only don't tell you who suggested it to me because I don't know that he would want that made public.

We must have a one person review of the entire process to date which would require a one year moratorium. That person must level with the public - I and others for example suggest a referendum but there are downsides to that. We should all know about all sides of that and all other issues of basic principle. That person's job would start out with the given that a permanent solution must be found then advize us of the options available.

Who would that person be?

I don't know. I think that a judge is probably not a good idea in today's mood about the court system ... a lawyer would be perhaps too picky and arcane ... the suggestion made by my friend was Bill Saywell who is an esteemed academic and expert in international relations.

I do know this. We've reached the point where Yogi Berra's advice .. when you come to a fork in the road take it .. begins to make some sense.

The very worst thing we can do now is assume that if we just cram this through and get it behind us all will sort itself out. It won't for this is like an old soap ... there's always another episode to come.