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PRINCE GEORGE
Citizen
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1995
85 CENTS
FIRMS JOIN FORCES FOR
Project would create 100 jobs
by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen Staff
About 100 new permanent jobs would be created by a proposed hiedium-density fibreboard plant here, a partner in several area Sawmills said today.
J The plant, a joint venture of Canfor Corporation and Sinclar Enterprises, is planned between JSTorth Central Plywood and JCanfor’s Netherlands sawmill in Jhe BCR Industrial Site, explained Bob Stewart of Sinclar.
The plant would use bark and shavings from the Sinclar group’s Nechako Lumber mill in Vanderhoof and The Pas Lumber’s feear Lake sawmill plus Canfor’s Netherlands sawmill and Polar
sawmill in Bear Lake as raw materials, Stewart explained.
This is the second Canfor project announced this week to deal with mill residues. The company also announced Thursday it is seeking environmental approvals for a new $80-million electric plant which would use wood residue for fuel.
The projects would eliminate the need for beehive burners now used to dispose of waste left after making lumber and chips used by pulp mills.
The plant is expected to cost more than $120 million to build.
The two partners announced Thursday they were applying for the necessary environmental per-
College faces threat of strike
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff
With 72-hour strike notice served by the College of New Caledonia Faculty Association, students are circulating a petition asking faculty and administration to consider the impact of a strike or lockout on them.
“Petitions are going to all classes so there is pressure on both sides of the bargaining committee — so that they know students don’t want a strike,” Dana Lindaaf, a business student representative of the association, said Thursday evening.
“Students might not be able to finish their semester if they’re sitting around and can’t do anything because of a strike.”
After a day and a half of mediated negotiations between the administration and the faculty association, talks reached an impasse Wednesday afternoon, said CNC president Dr. Terry Weninger.
The faculty union called on mediator Stephen Renfrit to book out of the negotiations. “But we specifically requested the mediator pot book out, but just adjourn the proceedings,” Weninger said today. ! The faculty association served jstrike notice at 5 p.m. Wednesday, said George Davison, president of the CNC Faculty Association. The mediator is back in Vancouver, but not officially out of the negotiations, Weninger said.
Davison agreed. The mediator must first report to the head of the provincial mediation board, Brian Foley in Vancouver. Afterwards the mediation board may decide to allow the mediator to book out, as Requested by the faculty association, or return him to negotiations if both sides are close to an agree-
ment, Davison said.
If the board decides to let the mediator book out, there would be a waiting period of 48 hours after that decision before the 72-hour strike notice would begin to take effect, Davison explained.
“In the meantime, we will continue to make every effort to reach an agreement, but the college knows the clock is ticking, and not much time is left,” he said.
The administration needs to be able to set up such things as special training courses in industry or on aboriginal reserves without having to seek union permission on each one, Weninger said. But it would never seek to contract out the teaching of main program courses, he added.
“It’s a very complicated issue. But it basically centres on our ability to work with our community partners and has nothing to do with our base programs,” Weninger explained.
The administration and the faculty association agree contracting out is the major issue.
“We recognize the college’s need for flexibility and responsiveness to meet the needs of the community,” Davison said. “However, our membership needs strong job security language in the collective agreement.”
The administration’s assurances aside, the current language is not clear, he said. There are numerous grievances in process, and many others have been filed over that issue.
“We are doing everything that we possibly can to try to find the common ground,” Weninger said. The last contract expired March 31, 1994.
INDEX
Farcus
'Ann Landers .. .....20
Bridge........
Business ...... . .22,23
City, B.C...... ... .23
Classified..... . .27-34
Comics ....... .....41
Coming events . .....21
Commentary .. ......5
Crossword .....30
Entertainment . . .41-43
Horoscope..... .....29
Lifestyles..... . .20,21
Movies........ .....42
Nation........
Sports ....... ..13-18
Television ..... .....34
World........ ......7
58
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mits to build the mill.
“We’ve already made studies of the environmental issues, air and noise emissions. If we can get the approvals from the various ministries we hope to have the foundations in before freeze-up and start building the structure over the winter,” Stewart said.
The plant would begin operations in 1997.
Stewart said the new plant was not a replacement for the Sinclar Group’s Vanderhoof Pulp and Paper project.
“Vanderhoof Pulp and Paper has no appetite for bark and shavings. This does.”
Vanderhoof Pulp president
George Killy has asked for a meeting with Premier Mike Harcourt about the infrastructure (roads and power lines) needed for the project, but doesn’t have a date for a meeting yet, Stewart said.
The project is expected to employ as many as 200 people during design and construction.
Medium-density fibreboard, best known as the shelving in kitchen cabinets, is a growing market, with new uses becoming common, said Jim Earle, project manager for Canfor.
The product is being run through milling machines to make decorative moldings, replacing solid wood. It can be stained so it’s almost impossible to tell from a
carved piece of wood. It also can have a new decorative surface bonded to it, so a piece of furniture can look like oak, pine, walnut or have a hard finish added for kitchen use.
As the supply of logs declines in North America due to environmental restrictions in the States and declining supplies worldwide, the use of “engineered products” like this are increasing.
The use of medium-density fibreboard, which costs less than solid lumber, means new products, with the quality consumers want without replacing solid wood for the jobs it does best.
There’s more bark left from logs being turned into lumber than
could be used by the fibreboard plant.
Much of the rest would be used by the new cogeneration facility at Canfor’s Intercontinental pulp mill here, which would supply power the company now buys from B.C. Hydro.
It’s planned to produce 37 megawatts of electricity, about 58 per cent of the electricity used by the firm’s two pulp mills in Prince George.
The two projects would mean better air quality in Prince George by eliminating several beehive burners, said Garth Decker, vice-president for Canfor’s Prince George pulp and paper mills.
End of an era
Citizen photo by Dave Milne
University of Northern B.C. maintenance workers pull apart the old construction office building that was the nerve centre of construction on the Cranbrook Hill campus from the day work began on the initial phase of the project in 1992. The conference and fitness centre was the last major building of this initial phase to be completed, and was opened to the public late last month. A new phase of expansion has begun with work on a second 274-bed student residence being built just west of this demolished office.
KNEW ABOUT FIRING FOR ‘CON
PGRH defends hiring decision
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen Staff
Prince George Regional Hospital’s board of trustees hired its new interim top administrator knowing she had been fired as deputy minister of health in Nova Scotia for conflict of interest.
Hospital board chair Lorraine Grant said Thursday they felt Lucy Dobbin was the best person for the job.
Grant pointed out that the Nova Scotia conflict commissioner ruled Dobbin was innocent.
“She has the best qualifications. .. She is an excellent person. When she gets here, you’ll fall in love with Lucy Dobbin.”
Dobbin, a former nun, has more than 30 years of experience in health care and has been the chief administrator at hospitals in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
Dobbin was hired on a sixth-month contract which could be extended up to a year. She starts Feb. 20.
Dobbin was dismissed as deputy minister of health last October after Premier John Savage learned that her husband, Patrick Dobbin, attended a meeting of senior health
department staff at their home in Lunenburg, N.S., last May.
Patrick Dobbin later sent out brochures to hospitals offering private consulting work and suggested that Carrick Consulting Services, which he and his wife owned, had influence over health-care reform.
In a written ruling later, conflict-of-interest commissioner Justice Alex Macintosh ruled Dobbin was innocent because the province’s conflict law was too narrow.
Macintosh said Dobbin failed to separate herself from her husband’s business, but that wasn’t against the law. He said Dobbin was wrong to have allowed her husband to attend the meeting and she should have removed her name from the company’s brochure.
Dobbin was paid $100,000 in severance 10 days after being fired by Savage.
Dobbin said she was .up front with the PGRH board of trustees in telling them she had been fired as the deputy minister.
“But I want to let that be in the past,” added Dobbin in an interview from Lunenburg, N.S. “I had a long time in health services — that was only one incident. And I
got cleared of it, so I really don’t want it to be the oply„. thing that people talk about.”
All the reference checks the hospital did were positive and glowing and Dobbin was highly recommended, said Grant.
The only negative that people mentioned is that Dobbin may have been a little politically naive, added Grant.
“Did she have a moment of not thinking through a process when she was under the gun in making a snap decision at the last minute (in letting her husband attend the meetings)?” asked Grant. “Yeah, she did. She was guilty of that. Yeah, but are we not all guilty of making one or two mistakes in our lives.
“Particularly when she was cleared of the charges, I don’t see what the issue is.”
The hospital is paying Dobbin’s moving costs to Prince George, about $10,000, Grant said. The hospital board chair wouldn’t say how much Dobbin is being paid.
Grant said they didn’t hire someone from B.C. because there was nobody interested in an interim position with the qualifications the
H
board wanted.
. “(Dobbin) is truthfully the best person for the job and because she’s living in Nova Scotia; I can’t help that.”
B.C. Health Minister Paul Ramsey (Prince George North) said he was not informed of the hiring in advance nor was he involved in the hiring process.
“I’ll have no comment on the qualifications of the individual or the hiring process,” he emphasized.
Dobbin, who has a degree in nursing and a masters degree in health sciences administration from the University of Alberta, steps into a hospital that has seen rapid change in the past three years. The hospital has cut beds and staff and struggled to balance its $60-million operating budget.
She replaces former executive director Dennis Cleaver, who was fired six weeks ago.
Cleaver, who had more than two years left on his five-year contract, received a severance package of almost $200,000.
With Canadian Press
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