Federal gov't projects whopping $11 billion deficit
HEAVY BORROWING PLANNED IN COMING YEAR
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Friday, March 17, 1978 Vol. 22; No. 54 Prince George, British Columbia
OTTAWA (CP) — Finance Minister Jean Chretien announced Thursday night that the government spending deficit in the financial year starting April 1 will jump by 25 per cent from the current year to a record $11 billion.
Furious opposition MPs immediately condemned government economic management policies and promised renewed demands for a new budget and fuller explanation of the increased cash requirements.
Sinclair Stevens, Progressive Conservative finance critic, predicted the announcement will mean higher interest rates for everything from home mortgages to personal bank loans by summer.
Chretien, addressing the Commons during debate on a bill that gives the government authority to borrow an additional $5 billion, said government cash requirements in the financial year ending this month will be $8.8 billion. That is up from the $8.5 billion he predicted in a Commons statement last Oct. 20.
The finance minister said the government wants additional borrowing authority of $5 billion on top of the $16-billion borrowing approval it received last year in order to give it all the power it needs to meet cash requirements in the coming financial year.
Chretien added that the government wants parliamentary
authority to borrow in foreign currencies as well as in Canadian dollars.
The government already has offered a $750-million U.S. bond issue in New York to pressure on the Canadian dollars by buying up unwanted Canadian currency.
Stevens charged that New York bankers, who decide the success or failure of the federal bond issue, are forcing the government to make a full statement now on its financial position and borrowing requirements.
The government was required to file information with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in order to show
its full financial status before being allowed to place the bonds on U.S. markets.
In the last budget, brought down by former finance minister Donald Macdonald March 31, 1977, the government said its borrowing requirements in the current financial year would be $7 billion.
But authority to borrow an additional $9 billion was subsequently sought and approved last December and the government now wants $5 billion more borrowing approved by Parliament.
This is partly because of the necessity to pay off interest accruing on $2.6 billion of Canada Savings Bonds maturing Nov. 1.
But in addition the government now is being forced into a costly defence of the dollar's value on international currency markets. The dollar has fallen to around 89 cents U.S.
Chretien says the increased borrowing authority now sought from Parliament should let the government meet domestic financing needed in the next financial year and also to finance drawings from a special $1 .Sbillion U.S. standby credit arranged for the dollar’s defence and the $750-million U.S. of borrowing now under negotiation.
Total federal spending in the next financial year has been estimated at $48.8 billion when budgetary spending, loans and advances are included. But a shortfall in revenue will send the government into money markets for about $11 billion.
Stevens says that will mean higher interest rates whether the money is borrowed from cash-short domestic markets or whether Ottawa goes abroad to markets where interest rates are rising.
He said the Conservatives want a new federal budget immediately that includes permanent personal income tax cuts as a measure to stimulate economic activity.
OFF FRENCH COAST
U.S. supertanker Amoco Cadiz on rocks off France's Brittany coast.
oior it 'secret'
ST. JOHN’S, Nfld. (CP) — A secret eight-page U.S. government document belonging to the national bomb data centre in Washington, D.C., has been seized by the RCMP from a local pre-school aged child who thought it was a coloring book.
The document was discovered earlier this week when the child was seen coloring in it, an RCMP spokesman said Thursday.
The spokesman said the document deals with international bombing incidents and the manufacture of bombs.
It was sent here accidentally along with a shipment of coloring books ordered by the local humane society as part of an education program, he said.
Its pages are inscribed in red with the words:
“Restricted Technical Data— Reproductions Prohibited."
It gave detailed descriptions of the types of homemade bombs used in several international bombing incidents in April and May of 1971. It also included diagrams and photographs of many techniques and the tactics employed by terrorist bombers.
The shipment of coloring books, in which the secret document turned up as a divider, was ordered from the U.S. Humane Society in Washington.
RCMP Cpl. John Gillis, who now has the eight-page document, said Thursday he will destroy it.
Newspaper, not Cossitt, faces 'secrets' charges
OTTAWA (CP) - Justice Minister Ron Basford said today the Toronto Sun, its publisher and editor are being charged under the Official Secrets Act for publishing information detrimental to national security.
A summons was served today ordering the Toronto Sun Publishing Ltd., Publisher Douglas Creighton and editior-in-chief Peter Worthington to appear in court April 7.
Basford also told the Commons he has decided not to lay similar charges against Progressive Conservative MP Tom Cossitt. Basford said top secret information revealed by Cossitt in the Commons was immune from prosecution.
The summons states the accused communicated infor-
mation contrary to two sections of the Official Secrets Act between March, 1976 and March 7, 1978.
If Parliament was the place to decide the privileges of members, the courts were the place to decide the limits of freedom of the press, Basford said in the Commons.
He said he decided to prosecute The Sun only after "the most careful consideration.”
RCMP, meanwhile, would continue to seek the sources of ihe documents that were leaked to Cossitt and The Sun.
Basford described as "contemptible and cowardly" the public servant who leaked the documents.
The RCMP have been trying for two weeks to find out who leaked the documents that Cossitt drew from for statements
inside and outside the Commons Feb. 21.
Two investigators questioned reporters this week about documents marked "top secret” and "For Canadian eyes only” that evidently had come from the RCMP security service.
They said they were gathering evidence against Cossitt and indicated shortly after the investigation began that there was enough evidence to prosecute under the broad net of the Official Secrets Act.
The act makes it an offence for an unauthorized person to have such documents in his possession.
Basford urged MPs and the press who are given classified papers to show them to the responsible minister or to the RCMP comissioner before making them public.
WRONG SEAL HERD, THOUGH
Greenpeace visit okayed
ST. ANTHONY, Nfld. (CP) — Federal authorities have approved a visit to a seal herd by the Greenpeace Foundation but the herd is not one being hunted by Canadian and Norwegian sealers. Greenpeace officials rejected the offer.
"Too many people have sent us money to come and protest against the seal hunt for us to take a joy ride to take pictures,” said Greenpeace president Patrick Moore.
Permission for Green-peacers to visit seals in an area away from the hunt and about 180 nautical miles north of here came from Ottawa today.
Federal officials said the Greenpeacers would not be issued permits to get closer than half a nautical mile to the hunt. They would be able to visit a seal patch where no hunting was in progress.
Moore said Greenpeace would continue to press for permits to visit the hunt.
On Thursday, the six Canadian vessels reported having taken 12,463 pelts while the four Norwegian ships reported a kill of 1,851.
Moore said Thursday night that a delegation from small northern outports “joined the foundation in expressing their outrage at the Canadian Icebreaker Louis St. Laurent being used at taxpayers expense to break a pass for sealing vessels off the coast of Labrador. ’ ’
LEFT CHILD WHILE DRINKING BEER
Grandmother guilty of 'neglect'
by AL IRWIN Citizen Stuff Reporter
A Prince George woman who left her seven-year-old grandson in the lobby of a hotel for four hours while she drank in the beer parlor has been found guilty of child neglect.
Tina McEachern was given a six-month suspended sentence by Judge George Stewart in provincial court Thursday.
Wilma Redpath, a desk clerk at the McDonald Hotel, said that on Aug, 5, 1977, at 4:30 p.m. Mrs. McEachern brought a boy from the coffee shop to
the desk and told her to look after him, then went into the pub.
At 5‘30 p.m. another clerk came on duty, and Redpath left.
Redpath said that when she returned at 6:30 p.m., the child was still there.
Edward Coole, owner of the McDonald, said that at 7 p.m. he entered the pub and asked Mrs. McEachern to take her grandchild home. She left and took the child, but, after making a phone call in the lobby, again left the child and returned to the beer parlor. At about 8:30 p.m., after warning the woman again to take her child home, Coole called the police.
Coole said that after the police arrived the woman again refused to leave the pub, saying sho wanted to finish her beer.
McEachern said she wasn’t aware that the hotel was not responsible for babysitting.
Judge Stewart said he did not have much difficulty finding her guilty of neglect.
"I don’t want to be moralistic about it, but it is obvious that beer is more important than the child. I’m finding you guilty. I don’t think you are a fit person to look after a child”, Stewart said.
Tanker grounds, big spill feared
Withdraw, U.S. tells Israelis
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States demanded Thursday that Israel withdraw from southern Lebanon, possibly to be replaced by a United Nations peacekeeping force to promote stability in the area.
"We expect Israel to withdraw and we have made our views in this respect known to the Israeli government,” said the U.S. statement, issued at President Carter’s direction by the U.S. state department.
The statement said “the only real solution” to Israel’s security problem and Middle East violence generally is a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-lsraeli conflict.
"We don’t intend to be distracted from efforts to resolve these basic problems,” said the statement read by presidential spokesman Hodding Carter.
He said the United States is exploring, in “urgent discussions" at the UN and elsewhere, arrangements for southern Lebanon’s future and that it would support Security Council consideration of placing a peacekeeping force in the area.
It is not clear whether the U.S. position diverges from the Israeli government’s view that its troops should remain in southern Lebanon until arrangements are completed for preventing Palestinian terrorists from staging raids from the area.
Spokesman Carter, although declining extensive elaboration, said there has to be “a linkage” between the U.S.-demanded Israeli withdrawal and “measures which would restore stability" in southern Lebanon.
He declined to say what other alternatives the administration might consider apart from a UN peacekeeping unit.
Asked whether the administration was considering the use of U.S. troops in an international force, the spokesman said: "Not at this point.”
Over the long run, he said, the United States favors “the extension of the authority of Lebanon down to the border.” The area from which Palestinian terrorists launched their attacks—and which now is controlled by Israel—has been a no-man’s land beyond the control of either the Lebanese army or the Syrian-led Arab League contingent that polices the rest of Lebanon.
See also page 5
BREST, France (AP) -The U.S. supertanker Amoco Cadiz, carrying 63 million gallons of oil, broke in two early today on rocks off France’s Brittany coast and is pouring oil onto beaches and fishing grounds.
The wreck has the potential to be the worst tanker oil spill on record—if all tanks are ruptured and it discharges its full load. But officials could not yet forecast the size of the spill.
Even before the 233,690-ton ship broke up about five kilometres off shore, leaking oil had reached more than a kilometre of coastline.
Authorities at this French Atlantic port ordered a full pollution alert in a bid to save the lobster-rich coastline, but navy ships loaded with chalk and detergent were unable to move in between the supertanker and the shore because of rocky obstructions in the water.
It was the fourth time the Brittany coast has been polluted by a tanker spill since 1967, when the Torrey Canyon broke up 160 kilometres to the northwest, off England's southwest coast.
The Torrey Canyon, the worst shipwreck spill on record, poured 29 million gallons into the sea. The oil washed ashore in both England and France.
Helicopters took 41 persons, including a woman, off the 320metre (1,060-foot) Amoco Cadiz during the night, leaving only the captain and first officer on board the vessel.
Northern
leaders
optimistic
OTTAWA (CP) - Municipal leaders from northern British Columbia came away happy Thursday after impressing on a special Commons pipelines committee that they do not want to be stuck with costs of providing facilities for northern pipeline construction.
Three representatives of the Peace River-Liard regional district said they favor construction of the $10 billion Alas-kan pipeline through their area, but local taxpayers should not have to bear the costs of additional education, housing and transportation.
Committee chairman Maurice Foster (L—Algoma) said the federal government can take no direct action since the municipalities are a provincial responsiblity.
However, he promised them their views, which are sup ported by the committee, will be passed on to Deputy Prime Minister Allan MacEachen for use in negotiations with the British Columbia government.
PM considered autumn election
OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Trudeau said Thursday he would have preferred to have had a federal election last fall but that he held back because "people would have said: ‘That’s too soon, too soon.”’
"I would like to have got it over with last fall,” Trudeau told a news conference after being asked whether he might prefer to hold the next election in 1979.
Now, he said, at least one pundit is describing his decision to wait as “the worst political mistake of my career.”
TODAY
This week:
Killed
Injured:
Arrested an impaired: This year:
Killed:
Injured:
To name date 1977: Killed:
Injured:
1
12
25
3
99
1
151
(featured inside)
...........24
.............5
City, B.C............. .............7
...........21
.............6
Entertainment.. .........20-24
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THE WEATHER
J
A Pacific disturbance over south-western B.C. is expected to bring Prince George cloudy skies with rain showers today. The weekend forecast is for morning fog patches and mainly cloudy skies with some sunny periods.
The forecast high today is 3, the low -5. The high Thursday was 5, the low 0, with 13.7 mm of precipitation. On this date last year the high was 5, the low -5.
( NOW HEAR THIS)
• An experienced school teacher says new teachers who don’t wear green to school today will have an experience they’re not likely to forget next year on St. Patrick’s Day — the acceptable student tradition here is to pinch those who forget.
• A North Nechako Elementary School teacher won the heart of at least one student recently. An elementary school student confided to the public health nurse that she knew she liked her new teacher when: “I stuck my tongue out at her and all shedid was stick hers out right back.” The action took place during a “switch day” at the school Wednesday when teachers changed classes for a day.
0 A sales representative extolling plastic pipe found himself a victim unknowingly of male-female relations on a male-dominated council. Passing out samples of pipe he missed the mayor’s desk which is on a podium removed from the aldermen’s desks. "Hmmm,” remarked acting mayor Monica Becott, council’s only female, “I’m sure this revealed one thing — male chauvinism isn’t dead.” An embarrassed salesman didn’t hear an alderman reply: “You wouldn’t have understood anyway, Your Worship.”
&
‘Don't bother me now. I'm writing a song about taU poophl'