CONVICTS HID IN COUCH
Haunted house
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CKbn Photo by Tim Hwanty
 Corinne Voth and Tom Bulmer had a sure cure for Halloween headaches as they took part in the hi jinks at a “haunted house” on Spruce Street Wednesday. Aside from an unusual number of spooks, witches and goblins on the streets, police report a quiet halloween in Prince George.
'DIRTY TRICKS' SCANDAL
Bennett denies plot
  VANCOUVER (CP) — Premier BUI Bennett denied Wednesday reports that a political dirty tricks campaign was plotted during Social Credit party meetings at Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. in 1974.
   And as the premier was issuing his denial, another phoney letter to a newspaper editor signed with the name of a New Democratic Party supporter was made public.
   Radio station CJOR quoted an unnamed party source as saying the dirty tricks cam-
 paign of writing the letters and organizing callers to radio talk shows was hatched at meetings at Harrison Hot Springs and at a Vancouver hotel.
   The campaign was to be used for the February, 1974, byelection in North Vancouver-Capilano and the December, 1975 provincial election. The Liberals won the byelection but Social Credit ousted the NDP in the 1975 general election.
   Earlier reports said the dirty tricks letters, which are the
QUEBEC ARGUMENT
New federalism called dead end
  QUEBEC (CP)-The Parti Quebecois government’s white paper on sovereignty-association argues that renewed federalism is adead end and sovereignty-association is the only way out of Quebec’s constitutional deadlock.
   “If we really want a new agreement between Quebec and the rest of Canada, we must substitute for federalism a new
 supporters of the "No” will not have been able to agree on a concrete formula of renewed federalism,”
   It describes Confederation as a “misunderstanding.” French Quebecers saw the 1867 pact as a way of safeguarding the rights they had, while Englishspeaking Canadians considered it a way to install a strong central government in Canada
 subject of a province-wide police investigation, were developed a year ago for the May 10 provincial election.
   The latest letter, the third with the name of Gordon Townsend forged, appeared in the Cowichan Leader at Duncan, B.C. March 28.
   Leader editor Leslie Leyne said Wednesday the letter’s authenticity was not checked.
   The letter criticized NDP MLAs Barbara Wallace, Karen Sanford. Bob Skelly, Norm Levi and others for attacking the B.C. Resources Investment Corp. share distribution.
   Meanwhile, the party source said Bennett attended the strategy meetings in 1974 and told supporters the party would have to adopt some NDP tactics in order to win. Bennett said he was referring to the NDP's successful door-to-door canvassing, not dirty tricks.
   Bill Vander Zalm, current municipal affairs minister, Grace McCarthy, past-president of the party and current human resources minister. and Hugh Harris, Bennett’s campaign manager and current executive director of the party, also were reported to have attended the meetings.
Subscription
price
increases
   Increased transportation costs, along with increased production and material costs, have combined to necessitate an increase in the home delivery price of The Citizen.
  Effective Nov 1, the monthly subscription rate by carrier increases to $4 per month from $3.50. Of the increase, 40 per cent, or 20 cents per subscription, will go to the carrier.
   At the same time, the single copy price of the newspaper outside the greater Prince George area has been increased from 20 to 25 cents per copy. Single copies of the paper sold in the city will remain at 20 cents.
   Mail subscribers will also be affected by the new rates.
Trade surplus takes big jump
  OTTAWA (CP) - Canada’s trade surplus leaped to $641 million in September, the largest monthly surplus since March, 1978, Statistics Canada reported today.
   The huge surplus compares with revised figures showing trade deficits of $60 million in August and $13 million in July.
Escape scheme sewn up neatly
  SALEM, Ore (AP) — Two prisoners who were sewn inside a cloth-covered couch made the first escape from the Oregon State Penitentiary in 26 years Tuesday, prison officials said.
   The prisoners stole the truck that carried the couch outside the prison gates and later fled in a car they took from a woman at knife point, officers said.
   The car was found abandoned Tuesday night on the city’s northeast side.
   The escapers, Delbert Fuston, 56, and Wayne Strickland, 49, remained at large today.
   Authorities said the pair had other prisoners in the furniture shop sew them inside the threeby-eight foot sofa.
   Fuston was described as 5 feet 6 1-2 inches tall and 155 pounds. Strickland is 5 feet 7 inches and 180 pounds.
   “It apparently was a tight squeeze in that couch,” a prison spokesman said.
    Strickland worked in the prison’s furniture factory, which makes furnishings for state offices
    Strickland h .d been sentenced to a life prison term i«r parole violation as a habitual criminal after convictions for burglary, robbery and kidnapping.
   Fuston was serving a 20-year sentence for robbery.
   The car was taken from Debra Godwin, 24, a file clerk with the state corrections division, prison officials said.
   She said she was getting into her car near the Oregon State Hospital when the men accosted her.
   Officers said she was forced into the car between the two men, but was
 released a few blocks away. She suffered what police said was a superficial puncture wound in an arm. Miss Godwin said each man had a knife.
   Larry Roach, executive assistant to prison Superintendent Hoyt Cupp, said the couch was hauled on a flatbed truck to a nearby warehouse, which was then locked from the outside. The escapers took off the warehouse door hinges and drove away in the truck.
   A prisoner was put in an isolation unit on suspicion of aiding the escapers. His name was not released.
   The last escape from the prison compound in southeast Salem occurred in April, 1953 when five men hid in a false bottom of a flax wagon. The escapers were recaptured within a day.
The
Thursday, November 1,1979
23; No. 212
Single Copy 20' •
Outside Prince George 25e
Prince George, British Columbia
PICKETS HEEDED
Airport stays open without firefighters
    There were no firefighters on duty at Prince George airport today because of a picketline by striking air radio operators. No scheduled flights landed this morning.
    A spokesman for CP Air said the lack of firefighters and the morning fog diverted its early flight to Fort St. John.
     At PWA a spokesman said it was purely because of the fog that its two flights overflew Prince George.
     “It is up to the captain whether he wants to land without fire protection,” said local PWA manager Don Mitchell.
    The air radio operators closed down all operations of their office in Prince George after talks with the Treasury Board on a new contract broke off Wednesday.
     Rick Hart, local spokesman for the operators, said all B.C. air radio stations are closed down and members are no longer providing any kind of service.
    “We feel that Transport Canada and the airlines are unconcerned about the flying public’s safety and therefore we withdrew all services,” Hart said.
    Air radio operators provide weather information, navigation aid and flight planning services.
     Hart said he would not board an aircraft because he feels it is not safe.
    “They are flying with inadequate weather information and navigation aids arc not monitored, which makes them unreliable,” Hart said.
    CP Air spokesman Ralph Sharp does not believe that safety is endangered.
     “As long as pilots feel it is safe to fly, they II fly. Airlines would shut down should it become unsafe. No airline wants to confront a major disaster because of unsafe conditions,” he said.
    A spokesman for the Public Service Alliance of Canada said talks failed after treasury board reduced its pay offer to more than half of the 1,167 operators at 142 airport and coast guard stations.
    The spokesman said the alliance notified operators immediately and radio stations were shut down in 11 Northwest Territories locations and in London and Wiarton, Ont.
  Others were expected to follow.
     "We see it as a real slap in the face,” the spokesman said.
    Treasury board increased its over-all pay increase offer to 15.48 per cent from 15.31 per cent over two years but in doing so reduced its offer to 950 of the operators in the two lowest-paid categories, the spokesman said.
Parole
board
created
   VANCOUVER (CP) - British Columbia will have a provincial parole board Jan. 1, Henry Bjarnason, director of the Lower Mainland Regional Correctional Centre (Oakalla) said Wednesday.
   This means that prisoners eligible for parole in provincial jails could be released earlier than when they were subject to decisions made in Ottawa, he said. The decision-making process on parole applications will take place locally rather than in Ottawa.
Robbers get away with million
   MONTREAL (CP) - A gang of at least three bandits used a hijacked grocery truck, a rifle and a key in Wednesday’s robbery of more than $1 million from an armored truck, police said today.
    A police spokesman said the
constitutional formula,” the .......7............................................................................................................................................... latest estimate was that about
 document says.
   “Recent history proves the impossibility of renewing Canadian federalism in a way that could answer the needs of both Quebec and Canada.”
   The white paper is to be released later today but despite heavy security measures the French-language daily Journal de Quebec obtained a copy of the 32-page resume of the paper entitled La Nouvelle Entente Quebec-Canada, The New Quebec-Canada Agreement, and published excerpts.
   Recent polls, including one commission d by the Quebec government, indicate that renewed federalism is more popular among Quebecers than the PQ’s sovereignty-association option.
  Supporters of renewed federalism “have come to assert that a negative response by Quebecers in the referendum would give the signal for a fundamental reform of Canadian federalism," the document says.
   A “No” vote in next spring’s referendum would be seen by English Canada as a vote for the status quo.
   “This reaction is all the more likely because in Quebec
HUGE PROPOSAL FOR AREA
Financier tours coal mine site
   A New York financier and the chairman of Vancouver-based Norco Resources Ltd. were touring the site of the old Bowron River coal property today south of Purden Lake.
   Norco announced in Vancouver earlier this week it had made a tentative deal with a Taiwan government agency to spend $80 million to re-open the old property and ship $ 1 bil lion worth of coal over 25 years.
   Norco chairman Morris M. Menzies arrived in Prince George Wednesday night with Marty Schlesinger of New York, who is looking at possible financing for the company.
   While in Prince George, Menzies announced Norco had just acquired a further seven coal licences and now holds the entire Bowron River coal basin.
   The company, which originally held only three licences in the area covering only 20 per cent of the basin, said it acquired six other licences on March 28 this year from the B.C. Department of Mines.
   Menzies said the company now holds 16 licences which cover 15 square miles “or the .vhole coal basin.”
   His announcement said the company had spent $2.5 million on exploration, diamond drilling and underground work up to the end of March on the original three licence areas. He said this proved reserves of six million metric tonnes in that area alone and indicated an additional 55 million tonnes.
   In an earlier announcement, Norco president John Wilson said a memorandum of agreement was signed in Taipai on Oct. 9 with the Taiwan Power Company calling for the annual
 delivery of 200.000 tonnes of coal in 1982, rising to one million tonnes in 1986.
   Development of the old coal mining property would create 600 jobs. Regional district officials anticipate most of those employees would locate in the Blackburn and Tabor areas.
   Wilson said Taiwan government and power officials visited the mine site, 56 kilometres east of Prince George, last summer.
    The agreement with Taiwan is subject to a feasibility study that the coal can be profitably mined and financing can be arranged.
   Menzies also released to The Citizen copies of letters exchanged between Norco and Japane.se interests regarding the purchase of any coal surplus to the needs of Taiwan.
   A letter from Kanematsu-Gosho (Canada) Inc. says it has learned Norco obtained 100-per-ceni control over the Bowron basin and “we, therefore, wish to ta.