Restraint' guidelines stymie city
         by TOM NIXON Staff Reporter
    The guillotine hanging over this year’s $34 million provisional city budget has been stayed until the guidelines for Premier Bill Bennett’s wage and budget restraint program are revealed.
    More than $1 million in budget expenditure cuts and a total $1.6 million in taxation savings were proposed for council debate Monday.
    Some drastic slashing of recreation programs and street maintenance were proposed, including cancellation of some road oiling, reduction in street sweeping and cancellation of the parks construction program and children’s summer parks programs.
    Confusion over how the Premier's 12 per cent ceiling on municipal budget increases will be enforced put the recommendations in abeyance, however.
    Bennett announced his restraint program last week.
   Although Mayor Elmer Mercier wanted to continue to search for further cost-cutting, council voted to wait for the restraint guidelines.
    Mercier is concerned that Bennett recognize the city is stuck with a number of fixed costs it cannot control.
    The city has already negotiated an 28-per-cent wage increase over two years for its unionized workers, monstrous snow removal costs face city hall this winter and police costs were increased tnore than 25 per cent by the provincial-federal policing agreement.
    “You add (the fixed costs) together and over the past year it all increased 50 per cent or more,” Mercier said
    He said he’d like to know what “allowances” the Bennett policy will apply to special costs.
    "Maybe the lesson is we should all live in Phoenix,” he said.
    The mayor said council could learn that Monday’s proposals, which cut the predicted property tax increases from 20 percent to about 17, on average, are considered enough by the provincial government.
BULLETIN
    OTTAWA (CP) — The government has announced sanctions against Poland and Moscow including suspension of some exchange programs ar.d postponement of negotiations on Poland’s debts.
    External Affairs Minister Mark MacGuigan said in a written statement Tuesday that Ottawa is taking these steps because of “repression of civil liberties in Poland.”
   The minister said the measures against the Soviet Union include:
    —Review of planned high-level contacts to see whether they should proceed.
    —Postponement of negotiations on exchange programs in science, education and culture.
    At least two aldermen weren’t satisfied with that, however.
    Alderman Richard Godfrey said he still wants $2 million in cuts, not the $1.1 million proposed.
   And Alderman Hans Taal warned council he’ll seek a reduction in the recreation co-ordinators' staff from six to two to save what he claims is another $110,000.
Paycheques cut back at Mac-Bio
   POWELL RIVER, B.C. (CP) - A depressed market continues to plague British Columbia’s forest industry, resulting in cuts in forestry operations, plant closures and layoffs affecting thousands of industry workers.
    MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. announced Monday that the paycheques of 3,700 salaried employees will be cut 10 to 15 per cent March 1.
    Top company executives, including chairman Calvert Knudsen and president Ray Smith, face pay cuts of 15 per cent and lesser executives and managers of 10 per cent. For Knudsen, who earns about $402,000 annually, it means a loss of about $60,000 a year.
    Workers at MacMillan Bloedel’s pulp and paper operation in Powell River were the latest to feel the economic squeeze when the company handed layoff notices to 1,600 of the plant’s 1,900 hourly-paid employees Monday.
    The layoffs will be for the period between March 30 and April 13.
Wealthy lifestyle 'almost obscene'
    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The wife of a Saudi Arabian sheik was awarded $75,000 Monday to support her for the next three weeks and was granted custody of her four children after she testified about a lifestyle her lawyer called “so opulent, it’s almost obscene.”
    Superior Court Judge Harry Shafer, who sometimes gasped in astonishment at the details of royal extravagance revealed by Sheika Dena Al Fassi, said he believed she was entitled to the money until the next court hearing, to be held March 16.
    The sheika, 23, seeks half of the 27-year-old sheik’s fortune, estimated at $6 billion.
    In her days with the sheik, the sheika said it was not uncommon for them to spend $2 million a month on personal expenses, including trips to Paris where she would buy between 12 and 15 evening gowns at a time at a cost of $20,000 each and more.
Stage set for Socred-labor shoot-out
Ihe • j • __
 Citizen %
            Tuesday, February 23,1982 Prince George, British Columbia	^
An analysis by GEORGE OAKE Southam News
  VANCOUVER — Like any pig in a poke, British Columbia Premier Bill Bennett’s wage control scheme looks as though it will grunt all year.
   The first squeal, in the form of a demand for a 33-per-cent pay hike in a one-year contract, has been slapped on the table by the Health Sciences Association (HSA), an organization representing 4.500 provincial hospital technicians.
  “Why should we shoulder the load?" asked HSA executive director Jack Campbell.
  Such brazen defiance of Bennett’s Compensation Stabilization Program (CSP) that would enforce wage hikes of between eight and 14 per cent in the B.C. public sector is only the beginning, however.
  The 25,000 member Hospital Employees Union is in the middle of negotiations for a 30-per-cent wage hike. More than 16,000 registered nurses sit down at the bargaining table next month in search of a 20-per-cent increase. The 45,000-member B.C. Government Employees Union is also spoiling for a fight.
  “If there isn’t an agreement by midnight July 31, 1982. there will be a strike,” vowed John Fryer, BCGEU general secretary last June.
Inevitably, the grunting is going to turn into a roar of
outrage. B.C.’s public servants are well aware they have lost in real wages the past four years. The BCGEU, for example, settled for an eight-per-cent increase in each of the past three years.
  Disparate observers, including the former B.C. Labor Relations Board Chairman Paul Weiler, now teaching at Harvard University, and Manitoba Premier Howard Pawley have noted the basic unfairness of the premier’s concept.
   Pawley said he "sharply disagreed with the plan because it zeroed in on “a particular class of individual,” a criticism echoed by Weiler who predicted the partial wage controls would fail.
  That may be what Bennett has in mind. As a shrewd politican governing the most unionized province in the coun-
try there is every indication is that he is picking a fight with "greedy labor" which will carry him through an election.
   Why else whould he appoint a commissioner to enforce wage rollbacks at a per diem rate of $325 plus living and travelling expenses.? If the man works a five-day week for one year he’ll be pulling in $84,500 per annum, or $500 more than the premier receives for governing the province.
   Why else would he inform business leaders of what he was going to say in his broadcast last Thursday night while leaving labor leaders in the dark? Bennett compounded the insult by not informing the federal government either.
  Senators Ray Perrault and Jack Austin, B.C.’s two appointed cabinet ministers in the Trudeau administration, were hightailing it back to B.C. last Thursday to hold a
late-night press conference in response to whatever Bennett had to say.
  Bad weather grounded their flight in Toronto, but staff members admitted later the senators had no idea what the premier might utter.
   If Bennett really wanted his plan to fly, why wouldn’t he make the polite gesture of informing labor leaders in advance and at least briefing the federal government so it could respond positively, adding weight to his daring scheme?
  Even the philosophy behind wage controls in B.C. at this time is suspect. While the provincial cost of living rose 14.2 per cent in the period between July. 1980, and July, 1981, salaries increased only an average of 11.2 per cent, according to a survey conducted by the management consultant firm of Thorne, Stevenson and Kellogg.
  Despite continuing inflation, B.C. wage settlements in January, 1982, averaged 14.6 per cent, or less than two per cent above the annual provincial inflation rate of 13.3 per cent.
  Yet B.C.’s Socreds, who anted up a healthy 32-per-cent increase in a 27-month contract for government ferry workers and a 40-per-cent fee hike for B.C. doctors over 24 months, suddenly insist on limiting all public sector employees to a basic 10-per-cent wage hike in 1982.
   As Bill Bennett trots toward an election his pig in the poke is beginning to smell like a red herring.
                  BENNETT SPOILING FOR AN ELECTION?
OCEAN RANGER TRAGEDY
 Lifeboat ramming hinted
    by E.KAYE FULTON Southam News
   ST. JOHN’S, Nfid. - A supply ship standing by the ill-fated Ocean Ranger radioed that the oil rig was still upright and “okay to land a helicopter on” at 2:55 a.m. last Monday — 90 minutes after the crew abandoned it.
    According to a confidential Mobil Oil transcript, 35 minutes after that report, Steven Romansky, Mobil’s operations manager in St. John’s, advised a second rig nearby not to let helicopters land on the Ocean Ranger “unless absolutely safe to do so.”
    The transcript also says a supply ship standing nearby may have rammed a lifeboat with survivors on board who were frantically bailing out water.
    The Ocean Ranger sank during a violent North Atlantic storm early in the morning of Feb. 15. All 84 crew members died.
    The transcript, initialed by Romansky, was leaked Monday to Gerry Phalen, a reporter for St. John’s radio station CJYQ.
    Phalen said today that a man identify-
 ing himself as an RCMP officer investigating the disaster telephoned him and requested a copy of the document “because Mobil wouldn’t give him one.” Mobil Oil, which leased the supposed “fail-safe" rig to explore Hibernia oil reserves off the east coast of Newfoundland, has steadfastly refused in the last
   OTTAWA (CP) — Replacement of obsolete radar at major airports was delayed for several years and is still being blocked by bureaucratic infighting in the Transport Department, says a report on air safety.
    Mr. Justice Charles Dubin says in his final report the radar is about 20 years out of date, yet the department’s top officials allowed rivalry between its telecommunications and air traffic services to delay installation of new equipment.
    The report, tabled in the Commons on Monday by Transport Minister Jean-Luc
 week to release details about rescue operations.
    Only two time references have been released by the company: the 1 a.m. call from the rig to alert the Coast Guard that the structure was listing as much as 15 degrees and the 1:30 a.m. report that the crew was evacuating.
 Pepin, also says the government should require emergency locator transmitters to be installed in all civilian aircraft.
    Pepin told reporters later that his department has informed pilots their planes must be equipped with the transmitters by April 1
    He said the government has budgeted $217 million for new radar equipment and tenders will be called the end of March.
   Government requirements for Canadian-built equipment and the lack of suitable radar among equipment now available have added to the delays.
Metrication
battle
promised
    BROCKVILLE, Ont. (CP) - An organization opposing metrication criticized governments and the media Monday night while launching a national campaign against the mandatory use of metric weights and measures.
    Taking as its slogan “Your Freedom To Measure is a Measure of Your Freedom,” the group Measure Canadian unveiled a nine-point program to achieve “freedom of choice for all Canadians in the use of measurement systems.”
   Bob Runciman, Progressive Conservative member of the legislature for Leeds, told a meeting attended by more than 400 eastern Ontario residents that forced metrication is an infringement on Canadians’ rights and freedom of choice.
    He lashed out at all levels of government for ignoring “this assault on our freedom," and at the media for becoming an “extension of the metric machine."
    Measure Canadian hopes to raise $100,000 to pay for legal challenges to metrication, including financial support for businesses that disobey the metric law.
Obsolete radar cited
                              Assistant Cubmaster Bruce Thiel gives last-minute advice to Third Fort George Wolf Cubs Warren Thiel, 9, left, and John Towers, 10, during Kubkar competitions at Parkwood Mall. The annual car rally, held The race is on	during Scout-Guide Week, continues daily from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. with final heats running Saturday at
                            12:30 p.m. The two fastest and two best-looking free-wheeling models will compete against Lower Mainland winners in the spring.
HERMAN
"I reviewed your salary, as you requested. We're paying you to much!"
FEATURED TODAY
 Attack by pirates
 In a pirate attack early today, armed IRA guerrillas captured a British cargo vessel, cast its 10-man crew adrift in a lifeboat and blew up the ship, say police. Page 2.
 National social crime
 The reasons men beat their wives are numerous and the incidence spans all social strata, says a report on what is termed a social — not private — crime against women Page 10.
Index
Bridge............................21
Business.......................8, 9
City. B.C....................3. 14
Classified...................18-22
Comics...........................24
Crossword......................20
 Entertainment...........24, 25
Family...........................10
Horoscopes.....................25
International...................2
Movies...........................24
National..........................5
Sports........................15-17
THE WEATHER
Kditorial.........................4 Television.
 .2(1
   The weatherman offers little good news these days, as the arctic condition gets worse.
   Cloud, cold, wind and snow are forecast, with highs today and Tuesday expected to be around -8 and the overnight low -25.
   Steady winds of approximately 20 kmh will make it seem even colder.
   There was no sunshine Monday and .6 cm of snow. The high was -4 and the low -18.
    Last year this date the extreme temperatures were 2 and -4.
   Today's sunset is sche-
Sadrack says . . .
Details page 7
 duled for 5:36 p.m., with sunrise Wednesday 7:11 a.m.
NOW HEAR THIS
 •	Here’s a brave city alderman who isn’t afraid of the wrath of feminists or off-road truck enthusiasts. During debate Monday, Alderman George McKnight commented about the Women's Equal Rights Association: “I pui this women’s rights association in the same league as tho four-by-four club.”
 •	Arm wrestlers don't drive cars. One look at the Inn of the North parking lots Saturday afternoon told you something unusual was happening. The Citizen-sponsored event drew a Canadian record field and most of them arrived in a pickup truck or four-wheel-drive.
 •	The big winner in this year’s Mardi Gras is still not known. Lucky button number 1261 was drawn Monday in the lottery for the $8,000 diamond, but as yet nobody has claimed the prize. Owner of the winning number is asked to contact Mardi Gras headquarters at 564-3737.