today ir» brief
COCAINE use may have caused the airplane crash that killed singer Rick Nelson and six others in Texas, says a published report. Page
THE DAIRY industry is trying to retrieve millions of plastic milk crates scattered in living rooms and backyards across the country. Page
INSURANCE is an issue with sports groups across North America, but the crunch is coming soon for some who can’t buy a policy anywhere.
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Index
Ann Landers...
Entertainment .
International...
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'I only got halfway there and it ran out of gasl"
Intense Page 15
Sadrack says
Some snow and sunny periods are expected for today, with mostly cloudy skies overnight. Expect clouds and snowflurries Thursday.
Chances of precipitation are 40 per cent today, 10 per cent overnight and 50 per cent Thursday.
The predicted high today and Thursday is near 3, with an overnight low near -3.
Tuesday’s high was 6, the overnight low was -3, there was 0.2 mm of rain
Details page 7
and no sunshine recorded.
Sunset today is at 4:19 p.m. and sunrise Thursday is at 8:20 a.m.
The ______40c
C itiz en
Prince George V JL Wednesday, January 15, 1986
Free trade opposition mounting
Premier Bill Bennett meets with Japanese Prime Minister Yashiro Nakasone on Tuesday.
JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER VISITS
Pacific ties envisioned
PWA UNIONS WANT MEDIATOR
CALGARY (CP) — Unions representing striking flight attendants and machinists have applied for federal mediation to try to end an eight-week-old strike at Pacific Western Airlines.
Union spokesman Chris Anderson described the move today as “simply another avenue to explore.”
The ticket and cargo agents’ union is not involved in the application because it feels progress is being made in its negotations with the company, Anderson said.
He said he expects talks involving a mediator could start as soon as Monday. Meanwhile, negotiations will carry on.
About 1,800 PWA em-
Iployees went on strike Nov. 20-
Insurance help seen for cities
VERNON (CP) - Relief might be coming for British Columbia municipalities hit by big increases in insurance premiums, says Mayor Lyall Hanson.
Hanson, who is also second vice-president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, says the provincial government is drafting a law for the next session of the legislature that would limit the liability of municipalities.
Some B.C. municipalities have seen premiums increase by more than 10 times and a few have dropped insurance coverage, said
Hanson.
He said that by putting a limit on the liability of municipalities, it is hoped insurance companies will lower rates and more competition will be encouraged.
Protests halt ice sculpture
EDMONTON — After receiving more than 800 heated phone calls from angry citizens, city council got cold feet and decided Tuesday to scrap plans to build a $50,000 ice sculpture of Thor, the Norse god of thunder and war.
The five-storey sculpture was planned for next month’s Winter Cities Forum.
Negotiations are under way with Japanese sculptors to provide an “alternative, more modest centrepiece.”
Mayor Laurence Decore said he felt the ice sculpture was still a good project and could be erected in future years.
“I think it was simply a matter of not explaining it as well as it should have been explained,” he said
by Canadian Press
OTTAWA — A movement that could turn into a national coalition against free trade was launched Tuesday during the final hours of the national economic summit arranged by organized labor.
The beginning was made at a hastily arranged meeting by about two dozen of the estimated 150 delegates attending the conference of behalf of labor, voluntary, farm, handicapped, educational, religious and other organizations.
Free trade — or freer trade, as the Conservative government prefers to calls its trade initiative with the United States — wasn’t included in the formal conference agenda.
But the first group to sign up as a participant in the coalition, which will begin as a national communications network, was the Canadian Labor Congress, the driving force in organizing the three-day summit.
Other founding groups include: the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the CLC’s largest affiliate with 300,000 members; the National Action Committee on the Status of Women; the National Farmers Union; the Canadian Council of Churches; and the Council of Canadians, a nationalist lobby group.
Dick Martin, executive vice-president of the labor congress, said he expects the list of participating organizations to grow rapidly.
Free trade, and related issues such as deregulation and privatization of government services, will be the biggest issue facing organized laDor and many other groups in the months ahead, Martin forecast.
He said the initial role of the coalition will be to exchange research data and keep track of various initiatives across the country aimed at changing the government’s position on free trade.
Much of the battle against free trade will probably take1 place at the provincial level, with local and regional groups exerting pressure on premiers and legislatures to use their influence on Ottawa, Martin said.
“We’ll have to see how it develops. It’s a very loose concept at the moment because we’re just starting to put it together.”
Bob Laxer of the Council of Canadians predicted provincial governments and political parties will play important roles in the struggle.
“The fact is that the premiers are going to insist on having a voice,” he told the ad hoc meeting.
Even people like British Columbia Premier Bill Bennett may become useful allies because they are bound to oppose some aspects of free trade, Laxer maintained.
“I don’t care how wacky he is. I don’t care about his politics as long as he is an ally.”
Tony Clarke of the Canadian Council of Churches said his organization has arranged a meeting for late January in Toronto to assess the “ideological dimensions” of free trade.
The goal will be to assess questions such as “the market society” and its implications for individual human beings, he said.
Lynn Kaye of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women said most western countries aren’t following the pro-market and free trade policies such as those advocated by Ottawa and Washington.
One of the first and biggest tasks will be to alert groups and individuals to the dangers of free trade before it is too late to change Ottawa’s mind, she said.
Closer
by Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone reiterated his desire for increased trade between his country and Canada during an afternoon meeting with B.C. Premier Bill Bennett in Vancouver.
“I have no doubt that the two civilizations will converge over the Pacific,” Nakasone told a Vancouver reception.
Before leaving Ottawa earlier in the day, Nakasone told a news conference he would support Canada’s plans for freer trade with the United States as long as they don’t prejudice other trading partners.
Following his meetings with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Nakasone said: “I expressed our view that we shall support such an arrangement with the understanding that the arrangement will not run counter to the principles of the GATT and would not adversely affect other trading partners.
“This is, after all, a new attempt and therefore we are not at all
clear at this stage what results will emerge.”
Bennett met Nakasone for about 20 minutes in the afternoon.
“My discussions and my approach with the (Japanese) prime minister has always been with the strong protectionist mood in the U.S. that to respond to it, we would not want Canada’s trading opportunities to be diminished,” Bennett said.
He noted that Canadian trade with Japan has increased substantially after the past few years, with 52 per cent of Canada’s exports coming from British Columbia.
Japan, on the other hand, is the second largest trading partner of both Canada and the United States.
Bennett said he is pleased with the phasing down of Japanese tariffs on B.C. plywood and the start of tariff reductions on two-by-fours by 1987.
“We are all looking for more liberalized trade in the world,” the premier said. “The greatest pros-
perity the world has known has been since the Second World War and there’s been a liberalization of trade.
“The worst period the world has known was the depression of 1932 when protectionism reduced world trade by two-thirds.”
At the state dinner Tuesday night, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark said: “For Canada, 1986 is the year of Asia. . .there could be no better beginning than to have you here to launch this year, which is so important to our two countries and to our Pacific region.”
Nakasone told the 1,200 guests that earlier he was given the nonor of being the first to ring the peace bell donated by his government to the University of British Columbia.
Speaking through a translator, Nakasone said: “I had a mental image of the sound of the bell reaching out not just over the Pacific but all over the globe in countless circles. I felt as if East is no longer East and West is no longer West.”
He said that like the B.C. flag with the sun shining over the Pacific, “am I not right in suggesting this splendor without diminish-ment which brightens the whole Pacific symbolizes the bright future of the Japan-Canada relationship and Pacific co-operation in a new era where East converges with West?”
During his brief visit to Vancouver, Nafcasone also attended a reception for several hundred Japanese businessmen as well as B.C. business and political leaders.
He told them he and his entourage had been warned to bring his warm clothes to Canada, which he wore all the time in Ottawa but "inside because of the heart-warm-ing welcome, we were almost sweating.”
Nakasone let the other members of his party and government speak because “you are from all prefectures (of Japan) and I want to encourage all of you to write and encourage your friends and relatives to vote for them.”
DRUG APPETITE: $10 BILLION IN CANADA
by Canadian Press
OTTAWA — The RCMP said Tuesday that Canadians may have spent more than $10 billion on illicit drugs in the year ending last March 31.
Solicitor General Perrin Beatty said outside the Commons that the figure shows the need for a law allowing authorities to seize the profits of the drug trade.
Such legislation would allow the govern-
ment to not only jail people convicted of deal ing in illegal drugs, but also seize property bought with the money from drug deals or the savings and investments of drug dealers.
The Conservative government has indicated it will introduce a bill to that effect later this year.
“The most important thing that we want do see done is attack the proceeds of drugs,” Beatty told reporters. “What we have now is massive big business operations operating in Canada and profiting from the drug trade and human misery.”
Beatty said the drug trade is so profitable that Canadians are willing to take tne risk of arrest and imprisonment.
Asked whether the government has considered legalizing marijuana, Beatty replied: “I’m not aware of any intention to do that.” RCMP Chief Supt. R. T. Stamler, director of drug enforcement, said in a message preceding the force’s fourth annual drug report that “a virtually unlimited flow of money
moves upward to high-level international criminals from street sales in Canada.
In its previous annual report, the RCMP estimated that the trade figure in Canada was approaching $10 billion.
Stamler said marijuana and hashish continue to dominate the trade with an estimated street value of $5.6 billion. Heroin was next with sales of $2.8 billion.
A growing market for cocaine followed at $1.2 billion. Chemical drugs, with sales of $400 million and led by LSD, were last.
It was emphasized that the figures are estimates basea on information gleaned from a number of agencies, from investigations, foreign and domestic production and consumption estimates and known crime statistics.
The following breakdowns were taken from the report:
CANNABIS: The RCMP says marijuana continues to be “the most common cannabis derivative available” and potent imports such as sensimilla (female plants with higher THC content than males), Thai sticks and Mexican Red Hair “could be purchased at street level in most domestic drug regions in 1984.”
However, total cannabis seizures were down 76 per cent from the previous year, with marijuana seizures plummeting to 3,844 kilograms from 23,641 kilograms in 1983.
“This dramatic decrease can be explained by the emphasis placed by the RCMP on her-
oin and cocaine, higher level targeting (going for the throat rather than the toes), tne redeployment of drug enforcement personnel during a significant portion of 1984, and the fact that no mothership operations were seized.” Arrests were down 15 per cent.
HEROIN: A bumper crop in Southeast Asia was reflected in lower costs and greater purity on the Canadian market. Seizures rose 30 per cent. Vancouver was the entry point for heroin supplying the four western provinces while southern Ontario was the main eastern point of entry. Ninety per cent arrived by air. Largest shipments arrived in false-sided luggage, smaller shipments "via the postal system.”
COCAINE: 1,161 people were charged, a 13-per-cent increase, and more than 115 kilo-rams were seized, a 17-per-cent increase, rices were stable ($100-$300 a gram, depending on whether the purchase was made in a major city or a far-flung outpost) and purity was rising, indicating, the RCMP said, "that a steady and plentiful supply” was reaching the Canadian market.
CHEMICALS: The most popular across the country was LSD. Meanwhile, commercial mushroom growers were growing "magic mushrooms” containing psilocybin. "Psilocybin continues to be a problem in British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces.” International authorities had warned that amphetamines and barbiturates are probably a greater problem than anyone assumed.
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