today in brief
by BERNICE TRICK Staff reporter
   Controversy surrounding the operation of the newly-opened northern economic development office in Vancouver surfaced during a debate at Monday’s city council meeting.
   Aid. John Backhouse says he’s concerned about the activities at the office, which was designed to promote business opportunities and economic development plans of Northern B.C. communities — especially during Expo 86.
   “What kind of reporting are we going to get (from the office)? Who is involved and what is the outcome? Has there been some extra billing to the Northern Development Council?” he asked.
   "I notice we don’t even have our own telephone number. . .the one listed is that of Pacific Congress Projects Corp. (consultants who run the office).
   Aid. Art Stauble responded to Backhouse’s questions, saying the machinery is in place for proper reporting, adding there is no separate telephone number because the office opened (unofficially) April 26.
   “It may take about five days before everything is worked out,” he said.
   Stauble, who was directly involved as chairman of the Fraser-Fort George Regional District, one of six northern regional districts that established the office, said a seminar is planned to acquaint people with the office and that a quarterly report will be issued.
   As to extra costs, Stauble said the only ones he’s aware of involved the printing of some brochures and an office computer.
   Outside the meeting, Backhouse expressed concern that “the office is not being identified as a northern development office.
   “It’s still being identified as Pacific Congress’s office and I can’t see how we can have a high profile in Vancouver under the name Pacific Congress.”
   Although the office is open for business, Backhouse said, the official opening has been rescheduled for the fall and “we won’t make much of a dent during Expo with an opening at that time.
   “In addition to the $160,000 paid to Pacific Congress annually for a two-year contract, I have information of additional billing like long distance telephone calls which I think Pacific Congress should be picking up.”
   Although Stauble suggested the issue belonged with the Fraser-Fort George Regional District instead of city council, Backhouse didn’t agree.
   "The city of Prince George has put $32,000 into the office, so it is a city matter,” he said.
  Aid. George McKnight said, “There’s a definite need for the absence of political involvement” and he suggested all business with the office be channeled through Dale McMann, manager of the Prince George Region Development Corporation.
“As politicians, I feel we aldermen should stay out of it,” he said.
   Mayor Elmer Mercier replied some business contacts don’t feel that way.
   “I know of three different firms who don’t want to talk with McMann. They want to talk to the mayor.”
now hear this. . .
 ■ Extra copies of Monday’s issue of The Citizen are available at our front desk. The special issue included a special four-pqge pictorial section on the visit of The Prince and Princess of Wales, who were here to open the B.C. Festival of the Arts.
Prince's speech here stuns observers
    by E. KAYE FULTON Southam News VANCOUVER - An intriguing aspect of the British Columbian royal tour is the glimpse it provides of the troubled and groping reflections of the man who will be king.
   Most of the immediate attention is focused, as usual, on the youthful Princess of Wales, who will leave Canada Wednesday just as she did after a 10-day tour in 1983 — without uttering a word in public.
   In contrast, Prince Charles, 37, has revealed himself — on the few occasions he has spoken — to be deeply affected by the doubts and uncertainties of the the 1980s, as well, perhaps, as his own role as the heir, fast approaching middle-age, to the British throne.
   During a speech to open the British Columbia Festival of the
 Arts in Prince George on Sunday, Prince Charles stunned the British press corps with a rambling and muddled dose of philosophy.
  Some veteran royal watchers who have followed Prince Charles’s recent dabblings in vegetarianism, mysticism and eastern philosophy are tucking the transcript away in their files as the first public inkling that the Prince may be heading for a nervous breakdown.
  Even more conservative colleagues found his comments disturbing.
  It was a strange speech to make in a hockey rink in an Interior B.C. lumber town — to an audience of 3,000 who expected something related to the arts but not quite so artsy.
   “I rather feel that deep in the soul of mankind,” Prince Charles began, • “there is a reflec-
 tion as of the surface of a mirror-calm lake of the beauty and the harmony of the universe.
   “But so often that reflection is obscured and ruffled by unaccountable storms.
  “So it depends, I think, on how each one of us is introduced to and made aware of that reflection within us.”
  With rows of balloons wavering from their fastenings on the rink ceiling and not a sound from the audience, Prince Charles continued:
  “I believe we have a duty to our children to try to develop this awareness, for it seems to me that only through the development of inner peace in the individual and through the outer manifestation of that reflection that we can ever hope to attain the kind of peace in this world for which we yearn.”
  Looking out into the crowd,
 his hands on either side of the podium, the Prince finished: “We must try, if we can, to make life into art itself, although it will always remain a tremendous struggle.”
   The Prince’s speeches abroad are normally short and to the point: he opens fairs and buildings, thanks hosts and reaffirms the British monarchy’s continued interest in its subjects.
   By protocol, the speeches are apolitical; by nature they are often personalized, with endearing but innocuous recollections of past visits, punctuated with awkward witticisms.
   At a federal government dinner on the eve of the opening of Expo 86, for example, he told the guests that his first memories of Canada involve travelling “all over the place” with his parents in a train. “Above all else, I recall the ubiquity of
 the dreaded mosquito in Canada.
   “I recall also, on one occasion, getting off the train, I think it was in Manitoba, and climbing onto a Royal Canadian Mounted Police horse which had been provided for several of us and then proceeded to get run away with, which was an interesting experience.”
  But it was the speech in Prince George that caught the watchful Fleet Street attention.
   “It is difficult to tell at this point whether Prince Charles is being the philosopher prince struggling to express himself or whether he is heading for something more serious,” said Ian Brodie, a Los Angeles-based correspondent with the Daily Telegraph in London. “Whichever the case, the speech was very odd.”
WOMEN LOSE ALIMONY
BIG SEVEN SUMMIT
 Farm subsidies tackled
         Southam News TOKYO — Leaders of the seven major Western industrialized countries formally recognized for the first time today that their farm subsidies are provoking trade wars that are harming them all.
   Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said the agreement was a tiny, but important, first step to ending the current U.S-European grain subsidy wars that are “killing Prairie farmers” in Canada.
   Mulroney told a news conference at the end of the three-day Big Seven economic summit that he had pressed the leaders of the U.S., France, West Germany, Italy, Britain and Japan to recognize that subsidies are another form of trade protectionism.
   “I referred to it as the ultimate paradox,” Mulroney said. “Here we come all the way to Tokyo to talk about liberalized trade and while we’re doing it.. .here is what
 the governments in the European Community and the U.S. and Canada are forking out in subsidies.”
  “I said, ‘look, we cannot compete with this. Prairie farmers cannot live with this kind of unfair competition.’”
   The final joint statement of the seven leaders savs that “longstanding policies of domestic subsidy and protection of agriculture in all our countries” are helping contribute to a growing surpluses.
   NEW DELHI (Reuter) - India’s parliament passed a controversial bill today denying civil alimony to divorced Moslem women after a stormy debate in which opponents said the law would reduce Moslem women to the status of animals.
   The bill, which has split India’s 80 million Moslems and caused protests across the country, frees Moslem men from paying alimony after three months in line with religious laws.
   More than 100 women protesters were arrested outside parliament as the lower house approved the
 bill 372-54 after a 14-hour debate.
   Conservatives, Communists, feminists and right-wing Hindus joined in a noisy chorus of opposition to the bill, which they see as a surrender to Moslem fundamentalists.
  They accused Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose Congress party introduced the bill, of appeasing religious hardliners in an attempt to win the minority Moslem vote in key states.
   Gandhi’s party has lost elections in Punjab and Assam states since last September.
The
Prince George
Citizen
Tuesday, May 6, 1986 #
Northern office's value queried
PEAVDA has given Soviet citizens their first detailed account of the Chernobyl disaster.	Page
PATRICK ROY was brilliant in
goal Monday as the Montreal anadiens edged the New York Rangers in overtime. Page
LIFTING restrictions on log exports would add at least $40 million a year to the provincial economy, says a new report.
Page
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The Bull page 12
 Sadrack says
 The weather continues be mainly cloudy with sunny periods and scattered showers. The predicted high today will be near 15 with an overnight low near zero and a high Wednesday near 13.
 The chance of precipitation is 40 per cent today and overnight and 30 per cent Wednesday.
 Monday’s high was 12, the overnight low was 2, there was 0.8 millimetres of rain and 1.4 hours of sunshine recorded.
 A year ago today the high was 14, the low was
"I got a date. Mom said I could borrow your coat."
Details page 9
1, there was a trace of rain and 6.1 hours of sunshine recorded.
Sunset today is at 8:50 p.m. and sunrise Wednesday is at 5:22 a.m.
 Provincial
 competition
 Dancers from across the province give their best performances during B.C. Festival of the Arts theatre dance competitions in prince George. From left, Richard Landry of Vancouver Island and Erin White of the
Citizen photos by Lisa Murdoch
 Sunshine Coast compete in the junior musical theatre dance class, while Tara-Leigh Popp of Kamloops performs in intermediate theatre dance. The competition continues today in St. Mary’s gymnasium.
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