today in brief
OPPOSITION MPs are saying an inquiry into Sinclair Stevens’ conflict of interest allegations can’t be impartial Because of the prime minister’s remark that ne expects Ste- c vens to return to cabinet. Page D
BLIND children in Ontario can “see” famous Canadians by iq feeling molded masks. Page I O
DRUG TESTING for NHL
players is just fine, says 1 c Wayne Gretzky.	Page ID
"You may serve the coffee now, Bellows."
Index
Ann Landers............25
Bridge..................21
Business...............8,9
 City, B.C.......3,6,7,12,27,
Classified............18*24
Comics .................10
Crossword..............22
Editorial.................4
 Entertainment.......10,11
Family.................25
Horoscopes.............21
International.............2
Movies..................10
National.................5
Sports................15-17
Television ..............20
You're kidding! Page 17
Sadrack says
  Today and Thursday are expected to be cloudy with sunny periods and isolated showers, with a clearing trend overnight. The chance of precipitation is 40 per cent today, 20 per cent overnight and 10 per cent Thursday.
  Today’s high will be near 11, the low will be near -1 and Thursday’s high will be near 13.
   Tuesday’s high was 9, the overnight low was 1, there was a trace of precipitation and 5.3 hours of sunshine recorded.
  A year ago today the
 Details page 7
 high was 14, the low was 1, there was 3.2 mm of rain and 13.5 hours of sunshine.
   Sunset today is at 9:04 p.m. and sunrise Thursday is at 5:08 a.m.
                         Jimmy Hegal swings his partner Tiffany Hutton in a square dance Lively performed by Grade 5 and 6 students at Gladstone elementary / school Tuesday evening. The dance was part of an evening of per-evenmg formances which also included singing and a play staged by young _ __drama students at the school. __Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch
NUCLEAR PLANT ACCIDENT
Gorbachev breaks silence
  MOSCOW (AP) - Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev told the Soviet public today that nine people have died and 299 are in hospital because of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in the Ukraine.
  He said the April 26 accident apparently was caused by a power surge and hydrogen explosion.
   It was the Soviet leader’s first public comment on the nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. He said radiation is still dangerous in the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
  “The worst is behind us,” he said, but “we still have a lot to do.”
   Gorbachev said he is extending a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing until Aug. 6 and invited President Ronald Reagan to meet him in Europe or Japan to discuss a permanent nuclear weapons test ban.
   “The (nuclear) accident at Cher-
nobyl showed again what an abyss will open if nuclear war befalls mankind,” Gorbachev said.
He expressed “profound condolences to the families and relatives of the deceased, to the work collectives, to all who suffered
 from that misfortune, who had suffered personal loss.’’
  He assured viewers that the Politburo has taken steps to clean up the reactor and the surrounding area.
 SNOW COVERS CALGARY
   CALGARY (CP) — A spring snowstorm that dumped heavy, wet snow on southern Alberta has forced closure of Calgary International Airport and Highway 2 between Wetaskiwin and Calgary.
   Airport officials said flights were being diverted or delayed or cancelled in some cases today.
   RCMP said Highway 2 was closed because of white-out conditions that accompanied the snowfall.
   Police said visibility is near zero in the Red Deer area and in some places, the highway is covered with ankle-deep snow. A travel warning was issued for all roads in central Alberta.
   The snowfall, which began in Calgary and some other Kouthem Alberta regions Tuesday night, was expected to dump as much as 10 centimetres in the area by today.
The
Prince George
Citizen
40<
Wednesday, May 14, 1986
Lumber dispute down to crunch
by KEN BERNSOHN Staff reporter
  The Canada-U.S. lumber dispute is more serious than it has been in months, according to B.C. deputy minister of forests Al MacPerson.
  “We’re getting down to the crunch,” MacPherson said.
  “All hell is breaking loose here,” Bill Lange, manager of resource planning for the National Forest Products Association, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. this morning.
  Lange repeated American lumber company allegations that Canada’s timber cutting fees act as a subsidy, letting Canadians unfairly capture a third of the U.S. lumber market.
  The American companies have repeatedly asked for a U.S. $27 duty on a 1,000 bpoard feet of Canadian lumber, or an equivalent raise in provincial fees.
  According to provincial, federal, and U.S. sources, here’s the current status of the dispute:
  •	At U.S. Canada lumber talks in Washington today, Canada is formally proposing the problem should be dealt with by special envoys, as the acid rain dispute was handled.
  •	The provincial government has representatives in Ottawa today to discuss strategy and who the special envoys might be. Two names under discussion are Dr. David Bond, former federal economic coordinator in British Columbia, presently head of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, and former royal commissioner on forestry Peter Pearse, of UBC.
  •	An omnibus trade bill containing restrictions against Canadian lumber could pass the House of Representatives as early as the end of this week. It’s expected to pass no later than the end of next week.
  It’s also expected Senate action will take longer. If a Senate trade bill is passed, it would have to go to a conference committee before re-passing in each house of Congress on its way to becoming law. If a trade bill does go to the president it would arrive in the Oval Office in early August.
bul I et i n
  OTTAWA (CP) — Conservative Quebec MP Robert Toupin will leave the Tory caucus to sit in Parliament as an independent.
  Toupin told a reporter with La Presse Canadienne, the French-language service of The Canadian Press, that he informed Prime Minister Brian Mulroney about his decision Tuesday.
  The MP for Terrebonne publicly criticized a government decision last December which allowed the closure of a Gulf oil refinery in Montreal and today said he can no longer support Tory economic policies.
  Toupin has informed Commons Speaker John Bosley about his decision and his departure from Tory ranks was effective today.
  Francois Gerin, a Quebec Tory MP who earlier this year challenged the Conservative establishment by calling for an end to corporate political donations, said Toupin has not hidden his disappointment with the government’s policies for Quebec.
  The move will be a blow to Mulroney’s party, which has lost ground steadily in Quebec since it swept 58 of the province’s 75 ridings in the general election of September 1984.
  Mulroney is scheduled to return Thursday to Ottawa.
 Standing in the Commons: Conservatives 209, Liberals 39, NDP 30, Independent 2, Vacant 2.
  •	As predicted several weeks ago, the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports has decided to file a case witn the U.S. International Trade Commission, which is scheduled to come up with a preliminary determination of injui7 June 26 and a preliminary finding of a subsidy amount and tariff, if the Americans win, around Oct. 9 - just in time to affect U.S. congressional electioneering.
  •	In Victoria, Premier Bill Bennett has repeated that B.C. is not changing its position.
  “We agree to the concept of a free trade discussion in which all items are on the table, with no preconditions, no exceptions,” the premier said.
  Frank Howard (NDP—Skeena), the Opposition forests spokesman, said tne federal government “appears to be doublecrossing British Columbia on the lumber issue.”
  “We are in a position where we can proceed with unilateral action,
  OTTAWA (CP) — Daily mail delivery may become a thing of the past in Canada.
  Michel Cote, the minister responsible for Canada Post, said Tuesday that alternate-day delivery is being considered to bring postal deficits under control.
  Cote said serious measures are
Milk, rain samples taken here
  Unofficial radioactivity tests by a Provincial Emergency Program radiological defence officer in Prince George indicate rainwater falling here poses no immediate health problem.
  High radiation levels were found in rainfall over Edmonton and Vancouver. However, while they are high, the levels found so far are about 100,000 times below the measure at which the federal Health Department would warn people to stay inside.
  The radioactivity was because of the recent Soviet nuclear accident at a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl.
  Don Fraser, the radiological defence officer, has had federal and provincial government training in radioactivity testing and has both his own equipment and that of PEP.
  He said his equipment was not sensitive enough to pick up any traces of radiation. But he also said equipment used by officials in Ottawa is far more delicate than his.
  However, he told The Citizen today, "Personally I feel safe. I’m not too worried and I’m not too worried for my family, with the amount I’m measuring.”
  He tested water draining off his own roof and it was “way below” the ability of his equipment to register any radioactivity.
  Daily milk, rainwater and ground-level air samples are now being taken here, in Terrace and Revelstoke and shipped by air to Ottawa laboratories.
  Results of those tests, done between Saturday and Monday, haven’t been announced yet. Earlier rain water tests in Vancouver did, however, show significant radioactivity levels.
with administration approval,” Lange said.
  Jack Munro, president of the Western Canada regional council of the International Woodworkers of America, said the proposal may have some merit, but “I hope that this does not mean there’s been some kind of agreement some place that we don’t know about.”
  He said he fears Canada may have already traded off the Canadian lumber industry’s interests in order to move more quickly on fre-er-trade talks.
  “My biggest concern is that the politicians are going to screw it up,” Munro said.
  “The lumber industry has had free trade for years. We’re really quite efficient so they (the Americans) want countervailing duties. I think we should learn a lesson from that.”
  U.S. President Ronald Reagan has said he will take unilateral action to help the U.S. industry if current Canada-U.S. negotiations do not settle the issue soon.
required to meet a two-year deadline set in February to cure the post office’s chronic deficits. The deadline was imposed by Finance Minister Michael Wilson in his latest budget.
  Canada Post, which has 60,000 employees and moves seven billion pieces of mail a year, had a deficit of $243 million in the fical year ending March 31.
  Cote, questioned first in the Commons and later by reporters, said alternate-day delivery is one of several options under consideration to cut costs.
  Others include increased use of community and group mail boxes.
  The issue was raised initially in the Commons by Cyril Keeper, New Democrat postal critic, who said he had information that Canada Post was considering cutting delivery to once every three days.
  Cote, asked outside the Commons whether he was talking about delivery every two days or every three days, gave a confusing response.
  “We could talk about three times a week. We could talk about four times a week,” he said. “It could be five days a week and taking a day off, something like that.”
  Cote said he expects a new Canada Post business plan to be approved by the end of June, allowing the multi-billion-dollar agency to meet its financial obligations.
  details probably will not be settled by May 21, the day new Canada Post president Michael Lander is to make his first appearance before a Commons committee, Cote added.
Northeast gets new gas plant
  VICTORIA (CP) — A new gas processing plant will be constructed in the northeastern part of British Columbia in the South Sikanni region, Energy Minister Tony Brummet said Tuesday.
  Government approval has been given to Remington Energy Ltd. of Calgary to build the plant in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, about 170 kilometres northwest of Fort St. John.
  Cost of the processing plant and gathering system is estimated at $7 million, the government said.
  The plant will handle up to
845,000	cubic metres of gas a day.
Alternate-day mail seen as cost cutter
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