The Prince George
Citizen
  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1986 ^	50 CENTS
 INCLUDES)
TV
TIMES
\ Harry Rankin's laughing 6    
L .ions, Edmonton ready 13     
f ’ros, cons of tidal power 39 
                                  ......20-24 
                                              
                                              
City, B.C......... ........25-35              
                                  ......22,23 
                                  ..........5 
                                  ......13-17 
MEMBERS PICKET FELLOW WORKERS
Strike fund splits IWA ranks
NO MORE BAILOUTS?
  VANCOUVER (CP) — Premier Bill Vander Zalm wants to get his government out of the marketplace.
  “This whole idea of providing grants or even low-interest or subsidized loans has got to stop,” Vander Zalm told the Canadian Chamber of Commerce earlier this week.
  Chopping grants and halting industry bailouts hardly seems like something calculated to win business votes, but the premier’s idea has lots of industry support.
  Business representatives say grants and loans are just political tools. They say governments get in the way of companies being truly competitive in the world market. And some say it takes someone like Vander Zalm, a self-made millionaire, to see the wisdom of such a move.
  “It’s a free-enterprise point of view,” said Graham Clark, chairman of the Vancouver Board of Trade. “When you have grants, you have to have somebody to administer those grants. It also intrudes on the privacy of the individual who accepts the grant and it is generally tied to a political consideration.”
  But Clark said: “You can’t suddenly kneecap an industry that has been receiving grants, it needs a chance to phase out the grants.”
Tax hike vetoed as deficit grows
    by JOHN FERGUSON
Closeup
 Fred Steinmetz explains the quality of testing unstained specimens on a research quality microscope to John Chapman, chief medical technician for Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, during the B.C. Society of Medical Technologists sixth annual convention in Prince George this week. The microscope gives a video readout of the slide on a closed-circuit color television screen and is valued at $7,800. The slide shown is at 250 times magnification and can be enlarged up to 1,250 times. Convention story, page 3. citizen photo by Dave Milne
B.C. LUMBER
  Tariff lobby set
Southam News
 TORONTO — Finance Minister Michael Wilson made it official Thursday — the federal spending deficit will be about $2.5 billion over target this year, hitting $32 billion.
  Wilson blamed lower-than-expected oil prices and slower economic growth for sharply cutting into projected revenues.
  But he rejected tax hikes or spending cuts to try to stay on the $29.5-billion deficit target. He said those measures would only compound the economic difficulties that regions outside Central Canada have experienced this year.
  In releasing the new numbers, Wilson also revised downward his projection of economic growth this year to 3.1 per cent from the 3.7 per cent projected in his February budget.
 “In these economic circumstances, with the regional difficulties that confront us, I do not believe that this fall in revenues should be offset by tax increases,” Wilson told a blue-ribbon audience
BULLETIN
 QUEBEC (CP) - The Quebec Court of Appeal has ruled that former Canadian Armed Forces corporal Denis Lortie will face a new trial on charges of killing three people in a submachine-gun attack on the Quebec national assembly in May 1984.
  A panel of three judges ruled unanimously in favor of giving Lortie the new trial on charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of three government employees.
  Lortie’s lawyer, Andre Royer, filed the appeal after Lortie’s conviction. Lortie received the mandatory sentence of life in prison.
 During the trial, Royer acknowledged that Lortie burst into the legislature, firing at random, but argued that the former armed forces supply clerk was insane at the time.
of business men and women at a special meeting of the Canadian Club.
  “Equally, it is not appropriate to make up the shortfall through further major cuts in spending this fiscal year. Expenditure cuts of this magnitude at this time, given the expenditure cuts1 we have already implemented, would be more disruptive and harmful to the economy than a slower decline in the deficit this year.”
 He said another reason he had rejected tax or spending changes was because the higher deficit was solely the result of unforeseen and uncontrollable revenue declines, not spending increases. He said spending remains on target and will come in this year at about $116.8 billion.
  This is in spite of higher stabilization payments to farmers triggered automatically by the sharp drop in grain prices this year.
 But Wilson said he would take more dramatic action in future budgets if it appeared the government could not hit its target of getting growth in the public debt below the growth rate of the economy by the end of the decade.
  Wilson’s new deficit figures tally roughly with estimates that have been floating in financial circles for several months and all eyes will now shift to the currency markets to see if there is any effect on the Canadian dollar.
 The dollar has been under some pressure this week when it dipped below 72 cents US and traders said the Bank of Canada intervened to support it.
  But it had a relatively quiet day Thursday, closing just above 72 cents.
 One senior banker said before the numbers were released that his bank had projected months ago that the deficit would be at least $2 billion over the $29.5-billion target that Wilson had set in February.
 And he said that the markets were already operating on the assumption Wilson would miss the target.
 Wilson had been under strong pressure from the business community early this year to reduce the deficit below $30 billion by major cuts in spending. The deficit was $34.5 billion last year, just $250 million over target and down from $38.3 billion in 1984-85.
 VICTORIA (CP) - British Columbia started a campaign Thursday to lobby Americans against a threatened U.S. countervailing duty on Canadian softwood lumber.
  Pat McGeer, the province’s international trade minister, told an audience in Salt Lake City, Utah, that the application by American lumber producers for a countervailing duty is aimed at “the wrong target in the wrong country at the wrong time.”
  Excerpts of McGeer’s speech to the National Association of State Development Agencies were released by his Victoria office. The association’s members are directors of international trade and investment programs in state governments.
  The proposed duty against Canadian lumber is aimed at the wrong target “because the duty will only increase the cost of housing to all Americans,” McGeer said.
  He said softwood lumber is a choice product in limited world supply, and takes a long time to be renewed.
  Canada is the wrong country to hit because it is the United States’ “biggest customer, best ally and greatest friend,” McGeer said.
  “It is the wrong time because our two countries are now discussing a broad free trade agreement which will benefit us all in both the
 short term and long term,” he said.
   He made the remarks after Premier Bill Vander Zalm said in Ottawa that he would go to the United States if necessary to convince Americans that a countervailing duty on lumber — which would cripple British Columbia’s vital forest industry — is against the interests of American consumers.
 Saskatchewan election Oct. 20
   SASKATOON (CP) - Saskatchewan will have a provincial general election on Monday, Oct. 20, Premier Grant Devine said today.
   “I believe the issues in this election will bc agriculture, jobs, diversification and the challenge of new horizons for Saskatchewan,” the Progressive Conservative premier told a morning news conference.
   He said he believes the voters will “not turn the clock back. They will stay the course, the course they chose four years ago.”
I
Pattison chopped spending
by Canadian Press
 VANCOUVER - Expo chairman Jim Pattison cut off loose expense account spending when he took direct control of the Crown corporation last year, says the minister responsible for Expo.
  Pattison said Thursday he has been shocked by some of the government waste he has seen since he became Expo chairman six years ago. He replaced former president Michael Bartlett when he resigned in June 1985.
  In a telephone interview from his Kamloops riding, Social Services Minister Claude Richmond said he agrees with Pattison. Expense account money was flowing freely, he said.
  “Michael Bartlett was the right guy at the right time for the job; but he was a freer spender than Jim Pattison,” Richmond said.
  Under Bartlett, Expo’s budget almost tripled to $900 million from $367 million. Pattison trimmed it to $802 million.
  Bartlett was able to expand the expenditure side of the budget by suggesting the fair could have considerable revenue, something previous executives had not stressed.
But it was the expense accounts
—	about $500,000 from April 1, 1984, to March 31, 1985, — where Richmond said spending controls had not been enforced as tightly as they are now.
                        i
     by DIANE BAILEY Staff reporter An International Woodworkers of America picket line shut down Lakeland Mill for several hours this morning in a protest against fellow union members.
  Lakeland managing director George Killy said the company began to call workers back after the line came down just after 10 a.m.
  “I believe the local union office persuaded the picketers to go away,” said Killy.
  Local 1-424 president Frank Everitt said the line was “definitely not authorized” by the union executive.
  “We had some of the officers go to the picket line to try get them to remove it.”
  About 12 IWA pickets set up the line to protest against union members there who rejected a strike fund assessment.
  “We are picketing the members who would not go along with the assessment. We are not picketing the company,” said one person on the line.
  The pickets refused to give their names, saying only that the action was organized by the picket committees at Northwood Pulp and Timber and Canfor miils that have been on strike for about two months.
  “It is a son of a gun when you have to picket your own union,” said another picket.
  Lakeland employees voted 86 per cent against a plan that would assess each IWA member who is not on strike $5 per working day to support those who are.
  Lakeland workers milled about the entrance to the site, waiting to see if the company would get an injunction against the pickets and get the mill operating again.
  Killy said the company began preparing an application to the labor relations board when the pickets went up.
  About 100 morning shift workers were off the job this morning, although a few that had arrived before the line went up were apparently at work.
  “I can see their point, but it is the democratic way,” said Lakeland employee Earl Walrath.
  “They took a vote and the vote stands.”
  Meanwhile, a group of about 25 Lakeland employees were at the IWA office on Third Avenue this morning in search of an explanation.
  “We want to find who started the picket, and why these guys are there,” said Glen Gardner, acting plant chairman.
  Gardner said the workers would not cross the line, despite the fact that it was directed at them and not the company.
  “Regardless of the reason it’s there, we obey any picket sign,” Gardner said.
  Michael Lestage, third vice-chairman at Lakeland, said workers may have been more receptive to the assessment if it had been voluntary.
  “If it had been voluntary, where you could give what you can afford, there would have been overwhelming acceptance,” he said.
  “There are a good many people who can afford it, and a good number who can’t.”
  There are currently about 20,000 IWA woodworkers on strike across the province, mainly on the Coast and in the southern Interior.
         .. .and in tomorrow's Citizen. . .
  Drugs. Drugs. Drugs.
  U.S. President Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy declared war on them this week and it wasn’t long before Prime Minister Brian Mulroney discovered Canada’s very own drug “epidemic.” Is the problem as serious as the politicians say? Southam News writers explore the issue in our Saturday Forum.
  Also planned:
  ■	High school volleyball: how Prince George and the North Central zone stack up this year.
  ■	Reforms now being considered would make life more secure for employees of companies that go bankrupt.
"Today's special is all the caviar you can eat for $600."
SacOiock
Low tonight: -4 High Saturday: 16 TOcatAei eCcteUfa. fvtyc 2