Tories, NDP
target Turner
Liberals attack ad ban
by JAMIE PORTMAN Southam News
OTTAWA — An- angry Liberal party is threatening legal action to force the country’s broadcast networks to show their new TV ads featuring excerpts from last week’s leaders’ debates.
At a news conference late Friday, campaign co-chairman Andre Ouellet accused the CBC, CTV and Global networks of “censorship” by refusing to carry paid advertising and traditional free-time political material containing brief unedited extracts from leader John Turner’s debate performance.
And Ottawa legal expert Allan Lufti challenged the broadcasters’ contention that use of the debate material in party ads would constitute infringement of the copyright law.
The same impasse exists with the three French-language networks, TVA, Radio-Canada and Quatre Saisons. The Liberals held a separate press conference in Montreal to protest the broadcast ban.
However, the Grits also had to admit to an embarrassing foulup at campaign headquarters: although a formal letter from the broadcasters imposing the ban was hand-delivered to party headquarters the afternoon of the French debate Oct. 24, senior Liberal strategists didn’t know of it until sometime Wednesday, nine days later.
As a result, party ad man David Morton, who has been overseeing the advertising campaign, was unaware of the ban.
by The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney viciously pursued Liberal Leader John Turner Friday just before release of another poll suggesting the Liberals still have a slight lead over the Conservatives.
Mulroney said Turner made a mess of the economy as finance minister and now his free-trade lies have been pinned to his forehead.
Turner, who took the day off, was also a target of NDP Leader Ed Broadbent for refusing to say how he would pay for his $30 billion in election promises.
Yet the poll, conducted by Insight Canada Research of Toronto, was good news for the Liberals and bad news for the NDP.
Results indicate the Liberals have the support of 40 per cent of decided voters, the Tories 37 and the NDP 20, with 16 per cent undecided.
For the poll, 1,101 eligible voters were interviewed Oct. 29-Nov. 3. Results are considered accurate within 3.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
The Liberals have climbed one point and the Tories two, while the NDP have slipped by three since the last Insight poll a week ago.
Elsewhere, a major investment firm warned that regardless of who wins the Nov. 21 election taxes will rise because federal finances are a mess.
“The steadfast avoidance of the deficit issue by all three political parties belies an inevitable reality
— the Canadian electorate faces a round of tax increases, possibly as early as the next budget,” Wood Gundy Inc. says.
Mulroney, meantime, used comments by former Supreme Court justice Emmett Hall to tackle Turner.
Hall, whose 1960s royal commission led to the creation of the medicare system, said nothing in the free-trade pact threatens medicare as the Liberals and NDP claim.
Lubicons, Ottawa 'nowhere' on deal
EDMONTON (CP) - A settlement to the Lubicon Indian band land-claim dispute doesn’t look much closer today despite Thursday’s meeting between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Lubicon Chief Bernard Ominayak.
Mulroney designated his chief of staff, Derek Burney, as a liaison with Ominayak. Burney will have “contact and monitoring function,” Mulroney’s communications director, Bruce Phillips, said Friday.
“Derek . . . will be monitoring the negotiations and keeping the prime minister advised and is there to pick up the phone if the chief wants to call him.
“But . . . Mr. Burney is not going to step in and take over these negotiations. It leaves (Indian Affairs Minister Bill McKnight) where he always was — conducting the negotiations.”
There’s no arrangement to start talks with Ottawa, said Lubicon adviser Fred Lennarson. It was hoped Burney would get the ball rolling with a call to Ominayak. It didn’t come Friday.
Last month, the Indians declared sovereignty over an area in northwestern Alberta and erected a
blockade to prevent oil and gas companies from entering without their permission.
Within a few days RCMP removed the blockade and Ominayak and Premier Don Getty reached an agreement in principle for a Lubicon reserve of 246 square kilometres. Ottawa must approve the deal.
The issue of wildlife and environmental management in 10,000 square kilometres the Lubicon consider their traditional area is well-advanced, says band lawyer James O’Reilly.
But negotiators spent all day Friday discussing concepts for wildlife and environmental management without coming to agreement.
The band and the province are still far apart on the issue of compensation for the oil and gas royalties Alberta has taken from the traditional Lubicon area.
“Insofar as the federal government is concerned we’re nowhere,” O’Reilly said.
Membership and reserve status for the full parcel of land proposed by the Alberta government remain sticking points between the federal government and the band.
Selling the city's merits 3
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Hilton loses title bout 15
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The Prince George Ififad
Citizen
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1988
50 CENTS
GRITS STILL AHEAD
The Civic Centre has been transformed into a StudioFair village market for the annual pre-Christmas
Studiofair craft sale. Vanderhoof craftsman Ted Eisenburger’s handmade wares include novel
wood-turned harps, sculpted wood vases and a popular assortment of wood toys. The Studio 2880-sponsored fair will continue through Sunday. Citizen photo by Dave Milne
CLINIC OPENING
Abortion protest peaceful
VANCOUVER (CP) - Several hundred sign-carrying anti-abortionists marched peacefully in the rain Friday as British Columbia’s first abortion clinic officially opened in a quiet east Vancouver neighborhood.
The protesters — some singing hymns and praying — gathered in front of the steel-grated door to the windowless cement building.
“That used to be my doctor’s office,” said Peggy Holland, voice trembling and tears welling in her eyes, as she handed out signs bearing anti-abortion slogans from the back of her car.
Holland, of Christians for Life, was urging protesters not to jaywalk or to obstruct anyone.
“A little courtesy goes a long way in a nasty situation,” said Holland, who said she reguarly pickets at Vancouver General Hospital, where abortions are performed.
Vancouver police blocked off the quiet residential street during the height of the demonstration and about a dozen officers stood watch on the crowd.
Outside the clinic, a phalanx of volunteer security people wearing orange vests stood behind a barricade and screened everyone going into the clinic.
The demonstrators — priests and nuns, high school children, parents pushing strollers or carrying babies and even a couple of Hare Krishna members dressed in orange robes - were generally
quiet and there were no confronta-
tions. But emotional currents were evident.
“I’m glad you weren’t aborted,” one woman hissed to a group of reporters.
The paint was barely dried on the pale, pinkish walls in the refurbished medical building.
Joy Thompson of the B.C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics said abortions would be performed at the clinic “very soon” but she wouldn’t specify a date “in order to protect our clients.”
She said the clinic would have escorts to prevent clients from being harrassed outside by antiabortionists.
“We don’t want another mob scene,” said coalition spokesman Hilda Thomas. “We can protect our clients, we can protect our clinic.”
Thompson said Premier Bill Vander Zalm had declined the coalition’s invitation to attend the opening.
Vander Zalm, a Roman Catholic who personally opposes abortion, tried to cut off provincial funding for abortions but lost a court challenge to the move by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association earlier this year.
New Democrat Darlene Marzari criticized the provincial government’s refusal to fully fund abortions at the clinic.
Although abortions are fully paid for in British Columbia hospitals, Health Minister Peter Dueck says the medicare plan will pay only
$106 for each abortion performed in the clinic.
The Canadian Abortion Rights Action League estimates the cost to a clinic of an abortion at about $300, but the Vancouver clinic will charge only what women can afford.
“This government isn’t putting in a nickel of taxpayers’ dollars,” said Marzari to guests and reporters who crowded into the comfortable, oak-panelled reception area for the opening.
“We’ve paid for this clinic in pain. We need the provincial government to recognize a service that is in demand.”
Thompson said the coalition was seeking a meeting with Dueck on the funding issue.
For cecurity reasons, the official ribbon-cutting to open the clinic was done inside the building.
The demonstration included representatives from about 20 antiabortion groups in Vancouver and surrounding suburbs. And the B.C. Catholic newspaper included a notice that a prayer vigil was planned.
Some students from area Catholic schools turned out.
“We’re here because abortion is wrong,” said one 17-year-old girl.
Walter Szetela of Campaign Life, a coalition of about 20 anti-abortion groups, urged the demonstrators not to abandon their protests.
“There’s no law in existence to give protection to these unborn children,” he said to cheers.
Tories question sub plan
by PHILIP JALSEVAC Kitchener-Waterloo Record WATERLOO, Ont. — Some Conservative MPs and ministers are beginning to challenge the government’s plan to spend $8 billion to buy 10 to 12 nuclear-powered submarines, Tory MP Walter McLean says.
“There are some serious questions being asked,” he said in an interview this week. “Those questions are being asked internally within the cabinet and within the caucus.”
For example, he said: “At a time of disarmament; are we moving against the flow?”
And, citing potential environmental dangers, the MP for Waterloo continued: “What are we going to do with spent nuclear reactors and so on?”
The former cabinet minister also added: “I have some reservations in terms of the size of the dollars. I know that the people in (the) Finance (Department) are concerned about it.”
McLean didn’t elaborate about
who else is questioning the controversial plan, announced in a white paper in June 1987, and in a separate interview Defence Minister Perrin Beatty denied there is any wavering.
“The government is fully committed to the white paper,” Beatty said in a telephone interview from Fergus, Ont.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has “made the party’s position quite clear” in repeated statements supporting the purchase of the nuclear-powered fleet to patrol Canada’s Arctic, Beatty said.
“The prime minister speaks for the government. Walter’s position in the last election, for instance, was against cruise testing. The party’s position was not that.” McLean, however, noted the anticipated selection between competing British and French designs hadn’t been made prior to the Oct. 1 calling of the federal election and, referring to the deal, said: “I suppose it’s not by accident.”
And, he added, “governments today are not unaware of polls. Pol-
ling suggests the public, for varying reasons, have a lot of questions (about the submarine program).” Recent polls have shown a majority of Canadians oppose the purchase.
McLean said he fully supports the serious refurbishing of the armed forces “but the question is how that is best accomplished?” Earlier this week, Beatty appeared on national television to defend the plan, which the government estimates will cost $8 billion but which critics say could cost substantially more.
Some reports have suggested External Affairs Minister Joe Clark and Finance Minister Michael Wilson were early opponents of the deal. Beatty, however, insisted they’re on side.
“All I know is the prime minister’s view and the position that has been taken by cabinet," he said. “I know the position that has been taken during the election by Mike Wilson and Joe Clark, very publicly.” -
(Distributed by Southam News.)
OTTAWA (CP) - Planned Parenthood has apologized for 31,000 letters, telling of a pregnant teen and asking for money, accidentally sent to children.
Embarrassed officials of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada said Friday the letters were sent by mistake by an Ottawa direct-mail house that purchased the mailing list of Young Miss magazine.
The letters were intended to have been addressed to the the girls’ parents, with “Mrs.” inserted before the surname and the young person’s given name dropped.
However, the letters, asking for $48 donations, went out addressed to the magazine’s readers, aged as young as nine.
The letter, telling the story of a pregnant 16-year-old, says one-quarter of Canadian teens are sexually active by the age of 15, and many don’t seek information about contraception.
Federation executive director Sharon Coleman said “the phone has been ringing off the wall for 24 hours” with irate parents complaining their children received the mail solicitation.
The letters were part of a 100,000-piece direct-mail solicitation sent out a week ago using subscription lists from several magazines.
“This is one of the most horrendous things that could happen,” Coleman said.
Heroin charges
laid
VANCOUVER (CP) - Eight people have been charged after the seizure of 4.2 kilograms of heroin estimated to be worth more than $14 million on the street, police said Friday.
The heroin was seized by Hong Kong police, said Vancouver police Const. Jim Szekeres.
The charges came after a two-year investigation.
Four men and one woman appeared Thursday in provincial court and were remanded without plea to Nov. 21.
Bing Hin Low, 53, Teddy Yee-Zone Lee, 55, and Billy Fin Leung Lee, 29, all of Vancouver, are charged with conspiring to import heroin and two counts of conspiracy to traffic in heroin.
Irena Kihn, 30, of suburban Coquitlam and Raymond Way Lup Yeung, 30, of Vancouver were each charged with one count of conspiring to traffic in heroin.