The Prince George
Citizen
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Bennett Dam damned__________5
Communism takes knock	8
Tragedy mars Open
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FRIDAY, JUNE 14,1991
70 CENTS
(Plus GST)
Low tonight: 6 High tomorrow: 15
Phone: 562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
ALCAN APPEALS ENVIRONMENT RULING
Pulp mill project in jeopardy
by KEN BERNSOHN Citizen Staff1
Alcan’s appeal Thursday of a court judgment requiring an environmental review of the firm’s Kemano Completion Project has put the fate of a new pulp mill planned for Vanderhoof in question.
‘‘We’ll have to talk with our partners in the pulp mill project,” said Bill Rich, Alcan’s vice-president for British Columbia.
“I can’t predict what effect it (the appeal) will have on our partners and where we go (next),” Rich said Thursday during a tele-
phone press conference from Vancouver.
Vanderhoof Pulp and Paper — a joint project by Alcan; Tembec Inc., a Quebec pulp company; and the Sinclair group of sawmills (Apollo Forest Products, L and M Lumber, Lakeland Mills and The Pas Lumber) — received a pulp agreement to guarantee wood supply for a new chemically-bleached Thermal Mechanical Pulp mill in Vanderhoof this spring.
‘‘It’s too early to tell (what effect this will have),” George Killy, president of Vanderhoof Pulp and Paper, said Thursday.
“We’ll have a board meeting this month to discuss it. What Alcan did wasn’t that unexpected.”
A month ago, Federal Court of Canada Justice Allison Walsh ordered the government to initiate a public environmental review process, and quashed the 1987 agreement between Alcan and the federal and provincial governments that cleared the way for the company to begin work on the hydroelectric project.
In his press conference, Rich did not give the legal basis for the appeal, and said he didn’t know if
the argument would be made public until the case was heard in court.
Pat Moss, chairman of the Rivers Defense Coalition, agreed with Killy about the lack of surprise in Alcan’s decision to appeal the ruling which came from a suit her group launched.
“We had anticipated they would appeal although we had rather they had joined us in pressing the (federal) government to implement the decision,” Moss said Thursday in a telephone interview from Smithers.
“We’ll have to respond to it. They’ll file their reasons for appeal and we’ll respond to it.”
Earlier this week, Moss said the Rivers Defense Coalition would not seek an injunction to halt construction by Alcan.
Although Rich said he didn’t know when the appeal would be heard, Moss said she expected it to be heard in the Federal Court of Appeal this fall.
In his press conference, Rich said Alcan will meet with contractors to minimize work done on the project until the appeal is decided.
The $1-billion project is almost half-built after more than three years of work, and $400 million invested, the Montreal-based company said in a press release.
Originally scheduled for completion in 1994, Kemano II would add 540 megawatts to Alcan’s hy-. droelectric generating capacity. This requires diverting additional water from the Nechako River to Alcan’s reservoir behind the Kenny Dam southwest of Vanderhoof, reducing water flows in the river nearby to 12 per cent of its pre-1950 level.
Hospital plan: More regional services urged
by SHERRYL YEAGER Citizen Staff Creating a more regional service for the North at Prince George Regional Hospital is the main thrust of recommendations released today by the Ministry of Development, Trade and Technology.
This involves expanding staff and services and better communication with other facilities in the North about what is available here, said Allan Husband, PGRH executive director.
The strategic plan was announced this moming by Health Minister Bruce Strachan in a conference at the hospital. It is the second portion of a two-year study to determine the region’s health needs and the Prince George hospital’s role in full-filling them.
Husband described the recommendations as no big surprise, and said some may take longer than others to meet and are guidelines for the hospital’s future direction.
“We claim to be a regional referal centre — if that’s what we claim to be, that’s what we should be trying harder to be.” The eight recommendations are for the hospital to:
■ Establish a regional health services council.
■ Effectively plan its regional role.
■ Clearly identify referral sources.
■ Develop centres of excellence at the hospital in areas such as perinatal, psychiatry and trauma services.
■ Enhance development and utilization of medical services and clinical programs.
■ Develop improved recruitment and retention plans.
■ Review the management process.
■ Market medical services and clinical programs.
Some of these have already been addressed by the hospital, Husband said, such as the recent hiring of a neurosurgeon and other specialists in demand.
Because it is difficult to find specialists and technicians willing to come north, and when they do they tend to stay only for short periods, what is available in Prince George varies.
As a result, staff at other hospitals or clinics may be unaware of what is available here and refer patients to Vancouver unnecessarily.
There is a shortage of pyschi-atric care in Prince George as well as the North, Husband said, and the plan suggests the hospital address the problem.
Implementing the recommendations will require the hospital board to identify where and how changes could be made while remaining within its budget, he said.
Bulletin
OTTAWA (CP) — Vancouver grainhandlers will be ordered back to work by noon Saturday if Parliament approves legislation introduced today by Labor Minister Marcel Danis.
The legislation got speedy introduction without the usual 48-hours notice after opposition parties agreed to deal with the bill urgently.
No Prairie grain has moved
through Vancouver since Sunday when the B.C. Terminal Elevator Operators Association locked out the grainhandlers because of a union work slowdown.
The grainhandlers have been in a legal strike position since May 8. They have been without a contract since the end of 1989.
Danis said he will appoint an arbitrator to settle outstanding issues between the two sides.
Local gas prices protested
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff
Gasoline prices in communities immediately south of Prince George have been considerably lower than at stations here for more than a month, and consumers are asking why.
In Prince George in recent weeks the price has remained steady around 57.6 cents per litre. In Mackenzie prices have been between 56 and 57, and in Vanderhoof the price per litre was 57.9 Thursday.
Thursday in Quesnel the price of regular unleaded was 49.5 cents per litre. In Williams Lake prices ranged from 46 to 49 cents a litre. Even in Hixon the price was 48.8 cents a litre at the Esso station.
Farther south the price seemed to be creeping up again. Gasoline had been down to 50.9 cents per litre in Kamloops, but jumped back up to 54.9 Thursday moming, said Chamber of Commerce spokesman Bernice Woytko.
In 100 Mile House the price was
49.9 cents at a Turbo station, while it was 54.9 at the Mohawk.
In Vancouver the price of regular unleaded today was 54.6 cents per litre, even though an urban transit tax of three cents a litre is imposed on gasoline there in addition to federal and provincial taxes.
The prices in Quesnel south to 100 MUe House are unrealistically low, says Don Coghill, B.C. public affairs manager for Imperial Oil.
The price in more stable markets like Prince George is realistically where it should be, he said Thursday.
A number of factors are at work in the communities to the south. Volume is down and fewer tourists are on the road, perhaps because of the recession, Coghill said.
“When volumes go down, you get various commpetitors chasing volume, trying to build up volume,” he said. “That creates pricing activity. When you lose sales, you try to recover that.
“So for whatever period of time
prices are driven down to totally unrealistic levels.”
The price of 57.6 cents in Prince George is actually three cents lower than the 59.6 cents prevailing in June 1990, well before the beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis. This is taking into account tax increases of approximately one cent a litre in January, Coghill said.
Prince George consumer Gene Van Den Brink said Thursday she would join a group in picketing the Fifth and Carney Petro-Canada station at 9 a.m. Saturday to protest the current level of gas prices here. Prices from Castlegar to Hixon have been 49 to 52 cents a litre, she said.
The purpose is not to target that one Petro-Canada station, but to register concern about Petro-Canada and other oil company prices in general, she said.
“It is the market that sets the prices,” Judy Wish, Petro-Cana-da’s manager of public affairs, said from Calgary today. “We don’t
say the price in B.C. is going to be X.”
The gasoline is sold to dealers at a certain wholesale price, “and they price it to where they can make a return and stay in business,” she said. “Part of it has to do with competition in those areas.”
Wish said the gasoline for the Petro-Canada stations would ordinarily come from refineries in Edmonton or Port Moody.
Jack Blatchford, manager of the Fifth and Carney Petro-Canada station, said prices in Quesnel and communities farther south have over the years always tended to be somewhat lower than in Prince George.
He agreed the market sets prices.
“Someone lowers prices and everyone has to compete,” he said today. “If someone in the market stays low, we’ll match it, and everybody has to stay down with them.”
Ontario premier rejects resignations
TORONTO (CP) — Ontario Premier Bob Rae flip-flopped Thursday on whether two ministers should quit his cabinet because they interfered in the case of a pediatrician who sexually assaulted patients.
In a stunning turn of events in the legislature, Rae accepted the tearful resignation of Women’s Issues Minister Anne Swarbrick —
appearing to make her the third minister in nine months to fall from Ontario’s rookie NDP cabinet.
Four hours later, Rae reversed his decision, saying he would stand by Swarbrick and Northern Development Minister Shelley Martel.
Both women wrote letters to the Ontario College of Physicians and
Surgeons, urging it suspend the licence of a North Bay doctor convicted of molesting children.
“I don’t think that in any sense the public good would be better served by their resigning,” Rae said after he met with both ministers late in the day.
“I’m making the call knowing full well that there will be those who disagree.”
Rae said there was “no question” Martel and Swarbrick broke the government’s conflict of interest guidelines, but “there’s nothing that says breach of the guidelines leads instantly to resignation.”
The whole affair left Conservative Leader Mike Harris questioning Rae’s credibility and the value of the government’s conflict rules.
INDEX
Ann Landers .... 38
Bridge.................28
Business 22,23
City, B.C..............2,3
Classified .... 25-33
Comic...................40
Commentary 5
Crossword...............27
Editorial................4
Entertainment . 40,41
Family................38^9
Horoscope...............28
International............8
Movies.................41
National.................6
Sports...............13-17
Television..............30
"I demand to know what you were doing in the kitchen at 3 o'clock in the morning."
North to Alaska
Officer Dave Johnson, Const. Bryan Valantine, Sgt. Jay R. Chase and Officer Bob Villarreal, left to right, make a stop in Prince George on a cycling relay from Texas to Alaska to raise money for leukemia research. Johnson, Chase and Villarreal are three of 24 Houston, Texas, police officers biking north, while Valantine is a Powell River RCMP officer they picked up along the way. In the past 10 years, the Houston police have raised $550,000 for leukemia research and this year they are working in conjunction with the Bruce Denniston Bone Marrow Society of B.C. Denniston was an RCMP officer in Powell River who died of leukemia.
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