The Prince George
Citizen
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25,1991
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Phone:562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
UNIVERSITY EVALUATOR PRAISES ACADEMIC BLUEPRINT
UNBC plans ‘way of the future’
by BEV CHRISTENSEN Citizen Staff*
The plans for the University of Northern B.C. are being given top marks by the man who recently completed a national evaluation of Canada’s universities.
“I spent more than a day with the interim governing council of UNBC discussing their plans and I was very impressed,” Dr. Stuart Smith said Thursday from Ottawa.
“I discussed the findings of my report with them and felt we had unanimous agreement on the major recommendations and that it was the intent of UNBC to be foursquare in line with these recommendations and were more than taking them seriously.”
Smith said there is a growing demand in Canada for people with university degrees with a large practical vocational component
“This is the way of the future and UNBC may be the first place in Canada
Cedar shakes proposal could hurt Quesnel
Citizen news services
Proposed measures in California to restrict the use of cedar shakes and shingles in house construction would have negligible impact on sawmills in Prince George, but could affect 50 to 100 jobs in the Quesnel area.
British Columbia’s important cedar shake and shingle industry is facing a major fight to persuade California legislators not to ban wooden roofs in the wake of devastating fires in the Oakland area earlier this week.
“No, we are not affected by that,” Fraser-Fort George Regional District director Erwin Stoll said today.
One small independent mill west of McBride produced shakes for the regional market, but it closed three or four years ago, said Stoll, who represents the Willow River-Upper Fraser area on the regional district board.
There is, however, a small industry in the Cariboo between Quesnel and Barkerville, said Cariboo South MLA David Zimhelt.
Some operators near Wells and Barkerville cut bolts, or rough lengths of cedar, and then ship them to Lower Mainland mills for further processing.
The industry in the Quesnel area has a significant market within Canada alone, and that might help the Central Interior industry in case California adopts strong restrictions against cedar shakes and shingles, he said.
There are indications the fire, which destroyed more than 2,500 homes and killed 19 people, may prompt California Governor Peter Wilson to pass a law as early as next month to “solve the problem,” Phil Favro, former California fire marshall and consultant, said in an interview Thursday.
that takes on this mandate in a serious way,” he said, referring to UNBC’s commitment to ensuring students will receive university credits for the vocation training they complete in community colleges.
UNBC’s academic plan also includes a strong commitment to work-study or co-op education in which students’ summer work placements will be related to their university studies.
The results of Smith’s report of his survey of universities that are members of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is the basis of a 40-page report which appears in the Oct. 21 edition of Maclean’s magazine.
In the report Smith evaluated universities on 12 points within four major categories: student body, faculty, financial resources and reputation.
UNBC’s plans to offer multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs are applauded by Smith.
If UNBC is to succeed, it has to carve out a new niche, he said.
“If it tries to be like other universities only located in a remote place it would ultimately fail. I think people would find that sort of second rate.
“Instead it can serve northern communities and be at the leading edge of educational developments by providing people with definite employable skills plus an excellent general education given by scholarly people. That is what people want and, in most provinces, that is hard to get.”
He said the University of Calgary and the University of Kings College, which is associated with Dalhousie University in Halifax, have undertaken in a small way to provide these programs.
When seeking to attain its goals of multi- and interdisciplinary programs wilh a strong vocational component, UNBC will have the advantage over these univer-
sities of have these objectives as goals from its inception, he said.
He also had some words of advice for the new university if it wishes to sustain these goals.
“I had the experience in the early days of my academic life of going to Hamilton to start the new McMastcr University’s medical school and I can tell you, when you’re starting something for the first time you can pick and choose people to support that particular mission and with that kind of revolutionary zeal you can rise to great heights.
“But universities tend to revert to the traditional model from the revolutionary vision and, within about 15 years, they’re back into the mainstream.
“What is done in the beginning is tremendously important. So if they start out determined to do something different and become recognized for that there will be less tendency to slide back into the traditional.”
Other recommendations in Smith’s report include:
■ Requiring all professors including those in senior positions to spend a minimum of eight hours a week instructing students.
■ Establishing a national standard for measuring universities’ teaching standards.
■ Simplifying the complicated processes by which students now transfer academic credits between universities.
■ Student fees should increase gradually to cover 25 per cent of universities’ general operating costs. Fees now cover 17 per cent of these costs.
■ A student assistance plan should be established in which loans are repaid through a surtax on federal income tax once a student’s income rises to a certain level.
■ Steps should be taken to ensure more women arc promoted into positions of higher authority and to increase the number of women in programs requiring a doctorate.
Hat’s all
Citizen photo by Brent Braaten
Balwinder Rai hangs up a Mexican hat over a colorful blanket, part of the display for the public to view at the Multicultural Centre at 1306 Seventh Avenue. A two-day regional conference on race relations began today at the Coast Inn of the North. See also pages 2 and 25.
Deadline imposed in postal dispute
OTTAWA (CP) — Federal Labor Minister Marcel Danis has decided to give both sides in the two-year-old postal dispute until Monday to reach a settlement before he tables legislation to force an end to the impasse.
Danis had planned to introduce the bill today but has reconsidered
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following separate meetings late Thursday with negotiators for Canada Post and the 45,000-member Canadian Union of Postal orkers.
A spokesman for the minister said the plan to defer the legislation will give the union and the Crown corporation a chance to agree to a new contract. The previous contract expired in July 1989.
“What this means is they will have until Monday morning to arrive at a negotiated settlement,” said Micheline Racette.
“But the minister has been quite clear. He still intends to proceed with the legislation.”
Danis said the legislation will keep postal workers on the job and keep the mail flowing normally and submit the dispute to arbitration.
Deputy Liberal Leader Sheila Copps said the government is pulling the plug on collective bargaining when Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are close to an agreement.
“We certainly don’t intend to support legislation that is premature,” she said.
INCINERATOR EMISSIONS
Hospital caught in pollution crunch
by DIANE BAILEY Citizen Staff
The Prince George Regional Hospital incinerator periodically fails to meet the pollution control standards set for it by the provincial Environment Ministry.
Ministry officials visited the hospital six times last year to inspect incinerator operation, municipal section head Blake Medlar said in an interview.
On two of those visits, the smoke coming out of the incinerator stack exceeded permit levels.
The ministry also received several complaints last year about black smoke and an “acrid, pungent odor” coming from the incinerator stack, Medlar said.
Two more complaints were received recently.
Medlar said the complaints centre on “odd occasions” when short puffs of smoke, lasting about a minute and a half, arc emitted from the stacks.
The appearance of smoke is related to problems maintaining a high enough temperature in the incinerator, said Medlar. And temperature is related to the rate at which waste is fed into the burner.
The ministry sets very strict guidelines for both. Temperatures must be high enough to destroy harmful micro-organisms and to bum plastics without producing toxins.
Medlar could not say if the smoke poses any health risk.
“I don’t know how to say yes or no to that and back up my answer one way or another. Obviously it is a concern for the ministry if we have temperature criteria established to ensure complete destruction.”
He said the environment ministry wrote the hospital about a year ago suggesting operator error in feeding the incinerator. It also recommended the emission stack be extended to reduce the amount of offending smoke and odor in the immediate area of the hospital, he said.
The hospital “acknowledged operator error” and said it was planning an improved training program, said Medlar. It blamed the acrid odor on smoldering ashes and said it planned to eliminate the problem by watering the ashes down.
But PGRH said it couldn’t get funding to upgrade the incinerator stack and, says assistant executive director of environmental services Al Love, that is still the case.
“We feel we’re between a rock and a hard place,” Love said in an interview.
The B.C. government has decided to move towards a provin-
SYSTEM IN WORKS
The provincial environment ministry is very close to naming the company that will dispose of all biomedical wastes generated in B.C.
“We wish to have established a system that will involve the transportation as well as the treatment and disposal of biomedical wastes,” said Rob Dalrymple, head of the ministry’s biomedical waste unit in Victoria.
The details, including where the treatment facility will be located, are up to the firm chosen.
Dalrymple said the decision to move to a provincewide scheme was chosen after the environment ministry beefed up target criteria for incinerator operation.
“There’s a feeling none of the existing incinerators would be able to meet the criteria without upgrading,” he said.
One collection and disposal system would be more cost-effective, he said.
But the Prince George Regional Hospital has concerns about the plan, says Al Love, assistant executive director of environmental services.
Love said he expects hospitals in the North will face higher transportation costs. Refrigerated storage, to hold the wastes until they are picked up, is an additional cost.
There are also risks associated with transporting potentially hazardous biomedical wastes, Love said, particularly during winter on icy northern roads.
“They don’t look at North and its transportation problems,” Love said. “It’s not designed to help us but to deal with problems in Vancouver.”
The scheme came out of meetings between the Greater Vancouver Regional District and provincial environment and health ministry representatives, he said.
“Our attitude was to look at better equipment, perhaps different legislation and more stringent testing that would satisfy the local constituency,” said Love. “They didn’t buy into that.”
The provincewide system is expected to be in place by the spring of 1993.
cewide biomedical waste disposal system and won’t pay to upgrade incinerators that it says will soon be out of commission, he said.
The system is expected to be in place by the spring of 1993.
Love agrees PGRH has had complaints from nearby residents about emissions, but said the problem lies in what is being burned.
“It’s not operator error anymore when we tell them to only put in three or four bags at a time,” he said.
“The problem is we don’t know what’s in the bags.”
If the bags happen to contain a lot of plastics, he said, then smokiness can become a problem.
But if that’s the case, said Medlar, “They should assess their feed stock to ensure they don’t have a large quantity of materials causing the puffs of smoke.”
There has been a dramatic increase in the past two years in the amounts of that kind of garbage that is being burned at PGRH, Love said.
In June 1989, the hospital instituted a system of “universal pre-
cautions” in response to the AIDS threat.
The incinerator is now burning all day, every day of the week rather than the five or six hours it used to take to dispose of hospital waste, he said.
Love said strip readings showing the temperatures in the incinerator indicate they remain “pretty constant.”
When the fire is dampened by wet wastes fed into the incinerator, said Love, the gas feed keeps temperatures at the required level. Temperatures in the incinerator do “not significantly” fluctuate downwards, he said.
Love dismissed worries about health risks from the smoke emissions.
“We are not throwing anything in there of a chemical nature that we think would harm anyone,” he said.
Meanwhile, said Love, PGRH has hired a consultant to put its whole waste management system under scrutiny.
Medical and infection control staff now agree that “perhaps universal precautions, in some cases, was an extreme case of overkill,” said Love.
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