The Prince George
Citizen
MONDAY, MARCH 23,1992
51 CENTS
(Plus GST)
Low tonight: -6 High tomorrow: 7
The federal leaders
Referendum team formed 8
‘Hush money’ for Fergie? 9
Huskies extend series
11
Phone:562-2441 Classified: 562-6666 Circulation: 562-3301
MESSAGE FROM B.C. TRADE MINISTER
Resource towns face ‘transition’
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff
B.C. communities dependent on the forest industry were especially hurt by an American decision to impose a provisional duty on Canadian softwood lumber, says Dave Zimhelt.
“We arc being hit extremely hard with protectionist measures right now from the United States," the minister of economic development, small business and trade said Saturday at the College of New Caledonia.
“When I speak about it, my guts chum.”
The U.S. Commerce Department announced March 6 it was imposing the 14.48-per-cent duty.
U.S. forest products companies claim Canada’s restrictions against raw log exports keep some customers out of the Canadian market,
suppressing log prices and in effect creating an indirect government subsidy for lumber.
Canada’s log export restrictions are designed to protect jobs by limiting the number of raw logs that can be shipped to countries such as Japan, China and South Korea.
Zimhelt spoke Saturday at the annual meeting of the Western Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers at CNC. The topic of his address was The Transition of B.C.’s Economy. About 75 were in attendance.
Zimhelt, MLA for Cariboo South, said he complained recently to the U.S. consul-general in Vancouver.
"I delivered this message to him. I said, ‘You’re trying to make us export our logs across the sea to Japan.’
"Basically, that is the pressure coming on us from the southern wood industry in the U.S. They’re putting on the economic pressure.
"Just because they’re prepared to sell primary resources overseas, they think we should, and if we restrict them (raw log exports), they claim wc are in effect subsidizing them.
“We don’t see it as a subsidy. We see it as greatly internalizing the costs.”
The provisional tariff hits especially hard at the 200 communities in B.C. that the Forest Resources Commission recently identified as being at least 50-pcr-cent dependent on the forest industry.
"So this dependence of many communities on one resource makes them very fragile when you sec trade wars going on, as we’re
seeing now from the U.S.,” Zim-hclt said.
"And those things that the American or other economies get very protectionist about are the value-added production that generally return the most in terms of economic value, jobs and cash flow going back to those communities.”
B.C. will weather the current economic downturn and challenges from abroad through diversification, he continued.
Zimhelt said his department predicts Prince George and the whole region will grow.
"Yet we’re not sure what generates growth. It has something to do with size and the way people interconnect, as with communications and transportation systems.
“An urban economy has a life of its own. So as soon as you
move from primary resource extraction to more value-added and more diverse things where you substitute exports and create subsidiary industries and so on, it creates a life of its own.
"It can create an amazing amount of wealth from a very small substratum of natural resources. The key is to find that bit of magic there, and with it challenge your people to be as skilled as possible, and create the economic forms that can allow that to happen.”
On the other hand, communities have to avoid the kind of fanciful economic planning that is based on boosterism, he cautioned.
"We’ve got to build in a pretty good risk analysis. I don’t think as governments or as communities wc have built in all the potential costs of certain types of things.
“Our task as government is not to pretend that UNBC (University of Northern B.C.) is going to have an economic multiplier effect of six to 20, or even three. Some of your colleagues have posited a somewhat smaller multiplier that is more realistic, perhaps."
The transition to a more diversified economy will mean wrenching changes for many smaller Interior B.C. communities, he said.
"Because the B.C. economy is going through a period of change, it’s going to be agonizing in many cases. But I think the necessity will breed the invention necessary to take us through the transition.
"There will be a reduction of our dependence on resource-based commodities and an increased reliance on our ability to compete in the area of goods produced to be sold off-shore.”
ILLEGALLY DUMPED OIL CLEANED UP
City and provincial Environment Ministry officials have managed to clean up all but about 30 litres of illegally dumped used motor oil before it contaminated the Fraser River.
Between one-eighth and one-quarter of an inch of used oil was discovered floating on a small pool at the outfall of a storm sewer just upstream of the Ycllo-whead Bridge, said the ministry’s environmental safely officer Dave McQuillan.
"It was black wilh oil,” he said today.
A second culvert drains that pool into the Fraser River, McQuillan said.
Ministry investigators are not sure if the oil was poured into the storm sewer or directly into the pool, he said.
McQuillan estimates that 150 litres of oil was dumped. About 30 made it into the Fraser River and about one-third of that contaminated the river’s shoreline.
The spill was reported Wednesday night and the ministry set up a boom Thursday to contain the oil in the river.
City crews used a vacuum truck to skim the oil off the pool and to clean up the contaminated shoreline, McQuillan said.
Although the spill didn’t tum out to be serious, it illustrates an ongoing problem with the dumping of hazardous wastes down storm sewers, said Blake Medlar, the head of the ministry’s municipal section.
The sewers flow directly into the river, bypassing municipal waste treatment facilities.
He said the provincial environment ministry is in the process of establishing guidelines that would require municipalities to install some kind of passive treatment for water flowing out of storm sewers.
An example of passive treatment would be a rock pit or swell where the water would sit before entering the river, he said.
Background information supplied by the oil industry says that just half a litre of oil can make a one-acre slick on a lake or stream.
The film blocks the sunlight needed for photosynthesis. Used oil also contains metal traces and other contaminants.
DOWNTOWN WILLIAMS LAKE
Fire losses in ‘millions’
by Canadian Press WILLIAMS LAKE — Twenty businesses were destroyed in a huge downtown blaze early Sunday and five firefighters were injured after an explosion in the burning building.
There were no other injuries reported but nearly 100 employees are without a workplace after the fire gutted the three-storey Centennial Building, whose tenants included CFFM radio, a travel agency and the Workers Compensation Board.
The losses will run into the mil-
lions of dollars, said fire chief Dale Moon, who described it as the worst fire in recent memory in Williams Lake, 330 kilometres north of Vancouver.
It could take up to a month to investigate the cause of the blaze, he said.
Assistant fire chief Randy Isfeld suffered severe leg injuries and was flown to Vancouver General Hospital.
Also destroyed in the blaze were the Williams Lake Crisis Centre, the Legal Services Society, lawyers’ offices and the Cariboo Lum-
Violence: Teens ot risk
OTTAWA (CP) — Teenagers arc twice as likely to be victims of violence as the general population, a Statistics Canada study indicates.
The study was based on data from 13 police departments from 1988 to 1991.
The federal agency found that 23 per cent of all violent crime victims were between 12 and 19 years old, even though teens comprised 11 per cent of the population.
But teenagers were less likely lo be killed in violence. Nine per cent of homicide victims were teenagers, slightly lower than their proportion of the population.
Personal reasons such as arguments were the most frequent motives for homicides. But one third of younger victims (aged 12 lo 15) and one quarter of older victims (aged 16 to 19) were killed during the commission of another offence, such as sexual assault.
i INDEX
Ann Landers . . . . 20
Bridge..... . . . 17
Business .... . . . 14
City, B.C. . . . . 2,3,6,7
Classified . . . . 15-18
Comics . . ., . . . . 19
Commentary . ____5
Crossword . . . . . . 16
Editorial .... ____4
Entertainment . . . 19
Family..... . . . 20
Horoscope . . . . . . 17
International . ____9
Lotteries .... ____6
Movies..... . . . 19
National .... ____8
Sports..... . 1113
Television . . . . . . 17
HERMAN
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'I don't care If you are sick, you can't sit there looking like that all day."
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bcr Manufacturers Association headquarters.
The fire broke out around 3:30 a.m. and was followed by an explosion that showered glass and debris on to the street.
The other injured firefighters were treated and released.
Earlier this month, a suspected arson destroyed several businesses, including a newspaper office, in 100 Mile House, about 70 kilometres south of Williams Lake
The fire occurred after the paper ran a story on drug use in the area.
Crash scene described as ‘horrible’
NEW YORK (AP) — It was a scene of fire and ice, a rescue from hell.
When USAir Flight 405 crashed on takeoff during a snowstorm Sunday night, it exploded in flames and sank in frigid Flushing Bay. The first police and firefighters found chaos and corpses — and some lucky survivors among the 51 people aboard the plane.
“It was just the most horrible conditions you can have for something like this,” said SgL Michael Collins of the Port Authority police. “The snow, the visibility, the fire, the smoke, the injuries. The dead. The water. The debris. The baggage floating. It was bizarre, totally bizarre.”
More than two dozen people died in the crash al La Guardia Airport.
The Fokker F-28 Model 4000 veered to the left near the end of the runway, lost a wing and a nose wheel before plowing over an embankment, and came to rest in the water.
A tail section could be seen sticking out; the fuselage was turned upside down, its bottom protruding.
TB tests resume at Duchess Park
Tuberculosis testing is under way again today at Duchess Park Secondary School to sec if the disease is spreading.
“It’s part of the process to retest again after a period of time to check that the cases are clear,” health unit manager Tim Rowe said today.
About 750 people at the school will be tested during the next three days, he said.
The initial skin tests were given in January to about 750 staff and students of the school after one person was diagnosed with TB in December.
TB is an infection which enters the airway passages to the lungs and damages the lungs.
Positive skin tests show the person has TB antibodies in their system, which could mean they have
been immunized or they have had contact with an active case and developed antibodies..
TB has a long incubation period, so tests are being done now to see if any new positive skin tests will be found, said Lenora Angel, NIHU nursing supervisor.
During the January tests, 29 positive results were found and chest X-rays were given to determine if the people had active TB.
No active cases were found at that time, Angel said. “Once we have a positive test we then do further studies to determine status of the individual — whether they had TB or if they had antibodies present but not active disease.” “Some people we found were positive had been previously immunized for TB so their tests were positive.”
Tentative nurses’ pact reached
VANCOUVER (CP) — The B.C. Nurses Association and the Health Labor Relations Association reached a tentative agreement Sunday on a three-year contract, the association said.
The deal was reached after six days of negotiations under mediator Vince Ready.
The previous contract expired almost a year ago, the association said.
Nurses will receive wage increases of 3.5 per cent in the first year and two per cent in the second, with a cost of living adjustment clause in the third year.
Both sides are recommending acceptance of the deal.
Citizen photo by Dave Milne
Public health nurse Linda Hays gives Duchess Park student Beth MacRltchle a skin test.
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