Budget
PRINCE GEORGE
High today: 0 Low tonight:-2 Details page 35
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10,1997
Serving the Central Interior since 1916
80 CENTS (HOME DELIVERED: 50 CENTS A DAY)
INDEX
Budget Rents,!
Si % y Downtown 960-4200 i
• j ' Airport 963-9339
24 Hour Emergency Service 960-4200
■ Canadian film-maker James Cameron spent $280 million on the making of the Titanic. But it was a personal and professional experience that left him “tremendously moved.” /25
1•>/ pets
■ Dead chickens. An injured lamb. Could a child be next?
Our Animal Advocate, Sandy Stephens, warns dog owners against letting their pets run free in the country. /31
NATION
■ An airplane crashed in dense bush in northeastern Manitoba Tliesday, killing four passengers and injuring 13 others as it ripped through trees and rocks with the “sound of a bomb.”/14
MOVIES
Murder suspect in court
The man charged in the second-degree murder of a Cinema resident made his first appearance in Quesnel provincial court Tliesday.
Dwayne Neele Driver, 35, of no fixed address, was remanded in custody until his next court appearance in Quesnel Dec. 23.
RCMP re-arrested Driver Tliesday. Cinema is about 30 kilometres north of Quesnel.
Around 6 p.m. Sunday, police were called to a home in the Cinema area. A 50-year-old man had been shot in the neck with a high-power rifle and had died as a result, police said.
The murder is believed to have occurred as a result of a dispute during a party, RCMP said.
Police cannot release the name of the deceased until they notify next-of-kin.
Citizen photo by Brent Braaten
NOW THAT I’VE GOT YOU HERE, SANTA — Spencer Kelly, 6, thinks hard before asking Santa what he would like for Christmas, during Spencer’s visit to Santa at Parkwood Place Tuesday. Santa is stationed at Parkwood Place — specifically on the lower floor of The Bay — Mondays to Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to noon and 2:30 to 5; on Thursdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to noon, 2:30 to 5 and 6:30 to 7:30; Saturdays from 11 a.m. to noon and 2 to 5 p.m.; and Sundays from noon to 3 p.m.
Bryan Adams rocks the Multiplex Feb. 24
Singer-songwriter Bryan Adams will return to Prince George Tliesday, Feb. 24 to perform at the Multiplex.
His visit here, presented by The Prince George Citizen, is part of Adams’ Plugged In 1988 Coast to
Coast Canadian Tour. He’ll visit 14 cities between Feb. 7 and Feb. 26 from Charlottetown to Vancouver.
Tickets, for $37.50 including GST and service charges, will go on sale this Saturday at 9:30 a.m, at Towne Ticket Centre outlets. They’re at the
Multiplex box office and Studio 2880, 2880 Fifteenth Ave. You can order and charge by phone by calling 614-9100. There’s a limit of eight tickets per person.
The new tour is “Plugged In” in contrast with Adams’ latest album
released Tuesday. That’s Bryan Adams MTV Unplugged, an allacoustic album.
However, the B.C.-raised Adams, who has sold more than 50 million albums, will be literally plugged in at the Multiplex Feb. 24.
COMMUNITY
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D
minium
Trustees OK sweeping smoking l)an
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff
By spring, no smoking will be allowed on school grounds — period.
The ban will apply not only to students and school staff but also to adults attending community functions on school grounds, trustees decided Tuesday in approving a toughened no-smoking policy for School District 57.
The policy now goes to all district schools whose administrative staff, after consulting with stakeholder groups, will devise boundaries of the
no-smoking zone around them. The policy says the no-smoking area must extend at least 50 metres into the sur-rounding neighborhood and, depending on topography, may be expanded to include several blocks beyond school property.
Each school’s recommendations for the boundaries of th^r smoke-free zone have to come back to the school board in order to receive final approval from trustees in late March.
One reason for the across-the-board, no-exceptions policy is that the sites where smoking was permit-
ted on school grounds, called smoking pits, tended to undermine the intent of previous, more permissive versions of the school district’s smoke-free policy.
For example, Grade 8 students going to Blackburn Junior Secondary School admired older students i^’ing its smoking pit and, in order to be socially accepted, began to take up smoking themselves as a kind of initiation rite, said school board vicechair Bev Christensen.
“So by moving it out off school grounds entirely and some distance
into the community, it will make it less attractive to students in transition from Grade 7 to Grade 8,” she said.
Adults attending cultural functions at Vanier Hall will have to leave the grounds of Prince George Secondary School if they want to smoke during intermissions. A $50 fine will apply if they go outside the door to smoke.
Smoking will be banned in all school district vehicles, and adults driving their own cars onto school property to pick up children will have to put out their cigarettes. I
Rural doctors might pull out
Wage proposal rejected
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen Staff
Doctors in rural areas of Northern B.C. may start withdrawing hospital services after the regional health board and the health ministry nixed their hourly-wage proposal.
The doctors were asking to be paid for working in rural hospital emergency departments by the hour because so few patients meant the doctors — paid only for the patients they see — were working for as little as $10 an hour.
Rural doctors met with Northern Interior Regional Health Board CEO and president David Richardson during the weekend, and Richardson passed the idea by health ministry officials in Victoria Monday.
“We are interested in supporting the physicians, but we’re not in a position to respond right now to their financial request,” Richardson said Tliesday.
He has encouraged the doctors to take their case up with B.C. Medical Association president Granger Avery, saying getting paid by the hour for emergency work is something B.C. doctors can negotiate with the health ministry.
Rural doctors’ group member Dr. Brian Brodie from Bums Lake said he wasn’t surprised. “We’ve just got what we expected... But this isn’t just going to shrivel up and die away.”
Doctors from Burns Lake, Fraser Lake, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James and Mackenzie will decide this weekend in Vanderhoof what step to take next, which could include withdrawing hospital services, said Brodie.
Rural doctors have gone public recently with frustrations over their workload, saying they need help with on-call burnout, holiday coverage and emergency-depart-ment training.
The emergency department is a particular sore point because rural hospitals often don’t see many emergencies which means doctors who get paid per patient may make as little as $10 per hour, said Brodie.
But Brodie said the chance the 7,000 strong doctors’ association will make a small group of rural doctors’ wishes a priority is almost nil.
Rural doctors have negotiated hourly rates for emergency department work in New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba, he said. \
Brodie said he doesn’t understand why the regional board is working on a different way of paying doctors (by salary) in the Robson Valley, but won’t consider their proposal.
Richardson said the pilot project in the Robson Valley, east of Prince George, could become a model for other rural communities.
PAGE 13 Nativity scenes what it’s all about PAGE 3 City contributes to PGSO recording
SPORTS
■ More than 400 spectators turned out to celebrate Prince George’s high school volleyball excellence at PGSS Tuesday night, as the best local players took part in the inaugural Coca-Cola All-Star Game. /8
Ann Landers---- ........18
Around Town ... ........19
Bridge......... ........34
Business....... . .17,22,23
City, B.C....... .....3,6,13
Classified ...... .....33-36
Comics ........ ........26
Crossword ..... ........26
Entertainment . .....25-27
Horoscope ..... ........34
Lotteries ....... ......... #
Lifestyles....... .....18,19
Movies......... ........27
Nation......... .....14,15
Sports ......... ......8-12
Television...... ........26
World ......... ........16
possible by next month
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen Staff
The provincial government could make an announcement on changes to stumpage fees in the next month, says a forests ministry spokesperson.
The forest industry has been clamoring for changes to stumpage — the fee companies pay to cut trees on Crown land — to lower their costs.
A group of 17 CEOs from major forest companies has been in talks with the provincial government on changes to stumpage, which are ongoing, Ministry of Forests spokesperson Bill Macpherson said Monday.
“There are things being considered by both parties,” he said from Victoria.
“And I think fairly soon — certainly within a month or so — I think we’ll be able to have some sort of an announcement.”
Slocan Forest Products Ltd. CEO and president Ike Barber didn’t want to comment on the
ongoing negotiations.
“We’re working on it, and it’s a very sensitive issue back and forth,” said Barber from Slocan’s head offices in the Lower Mainland on Tliesday.
Slocan owns mills in the Northern Interior, including in Mackenzie, Vanderhoof and Valemount.
Delivered wood costs to mills are too high for companies to be competitive on the world market, and one of the factors is stumpage, added Barber.
“That total package has to be addressed, and were doing it as very aggressively as we can.”
The IWA said forest companies should get on with efforts to fix B.C.’s stumpage rates.
IWA president Dave Haggard said the province has an offer of relief on the table to industry.
“Instead of dealing quickly with that offer, they have asked for two months to study the issue,” said Haggard in a news release. “That’s not good enough.”
NDP planning three aluminum smelters
VANCOUVER (CP) — The B.C. government is moving ahead with plans to use excess hydro power to build three new aluminum smelters.
The NDP will release a study today into the aluminum industry prepared by the Vancouver-based firm KPMG that says British Columbia is “in a unique position to become one of the world’s leading exporters of aluminum,” the Vancouver Province says.
The study says this is because of cheap power, a booming market and B.C.’s position on the Pacific
Rim, the Province says.
It estimates that the three new smelters would bring in $3.6 billion in new investment into B.C. and create about 6,000 permanent jobs.
The government has said that smelters could receive, at a reduced rate, power from the downstream benefits B.C. is entided to under the Columbia River Treaty.
The report forecasts a 35-per-cent increase in the worldwide demand for aluminum over the next decade.
Stumpage fee changes
058307001008