today in brief
30c
Tuesday, March 22, 1983
 THE RIGHTS to death of the terminally ill in the U.S. have been set out by an influential commission of experts in medicine, law and ethics.
Page
 THE BANE OF Montreal dope-dealers, a 25-year police force veteran, has been busted for trafficking drugs.	Page
 HUNKY BILL has parlayed a $10 wager into a $5-million-a-year operation by following his own advice of staying small and profitable. Page
 DARCY ROTA tied the Canucks' single-season goal-scoring record
 ing
 with his 40th Monday night. Page
 9
13
Index                                
                   ...............19 
                   ..............8,9 
City, B.C......... .3, 12,24, 25     
                   ...........16-20  
                   ...............22 
                   ...............18 
                   ................4 
Entertainment.     ...........22,23  
                   ...............26 
  Horoscopes...... ...............23 
International...   ................2 
                   ...............22 
                   ................5 
                   ...........13-15  
                   ...............18 
m*
The
Prince G
eorge
Citizen
Sadrack says
   Clear skies, sunshine and cold temperatures are in the forecast for the Prince George region today and Wednesday, with an overnight low tonight expected to reach -12 and a high Wednesday of 1. There is little likelihood of precipitation tonight and Wednesday.
  Monday’s high was zero, the low was -10, there was 9.8 hours or recorded sunshine and no precipitation.
   A year ago on this date the high was 11, the
Serving Central B.C.
cut
        by Canadian Press VANCOUVER - There will effectively be no legal aid in British Columbia for three months this year unless the provincial Treasury Board comes through with $2.4 million in new funds, the Legal Services Society of B.C. said today.
   Society chairman Don Silversides said from May 15 to Aug. 15 the society will not refer any criminal or family law cases to private lawyers, although about 40 staff lawyers will continue to work.
   Silversides said this means that some people charged with “very serious crimes such as rape and murder" may not be represented by lawyers. Also, effective April 15 and continuing through the next fiscal year, no one charged with summary conviction offences or offences under the Juvenile Delinquents Act will be provided with a lawyer, he said.
   Silversides also said effective Sept. 1, all duty counsel work will be suspended.
   The cutbacks follows the Treasury Board’s decision to deny the society’s request for an extra $2.4 million in the upcoming fiscal year.
   Society executive director Stephen Owen said Monday provincial funding of $13 4 million is inadequate to cover the increased demand for legal aid services brought about by tough economic times.
   In 1982, the government cut the society's financing by $625,000, forcing it to tighten qualifications for legal aid recipients, reduce fees paid to private lawyers who act for them and lay off staff.
   Owen warned that further drastic measures would have been implemented had the society not been given an extra $800,000 in early January — $175,000 more than was cut from the budget, but still not enough to meet increased demand.
   "What we have is a statutory obligation to provide certain services,’’ he said.
   “We are in an analagous position with other organizations also required to provide for people who meet certain qualifications. So many people are eligible now due to tough economic times that it has become a drain on our services.”
   Owen estimated that 3,500 urgent cases are handled by legal aid each month.
Ability-to-pay precedent set
   VANCOUVER (CP) - Public sector employers’ “ability to pay" overrides all other factors in determining wage increases under the provincial government’s wage restraint program, commissioner Ed Peck ruled Monday.
   Peck, who became head of the Compensation Stabilization Program 13 months ago, upheld a claim by Simon Fraser University that it is unable to afford a 9.8-per-cent salary increase awarded university faculty members.
   “Ability to pay is the dominant and uncompromising element of the program,” Peck said in his ruling, which could have an impact on the fate of salary increases awarded thousands of B.C. public school teachers.
   More than 60 school districts have filed “ability to pay” arguments with the program, claiming they cannot afford arbitration awards ranging as high as 6.5 per cent.
    Peck’s first decision on these contested awarded is expected to be handed down this week.
   "Although each case is going to have to be looked at on its own merits, conceptually, I will apply the same criteria as the SFU decision,” he said.
David Dautzenberg examines drawing of proposed inner-city park at Third Avenue and Quebec Street.
QUEBEC STREET STAYS BLOCKED
Survey saves inner-city park
by BOH MILLER Staff reporter
   A last-ditch effort by Aldermen George McKnight and Steve Sintich to scrub an inner city park at Third Avenue and Quebec Street went down to defeat by a 6-2 vote Mondav.
   By a similar majority, with McKnight and Sintich opposed, council reaffirmed its support for the project after a lengthy presentation by the Towncenter Business Association.
   Association president Monica Becott told council results of a survev amon^ of merchants and customers on Third. Fourth and Fifth Avenues done in the past two weeks showed overall support for the park.
   Of the total number surveyed, 321 were in fa vor of the proposal and 64 were against it. Be cott told council some people have difficulty accepting change in the downtown and if there are enough people concerned about the effect
 the park will have on traffic, maybe council should take another look at downtown traffic patterns.
   The proposed park, delineated by concrete barriers on a half block of Quebec Street between Second and Third Avenues, has been criticized by several merchants in recent weeks. Merchants have complained the barriers have caused traffic problems and forced customers to drive out of their way when they come downtown to shop.
    As a result of a number of letters to council, alderman opted two weeks ago to invite the association and any interested merchants to discuss the park at this week's meeting
   Alderman Alan Greenwell said no single location would be acceptable to everyone.
   Alderman Brian Brownridge said he had doubts about the park originally but since it is
 something initiated by merchants that they will have to live with, he would support it.
   McKnight said the park should be defeated until the association can come up with a more long-range plan for revitalizing the downtown. Sintich said it is premature this year based on the supposition that major downtown redevelopment projects are in the wings.
   Mayor Elmer Mercier advised Sintich that downtown redevelopment (a proposed one-block project by Evansford Development Corporation) is still a long way off. He said the park shouldn’t be defeated on the hope something else will revitalize the downtown in the immediate future.
   Mercier and aldermen Brownridge, Green-well, John Backhouse, Jack Sieb and Art Stu-able voted in favor of the park. Aldermen Richard Godfrey, Hans Taal and Ed Bodner were absent from Monday’s meeting.
$2.4 MILLION NEEDED, GOV'T TOLD
Legal aid faces 3-month
City boy
honored for rescue
   Michael Gatey, 13, is scheduled to receive one of Canada’s highest awards during a ceremony in which Gov. Gen. Ed Schreyer will honor 23 Canadians.
   The Prince George boy, then 11 years old, saved two of his companions, Feb. 1, 1981 when they fell through the ice while fishing on Fraser Lake.
   Gatey is to receive the Medal of Bravery, Canada’s third-high-est award.
Court hears tariff fight over lumber
   WASHINGTON (CP) - United States lumber producers carried their fight against Canadian imports into the courts Monday, appealing a preliminary U.S. government ruling that rejected placing penalizing duties against $2 billion a year of Canadian wood products.
    The U.S. Coalition for Fair Canadian Lumber Imports asked the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York City to overturn the Commerce Department's March 8 ruling that the Canadian imports aren’t significantly subsidized by their government.
   The U.S. group, which includes about 650 lumber companies that brought the complaint against Canadian imports last October, has asked for a speedy court ruling in advance of a scheduled May 23 final ruling by the Commerce Department.
   Paul Ehinger, chairman of the U.S. coalition’s steering committee, said after the appeal was filed in New York that the U.S. companies still believe provincial governments in Canada subsidize softwood lumber producers by providing standing timber at unfairly low prices
    The forest industry in British Columbia, largest lumber producer and exporter in Canada, has said the import duties that U.S. competitors are seeking would be disastrous.
    In Vancouver, officials of the Canadian Softwood Lumber Committee, a coalition of industry and government groups which spearheaded the fight against the penalties, said they are disappointed, but not surprised at the action.
    “We have known since the outset that this was a course open to them,” said Allan Sinclair, vice-president of government and public affairs of the Council of Forest Industries.
    Tom Waterland, B.C. Forests minister, said in a telephone interview from Atlin he doesn’t "really see any reason for concern.”
    “I’m not going to try to interpret the legal validity of the (Commerce Department’s) judgment that was made, but I understand that it’s pretty well phrased and lays the facts out in a pretty straightforward manner,” he said.
    “What specifically their appeal grounds are, I don’t know. That had to happen at that time, I’m sure."
    Gus Kuene, vice-president of the Northwest Independent Forest Manufacturers Association in Tacoma, Wash, said the association is not trying to put any Canadian lumbermen out of work, members just want to share the market.
Nurses vote Our navy 'a mess' bulletin
on new pact
  VANCOUVER (CP) — After a year of negotiations, a tentative contract agreement has been reached between 14,000 British Columbia nurses and 119 general hospitals.
   The B.C. Nurses’ Union and the Health Labor Relations Association announced today that a settlement was reached Monday under mediator Dave MacIntyre.
   No details of the proposed contract have been released. Ratification votes by the nurses and the hospital boards are expected to take about three weeks.
   The contract is subject to review by Compensation Stabilization commissioner Ed Peck.
   The talks began in March, 1982, and the union opted for binding arbitration last fall. The two sides returned to the bargaining table last month.
   Under the old agreement, which expired last March 31, the starting rate for a ward nurse was $1,900 a month.
                          by Canadian Press WASHINGTON — An influential American military publication is telling Canadians: "Your navy’s a mess, and it’s headed the wrong way.” Cmdr. John Byron of the U.S. Navy, writing in the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine Proceedings, takes Canada to task not only for inadequate defence spending, but particularly for having old, inadequate and dilapidated ships.
  He describes the current Canadian armada as “twenty destroyer types, three diesel submarines, three replenishment ships, and a collection of miscellaneous cats-and-dogs.”
  “The technology is old and so are the ships,” Byron says, "And they’re not in very good shape. The destroyers have an engineering history so sad as to bring tears to your eyes.”
   His suggested remedy, in an article labelled as opinion, is that Canada cancel a planned order to buy six frigates, forget about having a surface ship navy composed of destoyers and instead build a navy around diesel submarines.
   Unlike the current Canadian navy, which Byron says disparagingly is “barely capable of protecting itself,” a submarine force operating off both coasts would be a major threat to any enemy forces.
   He says the Canadian navy now is no more than "a collection of ships whose only hope of survival is in finding a U.S. task force to join. “That’s not much of a national naval policy, Canada," Byron writes If Canada had more diesel submarines, he notes, the U.S. Navy could use them as “enemy surrogates’’ to build up North American defences. The proposition makes mutual sense. Byron suggests to Canada, because the United States would be “staying sharp against diesel submarines and yours honing its skills against the world’s best nuclear boats."
   OTTAWA (CP) — Several federal government offices “are in almost constant violation" of the new Constitution by failing to provide bilingual services to the public, says Max Yalden, official languages commissioner.
   Failure by a federal office to provide services in French or Eng-iish “where there is significant demand for them is in breach of the Constitution and an action for redress can be brought before the courts,” Yalden says in his annual report released Tuesday.
   “As sections of this report will testify, there is no lack of substance for such an action — a Rood many federal offices are in almost constant violation of those rights.”
   In linguistically mixed regions of Ontario, for example, services to the French-speaking minority “remain anemic and passive, if not downright skeletal," Yalden writes.
“Let me know immediately if you start feeling the urge to move sideways."
Carrie Fisher Page 22
 low was -4 with 6.6 hours of sunshine and no precipitation recorded.