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Hospital job action to resume on Tuesday
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen staff
Although there is a lull now, job action by local members of the Health Sciences Association is slated to resume Tuesday, says Fred McLeod, HSA director for Region 10.
The union, which includes professionals like pharmacists, speech-lan-guage pathologists and diagnostic technicians, is seeking a wage settlement approaching parity with rates paid in Alberta and Ontario, he said Sunday.
The HSA represents 135 workers at Prince George Regional Hospital and 60 at the Child Development Centre.
Walkouts took place at different locations last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
This week job action is planned for professionals and technicians in different classifications Utesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Diagnostic people are expected to go out Tuesday from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. These include lab technicians and medical imaging technologists.
Wednesday, clinical people, health record administrators, social workers, pharmacists and dietitians, among others, are expected to go out for the same period of time.
Thursday job action is expected by rehabilitation people — occupational therapists, physiotherapists, recreation therapists and speech-language pathologists.
HSA members taking part in such job action have done other work like
clean-ups in seniors’ lodges or running a soup kitchen at the Child Development Centre.
Historically, B.C. HSA members led other provinces in terms of compensation by 10% to 15%. Now this has been reversed, and B.C. health professionals and technicians lag behind Alberta and Ontario by 10% to 15%, McLeod said.
Many students trained in these fields at B.C. universities and technical institutes are leaving the province to take jobs.
A third of the pharmacy class graduating from UBC last year went out of the province to work, and half the • graduates from the nuclear medicine program at BCIT went to the U.S., he said.
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High today: 16 Low tonight: 8 Details page 2
on P.G
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen staff
The Planning Institute of B.C. Annual Conference taking place Tuesday through Friday at the Coast Inn and the Civic Centre will draw 100 delegates from throughout B.C.
*Not only urban planners but also representatives of smaller communities and resource planners will be among those in attendance, said Joan Chess of the Fraser Basin Council.
“We’re trying to offer a wider range of topics,” Chess said Sunday. “The field of planning is now rather diverse.”
One of the featured speakers will be Iona Campagnolo, founding chair of the Fraser Basin Council, who will ad: dress conference participants-at noon in the Coast Inn of the North Ballroom.
Other featured speakers are John Backhouse, northern development commissioner; Daniel C. George, executive director of the Prince George Native Friendship Centre, and Don Fair-baim, vice-president of business development for B.C. Gas Inc.
The opening session will be Hiesday
night at the Two Rivers Art Gallery, and the key event will be a slide show on the history of Prince George presented by Kent Sedgwick, senior planner for the City of Prince George and local historian.
Examples of sessions Wednesday morning are Resource-Based Communities, chaired by Dr. Greg Halseth of the University of Northern B.C. and Mayor Corinne Lonsdale of Squamish; and Water: Who Owns It? Who Decides?, conducted by College of New Caledonia geography instructor Jim Windsor and Henry Klassen, chair of the Nechako Watershed Council.
Typical Wednesday afternoon sessions are Highway 16 Commercial Corridor Planning, offered by Ed Chanter, Prince George’s manager of long-range
planning, and University of Northern B.C. Campus Planning, chaired by Paul Zanette, who holds a bachelor’s degree
in architecture.
Thursday morning sessions will include topics like First Nations and Local Government, moderated by Richard Krehbiel, director of policy and research at the Lheidli T’enneh
Treaty Office and Laurie Flahr, master’s degree candidate at Simon Fraser University, and Planning Education — Theory and Practice, led by Caroline von Schilling, a UNBC fourth-year planning student.
Among Thursday afternoon sessions will be B.C. Assets and Lands, conduct-’ ed by Margaret Ann Thornton, manage er of planning services for the District of Squamish and Tom Dielissen, senior land officer for the B.C. Assets and Land Corporation, and Changes to the Local Government Act, chaired by Mitch Fumalle, director of the plan£ ning advice and approvals branch of B.C. Municipal Affairs. I;
Chanter will lead a tour Thursday afternoon to illustrate his workshop top-; ic, Downtown — Is It Really Worth Saving?
Friday’s plenary.session from 10:30 a.m. to noon will include a debate among four panelists on the topic Be It Resolved — Planning Institute of B.C Members Should Be Licensed Professionals.
Closing remarks are scheduled for Friday afternoon.
Harris in no rush about MP pay hike
Local residents win more than
mere peanuts
Two Prince George residents got more than just peanuts when they scratched their Bingo Nut scratch and win lottery tickets.
Karyn Apps and Mike Cochrane each won the $10,000 top prize recently.
Apps had stopped at the Tlirbo station on 15th Avenue to buy propane for her barbecue. She traded in two Bingo Nuts tickets, worth $9, for nine new tickets. “It was very exciting,” she said. “We threw the (propane) tank over the fence and left for Kamloops right away” to collect the prize, Apps said.
With her winnings, she said she plans to buy scooters for her kids and put the rest toward aj^own payment on a house.
Cochrane purchased his winning ticket at the Mr. G store on Ospika Boulevard. “I scratched the very first one and said to my girlfriend, ‘It’s all peanuts. What does all peanuts mean?”’ he said. Cochrane said he’ll pay bills with his prize.
Dissident Alliance MPs
to learn their fate today
Citizen News Service
The Canadian Alliance Party caucus protocol committee met Sunday afternoon and evening to review the actions of dissident MPs Deborah Grey and Diane Ablonczy, says Alliance MP Dick Harris.
Alliance leader Stockwell Day did not attend the committee sessions, but was expected to join in further deliberations of the committee today, Harris said in a telephone interview from Ottawa.
A decision was expected about noon, said Harris, who is Alliance Party whip, and represents the Prince George-Bulkley Valley riding.
Grey, MP for Edmonton North, is the first MP ever elected by the Canadian Alliance’s predecessor party, the Reform Party. She is under review for having said last week that “the gig is
GREY
ALBLONCZY
up” for Day, who has encountered numerous troubles as Alliance leader in recent months.
Alblonczy, an Alliance MP from Calgary, having recently returned from an extended tour of Europe to study health-care reforms, said Day was
unfit to be prime minister and blamed his leadership for the party’s falling poll ratings.
Ablonczy said it’s time die party took a look at who could move the party ahead.
“The buck always has to stop with the leader,” she said in a Canadian Press story. “I think we have to be candid and say that perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at who would be best able to bring the agenda forward.”
Ablonczy said she plans to join a committee being formed to campaign in favour of a leadership review at the Alliance’s national assembly next April in Edmonton.
But she supports demands from some other Day critics for an earlier review, possibly before the new parliamentary session in September.
Eight dissident MPs, including Prince George-Peace River MP Jay Hill, called on Day to quit last month, and were suspended or decided to sit outside of caucus.
A Gallup Poll released Saturday suggested the Alliance had fallen to 9% in voter support country-wide last month, down from about 25% in last fall’s election. The Progressive Conservatives, by contrast, saw their support rise to 19%.
by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen staff
The decision on whether to accept a 20% pay hike passed by the House of Commons can wait for three to four months, says Prince George-Bulkley Valley Alliance MP Dick Harris.
“There’s lots of time to do that," Harris said Sunday afternoon from Ottawa.
Harris cautioned that he didn’t know whether the bill authorizing the pay raise would make it through the Senate. In most cases the Senate, historically the chamber of sober second thought, can only delay, not kill, legislation approved by,, the House.
However, the House of Commons is only a week-and-a-half from rising for the summer, Harris said. A delay by the Senate could sidetrack the pay-raise bill or cause it to die on the order paper.
Harris also reiterated he could not disclose his intentions or even contemplate making a decision whether to accept the pay raise until he had talked to family members. “When you comment
on family finances, you have to talk to your family first,” he said.
But he also said once again, “I feel I’m worth as much as Hedy Fry and most Liberals, who definitely will be receiving the raise.”
Dr. Fry is the Lower Mainland MP who caused a furore in late March when, in a speech in the House, she alleged that some Prince George residents “are burning crosses on their lawns as we speak.”
Harris said he also had to talk to the board of directors of the Alliance constituency association for his riding and consider their opinions before deciding whether to take the pay raise for MPs.
HARRIS
, i ...i ... 1, .. »y,,.. Citizen photo by Brent Braaten LOOK MA, ONE HAND — Members of the Chinese Imperial Circus show their strength and agility during a performance at the Coliseum Sunday afternoon. Shows run today at 4 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. There are 14 different acts in this year’s circus.
MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2001
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