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‘Don’t take AimHi away from us’
About 200 protest cuts to community living programs
INDEX
Ann Landers..... .......29
Bridge.......... .......41
Business ........ ... .20-22
City, B.C........ .. .3,5,13
Classified ....... ... .38-42
Comics ......... .......28
Coming Events ... .......16
Crossword ...... .......28
Entertainment ... ... .25-29
Horoscope ...... .......41
Lifestyles........ ... .16,29
Movies.......... .......26
Nation ......... ......6,7
Sports ..........
Television....... .......27
World........... ... .14,15
canada.com
by SCOTT STANFIELD Citizen staff
Society will be judged in the manner they treat its most vulnerable citizens. It’s the catchphrase of a campaign by AimHi (Association for Individuals with Mental Handicaps), which staged a noon-hour rally Friday at city hall to protest proposed government cutbacks to community living programs.
Staff at AimHi say the province intends to cut 35% from the Ministry of Children and Family Development, which they fear will have an adverse effect on their services and group homes.
Many of the estimated 200 people at Friday’s protest, like Linda Ash, are mentally-challenged persons bearing signs which read things like Dignity For All, and Focus On My Ability, Not My Disability.
“Don’t take AimHi away from us,” Ash said.
“AimHi placed me in a good group home with good roommates,” said Mike Meyers, an autistic man. “We don’t need these institutions — it’s just not fair.”
‘ The association has about 400 staff members, more than 1,000 clients of all ages and at least a dozen service programs such as life-skills training. It also operates four group homes and 34
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen staff
The B.C. Liberal government’s forest policy reforms are meant to revitalize a stagnant industry, particularly opening up the flow of timber to the highest possible use,
Prince George North MLA Pat Bell said Friday.
If details are hard to come by on exactly what the government plans to do, that’s because the reforms are still being formulated, said Bell.
He was responding to critics in the forest sector who say they’re not getting detailed information on the policy reforms and are fearful the reforms will not open up the flow of timber.
The changes being considered include moving to a market-based timber-pricing system, as well as doing
away with a requirement that ties timber in a given area to a particular sawmill or group of sawmills. Changes on who has the rights to log timber are also being considered. Currently, the majority of timber harvesting rights are in the hands of major forest companies.
The most significant objective is to allow wood fibre to flow to high-end uses like guitar manufacturing and I-beams, instead of using it all to produce two-by-fours, he said.
Bell said there’s only one glue-lami-nate beam manufacturer in B.C., in Penticton, but there’s a plant in Edmonton that produces threes times a much product as the Penticton plant.
“Is there not an opportunity for a Mackenzie, Prince George, Vanderhoof or Fort St. James for a similar kind of plant?” asked Bell. “One of our objectives is to give people an opportunity to create that highest and best use of the end of material. And we need to get out of people’s way. For too long we’ve constrained the industry by regulation.”
— See Saturday Report page 13
Hill echoes call for beetle bail out
Cornered
by Baldwin
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dustry plan already presented to Ottawa.
The federal Liberal government is aware of the pine beetle epidemic but has made no cash commitments.
Last week, an aide to Environment Minister David Andersen, B.C.’s senior federal minister, said the large amount of money being requested will require disaster funding, and that means the province will be expected to kick in funding as well. Discussion between Ottawa and B.C. is continuing, said the aide.
But Hill said demanding that B.C. apply for disaster funding is a cop-out. The federal government should help without having to be asked. Ottawa moved very quickly to help out after the ice storm in Quebec two winters ago, said Hill.
The Northern Forest Products Association has already been to Ottawa twice seeking $50 million in each of the next
10 years to ensure areas of dead timber are harvested and replanted quickly. The industry is also looking for cash to fund research into the beetle’s impact on wildlife, water quality and”forest productivity, some of it to support a full-time research scientist at UNBC.
An estimated 72 million cubic metres of timber — or about 1.6 million logging truck loads — is infested in north-central B.C.
The beetles, about the size of a grain of rice, destroy lodgepole pine by eating out the inner bark when they lay their eggs, as well as by introducing a fungus that impedes water flow.
Exceptionally warm, dry springs and summers in 1997 and 1998 allowed the infestation to spread rapidly through mature lodgepole pine forests, abundant in the Interior. Consecutive mild winters have also helped its advance.
Santa breakfast today
by SCOTT STANFIELD Citizen staff
If you haven’t already had breakfast, you might want to consider heading to Foodteller at the corner of Fifth and George Street for the Santa Claus Brealtfast event today from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Breakfast will be served until 10:30 a.m., after which there will be entertainment and a visit with Santa, as part of downtown’s Classic Christmas 2001.
Once you’ve digested breakfast, you can then sample some of the six types of chili which will be featured at the chili cook-off from noon until 3 p.m. at Third Avenue and George Street.
Proceeds from the fund-raiser go toward organizations such as the Prince George Hospice Society and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Today’s events also feature sleigh rides with Santa from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Wilson Square in front of the courthouse, photos with Santa from noon to 3 p.m. at Northern Hard-
semi-independent living homes.
“I’ve read these placards and you’re absolutely right. You have abilities,” said Janette Dorre, whose daughter Nicole lives in a group home. “I do not want to see these programs cut.”
Nowell Senior, whose 25-year-old son Mark is mentally challenged, said government cutbacks will likely put Mark into congregate care among 20 or 30 others, a living arrangement Senior said would encourage Mark’s former selfdestructive behaviours to resurface.
“This would be devastating to Mark,” Senior said. “Who among us here today would choose to live with that many people? We want home-based community living to remain.”
According to Dorre, congregate care is the same as institutionalization which, she said, translates into “isolation.” Minister of Children and Family Development Gordon Hogg said congregate care refers to apartment model complexes which have 12 to 20 beds, not institutionalization.
In an interview Friday, Hogg said the government has not yet targeted its budgets, but is looking at a number of budget scenarios for a 20% to 50% cap for all ministries except education and health.
“No matter which model we go to, I don’t think there’s going to be a dramatic shift in that type of living,” Hogg said. “We’re certainly not going back to institutions.”
The majority of developmentally disabled people in B.C., he added, live in
Citizen photo by Dave Milne
William Burdette climbs the steps of City Hall Friday to address a crowd protesting proposed government cutbacks to community living programs. Roughly 200 people took part in the event.
four-bed group homes, except for a few places such as the 25-bed Willows facility on the Lower Mainland.
He also said B.C. has led North America in the deinstitutionalization process.
“The next step is moving toward what’s called individualized funding,
so you start to create more options (such as community-based governance models) for parents and for those children,” Hogg said. “We’re going to have some budget pressures, but as I’m meeting with the BCACL (B.C. Association For Community Living) and some of these other groups, they’re talking
about ways of being able to take over some of these structures ... generate some savings and create much more work for the developmentally disabled and for the volunteer and community-based sector at the same time. We could have a pretty good system when we come out of this if we work at it.”
Forest policy reforms still being formulated
Citizen file photo
Santa will visit downtown’s Classic Christmas 2001.
ware, Bowling with Santa at the Fifth Avenue Bowladrome, a colouring contest and a chance to win one of many prizes in Santa’s Gift Bag.
The inaugural Classic Christmas is sponsored by the Downtown Business Improvement Association and Special Events Creators.
by GORDON HOEKSTRA Citizen staff
Prince George-Peace River MP Jay Hill called on the federal government Friday to pencil in some cash in its budget to help fight the expanding mountain pine beetle epidemic in north-central B.C.
“If this government takes the issue seriously, the necessary funds will be targeted in Monday’s budget,” Hill said from Ottawa. “Just as it has done with the softwood lumber dispute, this government has failed to step in and offer to help the province in our fight against the mountain pine beetle.”
Federal Finance Minister Paul Martin will table the government’s next budget Monday at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time.
Hill — part of the Tory-Democratic
“If this government takes the issue seriously, the necessary funds will be targeted in Monday’s budget.”
—JayHill
Representative Coalition — said he wrote to Martin Nov. 6 asking for $50 million annually to fight the beetle during the next decade, but he said he’s had no response.
It’s the same amount in a northern in-
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