it’ll help

Your last chance

A cut in what it costs to log will
bring relief to the province’s key
industry\NEWS A6

It’s getting close to the deadline
to nominate worthy
volunteers\COMMUNITY B1

Soccer upset |

Western Pacific astounds all with
victory over arch rivals Super
BM\SPORTS BS

WEDNESDAY _
APRIL 8, 1998

Steve Nickolls

SCI
closes
mills,

logging

SKEENA CELLULOSE
sawmills here and in
Carnaby and Smithers will
shut down for two weeks
starting Monday,

And company officials
aren’t categorically stating
that the sawmill will restart
on time if lumber markets
remain in the doldrums,

**We need stronger market
conditions,” said Skeena
Cellulose spokesman Don

McDonald, who a week ear- -

lier denied any knowledge
of impending sawmil? shut-
downs.

“We're hoping to recom-
mence April 27, That's what
we're planning.”

He said that date is predi-
caled on the beginning of an
uptick in lumber markets.

“Our big problem is the
softness of the lumber
market, which is something
we can't controi,’”
McDonald said. \

But he added that the in-
ventory of logs and chips in
Skeena Cellulose’s yards is
also too high.

He said there’s more than
enough fibre to supply the
Prince Rupert pulp mill,
which will continue opera-
tions.

The sawmill shutdown is
in addition to the three-week
Skeena Cellulose logging
shutdown that began Mon-
day and is slated to end
April 24.

The planer mill and chip-
per will continue operations
during the shutdown here,
McDonaid added,

“We're really taking a
partial seasonal shutdown,”’
he added, ‘‘l don’t think
we're the only company
that’s doing this, It’s some-
thing that’s happening
throughout the province.”

LOCAL FISHING guides accuse the province of ignoring
a report it commissioned which indicates guides face
heavy licensing, fees,

“It’s just ridiculous at this point,”’ says Steve Nickolls,
chair of the Terrace Angling Guides Association.
“They’re ignoring their own report and driving guides out
of business.”’

The report, conducted by ARA Consulting Group for the
environment ministry in February, noted that the burden of
last year’s 1,000 per cent increase in guiding licence fees
was especially severe on lower Skeena guides. It also says
guides need a phase-in period for large fee increases,
something that didn’t happen in 1997.

The environment ministry did allow deferred payments
in 1997 so guides could pay their fees over the course of
the season rather than all at once. But guides say the pro-
gram was canceled unexpectedly this year, meaning they
naw have to pay thousands up front to get licences.

“They won't tell us anything other than here’s your bill,
pay up,’’ says focal guide Noel Gyger, ‘‘It’s a pretty dif-
ficult situation.’’

The guides also say that there’s a good chance the De-

partment of Fisheries and Oceans will close the coho
sports fishery this fall because of conservation worries.

This could cut the recreational fishing season short by
fwo months for guides who rely on European tourists,
since Europeans tend to prefer keeping some of the fish
they catch, rather than just catching and releasing them.

“If the coho season is closed they (guides) will probably
shut down at the end of August,’’ Nickolls says.
‘Rumours are that DFO may even close sockeye to
sportsfishing.”’

Even though there may be no business in the fall, guides
still have to pay for “‘rod days”? allocated under licensing
regulations. The environment ministry does not refund un-
used portions.

B.C.’s fisheries director Jamie Alley says it just isn’t
ministry policy to refund guides for unused rod days, and
there are no plans to change that policy.

Aad he says the deferred payment plan was dropped be-
cause the guides have had enough time to build those extra
costs into their prices,

*‘Last year the guides made a good argument that there
wasn’t advanced warning to build the fees inte the client

« Farmer fends
off feisty bird

ONLY THE male rhea act aggressive, and Ted
Huber has a number of tricks for dealing with him.
The retired farmer has a wide variety of exotic
birds on his acreage — for story see B1.

93¢ PLUS 7¢ GST
VOL, 10 NO. 52

des behind eight ball again

prices,’’ he says. ‘But now they’ve hada full year to build
it into their cost structure.’

Alley notes that the fisheries ministry is talking with dif-
ferent parts of the sportsfishing industry, including guides.

“We've been criticized for not doing consultation,’’ he
says. “We're doing that now, Until we have a complete
assessment, there will be no changes,”’

The guides point out that this lack of response and in-
flexibility in the environment ministry is criticized in the
ARA report. ‘They get rid of financing ata time when the
whole industry is in crisis?”’ says Nickolls. ‘‘What are we
supposed to do?”

The report nates that government administration of hunt-
ing guides is much more flexible, adding that ‘‘angling
guides do not have access to this same flexibility — fish
resources Muctuate more widely on an annual basis.”

The report also says that, “Despite it’s importance, the
angling guide industry of British Columbia is not well-
appreciated’ and it says the industry needs ‘predictable,
transparent and fair regulations’? in order to survive.

Guides, however, argue that current government regula-
lions are none of the above.

Hospital ward
overloaded,
overworked

HEALTH CARE providers have been cautioned again
about how to use the overworked and overloaded intensive’
care unit (ICU) at Mills Memorial Hospital.

Tis use has soared in the past three years, causing it to run
a deficit and, al times, have five people in what is sup-
posed to be a three-bed ward,

At-the same time, full time nurses are burning out from
overtime requirements because of the high usage rate and
the effect is also being felt on casual or on-call nurses, says
Mills administrator Michael Leisinger.

“What we're saying is we’re a three-bed [CU funded to
have one nurse on duty around the clock. This is nothing
new,’’ he said,

“When we get beyond that, then we have problems.”

Leisinger outlined the need for caution in a March 27
memo to local health care providers.

Part of the problem facing the ICU is that it serves a ge-
ographic area beyond the one which is used to determine
the hospitai’s budget,

With two internist specialists in Terrace, there’s more
coverage provided for critically ill patients,

So when the single internists in either Prince Rupert or in
Kitimat are off duty, ICU patients from there are sent to
Mills, said Leisinger, ‘‘The ICUs in Kitimat and in Prince
Rupert clase regularly,’’ he noted,

On an annual average, 25 per cent of the [CU patients at
Mills are from outside its normal service area.

Trying to keep the Mills ICU at three patients, on budget
and within the nursing service capability could lead to dif-
ficult decisions, Leisinger acknowledged.

An existing ICU patient could be moved to the general
wards should a new one arrive who is more critically ill.

And ICU patients may find themselves flown to other
hospitals where there is space, said Leisinger,

“We're nol trying to put up walls but we are trying to
live within our means. We'll continue to do what’s best for
the paticnt,”’ he added.

Leisinger did say that in emergency situations, matiers of
budget and staffing go out the window.

Dx. Geoff Appleton, the northwest representative for the
B.C, Medical Association, found the [CU use memo dis-
turbing. ‘‘The decision to move a patient out of ICU Is a
medical decision. If we get sucd because a patient dies,
that’s not an administrative problem, it’s our problem,”
said Appleton. ‘‘The buck stops with us. We're on the
front linc, not anybody else.’”

Appleton added that the core problem at Mills remains
that it provides specialty services to a region without being
given a sufficient budget. He said the matter of regional
service will come up at an April 9 meeting here between
local dactors and an official from the health ministry,

Skeena NDP MLA Helmut Giesbrecht, in commenting
on the same meeting, said he hoped doctors could be
drawn into creative decisions to help the hospital.

For more on Mills, see Page AG.

Condoms to the west and east

AS THE CONDOM debate reges in the
Coast Mountains school district, our
neighbours in Prince Rupert and
Smithers wonder what's going on.

Those two school district opted to
make condoms available in schools years
ago, and haven't heard any complaints
since. Both school board chairs report
condoms are a non-issue.

The issue didn't get such a quict recep-
tion when those school boards first
debated it, Smithers and Prince Rupert
residents raised much the same issues as
Terrace residents are now.

In Tertace, the condom debate makes
its debut appearance before the board’s

‘education committee meeting on April

15. It’s scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the
Caledonia lecture theatre.

Al that mecting the education com-
mittee is expected to make a recom-
mendation on whether to make condoms
available in schools. Then it’s up to a
board of nine trustees to make the final
vote, That would be at the board meeting
in Stewart in May.

Sarah de Leeuw, the person leading the
pro-condam side, phoned school districts

around the province to find out how
many made condoms available to stu-
dents. A totel of 37 do, 18 don’t, three
have no policy, and one didn’t return
phone calls,

The condom issue arose here once be-
fore, in 2990, when the former Tertace
school district voted against making
them available. Despite that vote, con-
doms have been available at one school
district school, Hazelton Secondary, for
years, says principal Sheila Ryan,

“Condoms are available through the
offices of the three home school coor-

dinators,’’ she said, ‘The doors are
open. They’re just there in baskets and
the kids can help themselves,”

And, according to Ryan, the condoms
go quickly,

Prince Rupert school board chair Rus-
sell Weins said parents have never
spoken up about condoms again since
they were made available through ma-
chines in schools about cight years ago.

‘Kids don’t have sex in school of get
bad habits in school,’’ sald Weins.
“Most of it comes from the home.,’”

Weins says, in looking back, the deci-

sion the board made was the correct one.

“Students live in the 90s and some of
us are calching up,’” he said.

Fred Stewart, Prince Rupert’s opera-
tions manager, said students use the ma-
chines, but not very often, He said the
school district probably spends more
money on condoms than it brings in
from the machines, since condoms often
expire before being purchased. And then
the disirict has to replace them,

Cont'd Page A10