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The final say

High achievers —

Tough as nails

Readers have a last crack at
commenting on the federal
election\NEWS A5.

Aboriginal achievement awards
| céremony held\COMMUNITY
B1 |

One of the newest and dangerous
sports comes 3 to Terrace\SPORTS
B6

WEDNESDAY
MAY 28, 1997

Reformer’s lead slips,

NDP’s Sobol
now in second

THE RACE to represent Skeena is
turning into a tight Reform-NDP
contest, an opinion poll conducted
May 20-23 shows.

Reform candidate Mike Scott’s
tead has slipped from 45 per cent of
decided voters in a poll three weeks
ago to 36 per cent in the latest one.

And NDPer Isaac Sobol has nearly
doubled his support among decided
voters from 16 per cent to 30.

Liberal candidate Rhoda Witherly
has dipped from 30 per cent to 25.

The poll was conducted for The
Terrace Standard and other newspa-
pers owned by Cariboo Press by

Maxx Research from Prince George.

It polled 200 voters between May
20 and May 23 asking, “If there
were an election today, how would
you vote?”

Progressive Conservartive can-
didate Kent Glowinski registered six
per cent while three per cent of vot-
ers chose ‘other’, primarily
Christian Heritage Party candidate
Rad Freeman.

The margin of error is plus or
minus seven per cent, 19 times out
of 20.

Although the results place Scott
ahead of Sobol, the margin of error
means it is possible the two candi-
dates are tied, noted pollster Peter
MacMillan of Maxx Research.

“The way it looks Reform and

NDP are overlapping. We can’t say
they are not tied. But the Liberals
are well behind,” he said.

MacMillan noted that the percent-
age of undecided voters remains
high at 28 per cent causing him to
speculate that it could be quite a race
on voting day, June 2.

“It shows there are still lots of
votes out there,” he said.

The poll results indicate Kitimat
may very well be the key batile-
ground between Scott and Sobol.

Scott took the city handily in 1993
and has to keep a lot of those votes
to stave off Sobol.

Scott was elected as the siding’s
first Reform MP in 1993 with 38 per
cent of votes cast, followed by 24
per cent for Liberal Rhoda Witherly

TANDARD :

oll shows

and 20 per cent for NDPer Joe
Barrett.

Other responses from voters polled
indicate Jean Chretien remains the
best choice for prime minister at 44
per cent, with Reform leader Preston
Manning at 26 per cent. NDP leader
Alexa McDonough went from six
per cent in the first poll to 13 per
cent now.

Reform was chosen as most popu-
lar choice for official opposition fol-
lowed by the Liberals and the NDP.

Reform candidates remain on top
in the Prince George-Bulkley
Valley, Prince George-Peace River,
Cariboo-Chilcotin and Okanagan-
Shuswap ridings. Incumbent NDP
MP Nelson Riis is on top in his
Kamloops riding.

93¢ PLUS 7¢ GST
‘VOL. 10 NO. 7

Skeena riding poll

% decided voters

REF NDP LIB PC OTH

a, SS

mg Where to go

VISITORS are showing up in record numbers at the Tourist Info Centre on Keith Ave. It's the first year the info centre hasn't either moved in
the middle of the year or been plagued by road construction disruptions. And officials say the number of people coming in this spring is
more than twice as the numbers recorded last year. That's the info centre's Vicki Correia helping tourists find brochures.

Candidates wade into fish war

NDP’s Sobol is the only one backing B.C. premier's tough stance on salmon

FEDERAL CANDIDATES here are denouncing
Premier Glen Clark as a reckless opportunist for
heating up the salmon war between the U.S. and
Canada,

Reform’s Mike Scott, Liberal Rhoda Witherly and
Progressive Conservative candidate Kent Glowinski
all took shots at Clark after B.C, moved to break off
a deal permitting Americans to test torpedas off
Vancouver Island.

Also over the weekend, three U.S. fishing boats
were atrested arid detained In B.C. because they
didn’t notify Canadian authorities before crossing
the border.

Clark claimed credit when Canadian and
American officials announced the Pacific Salmon
Treaty talks — which broke down last week ~- would
resume this Friday. - .

“He's basically grandstanding,” Scolt said. “He
recognizes that his NDP cousins in the election race
in B.C. are in real trauble and he’s using this as an
election issue to bolster heir chances.”

Scott predicted the issue will go on the backbumer
for both the NDP in Victoria and the Liberals in
Oltawa as soon as the federal election is over.

“The issue has been here for four years. :‘’s not
new. It didn’t crop up last weck, Yet all of a sudden
we have the premier discovering this issue and beat-
ing his chest seven days before a vate. It’s pretty
obvious what he's doing,”

. Both Scott and Witherly appealed for caution, not-

ing Canadian fishing boats often rely on finding
safe anchorage on the American side of the border
when they fish the waters of the Dixon Entrance.

It would be easy for Americans to tighten the

screws on Canadian fishermen there, Witherly said,
adding reprisals could also come in the area of lum-
ber tariffs,

“Although grand dramatic gestures sound good
and certainly our premier is very fond of those ges-
tures you have to make sure you’ve thought it
through very carefully as to what the costs and con-
sequences are,” she said.

“Premier Clark's actions have always been media-
driven, and not what’s the best for negotiation,”
Glowinski added, “It gets nothing done except
makes people angry.”

The only local candidate speaking out in favour of
Clark’s tough measures was NDP candidate Isaac
Sobol.

“I think it’s a great move,” Sobol said. “I'm glad
he did it. You have to be tough with Americans,

“| grew up in the Slates. [ know what you have to
do with Americans, You can’t pussyfoot around
with them or they wil] roll over you until you're
dead.”

“T’s not lime to be polite,” he added. “It’s time to
be tough and get our salmon back.”

North coast salmon will be the biggest losers if
there is no fishing agreement reached between the
two countries.

Failure to get a deal means continued overfi shing
of north coast salmon runs by the Alaskan commer-
cial fleet this summer.

The two countries have gone four years without
reaching a new deal,

The Pacific Salmon Treaty was supposed to fairly
deal with the problem of fish bound for one coun-
try's rivers being caught by the fishermen of the

other country.
The principle was that there should be equal

-numbers of salmon intercepted by each country’s

commercial fleet on their way to spawning grounds
on the other side of the border.

In practice that tends to megn southem B.C. fish-
ing boats catch American bound fish that will
spawn in the Columbia River system.

And Alaskans catch salmon bound for the B.C.
rivers like the Skeena, Nass and Stikine. Coho and
chinook stocks headed upriver on the Skeena are
particularly affected.

Scott, the Reform party's fisheries critic, says the
Alaskans have continued to increase their take of
B.C.-bound salmon to the point that for every U.S.-
bound fish caught in B.C., there are now eight B.C.-
bound salmon caught by Americans in Alaskan
waters,

He denounced the Liberal government record of
dealing with the issue as “lackadaisical and off-
handed.”

Scott has called for firmer action for years, and in
particular advocated a public relations campaign
directed at American citlzens to convince them to

- put pressure on their government.

But he says Liberal fisheries minister Fred Mifflin
has ignored it as a “B.C. issue" for the last four
years and has instead made only brief appearances
at times of crisis.

That’s what’s happening now, he says, predicting
the Liberals will vanish on the issue once the elec-
tion is over.

“The Liberal government has had three years to do
something, and they’ve done virtually nothing.”

Low turnout
feared for
election day

CALL IT apathy, anger, exhaustion, confusion.

Those connected in one way or another to the June 2 fed-
eral election are worried a number of factors might com-
bine to result in a low voter turnout that day.

One troubiing indicator dates back to the last federal
election in 1993 when only 63 per cent of registered voters
cast their ballots. That was a big drop from 1988 when 77
per cent of Skeena voters turned out.

Indeed, the drop was so dramatic that fewer people
turned out to vote in 1993 then in 1988 despite a growth in
the voters list from 41,500 people to 50,502.

Incumbent Reform MP Mike Scott’s campaign manager,
Barrie Carter, says the issue this election is that there are
no issues.

**T don’t think things will be much different in turn out
than in 1993," said Carter last week. ‘We're not getting
as many phone calls as we would usually get from people
wondering if they are on the voters list. Perhaps it’s apathy
—— we'll call it that.”

Pratik Modha, the campaign manager for NDP candidate
Isaac Sobol, thinks voters may be suffering from burn out.

‘Don’t forget we just had a provincial election last
spring and there were civic elections in the fall,’’ he sald.

Modha said he was quite concemed at the start of the
campaign as there wasn’t the kind of interest shown that he
at first expected. But activity has picked up since the May
long weekend. ‘‘Maybe people began to realize there were
only two weeks left until the vote,’? Modha added.

Don Silversides, who is in charge of Liberal Rhoda
Witherly’s campaign, thinks there’s a message in the high
level of undecided voters being recorded by impartial poll-
ing and by phoning done by political parties.

**The conventional wisdom is that if there is a high level
of undecided voters on election day, they generally don’t
vote,’? he said. And Silversides also says there hasn’t been
one central issue to capture the attention of voters,

All three managers are worrled about confusion caused
during the Elections Canada enumeration this time.

Cont'd Page A2

Hey you guys,
move up north

LOGGING contractor Gordon Hull has a suggestion
for cutting costs at troubled Skeena Cellulose.

Close the plush downtown Vancouver offices, load
all the company brass into a bus to Terrace, and set
them up in a trailer down on Keith Avenue, he says,
Hull, part owner of Don Hull and Sons Contracting,
says the Vancouver office costs the company $1 mil-
lion a month.

That means costs of $12 million a year — almost 10
per cent of the $130 million in losses Repap’s B.C.
subsidiary incurred last year,

“Look at the company’s CEO,”’ Hull said, referring
to Skeena Cellulose president Harry Papushka. ‘‘He
doesn’t have to live in Vancouver.’”

The counter-argument is that the company needs its
Vancouver office to market its pulp and lumber,

But Hull rejects that notion, ‘‘All thelr customers are
overseas anyway, and they have offices in Japan and
China to serve them,’’ he said. ‘Besides in this day
and age with telephones and faxes it doesn’t matter
anyway. You can live in the Arctic circle and still be
just as much in touch,’’

Lack of money to build logging roads continues te
plague Skeena Cellulose, That story Page A6.

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