PAGE 4, THE HERALD, Friday, October 14,1977 (the herald) = Published by Sterling Publishers Generat Office - 635-6157 Circulation (Terrace) - 635-6357 (Kitimat) - 632-6209 PUBLISHER... W.R. (BILL) LOISELLE MANAGING EDITOR... STU DUCKLOW Published every weekday at 3212 Kalu St. Terrace 6.C. A member of Varified Circulation. Authorized rs second class mait. Registration number 1261. Postage pai. «cash, return postage guaranteed. NOTE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full, complete and sole copyright In any advertisement producad and-or any: editorial or photographic céntent published In the Herald. Reproduction A ret permitted without the writien permission of the r. ~ ‘ ar’ Interpreting The News | Canada sparks debt write-offs — UNITED NATIONS (CP) — Canada has set a new - standard of co-operation for the United Nations that it hopes and expects other member states will be quick the follow. The new criterion is that of debt cancellation, the writing off of debts that the poorest countries owe to the wealthier . industrial states. The move is part of the spirit of the new ' international economic order the Third orld has been ' demanding. The Canadian initiative was disclosed recently when government House leader Allan MacEachen, speaking as cochairman of the Conference on International Economic : Co-operation, announced that Canada was cancelling more than $250 million of development assistance indebtedness : owed by developing countries. : tries would f Canadian diplomats hoped that other industrialized coun- iow that policy. This week, Sweden did just that, announcing in the General Assembly that it intends to write off $220 million owed by the poorest developing countries and suggesting, like the Canadians, that other advanced countries do the same. PROVIDES EXAMPLE Several developing countries have expressed ap- preciation for the Canadian gesture in speeches in the general debate currently under way in the Gekeral ‘Assembly and have pointed to it as an example for others. Diplomatic observers now expect the pressure will be on other industrialized countries to move toward debt can- cellation. In all, the developing countries owe about §20 billion on development assistance credit extended by in- . dustrialized states, which include the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all of Western Europe. Debt cancellation was a major issue on which the rich and poor countries disagreed at the 17-country Paris Conference on International Economic Co-operation which ended last June 2. MacEachen represented the industrialized states in negotiations between the two groups. Some Western countries, including the U.S., have written off small debts annually on a case-by-case basis, but the Americans have rejected Third World demands for wholesale debt cancellation. Canada may have found it relatively easy to write off its debts since Canadian assistance loans have been granted on an interest-free basis with a 10-year grace period followed by a 50-year repayment period. Since the loan would not be paid back for 60 years and inflation by then likely would ve reduced its worth, the amounts involve diminish over the qears. Other countries charge threeper-cent interest and some require earlier repayment. As a result, amounts involved carry greater impact and cancellation becomes more difficult. : Future Canadian development assistance will be in the form me outright grants, as favored by the developing countries. ‘ Today in history 1066—The Battle of Hastings was won by William the Conqueror who took England away from Oct. 14,1977 Mackenzie King’s Liberal party defeated R.B. Ben- nett’s Conservative government 42 years ago Harold. today—in 1935—in a federal § 1793—Marie Antoinette’s election. The Liberals took trial by the French 171 of the 245 seats in the revolutionists began. _ House of Commons, gaining 18H—E.E. Cummings, the largest majority since American author and artist, Confederation. The Con- was born. 1957=-Queen Elizabeth Ti became the first British sovereign to open Canada's Parliament. servatives were reduced from more than 130 seats to fewer than 50, and 12 cabinet ministers were defeated. HERMAN T1077 Unwvartol Press Syrdicpte oft ‘We can't elope. | haven't got a suitcase.” _ESKIMO POINT, N.W.T. CP-What beganas dn incredible wildlife success tory has turned into a nightmare for snow geeses nesting on this coastal plain halfway up the western shore of Hudson Bay. In 1954 only 12,000 pairs of breeding snow geese were counted in a small geesee were counted in a small area at mnell River. This led to the establish- ment of a federal migratory bird sanctuary in the area. By 1973, biologists estimated 163,000 nests at the mouth of the mouth of the M the river alone. os Forage afar for food | | Protected geese turn sanctuary into wasteland that number. and south. community. Driven by their hunger, Now the entire sanctuary area only supports a fraction of The geese, in their search for the vast quantites of grasses and sedge it takes to feed them, have moved farther north Goslings hardly big enough to tumble through sodden scrambled as far as 50 miles in a deperate search for food. “It must be October already — I just saw a ‘mail early for Christmas’ sign.” | Tories ready for battle on - borrower's protection bill OTTAWA (CP) — Consumer legislation stalled in the last session of Parliament faces an- other rough ride from the Pro- gressive Conservative opposi tion when it is reintroduced in the new session opening Tues- day. A borrowers and depositors protection bill, which died in the last session under heavy at- tack in Commons . committee, is expected to.be part of the legis- ‘lative program outlined in the session-opening Speech from the Throne—a_ = government-writter speech to be read by the Queen Tuesday at 4 p.m. EDT. Also planned is an overdue revision of the 1967 Bank Act, the law governing activities of the chartered banks rewritten by tradition every 10 years to bring it up to date. The Conservative oppositior has already served notice that the borrowers bill, at least, will have a rugged time in line with the party’s campaign against government internvention in the marketplace as a way to re- store business confidence and cure the country’s economic Ss. Tne new session is the third of the 30th Parliament, elected July 8, 1974, and may well be the last before a general elec- tion expected next year. The second session, which opened a year ago, will be formally pro- rogued in a brief ceremony Monday. By parliamentary rules, all incomplete legislation dies with the session and must be reintro- duced if the government wants It. ECONOMY DOMINATES Economic issues are expected to dominate the new session. And legislative oddsmakers give such economic measures Quebec office we MONTREAL (CP) — Requests ' fram manufacturing firms for in-. formation on moving to Montreal or expanding operations here have increased since the Nov. 15 election of a Parti Quebecois government in Quebec, says an official of the- municipal economic development office. * Paul Laurin said he was at a loss to explain it because “it would have been logical to assume that requests would taper off, but they have grown out of proportion. “How many are serious is difficult to say but we are following up on 50 or 60 interesting and active cases.” But he said the office had no in- formation on firms moving out. The economic development office was created flve years ago to attract manufacturing interests “because they are the highest job-generating sector.”’ ADVERTISES ABROAD .The office spends about 30 per cent of its $1.1-million budget advertising as the borrowers bill _ little chance of becoming law before the next election. Conservative economic critic Sinclair Stevens said in an in- terview he supports some sec- tions of the bill, such as those requiring full disclosure of credit costs. But he thinks the government has tried to do too much in one bill. And he is not convinced of the need for some consumer protections he re- gards as cumbersome. The borrowers and depositors bill was introduced last Novem- ber by former consumer affairs minister Tony Abbott as prom- ising consumers new rights in their dealings with lending and deposit-taking institutions. I would also give lice new mechanisms to crack down on loan sharks, But the bill came in for a heavy battering from the banks, trust and mortgage companies and it was still languishing in committee when the Commons adjourned for the summer, more than six months and 75 government-introduced amend ments later. Even the Consumers Associ: ation of Canada (CAC) is not happy with the bill. The group passed a resolution at its an- nual meeting in June calling for a delay in its implementatior until the problems of consumer credit could be studied in depth. The CAC called for a royal commission to study the “so- cial, economic and legal’’ as- pects of credit. “I think it has a chance of getting through,’ said Hert Gray (L—Windsor West), a for- mer minister of consumer af. fairs. “But it depends on the commitment to this. kind of con- sumer legislation on the part of the government.” ce Re i 5 Business spotlight 9, its services to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and other areas of Canada, particularly Toronto. One service is a listing of more than 80 per cent of the industrial buildings on the market. complete with color photographs. Another service is access to a data bank on manufacturing. The office has an economic research unit. It advertises. in financial pub- lications and in the financial pages of newspapers, ° Results’ are difficult to measure because ail requests are confidential and it often takes two to three years for a request to mature. “Feasibility studies and market analyses take time,’’ Laurin said. RESULTS GRATIFYING “The results are gratifying to the degree that we are pretty happy to keep on with what we're doing, and if we could reveal them, they would be very, very exciting to look at.” HAS RESPONSIBILITY The bill now is the responsibility of Warren Alimand, new minister of consumer affairs. Gray thinks the revisions to the Bank Act, now one year overdue, have less chance of getting passed. A government study on the revisions, released a year ago, proposed that foreign. banks be allowed toset up shop in Canada and that the rules for creating new banks be simplified, all in the interest of making the banking industry more competitive. Although these suggestions have not been strongly opposed by banks and other lending institutions that could be affected by changes such as trust companies and credit unions, Gray said he expects the committee hearings will be drawn out because sO many groups will want to make an appearance. Gray was chairman of the finance committee in 1966 during the last regular 10-year review of the Bank Act. -Elaborating on his opposition to the credit bill, Stevens said he is not convinced the government should be setting up a bureaucracy to erforce consumer credit legislation that is already in place in several provinces, He also wants to see the sections dealing withloan sharks taken out of the bill and placed in the Criminal a. John Rodriguez (NDP—Nicke Belt), party consumer critic, said he expects the Conservatives will dig in their heels on legislation affecting business as next year’s election ap- proaches. “Trudeau's ace card is national unity and Quebec,” he said. “The Conservatives’ ace card is the economy. “It’s a question of setting a climate, saying the government has screwed up the economy,”’ he said. “You embellish the idea that the government is incompetent.” Fecomes manufacturers From its start to the end ot Sep- tember, the office received . about 650,000 requests, he said. “But I would say that out of perhaps 700 requests, we're happy if we get 20 concrete results. “An awful lot of requests come from Italy. Montreal is more at- tractive to them than other parts of Canada because of the continental European approach to which they find it easy to adapt.” The office also produces audio- visual presentations in five languages for meetings with foreign overnment officials who come to nada “on a fairly regular basis.” One such meeting led to a visit last month from three Iranian businessmen Interested in prefabricated homes and the office set up meetings with the firms they wanted to meet, he said. The office works closely with the provincial industry and commerce department and cooperates with both provincial and federal governments when it can. they have sought out every blade remaining,even within the confines of this peninsualr “ lem with these geese is that they never have a ene ee Kent Brace, a Canadian Wildlife Service CWS Piologist, said in an interview. “Every year they're able to bring off their broods.” ; Brace said presence of the geese in the area may be due to ultural developments farther south as well as local conditions. "T feel this flock was one that stayed longer on the Prairies because of crops such as winter wheat. Instead of just staging in the McConnell area, they began to settle down.” ; More traditional nesting locations such as Southampton Island, high up in Hudson Bay, and Baffin Island produce young geese only during those years when snow leaves the ground early. ; Brace said the McConnell sanctuary and surronding territory may be too much of a good thing. “We have more than just our observations on the psread of this flock to conclude that the McConnell geese may be in serious trouble.” “There have been some unusual changes in nesting behaviou with females abandoning nests.”’ 7 “The young goslings here are in relatively poor condition andit is doubtful that a good percentage will survive until they can fly.”” Even more unusual was the disappearance of more than 500,000 geese too young to breed from the area. 8 Brace said the CWS has no idea where they went although ‘“we suspect they went on a moult migration to some other area.” The biologist said snow geese are easily the most numerous of North American geese and the emergence of ever increasing numbers was considered good by naturalists and hunters. But because of their remote nesting locations little is known of the dynamic forces governing their population. FUTURE UNCERTAIN _ ‘There are no historic records to indicate there ever have been such large concentrations in the Eskimo Point area. We have no idea whether to expect the population to spread into new areas, crash or just gradually decline, “We do know that when they were first discovered here the coastal plain was covered in a tufted plant species called cottongrass and now itis in short supply. ‘We also have our observations on the condition of the geese and their distribution to unlikely areas as an in- dication that all is not well. “And we suspect that without some managemen initiative to counterbalance this combination of human and natural forces that created this strong population, it may be along time before we enjoy such vast numbers again.” Action is being taken by local Eskimos, the CWS, which is jurisdictionally responsible for migratory birds in Canada and game agencies of the midwestern and southern United ates. They are working on a project to band 35,00 or more geese during each of the next 10 years, a project considered massive in the annals of wildlife biology. CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES Management alternatives for the population include artificial feeding on wintering and staging areas farther south, so the breeding birds return in better condition, or increased cropping :through hunting;: permitting’: fewer returning birds to utilize the breeding range more suc- cessfully. Brace said the banding is being done because of the need to know the distribution of the geese on their migration. “Any data we have show us only that there is a general mixing of various populations on the migration routes. “What we need to identify are the prime southern areas where these birds turn up on their southern migrations so that any management scheme proposed will affect the MeConnell birds primarily and avoid any detrimental effect on other less viable populations.” He said banding must be carried out on significant numbers of geese over a long period to be statistically valid. Maverick Graffty gets his at roast | MONTREAL (CP) — ‘When Heward Grafftey was born he spoke French at the age of three weeks—unfortunately he was in Westmount and nobody could understand him.”’ “The man is living proof that learning a second language is detrimental to one’s mind.” So went the one-liners and affectionate gibes during a gala roast here Wednesday in honor of the diminutive English Quebecer who has delivered Brome-Missisquoi riding six times to the federal Progressive Conservatives over the last 20 years. More than 200 of Grafftey’s longtime friends and sup- porters turned up at the $50-a-plate dinner, billed as a roast or the Gnome from: Brome. The roasters included national PC association president Michael Meighen, former president Egan Chambers, Montreal lawyer Philippe Gelinas and several well-known journalists. ° UNDERLINED STYLE . But the fact that several prominent would-be head-table Guests from both the PC and Liberal parties cancelled at the ast minute only served to underline Grafftey’s go-it-alone political style. , One of three Conservative MPs in Quebec, the fluently- bilingual Grafftey has traditionally shied away from establishment politics and has managed to win successive re-election in an 85-per-cent French-speaking riding on shoestring budgets. “He’s the phenomenon of electoral polities in Canada to- day,” sald national newspaper columnist and head table roaster Doug Fisher. ‘'He’s pulled off something that J can’t really understand as yet.” ; However, when Grafftey, 49, had a chance to speak, he made it clear he felt he owed his electoral success to his constituency organizers, most of whom are French Quebecers. “I’m proud of my team, they’re heavy hitters,” com- mented Grafftey as he introduced his organizers to the gathering of mainly well-to-do English-speaking Mon- . trealers, ALWAYS HELPED One of the organizers, Louis Cournoyer, from Cowan- sville, said in an interview that Grafftey was repeatedly elected because he was “likeable and never refused anybody who needed help.” ‘ But he said Grafftey first won acceptance in the riding by speaking French. ‘‘As far as we were concerned he was a stranger,” said Cournoyer, thinking back to 1957. ‘‘He was English, came froma rich family, and was a PC—not exactly a gift in Que- c Asked to describe Grafftey’s French, Cournoyer, replied: If Bob Stanfield could have spoken French like Heward, I tell you, he would have been elected prime minister.”