Welfare warning A local poverty advocate Says new welfare rules will hurt the poor\NEWS A14 Super bowlers A local team blows the competition away to prove their the best in B.C.\SPORTS B5 Eye opener A Terrace teen comes home from a national youth forum\COMMUNITY B1 $1.00 pius 7¢ GST ($1.10 plus 8¢ GST cutside of the Terrace area) "VOL.14.NO. Si STA 7 Likely to be ‘yes’ vote on Skeena By JEFF NAGEL LOGGING CONTRACTORS and sup- pliers are expected to vote ‘yes’ April 2 to a resiructuring that will hand con- trol of Skeena Cellulose ta NWBC Timber and Puip. Unsecured creditors owed up to $25 million will take around 10 cents on the dollar for SCI’s unpaid bills if the vote passes. The sale would then be official April 26. “T think a lot of people are going to hold their noses and vote ‘yes,’” pre- dicts Northwest Loggers Association manager Bill Sauer. “Simply because that’s the only alternative.” That support comes despite the his- tory of NWEBC president Dan Veniez and chairman George Petty, who both were part of Repap Enterprises when it cut Skeena loose in 1997 and triggered the past five years of chaos. Sauer said there are deep suspi- cions among some creditors. He said NWEC has yet to reveal a detailed business plan or prove whether it has the $75 million in financing it claims to have raised. A no vote will mean bankruptcy and likely end efforts by NWBC to buy the company. Rival bidder Forest Capital Ltd. has said it would seek to buy the opera- tions in bankruptcy, and would also offer money to creditors. But Sauer noted Forest Capital pre- sident Larry Bontje has not toured the region, while NWBC’s Veniez has held repeated meetings at northwest towns to drum up support, “I think almost everybody’s voting yes,” said Rob Geier of Geier Bro- thers’ Contracting. He said his firm, which is owed $25,000, has already sent in a ‘yes’ proxy vote backing NWBC. “No one’s stepping up that’s better than these guys,” Geier said. Terrace Precut mill owner Mo Tak- har is another creditor who says he will side with NWBC. “Pve decided I’m going to vote yes,” Takhar said. “I need the work.” “I think people want to go back to work,” he added. “If the vote is no, who knows what’s going to happen. They might sell it piecemeal.” Takhar, owed more than $70,000, said he finds Veniez’s vision compel- ling, although he, too, warries about NWB(C’s financing. “His plan is great money,” Takhar said. -if he finds the Under the terms of the sale, NWBC would buy Skeena Cellulose for $6 million and put up another $2 million lo pay unsecured creditors. A new complication is the possibil- ity claims by various employees will be counted as unsecured, giving them a Vote as well. Those claims — for severance, va- cation pay, other entitlements, plus unfunded pensions - total $16.1 mil- lion, according to a March 22 report of the court-appointed monitor. If those claims are all submitted by next Thursday and approved by the monitor, the employees could com- prise as much as 64 per cent of the total $25 million worth of unsecured creditors. Their presence will further dilute the voting power of other creditors, and may make it less likely any orga- nized effort to vote down the offer will succeed. Severance payments for terminated employees make up the bulk of the employee claims, at $11.1 million. OF that, 120 terminated manage- ment employees are owed $7.6 mil- lion. Terminated pulp mill workers are owed $1.2 million A further $2.2 million owed in se- verance to Carnaby sawmill workers may be removed, court documents in- dicate, because NWBC may retract the decision by SCI in January to de- clare the mill permanently closed. Vacation pay and other entitle- ments at all the milts total $2.6 mil- lion. Cont'd on Page A16 College toid to find students THE FINANCIAL challenges keep coming for Northwest Community College. Just weeks before its board of governors is to ratify a gi Boarder battle CHAD SLUBOWSKI (left) and Kristian Grey soar through the , air after launching off the first jump of tha Ruins Cup boarder- : cross course May 17. The two men were taking part in the fourth annual race at Shames Mountain. Grey nabbed third place in the men's open division. For full details and results: turn to page BS. SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN PHOTO. budget with $1.7 million in cost cuts, the college has learned it must at the same time boost the number of full time students by nearly 500. . “It’s a huge situation,” college president. ‘Stephanie: Forsyth said. “There is no question this college is going to look very different in coming years.” About $2 million in infrastructure and service cuts will have to be found, after the college makes that $1.7 million reduction, to develop and expand programing. Forsyth wants the board to review an outline of addi- tional courses for the upcoming academic year at its April 13 board meeting. That’s when the budget will be ratified. . At just over $16.4 million, NWCC’s provincial grant for the coming fiscal year. is roughly on par with the cur- rent one. But it’s come with an expectation that the college will meet a student full time equivalent (FTE) target of 1,821 next fall. ; That’s 485 more students than the 1,340 the college had been planning for and represents one-third of the college’s present enrolment. “If the college doesn’t produce the number of student seats that we are being funded for, we may lose a por- tion of our funding,” said Forsyth. NWCC has not met its FTE target for the past few years, Forsyth said, blaming a number of factors, includ- ing the cost of maintaining 10 campuses, program costs, and low enrolment in some classes. NWCC will add additional courses and programs to meet that enrolment target, but will have to cancel others. “Some of it is overdue,” Forsyth said of the work ahead. ‘We need to be more effective in terms of what we do.” The college is also considering raising tuition fees, a move Forsyth had been reluctant to consider until the March 11 budget arrived. Raising tuition by 25 per cent, for example, translates into just $250,000 more in revenues for the college. A college council of faculty, staff and administration had recommended keeping the tuition freeze in place for one more year, but that was before NWCC received its budget letter, Forsyth pointed out. NWCC has also learned its budget will shrink by eight percent, or about $1.3 million, in the years ahead. Years two and three of the advanced education mini- stry’s plan show the FTE target would also drop, Docs to start charging extra fees DOCTORS HERE will start billing pa- tients for phone consultations and pho- ned-in prescriptions beginning April 2. The $15 fee for a phone consulta- .tion and $7.50 for a phoned-in pre- ‘scription is in direct response to the government's cancellation of an arbi- tration award granting a fee increase and other payments, says local doctor Geoff Appleton who sits as the north- ern representative on the B.C. Medical Association board. That arbitration award from former Chief Justice Alan McEachern would have given physicians a fee increase retroactive to las| April of approxima- tely 11 per cent followed by a nine per cent hike this April 1. It would also have provided for province-wide on- call payments and other monetary items. Instead, the province said that was too expensive and passed Icgislation giving doctors a retroactive fee in- crease to last April of approximately 10 per cent amounting to nearly $200 million a year. There is no provision for a further increase April 1 but approximately $200 million has been set aside for items such as on-call. payments and rural incentives, making for a total boost to doctors of nearly $400 million. No mechanism is in place to decide how that second $200 million will be parcelled out and there is no provision for arbitration should the province and doctors fail to reach an agreement. That makes doctors angry, especi- ally. after they and the province agreed to binding arbitration‘in.the first place -which then resulted in the McEachern award, said Appleton. “For the last year the association has tried to keep a lid on things. We've told our guys to take it easy, that there was arbitralion,” said Ap- pleton last week, “So now that the award is can- celled, we don’t feel morally obliged to do that anymore,” he added. Appleton noted that the phone con- sultation fee was covered in the now- dead McHachern award, At $15, the fee is approximately half of what a physician receives from the Medical Services Plan for an of- fice visit. Appleton noted that the $7.50 pho- ned-in prescription fee is more or less. a token as it won't cover the teal cost of providing the service, / Phone consultations aren’t covered, by the plan, nor are phoned-in pre- scriptions, but they are on a separate fee schedule established by the B.C. Medical Association. As well as these new fees, doctors are to start charging the Northern Health Authority for on-call work at Mills Memorial Hospital. beginning April 2. Their rates will be the same as what was outlined in the McEachern award — $20 an hour during the day rising to $40 an hour depending upon whether the on-call hours are at night, on weekends and stat holidays, ‘On-cali fas been a contentious issue for physicians. It’s defined as the time period during which doctors are ‘available for people checking in at the hospital emergency room. “Up until’ ‘two “Years ago in Terrace, doctors weren’t paid for being on-call, although they did receive normal fees for seeing and treating patients. An agreement for rural doctors did bring in a $10 per hour fee for on-call services, but that was only for even- ing, overnight, weekend and stat holi- day coverage. “Whether we'll get paid or not is another thing,” said Appleton of the on-call bills to be sent to the health authority. Doctors are also withdrawing from volunteer committge work at the hos- pital to protest the arbitration cancel- lation. These committees deal with mat- ters such as medical policies, staffing: issues and anything else to do with physician i involvement and work at the hospital. .