Aid adjustment.
Legal aid office here

poised to shut down and

be replaced by new
centre\NEWS A5

Best ever

Local goaltender selected
to protect the net in
upcoming elite hockey
tournament\SPORTS B4

Guess who?

An adult adoptee reunites
with her mom‘on the
reserve in the play
Someday\COMMUNITY B1

$1.00 pus 7¢ GST
($1.10 plus 8¢ GST
outside of the Terrace area)

ay ae ee

ie Me

SING Ee) is ae ge
eit cat

ollege jacks tuition, kills daycare

Strategy depends

on higher enrolment

By JENNIFER LANG
TUITION WILE RISE by 20 percent
next year at Northwest Community
College and the daycare at the Ter-
race campus will be closed.

Additional layoffs and reduced ser-
vice hours at some campuses will also
be necessary, as the college gets cto-
ser to resolving a $3 million deficit
due to provincial cutbacks.

“We're about a quarter of a million
dollars away, so we’re getting closer,”
college president Stephanie Forsyth
said following the board of governors

meeting.

The tuition increase approved April
13 — smaller than those announced by
many other colleges since B.C.’s six-
year tuition freeze ended — means
NWCC can keep all 10 campuses
open, Forsyth said.

The tuilion increase will generate
$519,000 in additional revenue for the
college - provided nearly 500 addi-
tional students enrol.

The college learned last month it’s
expected to boost the number of Full
Time Equivalent students (FTEs), or it
will lose its current budget allocation
from the provincial government.

Even with the tuition increase,
NWCC’s tuilion is still the lowest in

the province,

“No one wanted to see an increase
if we could at all avoid it, given the
current economic situation in the

. north,” Forsyth said.

The college laid off 38 employees
when it last nearly $1 million in non-
core programming in a round of pro-
vincial government cutbacks an-
nounced in January.

“We have taken very seriously the
culs in the communities in the north
have been facing,” Forsyth said.

NWCC surveyed mayors and eco-
nomic development officers in the re-
gion about the impact of government
cuts when reviewing its tuition hike.

“The college is probably one of the

largest, if not the
Jargest [government
service] in the north
right now,” she said,
adding education is
one of the remaining
ways people can re-
train and find new

employment. =
The decision to Stephanie
close the daycare Forsyth

facility ends two
months of speculation as staff, admin-
istration and faculty reviewed alterna-
tives, but there was no getting around
the need for an operating subsidy from
the college.

The college found operating efft-

ciencics and other culs to keep cam-
puses open, she said.

Work hours for some part-time posi-
tions are reduced, meaning another 15
lo 18 part-time employees will lose
their jobs.

Three administrators are also being
laid off and some services — like mar-
keting and publications — are being
centralized.

Most of the other operational cuts
are internal, Forsyth said.

A $25 application fee has been eli-
minated, so it won’t cost potential stu-
dents anything to apply.

“We want to follow up every in-
quiry we can,” Forsyth said.

Continued Pg. A16

rer

el Riding shotgun

TOP GUN: Five-year-old Benjamin Knull gets set to blast away

interstellar nasties on a flying machine piloted by his four-year

old sister Allison. They were among the fun-seekers at the
Westcoast Amusements carnival Thursday. JEFF NAGEL PHOTO

Police sting snared young
murder suspect, court told

By SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN
A JURY will hear 20-year-old
Christopher Alexander confess on
videatape to the 1998 murder of
Linda Lefranc, crown‘ prosecutor
Declan Breanan said as the young
man’s trial opened here last weck.

The 37-year-old single mother
and college student was brutally
stabbed to death in her Braun St.
townhouse Dec. 9, 1998. Her se-
ven-year-old daughter found her
laying in a pool of blood that
morning.

Alexander, 17 at the time and
living next door to Lefranc, is
being tried in adult court for first-
degree murder.

Dressed in a white button-down
shirt, black slacks and tie with
white socks and no shoes, he paid
close attention and often looked
over to the seven-woman, five-
man jury.

Brennan told the courl under-
cover RCMP officers posed as an
organized crime ring recruiting
new members to get Alexander to
talk.

Alexander takes responsibility

for the murder and provides de-
tails of it in a two-hour video in
which he meets an officer posing
as the crime ring’s boss, Brennan
said.

“Mr. Alexander discusses in
detail about killing Miss
Lefranc,” Brennan said of the
tape, which will be played to the
jury.

He said Alexander’s descrip-
tion on tape of the weapon he

Police arrested Alexander Dec.
17, 1999 at the Terrace-Kitimat
airport here after a lengthy under-
cover investigation.

Other evidence, including a
partial palm print on a glass fish-
ing float, also places the young
man in Lefranc’s townhouse, court
was told, Brennan said investiga-
tors at the scene concluded a rob-
bery had taken place.

Lefranc’s purse appeared to

Undercover RCMP officers posed as an orga-
nized crime ring recruiting new members to get
Alexander to talk, court was told.

claims to have used matches the
description of the type of weapon
pathologists say must have been
used,

Autopsy results show Lefranc
was stabbed 83 times with a long,
slender knife roughly 2. centi-
metres wide, dull on one side and
sharp on the other, Brennan said,
But no-murder weapon was ever

found.

have been disturbed and receipts,
bits of paper and cards were found
littered on the floor of the apart-

‘ment, he said.

Brennan said her body’s posi-
tlon — between the couch and the
telephone — made it appear she
was making her way to the tele-
phone when she was stabbed.

' Prosecutors will. call witnesses

to testify about the crime scene,

fingerprint analysis, Lefrane’s au-
topsy and the year-long investiga-
tion leading to Alexander’s arrest.

Police investigated 330 tips,
polygraphed friends. and: family
and monitored the accused’s acti-
vities in the lower mainland.

At the time of the murder,
Alexander lived with his mother
and siblings next door to Linda
Lefranc in the same six-unit town-
house.

Brennan said there was some
“friction” between Lefranc and
Alexander’s family, adding the
accused had stolen from her prior
to her death.

“Mr. Alexander appears to be
familiar with how to enter that
apartment without forcing his way
n,” Brennan said.

Two of Linda Lefranc’s rela-
tives sat in the courtroom. One
woman sported a white tibbon on
her lapel.

One of Christopher Alexander’s -

friends from high school was also
present on April 17; the first day
of proceedings. The trial is ‘expec;
ted to last for another three weeks.

Dialysis next
health priority

THE MUCH sought after renal dialysis program is set ta
emerge from the shadowy world that decides on health
care projects.

Those closely involved suggest there'll be good news
within weeks for a program that has been wanted here
for yeurs.

The northwest is the largest geographical area in B.C.
without such a program.

It means people here who needed the life-saving, kid-
ney-cleansing procedure have ta move away, most com-
monly to Prince George.

Some people, depending upon their condition can do
dialysis at liome.

“I’m feeling better all the time about it,” Skeena Lib-
era] MLA Roger Harris said last week.

“I didn’t hear a ‘yes,’ but I heard some pretty good
words. They’re calling it imminent,” said Harris who has
been bird-dogging the project since his election to the
legislature nearly a year ago.

Just two weeks ago another project — the purchase of
a mammography unit - was given its own approval after
months of delay.

Planning for a six-station renal dialysis unit here in-
tensified two years ago.

There were optimistic projections in early 2000 that
the project would not only be approved, but built and
ready for use by now.

Instead, the project has been in limbo, a victim of a
series of time-consuming events,

The provincial election of May 2000 pretty much
stopped all health care planning.

Even after the election was over, the registered
nurses’ work-to-rule later campaign that spring and into
the summer took nurses out of the planning process, for-
cing another delay.

By fall the new Liberal government froze all capital
programs until it could review all of the projects.

And that review was extended further into the late fall
and winter of 2000 when five new super-regional and one
pravince-wide health authorities were created to replace
a large collection of smaller ones.

The blessing for dialysis here now ‘sits with the new
authorities, says Joanne Cozac. She works for the new
Northern Health Authority and manages the renal pro-
gram in Prince George. She would also be responsible
for the one here.

“There is agreement at all levels of government and
with all the authorities that there is a need for renal dia-
lysis in Terrace,” Cozac said last week.

She’s predicting some kind of go-ahead announce-
ment within weeks.

Prior to last year's capital projects freeze, ‘Terrace
was on the list for budget approval as were four other

Cont'd Page A2

We have highest
jobless rate in B.C.

UNEMPLOYMENT in northwestern B.C. has hit a
staggering 14.6 per cent.

That's the highest jobless rate anywhere in B.C,

Elsewhere around the province, unemployment
ranges from a low of 7.3 per cent in the northeast
to 13 per cent in the Cariboo,

The new rate in this region in March is a full
percentage point higher than the 13.6 per cent re-
ported in February by Human Resources Develop-
ment Canada.

It’s also 3.2 per cent higher than the wnemploy-

-ment rate was a year ago, the labour force survey
results indicate.

In the past 12 months the region’s economy’s
been rocked by the shutdown of Skeena Cellulose
operations, Loggers haven’t worked since summer
and the B.C. government has started to cut jobs,

‘The provincial average unemployment rate held
steady at 9.4 per cent, National unemployment i is
at 8.5. per cent,