Home in doubt Burning rubber

Motorcycle dragster Jim Braid

Traditional journey

Future territory of Kermode bear Native canoeists trace a 100-year

debated by loggers and environmentalists\NEWS A5

old watery path down the coast to Victoria \COMMUNITY B1 |

Snags second at a race in Prince George\SPORTS B6 |

WEDNESDAY |. JUNE 25, 1997

93¢ PLUS 7¢ GST VOL: 10 NO. 14

No miracle for Skeena Cellulose

By JEFF NAGEL ALL LOGGING by Skeena Cellulose ends Friday and hopes are sinking that protracted mill shutdowns will be avoided.

Job Protection Commissioner Doug Kerley has abandoned efforts to broker a temporary deal to keep the company’s operations open.

Instead, he will focus on a longer tem restructuring deal between the province, the unions and the banks that own the company.

The Royal and Toronto-Dominion banks |

have demanded the province contribute mil- lions of dollars for capital spending and that the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada agree to slash a third of the 750 jobs at the Prince Rupert pulp mill.

The number of working days is rapidly run- ning out now for 250 mill workers and

FRBC reveals regional budgets

By DAVID TAYLOR $66.6 MILLION.

That’s how much money Forest Renewal says they will be spending in the Skeena-Bulkley region over the next year --- an increase of 41 percent compared to last year’s figures.

About 50 people filled a boardroom at the Terrace Inn Friday for the long-

awaited announcement. Speakers included Forest Renewal’s CEO Colin

Smith, MLAs Helmut Gies- brecht and Bill Goodacre, and FRBC regional director Alan Parkinson. ,

“That — triple six,’ Goodacre quipped. ‘‘I don’t know if it was intended to be ihere, but that’s what we've got.’’

Province-wide, FRBC is supposed to spend some $625 million this year, more than the previous three years combined,

Goodacre and the other speakers lauded the Crown corporation for its work in the region and for the fund- ing increases planned for this year.

And the numbers sound impressive.

Watershed restoration has gone up from $9.6 million to $10.2 million, recreation

Baad ae ore ae

around 500 logging contractors here in Terrace. All logging ends this Friday and the Prince Rupert pulp mill shuts down at the same time.

“The Terrace mill will be down July the 11th,” said Skeena Cellulose spokesman Pat Ogawa. “Smithers and Camaby may be down a day or two earlier. The planer mills will run to about mid-August while we pre- pare the rough lumber to orders.”

Skeena CelJulose officials say the closures are indefinite and the banks will not extend more money to allow continued operations until deals are reached with the unions and government.

Employment and investment minister Dan Miller expressed dissappointment at the banks’ refusal to operate the company and

warned the province can take away forest licences if shutdowns go beyond three months.

“Tenures are granted on the basis that people do something. with them,” Miller told the Standard Tuesday. “We couldn't allow a permanent closure of all operations. We couldn’t allow that and allow the onw- ers to retain the tenure.”

Miller said talks continue with the banks and the failure to avert shutdowns docs not mean negotiations are doomed.

“We are in discussions on the financing package,” he said. “The trade union is in ‘discussions on the other issues. Let’s hope that those are productive.”

Miller said the province has become involved in restructurings before, most not-

ably at Evans Forest Products in Golden.

“We're not in the business of giving mon- ey away. But we will invest with the securi- ty that’s normally demanded in these kinds of investments,”

Miller also hinted that he sces the banks’ difficulties today as being their own mak- ing through extending loans to Repap.

“It’s regrettable in my view, albeit the bnaks ended up with this operation, they wete a party to advancing monies in the past.”

“The result is the closure of operations in the northwest and it now appears il’s up to

government response to the upheaval wide- spread shutdowns will cause in the region.

The man in charge of pulling various agencies together is Michael Riseborough

“It is a serious situation,” he said. “One of the difficulties that we're faced with is we don’t know whal the timeline is.”

“Events haven't given me a sense of com- fort of whether we’re talking about two weeks or six weeks or cight weeks.”

The Community Adjustment Process Riseborough’s organizing will cover a region from Prince Rupert to Telkwa and north to Stewart.

It takes in several provincial government

the people of the northwest and the govem- ministries, Human Resources Development

ment to come up with some solutions.” And meanwhile government officials are pteparing for the next stage — a smooth

Continued Page A2

City meddling in health care, group says

CITY COUNCIL’s call for a vigourous defence of Mills Memorial Hospital has drawn rebukes from the bady appoint- ed lo oversee local health care.

Councillors decided to write a letter to the health minister protesting plans to further cut beds there and eat into an accu- mulated surplus to pay for annual deficits.

But councillors are basically meddling where they have no expertise, says Community Health Council chair Larissa Tarwick.

She said the hospital is in negotiations with the health min- istry in efforts to resolve the hospital’s $450,000 budget shortfall.

“We would have appreciated hearing from the city before they decided to write a letter,” Tarwick said. “We would appreciate their support if we need it but we also don’t want lo damage the work we're trying to do.”

City councillors, however, are unrepentent, accusing the health council of being apparently unwilling fo take a tough stand to defend the hospital.

David Hull said the hospital will eventually spend all of its surplus dealing with deficits and will then hit the wall.

Failure to take steps to deal with the situation now amounts to a reckless gamble, hie said.

And he suggested the appointed — rather than elected — health council isn’t taking a tough enough stand because that would mean unkind words to the NDP government that appointed them.

“The entire Community Health Council has been hand- picked by our local MLA,” Hull said. “Helmut Giesbrecht is controlling the direction of local health care — that’s essential- ly what's happening.”

“So it’s going to be hard for this board to be objective when the hand that’s put you in thal position may be the hand you have to bite back at.”

Councillor Val George agrees the lack of an elected health board is a problem, but says people in the community must also take a stand if they want to maintain the present level of health care at their hospital. ;

“The community just doesn’t seem to be aware just how serious the situaiton is up there,” George said.

George said there was an incident two weeks ago in which more than 50 patients were at the hospital and only half that number of beds were available.

has been bumped up by $700,000 and value-added investments are expected to |

for jobs

“That’s just one incident of many that’s been happening recently,” he said. Tarwick disputes the suggestion problems are widespread.

hit $2.6 million this year — an increase of nearly nine- fold.

According to Parkinson, 70 watersheds will be restored, 1,400 — direct person-years of employment will be created and 41,000 hectares of trees in this region’ will receive en- hanced forestry trealment, like spacing or pruning.

In fact, the regional en- hanced forestry budget has increased from $13.9 mil- lion last year to $16.5 mil- lion this year.

But while regional spend- ing for enhanced forestry is on the increase, the Katum Forest district — which in- cludes Terrace, Kitimat and the Nass Valley — is seeing their budget actually decrease slightly this year.

“Qur budget is down $200-$300,000 from last year,” says Bob Wilson of the forestry ministry, who divvies up the silviculture money from FRBC.

Cont’d Page As

amping

THERE'S SO FEW jobs for students thls summer that staff at the Hire a Student office have resorted to desperate tactics, including camping out on the

Walker and Natalie Dickson threatened to stay out on the lawn until ten more jeb orders came in. Fortunately they made their goal, and were able to

“It’s only happened once this year that we had 51 people in the hospital,” she said, “We are never going to tell people they can’t be in the hospital.”

The city councillors say they believe the hospital has done

lawn of city hall, Student placement officers Joelle

go home for the weekend. For story see page A7.

Accord jobs are already

there, West Fraser says

By JEFF NAGEL WEST FRASER Timber figures it has already paid for ils share of the Jobs and Timber Ac- cord,

The company estimates its share of about 2,000 direct jobs to be crealed B.C.-wide by the industry is between 100 and 200, according to northwest regional operations manager Bruce MacNicol,

And since the time frame for the accord be- gins from April 1996, West Fraser may have al- ready created that many new jobs with the con- struction of its medium density fibreboard plat last year in Quesnel. ,

‘We're probably already there,’? MacNicol said.

MacNicol said he doubts the company could.

count its Forwest Veneer plant in Terrace

towards the total because it’s a refit of the pre- vious Forwest Wood Specialties Mill.

“T don't think you could count them again,’’ he said, ‘‘But if we go to a second shift there, those people would count.” .

Overall, MacNicol said the company docsn’t view the job creation targets of the accord as

x

m For more on Premier Clark's Jobs and Timber Accord, see Page Ai0,

hard to reach.

The greater question, he said, is if the Clark government follows through on its promises to seduce the cost of logging, particularly for coas- fal operators like West Fraser and Skeena Cel-

‘lulose.

“We're supportive of the agreement as long

as the government fulfills their end of it,” he

added,

And so far, says MacNicol, il looks like stumpage changes planned will have a major cf- fect on West Fraser’s bottom line.

He said the company paid an average of $9 per cubic metre for slumpage last year.

MacNicol expects promised changes in stumpage to take into account low-value pulp

. logs in this region should reduce the company’s

average stumpage paid to the minimum of 25 cents per cubic metre.

‘We would gain $8 or $9 per cubic metre out of all of this, which is a significant amount of money,’’ MacNicol said.

Multiplied out over the 800,000 cubic metres of timber a ycar West Fraser logs in this arca, ihe reduction should translate into savings of nearly $7 million annually, MacNicol said.

“Those things are positive things for our com-

Continued Page AiO

everything possible to cut costs, and that it now depends on recognition from Victoria that it deserves more money.

Stumpage breaks save firm $7m

Bruce MacNicol