NEWS photo Mike Wakefield WEST VANCOUVER mayor Mark Sager strolis with Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn after a ceremony te recognize West Vancouver’s new coat of arms. ‘‘It was the second time in West Vancouver history that we have had a visit from the Governor General,"’ Sager said at Monday night's West Vancouver council meeting. LGH 4t mercy of the union’ Talks with HEU break off; full-scale strike looms LIONS GATE Hospital (LGH) is now at the mercy of the Hospital Employees Union (HEU), an LGH official said Tuesday. Hospital president Bob Smith made the comment one day after the HEU broke off contract talks with the Health Labor Relations Association (HLRA). The HEU, which has been without a collec- tive agreement for over one year and is in a legal strike position, walked away from the bargaining table late Monday night. The HEU has been conducting a series of job actions at hospitals across B.C. With the collapse of the contract talks the union may escalate job action to a full-scale strike. Smith said a full-scale strike would have a major effect on pa- tient care at LGH. ““We are really at the whim of what the union downtown decides to do. You are not gcing to get into this hospital unless you are very, very sick,’’ said Smith. **The elderly are really the ones who are suffering. If a picket line does go up then the risk to patient safety will be very great,”’ he add- Smith said the hospital has determined it can close a max- imum of 150 beds under essential services guidelines. He said LGH has been unable to reach the 150-bed level. North Van man cleared as By Surj Rattan News Reporter As of Tuesday, LGH had closed 100 beds. “We're filled with some very sick people. We don't have any- where to turn,’’ said Smith. ‘‘We just can’t close any more beds.” He added that he had hoped the HEU and the HLRA, which bargains for 150 B.C. health care facilities, could have reached an agreement. It was unclear to press time Tuesday whether the HEU had planned to escalate the labor dispute to a full-scale strike and set up picket lines. HEU secretary-business manag- er Carmela Allevato could not be reached to press time. But HLRA spokesman Martin Livingston said Tuesday the HEU walked away from the bargaining table when it was told that it had to reduce its bargaining demands to ‘‘a realistic level.”’ The union has dropped its wage demands to a 14% wage hike over two years. But Livingston said the demand is still about three times higher than what the B.C. Nurses’ Union recently settled for. A NORTH Vancouver man, the subject of recent ‘‘ex- haustive and intensive investigation’? by Victoria police and North Vancouver RCMP investigators, has been cleared as a suspect in the Michael Dunahee abduction case. The RCMP issued a bulletin to several North Vancouver schools, showing, naming and describing the man who years ago was con- victed as a child molester. According to North Vancouver RCMP Insp. Peter Wlodarczak, the detachment issued the alert several weeks ago. The man lives near Queen Mary Elementary - School. Said Wlodarczak, ‘‘ft was our intention to have that information available to the school staff so that they could notify us. But I’m By Michael Becker News Reporter led to believe that they distributed it to the parents also. Everybody knew about it. “Knowing the principal’s prob- lems and responsibilities as well as the nature of the circumstances I can’t really fault him for doing that, but it was not our intention in the first place,’’ he added. The man came to the attention He said the HEU’s bargaining demands would cost B.C. tax- payers more than $233 million and represented a 35% increase in compensation cost.’ “There is not t:¢ money avail- able tc meet their tsmands,”’ said Livingston. But on Monday Alievato said the HLRA had beei: issuing ‘‘mis- leading’ informatica about the HEU'’s demands ‘'t) cover the fact that HLRA is hirdly moving at all from the offer HEU members rejected last month.”’ Livingston said the HLRA’s final offer to the HEU included: @a 3.5% retroactive wage in- crease for 1991; @ a 1.5% wage increase for 1992; @ pay equity retroactivity far ca- sual employees; @ a general wage increase for the third year of the contract (¢ffec- tive April 1, 1993) tied to the per- centage increase in the Vancouver Consumer Price Index between January 1992 and January 1993 and not to exceed 3%; @a cash payout of sick leave benefits at age 55; @ the establishment of a joint union/management pay equity plan to eliminate gender-based wage discrimination. Annual HEU salaries currently range from $20,000 up to $51,000. In 1989 a strike at LGH lasted for 17 days. of local police as a suspect when Victoria police invesigators work- ing on the Dunhahee case ap- proached the detachment about a month ago notifying the RCMP that they were interested in inter- viewing the suspect. But said Wlodarczak, ‘‘As Vic- toria has reported, this person did pass the polygraph examination. And Victoria City Police advise us personally that he is no longer a suspect in the Michael Dunahee case.”” When a story appeared in the Vancouver Province newspaper jast week identifying the man as a ‘‘prime’’ suspect in the Dunahee disappearance, local police were inundated with telephone calls Wednesday, Aprii 15, 1992 - North Shore News — 3 hipping firms grapple with ban Gypsy moth impact on port is already costly AN INTERNATIONAL commercial shipping group is unhappy with a Canadian ban on freighters suspected of carrying Asian gypsy moths. But a B.C. Chamber of Shipping (BCCS) spokesman essary. Said BCCS director Angus Mit- chell, ‘‘The chamber had a message in two days ago from BIMCO in Denmark (the world’s largest group of ship owners). One of their high-risk vessels recently went into a port in New Orleans and they weren’t inspected and didn’t have problems, and they asked why can’t the Canadians do that? “But we have a different policy this year because of the problems seen last year. Frankly from a shipping perspective I'm not so sure that banning is such a bad thing.”’ The moth, considered a threat to the local forest industry, was brought to the West Coast aboard freighters originating from Rus- sian ports, including Vladivostok, Vostchnyy and Nakhodka. Last year, such ‘‘high-risk’’ ships were inspected by Agriculture Canada officials. Seventeen vessels were turned away from the port when moth egg masses were found. Last month eight Soviet grain ships were ordered to leave the port when egg masses were found on the freighters. A shipping ban is in effect to July 31 for high-risk vessels. According to Mitchell, the ac- tion has halted the movement of 800,000 tonnes of grain to Russia. “‘They are sales that are on the books. It's all destined for Soviet ports. That’s a lot of product, and that’s jobs,"’ he said. Each empty Russian ship leav- ing Vancouver loses approximately $500,000 in operating costs. But Mitchell said that if the moth issue is not resolved locaily, the impact to the annual $38 billion port industry would be detrimental. **On strictly economic grounds I sincerely believe that the ramifica- tions will be catastrophic if the Asian gypsy moth gets a foothold here,’’ Mitchell said. , The value of 1990 shipments through the pert of Vancouver in- cluded: a @ $2.7 billion worth of forest aroducts; ® $2.7 billion in graius; © $3.35 billion in’ bulk minerals and liquids; @ $13.5 billion in containters. Economic activity generated by the port in surrounding municipal areas included incomes totally ap- proximately $612 million in 1990. According to Mitchell, some Japanese ships are listed by says the drastic action is nec- By Michael Becker News Reporter Agriculture Canada as ‘‘medi- um-risk.”” The Russian moth-problem ports are relatively close in loca- tion to Korean, Chinese and Jap- anese ports. Said Mitchell, ‘‘Whar happens if the rules change slightly to in- corporate some of the Japanese ports because of the Asian gypsy moth being found in substantial numbers in those ports? In actual fact they are not checking ships that are coming from Korean, Chinese or Japanese ports. “But you have some Japanese owners over on the other side say- 46 On strictly economic grounds J sincerely believe that the ramifications will be catastrophic if the Asian gypsy moth gets a foothald ere. - B.C. Chamber of Shipping director Angus Mitchell ing, ‘I don’t want that medium risk.” Under better market condi- tions they might not even come here. They would look elsewhere,” he added. Meanwhile, Conair Avistion planes took a dry run of an an- ti-moth aerial spray program and ouzzed the North Shore, Van- couver and Burnaby on Tuesday morning. Said Conair general manager Barrie Madu, ‘‘They were famii- iarization runs for the crews. They have high-resolution photos with the flight lines marked on them so they were just flying along those lines.” Three large, fixed-wing planes will do the spraying. The smaller planes carry a Conair pilot and a forest ministry observer. One Bell 212 helicopter will be spraying from a base in the Maplewood area in North Van- couver. A smaller Bell 206 helicopter will accompany the larger chopper. Weather conditions will dictate the timing of the early-morning aerial spraying applications. Said Madu, ‘‘They’re going to try not to do it in showery weather.”” Dunahee suspect from concerned parents. Meanwhile, the Ministry of the Attorney General is investigating the validity, in terms of human tights, of the police decision to issue a public bulletin describing the suspect. But said Wlodarczak, ‘‘Because of the urgency of the moment we felt it would be prudent to distribute information on this per- son to the schools in the vicinity so that they could be forewarned in case he came around when there were children out.”” The police spokesman said that as a result of information from police in Victoria, the North Van- couver RCMP received informa- tion from two other ‘highly credible’’ sources who indicated that the man ‘‘might re-offend.” But Wlodarczak said police now believe the man to be of no greater risk to the community than any other past criminal of- fender might be. “From investigation we are satisfied that at this point in time he has not committed an offence while he has been here in North Vancouver. “We are fully aware of his ac- tivities, and we have spoken to this person as well. In this case, because of the nature of the of- fence and the volatility of the sub- ject in the community, it got more attention than it normally would have,"’ he said.