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Fraud elements present

VICTORIA (CP) — The man who uncovered falsified

related to Coquihalla Highway p has

testified at an inquiry into the costs that the transaction had

all the elements of fraud “except for the most important one,
criminal intent.”

David Hooper, an investigative accountant hired by the
inquiry commission, said he found no evidence of fraud,
although the ministry's system of checking work is open to
abuse.

The inquiry concluded Tuesday after hearing several

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from 5 ‘about how to
tighten accountability in the ministry and remove the
potential for abuse.

Premier Bill Vander Zalm said|Tuesday in Kamloops,
where cabinet was meeting, that a judicial inquiry is not
poosied to investigate the falsifications.

The premier said he found the news of falsification
“somewhat upsetting and I can assure you that I'm anxiously
awaiting all of the details from the (MacKay) report so we
can take the necessary steps to make sure these sorts of
things don't happen again.”

One abuse, revealed Monday, was a $700,000 payout to
Kerkhoff Construction Group for work which had not been
done.

Former bridge engineer Len Johnson and Ron Lyall,
bridge construction engineer, said one set of figures was
substituted for another to authorize the payment to
Kerkhoff.

THREATS USED

The was ig to pull his
off a job on the highway because he had not been paid for
earlier worl

Hooper “said erage the figures were eventually
adjusted and corrected.

Equipment failure
blamed for death

. He said the ministry's financial operations are depen-
dent on people.
“If you get the wrong sort of people in there, you could

money.

He said with ministry staff working in the field in close
quarters with contractors, there is the potential for
collusion.

“The system could be milked,” Hooper said.

Highways Minister Cliff Michael said in an interview
that he can understand the pressure that led to the falsifi-
cation of documents.

“I certainly have some empathy and understanding for
the pressure that's on a person. I understand that (company
owner Bill) Kerkhoff was in his office (Johnson's) literally
demanding money and, I guess, rightfully so.”

Socred cabinet ministers said repeatedly the Coqui-
halla’s first phase would cost $260 million, even when the
authorized payments went beyond that. It eventually cost
$409. million.

Deputy Highways Minister Roy Illing testified earlier
that several changes have since been made at the ministry.
RULES CHANGED

Illing, appointed last summer, said contractors must
now tell the ministry when they are close to running over
the authorized budget figure.

But he said the system had only been in place for the
past several weeks.

Illing also had to defend the ministry’s earlier brief to
the commission on the overruns. He admitted parts justi-
fying cost controls were misleading, but said it was prepared
in a pressure cooker environment, and only went to press
Sunday afternoon before the Monday release.

Other ministry staff testified that the $250 million
estimate was a “reconnaisance estimate,” given after a
preliminary run-through of the terrain.

Assistant deputy ministry Mick Elston said the figure
first app in 1977. C counsel M: said it
appeared that the figure wasn't looked at too closely when
the project was reactivated in 1984.

“It was taken off the shelf, the dust was blown off it and
it was handed to the i ” said

HI-TECH
USED TO
GROW POT |

VANCOUVER (CP) — ri cant bo growers in B.C.
sophisticated

“Abd the high-tech operations can yield big profits.

“You don't have to grow hundreds and hundreds of
plants like you used to in the ‘70s to get a few pounds of
low-potency - marijuana,” said Vancouver RCMP Sgt.
John Abbott. “Nowadays with as few as 100 plants you
can realize a profit potential of $100,000 per year, tax
free.”

‘The emergence of potent, locally produced pot has
RCMP and Vancouver drug enforcement officers
worried.

“They are making that very high-potency marijuana
easily accessible to the user population, particularly the
adolescents,” said Abbott.

“We are marijuana today in Greater
Vancouver that is actually up to 20 times stronger than
domestic marijuana cultivated in the 1970s.”

Abbott said the marijuana harvested from “indoor
grow labs” also has at least twice the THC — the intoxi-
cating psychoactive ingredient — than species grown
outdoors in Mexico, South America, Afghanistan and
Thailand.

It can also be up to twice as potent as imported
hashish, he said in an interview.

“The ‘cultivators of North America, because of
advanced technology, are growing the strongest, most
potent marijuana in the world, and there is a recent case
in Surrey where a sample has been analysed at 22 per
cent, which is the strongest known analysis to date.”

JOINTS STRONG

Wayne Jeffery, who has been in charge of the

V RCMP crime laboratory's toxicology section

Elston said the figure remained the same, even though

for 10 years, said a person who smokes an entire “joint” of

By The Canadian Press

EDMONTON — An oil
worker from Rossland likely
died because of equipment
failure on a drilling rig, says
the president of the firm that
owns the rig.

Patrick Mooney, 20, died
Saturday morning near
Forestburg, Alta., after he
was struck by a part of the
rig known as a travelling
block. He was knocked off the
rig to a catwalk almost four
metres below, said Forest-
burg RCMP.

Jack Ross, president of
Border Drilling Company
Ltd., said investigators be-
lieve equipment failure, not
human error, was respon-
sible for the accident.

“This is the first fatality

we've ever been involved in,”
Ross said from his office in
Lloydminster, on the Al-
berta-Saskatchewan border.
Mooney was an exper-
ienced rig-hand, he said.

Mooney’s death was the
second oilpatch fatality this
year in the Forestburg area,
about 180 kilometres south-
east of Edmonton.

Last May, a drilling rig
collapsed and killed Herman
Tollenaar, 32, of Breton,
Alta.

Eight oil and gas workers
have died on the job in
Alberta this year, compared
with nine last year.

A memorial service was
held for Mooney in Rossland
today.

There’s Always

Something New for You!

the project was upgraded from expressway to freeway

standards, with truck lanes, runaway lanes and

High gas prices
due to tax hike

OTTAWA (CP) — Govern-
ment’s growing tax bite ac-
counted for nearly half the
increase in gasoline prices in
the 12 months ending in
August, federal figures res
leased Tuesday show.

The report from the En-
ergy Department's price
monitoring agency said the
cost of regular leaded gas-
oline rose by 7.2 cents a litre
at the pump.

The cost of regular leaded
gasoline in the United States,
where federal and state taxes
are less than half what they
are in Canada, rose by the
equivalent of only 4.6 cents
Cdn a litre during the same
period.

The report, based on prices
in 11 cities across Canada,
said the cost of a litre of
leaded fuel was on average
48.2 cents in August com-
pared with 41 cents in Aug-
ust 1986.

The pre-tax cost of regular
leaded gasoline rose by just
over four cents, to 30.3 cents
a litre from 26.2 cents.

The rest of the pump-price
increase came from higher
federal taxes, which went up
by 1.8 cents a litre, and
higher provincial taxes,
which went up by 1.8 cents a
litre.

U.S. federal taxes declined
from August 1986 to this
year by the equivalent of 0.1
cents Cdn a litre and the
average state tax went up by
only 0.4 cents Cdn a litre.

In August 1967, Ottawa

8.8 cents on every
litre of leaded gasoline sold
compared with a U.S. federa!
tax that amounted to the
cueiratent of 8.2 cents Cdn a

Average provincial taxes
in August were 9.1 cents a
litre compared with an aver-
age state tax of 5.4 cents Cdn
a litre.

BETTER DEAL

Canadians got a better deal
than Americans on light
heating oil.

In Canada, heating oil costs
went up in about half the
cities monitored and downin
the other half. With a na-
tional average of 29.5 cents in
August, oil costs were only
0.5 cents a litre higher than
in the same month of 1986.

In the United States, heat-
ing oil was 3.6 cents Cdn
higher in August than the
August 1986 prices of 26.6
cents Cdn a litre.

There are no taxes on
heating oil in Canada, except
in Quebec which applies the
nine-per-cent provincial sales
tax.

There are taxes on heating
oil in the United States, but
the agency said it didn't have
a breakdown of their impact
on retail prices.

The average price per litre
of regular leaded gasoline
was 52.6 cents in St. John's,
Nfid., 51.8 cents in Char-
lottetown, 47.4 cents in Hali-
fax, 45.8 cents in Saint John,
N.B., 54.2 cents in Montreal,
48.4 cents in Ottawa, 46.8
cents in Toronto, 47.7 cents
in Winnipeg, 47.9 cents in
Regina, 43.1 cents in Calgary
and 51.5 cents im- Vancouver.

The average price per litre
of home heating oil was 32.4
cents in St. John’s, 32.3 cents
in Charlottetown, 27.4 cents
in Halifax, 33.0 cents in Saint
John, 27.2 cents in Winnipeg,
29.1 cents in Regina, 30.7
cents in Calgary and 28.9
cents in Vancouver.

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thwarted police detection.

robbed by fellow growers.

high-po-ency marijuana could

relatively warm summers and ru;

become psychotic or

“You don't have to smoke as much to get high,” said
Jeffery. “If you smoke as much you're going to have some
real detrimental side effects.”

Abbott said most of the marijuana cultivated in B.C.
during the 1970s was grown outdoors —
east coast of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, the
Interior and the Kootenays — where it benefited from

on the

igged terrains that

But he added it often produced low yields and, more
importantly, less than one per cent THC.

Abbott, who has been involved in marijuana eradi-
cation for 15 years, said there wasn’t much indoor culti-
vation until the early 1980s.

That has all changed, he said, and recently there
have been “huge upward swings” toward indoor grow
labs because the equipment is easily available, there is a
much greater profit margin as three crops can be grown
each year instead of one and there is less risk of being

Drought worries

growers,

VANCOUVER (CP) — A
rainless October has turned
Vancouver into a tennis
paradise, but the continuing
dry, sunny weather is worry-
ing forest firefighters and
fruit growers across south-
ern British Columbia.

With forecasters saying no
significant change is in sight,
it could be a while before the
wet fall weather that Van-
couverites are more familiar
which forces them indoors.

With the drought — one of
the worst on the West Coast
in years — the Greater Van-
couver water district is urg-
fig potoke to lay off the taf

“We've had months of no
significant amounts of rain,”
water district administrator
John Morse said Tuesday in
an interview. “For coastal
conditions that's quite ab-
normal. People should cut out

unnecessary use of water.”

Water levels in the Capi-
lano and Seymour lakes —
the main water supply for 1.5
million people in the Greater
Vancouver area — have

dropped by 11.4 metres and

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Prices effective up te and including Sun., Oct. 25, 1987.

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firemen

10.2 metres, respectively.

In September, an inch-
worm could almost have kept
its head above the 28.4 milli-
metres of rain that fell on the
Vancouver area, compared
with a monthly norm almost
three times that.

So far this month, less than
a millimetre of rain has been
recorded compared with an
average October accululation
of more than 100 millimetres.

In the fruit-growing Okan-
agan in central British Co-
lumbia, water supply officials
cut off irrigation to
and now are worried that
next year’s water supply is in
danger.

“Usually the demand for
water drops around the end
of September but the de-
mand just kept on going,”
said Pat Poulin, adminis-
trator for the Westbank Irri-
gation District.

With continuing dry wea-
ther, fruit trees tend to dry
out more, jhe said.

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