\ B6 February 13, 1985 Lucerne Assorted. 2 Litre Blue L 1 Litre Tetra Brik Carton . Fresh Ducklings Average 4'/ Ibs. Limit of 4 Ducks Per Family Order of $25.00 or Over. Price of Ducks not Included. Grade A *2'*,,, While Stocks Last! | 99° VEAR OF THE Ox CHINESE NEW YEAR Sale Instant Sunburst Noodles Edwards Coffee Regular, Drip or Extra ine. 907 g. 2 Me. Te oo ccccccees Lucerne Large Eggs 4." q 2 Chow Mein Noodles Converted Rice Lancia Pasta Linguine, Rotini Springs Orange Pek : Tea Bags Sapporo Ichiban Noodles Medium. 398 mL. Busy Baker Crackers $09 Tin. . B.C. Grown. $4.14/kg. . Fresh Chinese Noodles Green Giant Vegetables Peas or Whole Kernel Valentine's Day Specials! Longstem Roses Daffodils ovr 33 Q0° seisx$] 39 j Potted Mums 5” Pot 6" Pot For more Savings see Flyer in last Sunday's Paper. Prices effective through Saturday, Feb. 16 in your friendly, courteous Castlegar Safeway Store. Mon. to Wed. and Saturday Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to6 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. We reserve the right to limit sales to retoil quantities Broccoli cater 9< Bok Choy or Sui Choy California or Mexican Grown. ples * Golden Delicious ik WN * Spartan NN cr pote ee mat 9< LL: en | * Red Delicious r In-Store Bakery | Specials Cherry Cake Donuts 389° Sliced. 675 g. 99° Coca - Cola Little Red Wagon Winner For First Week is: Susan Zurek, Robson a Dinner Buns White or Brown. Bran Muffins uw dd 96° | CANADA SAFEWAY LIMITED EEE) By NICOLE BAER OTTAWA (CP) — Mila Mulroney has met heads of state, jetted across Canada and lives in a 30-room mansion on the banks of the Ottawa River. But the striking 31-year-old wife of the prime minister, who once said she still scrubs sinks and bathtubs at 24 Sussex Drive, says she is much like other women. “Having been the wife of a corporate president and having been the wife of a lawyer, I don't think my life's really different from other women, except that it's maybe a little more charged,” Mila said in an interview in her office across from Parliament Hill. “And I think I'm probably very fortunate because I get to meet some of the people who make it all work and that's exciting for me.” Mila — who avoids controversy and speaks mostly about her husband and children — is a dramatic contrast to her predecessors, Maureen McTeer and Margaret Trudeau. ‘The concerns of the ethnic ity are cl to her heart’ She bubbles with enthusiasm as she explains how she juggles her time between raising three young children, delivering speeches and atten: raisers and accompanying her husband Brian at affairs of state. Assisted by a secretary and an executive assistant, Mila devotes her energies to raising money for research into cystic fibrosis and shelters for battered women. But as a Yugoslav immigrant, the concerns of the ethnic community are closest to her heart. KNOWS IMMIGRANTS “I can't be an expert on everything . . . (but) one of the reasons I'm so strong in the i i An intimate look at Mila Mulroney Mila’s popularity and hard work in last summer's election ign once promp ing Ontario Premier William Davis to joke that she probably won more votes for the Conservatives than her husband. McTeer, former prime minister Joe Clark's wife, threw herself into feminist causes. But Mila appears hesitant to discuss women's issues. ‘I feel guilty that I'm not spending as much time with my children as I could’ “I'm primarily a good listener and I'd like women’s groups to tell me what they'd like me to do,” she say: “That's why I'm now still in the consultative process.” Asked whether politics could give her the forum to pursue her interests, Mulroney muses: “Maybe. Maybe the multicultural side of it.” FEARS SPEECHES But, she adds, “when you run for public office at whatever level, whether it be municipal or provincial or federal, there's a lot of public speaking and I tell you, there hasn't been one minute in any speech that there haven't been so many butterflies in my stomach.” Mila says her children — Caroline, 10, Benedict, eight, and Mark, five, — lead mostly normal lives. They skate, ski, play piano and invite their friends home. “I try to tell them they're not all that different. Their father just happens to be the head of a government, like he was before the head of a company.” She avoids di security arr but speaks warmly about the RCMP guards who accompany the children. “I tease Caroline. I say she's going to have no problems with dates from me. She ean go out with anyone she wants as long as there's.a Mountie with her.” Although Mila enjoys her new role, she notes that she misses her family, and “I perhaps feel guilty that I'm is because I know from the ground up what it's like to be a new Canadian, to have family here, to have children who are half Yugoslav, half Irish and all Canadian.” Mila considers herself a working woman even though she isn't paid for making speeches and promoting her causes. She says she spends considerable time with her children despite the flood of requests for speaking engagements that comes with being the wife of the prime minister. “That's the big change, that they're inviting me to speak and there are certain people that want to listen. I've never had that happen to me before.” not ing as much time with my children as I could, and yet, most working mothers don't spend as much time as they want.” She says he position makes it unlikely that she will go back to university to pick up the two credits she still needs to complete her engineering degree. “T've chosen to work in the political arena for now. So I think what I'll do now is concentrate and enjoy what I'm doing.” MILA'S MANY FACES . . . Mila Mulroney during her two visits to Kootenay West last year. She says her life isn’t that much different from other women’s. Costews Photo S Dire Parliament's immunity under fire OTTAWA (CP) — Being a member of Parliament may not let you get away with murder, but getting away with slander is a cinch. That's because MPs and senators are protected from legal reprisal for anything they say in Parliament or any of its committees by the time-honored tradition of parliamen. tary immunity. If your local MP gets up one day and tells the House of Commons or any of its committees that you're a crook, a fraud and an all-around creep who can’t be trusted, there isn't a thing you can do about it but issue a denial or hope everyone else slept through the member's speech. MPs can be kicked out of the Commons for a day if they so much as imply another MP has lied, but they can say whatever they like about the rest of us without fear of any formal sanction. The idea is that MPs must be free of any muzzling to guard the interests of their constituents and that the forum ‘If your local MP tells the House you're a crook, there isn'ta thing you can do about it’ *for MPs, Parliament, holds supremacy over Canadian courts of law. Normally immunity is seldom resorted to and most observers don’t question the right of MPs to be free of court action. But it has become an issue several times during the past few months, most recently over Liberal MP John Nunziata’s accusation in the Commons that New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield's acquittal on drug possession charges was a “grave miscarriage of justice.” Now a few MPs have begun to wonder whether Parliament itself should impose some restraints on the use of immunity Nunziata is one of them. Nunziata, a freshman MP from Toronto who is rapidly earning a reputation as a parliamen tary maverick, says he resorted to using immunity because MP BOB BRISCO ~.isemunity in the House curtailed even by his peers in the Commons, at least under existing rules. “The privilege of a member of Parliament when ing in the House or in a committee is absolute and it it-was the onty-way to get pai to print e similar to those he had made outside the Commons the previous day RETRACTS REMARK Nunziata tried and failed in December to persuade Commons Speaker John Bosley to discipline New Democrat justice critie Svend Robinson for stating in a Commons committee that two PetroCanada executives were gathering information for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Robinson later retracted the remark and apologized. In his ruling, Bosley said an MP’s right to speak freely was “Absolute” unless it obstructed other MPs in fulfilling their duties. He seemed to suggest that meant it could not be would be very difficult to find that any statement made under the cloak of pa y privilege i a violation of that privilege,” Bosley told the Commons. But he added: “It is not for me to discuss whether members should or should not have this protection. It would be for Parliament to change the law if it felt this degree ot immunity was too great.” Nunziata says he now will take his case to a special committee on parliamentary reform He says it is proper for MPs to be free from legal reprisals for their statments, but wants the Commons to have the right to declare any member who abuses his immunity to be in contempt of Parliament. He also says Parliament should pay financial individ’ wrongly by MPs who cannot be sued. “Parliament cannot stand by and allow innocent individuals to suffer,” Nunziata said. “Parliament should take it one step further. They should say we can criticize or chastise the member or we're going to allow this person compensation, redress.” But New Democrat MP John Rodriguez says Nunziata is a “hypocrite” because he was prepared to use immunity when it suited him. ity from pr tion for MPs goes back 500 years to the early days of the House of Cc inE 1 ra Rodriguez told the Commons that Nunziata had tarnished Hatfield's reputation by commenting on unsub- stantiated allegations that the premier had taken part in statement in Parliament to be “utterly void and of no effect.” The right of immunity was finally enshrined in the 1688 Bill of Rights, which declared: “The freedom of speech and debates, or proceedings in Parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court of any place outside of Parliament.” adian legislatures and Canadian courts have continued to uphold MPs’ right to be immune from prosecution. In 1971, for example, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau and his energy minister, John Greene, were taken to court by an irate uranium mine investor who said he was harmed when Trudeau told the Commons legislation was forthcoming to prevent the mine from being sold to Americans. The court ruled Trudeau and Greene didn't have to defend in court what they said or did in the Commons. Of course, MPs are fair game once off the floor of the Commons, as then consumer and corporate affairs minister Andre Ouellet discovered in 1976, when he was convicted of contempt for criticizing a court decision in the lobby of the drug use in 1981. He asked Bosley to rule that Nunzi had violated MPs’ privileges by disclosing his Justice Depart ment source. Bosley rejected Rodriguez's complaint, which did not really directly involve immunity. However, Rodriguez said he too will seek rule changes from the parliamentary reform committee. “T'd like them to look at the grey areas of privilege,” Rodriguez said. “While Mr. Nunziata in this particular case did not do anything against me personally, (he) indirectly affected the privilege of an MP, which is the special relationship between himself and his sources of information. “I think we should look at some way of being very clear in the rules of the House that your privilege can be breached by another member.” Nunziata and Rodriguez, however, are bucking a 500-year-old tradition that traces its roots to the infancy of Parliament and is zealously guarded by their colleagues even today. Fredom of speech and immunity from prosecution for MPs goes back to the early days of the House of Commons in England, when commoners had a lot to fear from an angry king The first recognition of immunity came in 1396, when a king’s clerk was sentenced to death by Richard II as a traitor after giving Parliament a bill that angered the king by proposing to reduce charges for the royal household. When Henry IV took the throne, he agreed the sentence violated Parliament's privilege and withdrew it A more famous case involved MP Richard Strode, who was imprisoned by Henry VIII in 1512 for proposing an act to regulate tinsmiths. The Commons passed a retroactive act stating any legal action against an MP for any bill or Pa I instead of in Parliament itself. Legal and procedural authorities also uphold MPs’ absolute immunity from prosecution for remarks made in Parliament. Beauchesne’s authoritative Parliamentary Rules and Forms, for example, declares immunity “both the least questioned and the most fundamental right of the members of Parliament on the floor of the House and in committee.” In 1978, then justice minister Ron Basford declared he would not charge Tory MP Tom Cossitt with violating the Official Secrets Act by releasing secret security information because “it is well established that no charge in a court can be based on any statement made by an honorable member in this House.” And according to Jim McGrath, Tory chairman of the parliamentary reform committee, there isn't much likelihood that Parliament will toughen its rules dealing with immunity to crack down on abusers. McGrath's view is supported by Joseph Maingot, a member of the Law Reform Commission of Canada and author of a book on parliamentary privilege in Canada Maingot says the only recourse for a victim of abuse of immunity is for other MPs to shame the abuser into making an apology. Even Robert Foukes, the former vice-president of publie affairs for Petro-Canada who was wrongly identified by Robinson as a CIA spy, says MPs need to be able to speak freely even though he admits that “in my particular case it's very difficult to undo what's been done. “I think what legislators have to do is recognize that the immunity principle is a privilege they have gained after centuries of fighting for it,” Foulkes said. “The focus always ought to be on the word privilege. It is a privilege