The Leader-Post from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada • 29

I fife Section 3, Pages 29-48 The Leader-Post Regina, Saskatchewan Friday, February 10, 1978 Responsibility for consumers comes first with Lise Payette period is one dear to the hearts of the bill's drafters, and will also apply in the case of mail-order businesses to be covered in phase two of the consumer protection reform though the government is having trouble drafting the particular item in such a way as to avoid harming legitimate above-board mail-order businesses). Then there are more picky items which nonetheless will have a considerable effect on many businesses. One is the requirement that prices be marked on all goods; that will do away with the supermarkets' drive to electronic price coding, and it will also ironically affect the province's own liquor board which has an electronic code system in some stores. Premiums other than cash or the equivalent can no longer be included in goods or services no more towels in detergent boxes, for example. And manufacturers will have to list their addresses (a post office box will not suffice) in all ads.

The cumulative effect of all these measures, plus the two phases yet to come, gives the consumer far more power than he has yet had in Quebec. And, as a government official points out, they should be considered as part of a package which also includes the bill permitting class actions which also was tabled just before Christmas. That package may do as much to change the business environment in Quebec as almost any other legislation the PQ has yet introduced. those ads are placed on television which itself is under federal jurisdiction. Another provision will hit at the banks through their credit card arms.

The draft bill would end the practice whereby some credit card companies cut off merchants who give discounts to customers who pay cash. It will now be forbidden to require that a consumer signing a credit contract carry insurance offered by the company involved; insurance with any company will suffice. Cooling-off period 10 days Advertising messages and warranties will now be considered to be part of the sales contract and as such, binding on the merchant. Furthermore, replacement parts for a product must be available for "a reasonable period" after the contract is signed. Like loans, credit contracts could be revoked within two days of the consumer's reception of his copy of the contract.

In the case of door-to-door salesmen, the cooling-off period is 10 days; no payment of any kind can be required from the consumer before that date, and attached to the contract must be the official form to be filled out if the consumer wishes to withdraw from the contract. This basic principle of requiring no payment before the end of the cooling-off contain the principle of "tilting" toward the consumer in order to give little guys a fair chance against large corporations. But this lawyer thinks conservative judges may reject the draft bill as creating too great an imbalance in a supposedly impartial judicial system, and seek narrow rather than broad interpretations of the bill's principles. Some of the bill's details will have just as profound an effect as its general principles. One of these will affect all financial institutions that lend money to the public; it allows borrowers to revoke the loan without penalty within two days from their reception of their copy of a loan agreement.

Interest rates on loans and instalment purchase plans will have to be fully disclosed in all advertising and the rate will be calculated according to strict, formjlas set down by the government. In the case of instalment purchases, ads may not mention the amount of the instalment more prominently than the total purchase price. These and other provisions will hit hard at consumer loan advertising, including advertising by banks. Indeed, the government would be more than pleased if the result were the complete disappearance of all ads for loans; certainly the famous "red convertible" type of ad will now cease to exist in Quebec. And the province's right to enforce such legislation, even for federally-ruled institutions such as banks, has been reinforced by a recent Supreme Court ruling that Quebec can regulate ads (in this case, those aimed at children) even if published shortly before Christmas and consultations with interested groups are about to begin.

Next on the list are phase two, covering automobile sales and repairs plus other items such as mail-order houses, and phase covering real estate. If all goes according to the government's timetable, the three laws will have been passed by the National Assembly before summer; a more realistic estimate might be that they will be passed before year-end. Phrase two and three have yet to be unveiled and will in any case not include the "draft bill" stage used for phase one. But the government's inintention is to retain in later phases many of the basic principles enunciated in the draft bill. In that context, it is worth noting that even though the draft bill has no official legal status, it has already been through the exhaustive administrative procedure given to actual legislation it has been considered by all ministries concerned and passed by the cabinet's legislative committee (as well, during drafting the ministry consulted government MNAs, an unusual procedure).

Thus, changes other than purely technical ones are not likely to occur even if, as now seems likely, business and consumer groups both oppose parts of the draft bill. Before getting down to details, the draft bill sets out some sweeping principles. One of these in particular is new and has implications for a wide array of businesses. In cases that go before the courts, it says, the judge must take as sorted circumstances Into account. Among them whether there was undue pressure on the consumer to sign the contract; whether advantage was taken of his ineptitude or inability to look after his own interests and understand the contract's terms; whether the sales price greatly exceeds the price on similar goods or services sold elsewhere; whether the merchant or his sales representative knew the consumer could not enjoy an "appreciable advantage" from the good or service sold; and whether at the time the contract was signed there was not a reasonable probability that the consumer could pay the price asked.

If the courts accept the spirit of all of these requirements, they will lean very far indeed toward the consumer's side in dispute. One lawyer who handles many consumer cases predcits, however, that in fact the judiciary will do no such thing. For example, in the case of the requirement that the price not greatly exceed competing prices elsewhere, he notes that strict application would put out of business a considerable number of Advertising must disclose interest rates small shops that sell goods at admittedly higher prices in return for convenient payment terms. He doubts the courts would want to put these stores completely out of business. Assorted consumer protection codes MONTREAL Second only to Camille Laurin, father of Quebec's language charter, Lise Payette bids fair to be the Parti Quebecoi's minister who will have the most lasting influence on the daily lives of Quebeckers.

Mrs. Payette is the television broadcaster turned politician who holds the ministry of consumers, co-operatives and financial institutions. Her performance so far leaves no doubt that responsibility for consumers comes first in her philosophy as well as her title. So far public attention has been riveted on Mrs. Payette's abitious automobile insurance program whereby the' government lakes over coverage of all bodily damage.

That change was voted last fall but it still dominates the headlines in Quebec because it is only now being put into effect. Meanwhile, however, Mrs. Payette is pushing on to new fields. This time her goal is an overhaul of Quebec's consumer Three stages of reform protection code which, if the first phase is any indication, will give the province's consumers a better break than most other jurisdictions do. It will also set several precedents in basic legal principles.

What remains to be seen is how well business and the judiciary will cope with those changes. The reform is to come in three stages. The first, covering credit, advertising and assorted commercial practices, is already well under way. A draft bill was Woman not admitted to bar because of U.S. citizenship Individuals Rights Protection Act.

The judge questioned the rational of the restriction. He said that since a society member is an officer of the court he should owe "allegience to the sovereign in whose name the courts exercise their jurisdiction." He noted that an alien can swear an oath of allegiance and that a friendly alien owes allegiance to the Crown if he lives in the country even if he doesn't take the oath. The judge said an examination of qualifications, regardless of citizenship, could better achieve the objective of ensuring that a person is aware of the fundamental rights and traditions of the courts in Alberta. "No doubt this is a matter which deserves even more careful consideration as to the governing principal," Mr. Justice McDonald said in calling for the society's and attorney-general's CALGARY (CP) A woman barred because of her United States' citizenship from becoming a lawyer here has lost her case against the Law Society of Alberta.

But Tanya Dickenson has given the province's legal profession something to think about. Dickenson took the profession's governing body to court, challenging a law that requires a lawyer to be a Canadian citizen or British subject. She asked for an order that would admit her to the bar. She lost. Mr.

Justice David McDonald of Alberta Supreme Court rejected her legal argument but gave her a bit of moral support. "I would hope that the benchers at the Law Society of Alberta and attorney-general would give consideration to whether the arbitrary distinction now drawn by statute is desirable," Mr. Justice McDonald said in a ruling handed down late last month. Dickenson, who has been working for Banff lawyer Dennis Shuler, met all the requirments of Alberta's Legal Profession Act for enrolment as a law society member except for citizenship. Her legal education outside Canada was recognized by the society as sufficient to allow her to intern in a law office for a year and she had passed the bar admission examination, said J.

C. Major, the Calgary lawyer who handled the case for the law society. "The question was whether a person who is otherwise qualified is eligible for membership admission to the bar; in other words if they are not a Canadian citizen," Major said. The Alberta attorney-general's department joined the law society against the application argued by Shuler. Mr.

Justice McDonald dismissed Shuler's argument that the restriction was beyond the power of the Alberta legislature and contrary to the province's w1 lfffV' i vj WZr Little hope for the human race 1 Sh" V.H "Nothing special about me' So says Dr. Jennie Smillie Robertson, who celebrates Canada's first women surgeons, who practiced medicine her 100th birthday today. But Dr. Robertson was one of until she was 70 years old. Centenarian reached her goal His finds on the shores of Kenya's Lake Turkana add to the complexity by suggesting that at one time four different types of man-like creatures lived in close proximity at the same time.

Leakey begins and ends the book by putting man firmly in his place. He notes that in a book on the history of this planet, in which a given amount of time is allotted a proportional amount of book space, all human achievement since the stone-age cave paintings would have to be summed up in the final word of the final page. "Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty," he says. After discussing the evils of apartheid, national greed, malnutrition, overpopulation and nuclear weapons, he concludes: "To have arrived on this earth by the product of biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony." LONDON (Reuter) Richard Leakey, scion of the east African fossil-finding family, holds out little hope for the long-term survival of the human race. First, he says in his new book Origins, mankind is using up its limited resources too recklessly to survive for the relatively short geological time span of a few hundred million years.

Secondly, he says, "long-term stability for a single highly complex species, no matter how adaptable, is out of the question." Such opinions, philosophical rather than scientific, fill much of the book, written with science journalist Roger Lewin as a coffee-table compendium of man's earliest ancestors. All the important skulls and teeth which go to form man's fossil record are there, but these are interspersed with evocative paintings of daily life among cave dwellers and photographs of stone age men. Nor do the authors limit themselves to the fossil record. They also examine work by psychologists trying to teach apes to communicate, by anthropolo gists examining present-day primitive societies, by zoologists observing monkey and ape populations, and even by the specialized scientists who study ways in which bones are turned into fossils. The trouble with paleoanthropology the study of early human fossils for the layman is that there have been no world-shattering discoveries in the field over the past decade, only a series of important ones which have proved hard to keep up with.

Popular idea Thus, while few but the experts noticed, the popular idea that "man descended from the apes a million years ago" has quietly given way to a complex, controversial family tree upon which the creatures that were to become homo sapiens parted company with the ancestors of the modem apes between 10 and 25 million years ago. Leakey, son of archeologist Mary Leakey and the late Louis Leakey, has himself pushed the homonid record back in time some three million years. Indian opposes musical production saying "this is the negative way non-Indians have always presented Indian other doctors there if I got into trouble. "But I didn't need them. I got the work done." She returned to her practice in Toronto in 1912, afraid people would not trust her as a surgeon but her fears proyed unfounded.

"Women flocked to me. I'll never understand why women weren't timid about going to such a new surgeon." Men were more hesitant but gradually her practice grew to include both sexes. She remembered being horrified when told she must charge $100 for an operation. Dr. Robertson said she responded: "If I must, I must.

But I think it's too much, especially for me who's just starting." She was never overly concerned when her patients could not afford to pay their bills. "Never mind if you can't pay," she remembered telling one young man. "Come anyway. I don't want the money. I want to make you better." She retired in 1948 at the age of 70 and married Bob Robertson, a friend from her teaching days.

They enjoyed 10 years together before he died. Dr. Robertson said the world has been almost too kind to her. "I've had everything money can buy and more. I've had good health and I've had every happiness." TORONTO (CP) Dr.

Jennie Smillie Robertson, one of Canada's first women surgeons, says she has had everything money can and cannot buy during the last century. "I'm spoiled and the Lord has been good to me," said the gutsy little woman who celebrates her 100th birthday today. Born and raised on a farm near the village of Hensall. 20 kilometres north of London, Dr. Robertson said she cannot remember a day in her life when she did not want to be a doctor.

But she was reluctant to talk about her past achievements and experiences as one of Toronto's first women doctors because "there's nothing special about me." Dr. Roberston, now living in the Bay-view Villa nursing home, also said her 100th birthday should go unnoticed. "Don't say anything about it except that I like life and I've done all right." She traces her early fascination with the medical profession to the country doctor who looked after her father, Ben Smillie, when he as dying of consumption. He died when she ws six years old, leaving her mother to raise seven children. "Nobody else thought I should do medicine." she said.

Medicine was considered an odd ambition for a woman at that time. "So, I knew I'd have to make enough money to send myself to college." As a result, Dr. Robertson, the only member of her family still alive, taught school for several years in Huron County. But she did not allow her dream to slip away. One of the first women accepted into medicine at University of Toronto, she graduated in 1909 at the age of 31.

"When I started into medicine, the men were doing all the work" because they felt it was too hard for women. She said she-was most upset by the lack of women surgeons. Patients went to her when they were sick "but when they needed an operation, they sent for a man," she said. "I decided we must have a woman surgeon." Trained as surgeon Dr. Robertson went to Philadelphia, where she had interned, to train for several months under a woman surgeon.

She laughed when she remembered how her teacher conned her into performing operations by herself. Out of politeness. Dr. Robertson said, she suggested her teacher take a vacation. "To my surprise and horror she did, and left me quite a few surgeries to do.

"When I think back on it, it was probably the perfect way to start. There were ing role in the musical, to be presented in March at Adams Junior High. But Barry quit, saying he was concerned about the way Indians are depicted, his father said. Wayne-Westland Community School District officials said Wednesday they want to use the musical to show how Indians have been stereotyped. But Robinson does not want the play to go on at all.

"They say, they can use this as a learning tool, but there's a subliminal input that will surface in the kids later on," he said. Roslynn McCoy, a Sauk and Fox Indian who directs the area's Indian educational program, said before the curtain goes up, a narrative would be read WESTLAND, Mich. (AP) A Chippewa Indian has launched a petition to stop a junior high school from producing the musical Annie Get Your Gun on grounds it portrays Indians in a negative way. "They wouldn't put on Little Black Sambo in this district," said Joseph Robinson, who started the drive. "I don't know why this should be any different." Frederic Boyd, director of the Native American Strategic Services, an Indian civil rights group, said the Irving Berlin musical about Annie Oakley in the West presents Indians "as drunken savages, cut throats and killers.

We will be the laughing stock of the community the day after the play." Robinson's son Barry, 14, had a lead Two for one ST. PAUL, Minn (AP) The Minnesota governor's office is looking at the idea of allowing two employees to share a single state job in certain cases. The governor said a husband and wife might share a state job," each working half a day and each spending half a day with their children. The first reaction of one state employees' union was cool..