National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 11

NATIONAL POST, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2001 NEWS AIl ONTARIO Northern science centre visitors mourn porcupine's death SUDBURY A Sudbury legend has passed away. "Ralf" the porcupine died of natural causes overnight. More than three million visitors to the Science North Centre have bonded with the prickly creature since 1984. Staff will hold a private ceremony next week. Most porcupines live to be just eight or 10 years old Ralf lived to be 17.

Takara, the Japanese toy giant, says its new gadget will interpret a dog's Ontario nursing shortage easing, Clement claims CITES NEW REPORT BY SHANNON KARI TORONTO Ontario's health minister says the province's nursing crisis is easing because of the Conservative government's 1 increased 1 financial commitment to the profession. "I'm not prepared to declare victory, but at least we're heading in the right direction," Tony Clement said yesterday as he released da progress report from the Joint Provincial Nursing Committee. The report, Good Nursing, Good Health: A Good Investment, is the first formal evaluation of the implementation of recommendations made by a nursing task force in early 1999. According to Mr. Clement, the province has made progress on most of the original eight recommendations and exceeded targets in a number of areas, including an increase in funding.

He said the province has increased permanent base funding ONTARIO Harris adds to Cabinet by naming new chief whip TORONTO Gary Stewart joined the provincial government's inner circle of power yesterday, after being sworn in to Cabinet. Mike Harris, the Premier, appointed Mr. Stewart, 63, chief government whip and deputy government house leader, a after the resignation from Cabinet of Frank Klees. Mr. Stewart was elected to the legislature in 1995.

YOSHIKAZU TSUNO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 'Amegahappy day, your dog might say with new device DOG Continued from Page Al In one mode, the occurrence of several words indicating the same emotion automatically generates sentences such as, "I feel lonely. Play with me more" or, "Please, please, if you don't listen to me, I'll sulk." The Bo can also save a whole day's worth of doggy speak and summarize how the pooch passed the time. Examples of those messages are: "Lots of enjoyable things happened! A mega happy day!" a relaxed day today, peaceful." Takara plans to release a robottype model later, which could monitor the dog at home, analyze its barks and transmit the results to a remote device carried by the owner. While marketed as a toy, the Bow-lingual was developed with the help of a veterinary expert, the company said. It plans to sell the gadget overseas at some point since the same breed of dog "barks in the same way, regardless of country," an official said.

The company hopes to sell 200,000 Bow-linguals in the first year. Business could be brisk. The Japan Kennel Club lists 140 different breeds and says nearly 450,000 new dogs are registered with the club every year. Agence France-Presse ONTARIO Province plans 300 new shelter beds for battered women TORONTO The Ontario government will spend $26-million over the next four years to set up 300 new shelter beds for battered women and their children, John Baird, the Social Services Minister, said yesterday. The money will also be used to refurbish 136 beds in existing shelters.

The province currently pays for 1,700 beds at 98 shelters across Ontario. Embarrassment is the word for positive test creates the CLARKE "Still, it's not a happy moment. Continued from Page Al Embarrassment may be too strong a word. But we have tried to present a role as leaders the fight against doping in around the world, and this is not exactly leadership." Embarrassment may be exactly the right word, considering Clarke was one of the two athletes featured at the head table when the Canadian team opened its headquarters, Canada House, here last week. by $400-million annually to create new nursing positions, $25- million more than the task force recommended.

The committee, which is made up of members of the nursing profession and staff from the Health Ministry, estimated in its report that the additional money has created more than 12,800 new nursing positions, 6.6% more than called for. "We have more nurses working in Ontario than ever before," said Mr. Clement. The Minister admitted there have been nursing shortages in the past, and problems in losing trained staff to hospitals in the United States. But, he insisted, "we are a lot better at retaining than we have been." Shirlee Sharkey, co-chairwoman of the committee and president of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, echoed the Minister's comments.

"I'm nots saying the crisis is over," she observed. "But it is becoming a little more of a beautiful place." Nearly of nurses in the province are employed on a part- dog's barks for anything from frustration time basis, however, "which is problematic," conceded Ms. Sharkey. The Ontario Nurses Association, which is the union for 42,000 front-line workers, was skeptical about the interpretation of the numbers in the progress report. "My members are not seeing more people on the front line.

They're not seeing their workload being reduced, they're still seeing an increase in injury, an increase in sick time," said Lesley Bell, the CEO ofth nurses association. Ms. Bell said she is not suggesting the ministry hasn't increased its funding, but she questioned whether hospitals are creating new full-time positions. "At best, they're talking about temporary full-time, because they're not sure the funding will be remaining" she said. There are an estimated 82,000 nurses employed in Ontario.

According to statistics from the Canadian Institute of Health, there were 69.7 RN's per 10,000 population in Ontario in 2000, a slight increase from 1999. But Ms. Bell noted that figure is lower than any other province except British Columbia. "I don't think ast place is anything to rant and rave about," she said. Members of the nurses association have been without a contract since March 31.

Southam News Experts differ on meaning of productivity changes REVISION Continued from Page Al Canada's rate of productivity growth dipped into negative territory in the first quarter of 2001, falling 0.2% over the threemonth period, for the first yearover-year drop since 1996. "Clearly we still have a chasm to close" despite the apparent narrowing, said Avery Shenfeld, senior economist at CIBC World Markets. The persistent gap between Canada and the United States has been of concern to the federal government, which is working on a blueprint for increased productivity. Brian Tobin, Minister of Industry, and Jane Stewart, Minister of Human Resources Development, were given the task of leading the Liberal productivity agenda. The proposals are expected to be unveiled this fall.

While the productivity gap might not have been as large as previously believed, the lower U.S. growth rate suggests the 1111 "I mean, I could have recruited her three years ago, but she wasn't any good. Then I see her at the Francophone Games and she's running 11.29? I thought, 'Jesus Murphy! All of a sudden, she's queen of the Canadian 100-metre You've got to understand, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is." Naturally, the Clarke camp initially blamed the test on an accidental ingestion of the substance in a vitamin supplement. "The only thing I can put my finger on is vitamins," her coach, Clive Foster, said. "We have to get those vitamins tested." "That's always the first line of defence," sighed Canadian team head coach Les Gramantik.

Victor Lachance, head of CCES, told The Canadian Press that stanozolol doesn't come in vitamins or food supplements. "Stanozolol is simply not something you're going to find in any consumer product. If that were to happen, it would be a first," he said. "It isn't something you're going to mistakenly take, you have to work at getting stanozolol in your body." Unlike Seoul, where the gravity surrounding the press conference to announce Johnson's betrayal was thick with tension and shame, the first reaction yesterday was an eye-rolling, here-wego-again air of levity among the Canadian media, its sense of outrage dulled by a long string of positive tests from Ben Johnson and Ben, The Sequel to the accidental over-medicating of rower Silken Laumann to our two-time coca equestrian rider, Eric Lamaze, to PanAm Games roller-hockey goaltender Steve Vezina we just keep turning them in. But the laugh sticks in the throat when it turns out Venolyn Clarke is an elementary school teacher, working with specialneeds kids, and must be a hero in their eyes.

There ought to be a special corner of purgatory reserved for athletes who hide behind kids while cheating to gain such a paltry slice of fame. For the truth is that Clarke's personal best time of 11.29 seconds is 47-100ths slower than the gold-1 time Ukraine's Zhanna PintusevichBlock ran here Monday, and more than 6-10ths off Marion Jones' best. She was a bit player, not remotely in their class, even with drugs. "It's like sometimes you get the nicest person you could meet and then discover ah, I'm just totally said Gramantik. "I can't understand why one of her level would do that." It is not a scandal on the scale of Johnson's, which devastated the rest of the Canadian Olympic team, because "a person who just gets out of the heats and into quarter-finals is not of the stature of an Olympic champion," said Gramantik.

"So the bigger the name, the more disturbance it CAM COLE "I wish it would have happened before we had got here, or before we announced the team, or before Venolyn would have spoken at the first press conference," Gramantik said. "It's very disturbing, but we've gone through worse times than this in track and field. It's not going to affect of the team." "I thought she was an honest person. You want to be honest in our country," said hurdler Monte Raymond, who considers himself a friend of Clarke. "We're trying to make the Canadian crowd be proud of us, working as hard as possible and be truthful to our sport.

What she did hurt us." More disturbing, said Gramantik, was that Clarke had credited her "almost miraculous" improvement in times to Trigenics, which is described as "an innovative, drugless muscle strengthening therapy" developed by a Toronto-based chiropractor, Dr. Allan Oolo Austin. It all sounds hauntingly similar to the influence the mysterious St. Kitts-based Dr. Jamie Astaphan had over Johnson's "training program" prior to the Seoul Olympics.

"My biggest concern in the sport right now is the influence of outside people we have no control said Gramantik. "Not so much coaches as medical people who appear left and right and offer assistance, like this magician, this Doc Hollywood who hang around and try to provide assistance to athletes just to claim fame." Gramantik emphasized he was not accusing Austin 1 of being responsible for the steroid that felled Clarke, but said consultants like him "can come and go without responsibility." But some responsibility is going to fall on Athletics Canada and CCES, too. Because a all the signs were there the impossiblymuscled body, the dramatic improvement at an advanced age and yet Clarke was not tested at either the Canadian championships or Francophonie, because her final position was not selected for the random test. "We test a lot of people who probably shouldn't be tested," said Gramantik. "I would be in favour of testing more on a target basis than random." But it's not as though the athletes don't know the risks.

"We're educating them. Almost every team, we have at least one meeting about drug education," Gramantik said. "But those who choose to ignore it, they will ignore it even if you lock them up in the room for two days and show them videos of bad livers." Meanwhile, the show must go on. And here's a cheery thought, direct from the Trigenics press release on Clarke: "Dr. Austin will be on hand to provide her and other Canadian athletes with Trigenics performance enhancement treatments." Athletics Canada might want a look at the client list.

National Post E-mail Cam Cole at so-called "new paradigm" economy might not have been as strong a force as was believed either. Many people including Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve believe that technology driven gains in productivity can continue to outweigh increases in wages and resource costs, as they did in the late 1990s meaning inflation might not be nearly the destabilizing threat in the next few years that it has been in decades past. However, David Rosenberg, chief Canada strategist for Merrill Lynch said even the revised increase in U.S. productivity last year is extremely robust.

"Say what you want about technology, the bubble and the stock market, this was a stellar productivity performance," said Mr. Rosenberg. "It is more miracle than mirage, even post-revision." Mr. Rosenberg pointed to second-quarter U.S. productivity figures released yesterday that were far stronger than anticipated showing a surprise 2.5% increase in the rate's growth.

"Let's call it what it is: We just came off the worst quarterly GDP performance in a decade and here we have productivity growth running at a 2.5% annual rate. That's a story in its own right. To me, that would have to be viewed as an encouraging development. It is a source of comfort." But other experts said the rise in second-quarter productivity resulted from a 2.4% slump in the number of hours worked, which represents the largest drop since the first quarter of 1991. "What's happening, of course, is companies are quickly laying off labour, and these massive layoffs really are having an impact in terms of improving productivity," said Patricia Croft, chief economist at Sceptre Investment Counsel.

"I think it just shows how focused U.S. companies are on retaining that competitive advantage. It's really quite remarkable." National Post, with files from Dow Jones ENTER THE Air Canada Championship GOLFER'S PARADISE CONTEST You could win one of 5 trips for 2 to the Air Canada Championship and 1 Grand Prize week-long golf package for 4 to an Air Canada golf destination in North America. To qualify, just fill out this entry form and mail it to Canada Golfer's Paradise CTV, PO Box 898, Station 0, Scarborough, ON, M4A 2M8 or visit the CTV website at www.ctv.ca. Then watch the Air Canada Championship on CTV on Sept.

1 and 2, 2001, to see if you're the lucky winner. NAME: ADDRESS: CITY: PROVINCE: POSTAL CODE: TELEPHONE: Do you subscribe to the National Post? YES NO Winners must correctly answer the following skill-testing mathematical question: 53X 10 12 Contest open to Canadian residents of age of majority in the province of residence. No purchase necessary. Some conditions apply. The winning trips for 2 include airfare, accommodation and tickets to the Air Canada Championship.

Each entrant also has the chance to win 1 wwwk-long golf package for 4 to an Air Canada golf destination in America; includes airfare, accommodation and Approximate prize value: $4000, $9000 for Grand Prize. Contest regulations in today's Classified Odd of winning depand on the number of received. Contest starts July 25, 2001, and enda August 28, 2001, at 11:59 p.m. Draw will take place on August 13, 2001, for the pries to the Air Canada Championship and on August 29, 2001, for the Grand Prize. All winning contestants must answer a stil-testing question.

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