city incid Some 1 60 people marched in Nanaimo May 31, filing past the ‘‘Diefenbunker’’ — the fallout shelter Created during the government of former prime minister John Diefenbaker — in the Vancouver Island S$ annual Walk for Peace. Key speakers, including area NDP MP Ted Miller and Lt.-Col. (retired) Cody Coward, called for international safeguards on nuclear energy in reference to the Chernobyl Cident, and an end to nuclear-weapons testing in nearby Nanoose Bay. Coward, a member of the Sterans Against Nuclear Weapons who participated in nuclear testing in Nevada in 1957, called for anaimo to become a nuclear-weapons free zone. Communist Party provincial candidate Deborah acDonald outlined the recent peace proposals from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and urged "ticipants to discuss and endorse the proposals, copies of which were distributed. Other speakers at @ rally in the Collery Dam park included Rev. Les Clarke, Dr. Peter Carter of Physicians for Social ®sponsibility, Shawani Campbell of Island Women of Native Ancestry, Dr. John Garson of the WSabriola Island Peace Association and Green Party spokesman Helen Martin. yet Since she returned home to &h Na from an international peace t month, Moira Walker {tong N Wearing the same lapel but- liga here she goes. The names fe sae locations are written i €face of it and across them, 3 re Print are the letters “CTB.” Manth: a message that all will Mang Tecognize but the letters Or “comprehensive test ban.” er is determined that a lot Mang Nadians are going to under- hy AM t the term means — and Pg, 8 crucial to ending the arms of Walker, an activist with the Voice Ing gp MN (VOW) in Victoria, was Monat Six Canadians at the Interna- May pitool of Peace in Leningrad Vom 17. Organized by the Soviet ite Committee as part of the of Nations International Year h It brought together women Lon National peace organiza- ene TOm 28 states which had It; be 1975 Helsinki Accords. ; One of a number of events 8 to the world congress com- of Peg ing the International Year Xtoenhe! Slated for Oct. 15-19 in The gen. ete anadian delegation included Reg n-Hall, from the Con- Tory f Canadian Women in Von oto: Therese Godbout, eh S League of Quebec; Walker; Nangetta VOW member Yvonne Td. Two other Canadians, Nong Nes, now working with the ‘nq Bain Council in Helsinki, %o,, th Ballantyne, the general Yonay of the Women’s Interna- in ue for Peace and Free- hoo} Geneva, also took part in the 0 . Rina days, participants from May the world took part in what ‘on, Says were “intense discus- hoy, N peace and _ security.” “ong ean the agenda called for ses- Ring begin at 10 a.m., the women 4y, ant quickly changed that to 9 Yo) hee exchanges “‘often lasted T midnight,” she says. MOIRA WALKER It was just a week before the school that the events of Chernobyl broke, putting a new dimension on the discussion. But far from the | western media’s claims of Soviet “secretiveness,” the organizers of the school readily changed the program to enable participants to discuss the nuclear accident and its implica- tions, Walker says. “We saw that the Soviet people were treating the accident as it if was World War II again,” she notes. “Everywhere people were taking displaced families in; everywhere you saw people donating a day’s pay to the social fund. And every night on television, we saw new volunteers going in to help out. “But the lesson of Chernobyl that was clear to all of us,” she emphas- izes, ‘is that nuclear war would be fraught with the danger of hundreds of Chernobyls.” Throughout the conference, Walk- er says, there was a feeling from par- ticipants, particularly from those from Europe “that the world situa- tion is very urgent. “We heard from women in Greece who talked about the new AWACS planes flying missions over their country and from women in Italy whose home is the centre for the Sixth Fleet used against Libya. “Edith Ballantyne also warned us that there was every likelihood that the U.S. would move this year to break every arms treaty it has signed,” she notes. Participant at peace school Stresses test ban campaign As if to confirm that, it was only a few days after she returned home that the U.S. declared its intention to break the SALT II accord, endorsed by the Carter administration but never ratified. The final communique adopted by the school echoed that urgency, noting the “deep concern over the deteriorating international situation. “Nuclear tests continue, nuclear arms are stockpiled and there are dangerous plans to take the arms race to outer space,” it stated. But the communique also empha- sized: “The most important task was to halt all nuclear testing, to freeze nuclear arsenals, to phase out nuclear, chemical and all other wea- pons of mass destruction and to eliminate them by the year 2000.” » Following Mikhail Gorbachev’s TV address May 14, the participants sent a telelgram to the Soviet leader welcoming his extension of the Soviet’s unilateral nuclear test mora- torium until Aug. 6, and expressing “our earnest wish that these Soviet initiatives are successful and will begin a real process of peace in this international year of peace.” On her return, Walker says it was a bit disheartening to see the U.S. announcement of its intention to renounce SALT II and to find in her mail the latest issue of Defence Mon- itor, the publication of the Centre for Defence Information, with a report on the “militarization of America.” But, the participants at the school, and particularly her Soviet hosts, provided a welcome antidote, she says. ““They just seem to be able to sit down and say ‘Today we have to do this, and tomorrow something else, they just keep going. they’re always optimistic. — “T certainly came back encour- aged,” she says. Pointing to her but- ton, she adds: “I’m going to be doing everything I can to see to it that people find out what this button means and why a test ban is so important.” Start on icebreaker now — and build it here, Tories urged A delegation of trade union leaders, shipyard industry representatives and the mayors of three Lower Mainland . municipalities will be heading to Ottawa this week to press the Tory government to move immediately on the con- struction of a Class 8 icebreaker — and to build it in B.C. B.C. Federation of Labor president Art Kube told a press conference at Vancouver city hall June 6 that the . delegation had scheduled meetings with the B.C. caucus of both the Conservative and New Democratic parties as well as with Liberal leader John Turner for June 11 in Ottawa. He said the lobby group would be made up of himself; John Fitzpatrick, president of the Marine Workers and Boilermakers Union; Ron Ferguson, business manager of the Marine and Shipbuilders local of the Carpenters; Dave Alsop, senior vice-president of Versatile Pacific Shipyards; mayor Marilyn Baker of the District of North Vancouver; Jack Loucks, North Vancouver City mayor; and Van- couver mayor Michael Harcourt. The press conference followed the latest of several meet- ings that have been held among shipyard unions, the industry and municipal councils to put together a lobby on the icebreaker issue in light of the heavy unemployment in the shipyard industry. The Class 8 icebreaker, slated to be one of the largest ever built, was first announced by External Affairs Minis- ter Joe Clark on Sept, 9 last year, as one of a number of proposals advanced by the government to enhance Cana- dian sovereignty in the wake of the U.S. Polar Sea incident. The new vessel would be capable of smashing through ice eight feet thick — hence the Class 8 designation. But since the construction plan was first announced, the icebreaker project has been stalled, mainly by Defence Minister Erik Neilson and the Defence Department. The estimated $300-$500 million cost has not been specifically budgeted and DND opposes taking it out of the military budget and possibly cutting back on navy projects. A decision of some kind is expected later this month but whether it will be to shelve the project or put it off for reconsideration is still uncertain. The B.C. lobby wants to see the decision made imme- diately to proceed with the project. “The government shouldn’t be stalling on it,” North Vancouver City mayor Jack Loucks told reporters. “They should get down and make a decision right away —and the right decision is to build it in B.C.” Kube emphasized that British Columbia has a substan- tial deficit in inter-provincial trade with Ontario and Quebec and that shipyard workers in B.C. were suffering from an unemployment rate in excess of 50 per cent. “Unless we get some additional work, unemployment will increase to 75 or 80 per cent,” he said. “It’s up to the federal government to recognize its responsibility and transfer some of the procurement money to British Columbia.” The project is expected to provide jobs directly for some 900 shipyard workers in addition to the indirect jobs for those in various supply industries, particularly the steel industry in Ontario. North Vancouver District mayor Marilyn Baker said that there was “a real sense of urgency. We’ve got a team of expertise in both design and construction — and if we don’t get a contract, that will be lost. ““We can’t wait 12 or 18 months for a re-thinking of the . project,” she said. B.C. shipyards, particularly Versatile Pacific (formerly Burrard-Yarrows) and Allied Shipbuilders, both in North Vancouver, are world leaders in icebreaker technology, _ established in some 60 projects over the last decade. Versatile Pacific vice-president Dave Alsop told repor- ters that the yard’s bid on the icebreaker is thought to be the best, based on cost, adherence to specifications and past performance. Both Alsop and Kube emphasized that the presentation to Ottawa did not involve any wage concessions to make the proposal more attractive to the Tory government. Also at issue is the design of any icebreaker. The original plan was for a “Cadillac” version, a $500 million, 100,000 horsepower ship but scaled-down versions have also been considered and bids entered on them. But the design doesn’t matter to the delegation going to Ottawa. “We can do the Cadillac version or the scaled-down version,” said Baker. “The point is, we want to do it now. “Mulroney said last week that he was prepared to do something for the west and Clark has said the project should be built,” she noted. “We're telling them — let’s do it now.” sei. — PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 11, 1986 e 3