BRITISH COLUMBIA

Housing shortage hit
“Lite =a

Downtown Eastside Residents Association organizer Jim Green (1) shows new
DERA co-op housing project to federal NDP housing critic, MP Dan Heap,
during tour sponsored by DERA and B.C. Housing Coalition Aug. 29. The tour,
which also included provincial NDP municipal affairs critic Robin Blencoe, was
called to point out low-income housing shortages and stress the danger inher-
ent in the federal Conservative government's move to transfer social housing
entirely to the provinces. The B.C. government, which has the worst social
housing record in the country, failed despite invitation to send a representative,
and the visiting Tory cabinet last week refused to meet with the coalition.

<i ee

Dam-for-export plan
Called ‘gross betrayal’

By MAURICE RUSH

The announcement by Premier Bill Ben-
nett at the official opening of the Revelstoke
Dam Aug. 28, that B.C. will change its
hydro policy from one of building dams
only to meet B.C.’s needs to one of massive

“dam construction for the purpose of export-
ing huge amounts of hydro power to the
US., represents a gross betrayal of B.C.’s
Vital interests.

Bennett revealed that during the past
year he has been visting the U.S. to hold
talks with officials of the U.S. federal
administration and with California interests
who, he said, encouraged him to change
B.C.’s energy policy and opt for a “long
term strategy” of massive power exports to
California and the U.S. He announced that
next month he will visit San Francisco, Los

. Angeles and Sacramento to negotiate long-
term commitments to export B.C. hydro
power to the U.S.

' The Socred government has tried to
make the most of the Revelstoke Dam

‘Opening, but it is in fact one of the most
glaring examples of mismanagement of the
province’s hydro resources. Built at a cost of
$2 billion, the power generated at the dam is
surplus to B.C.’s needs and will not be
needed for at least 10 or fifteen years. As a
result, the province has been saddled with a
huge debt on which it annually pays close to
$300 million interest — nearly three times
the total savings in social programs cut by
the restraint program.

The decision by the Socreds to proceed
with the Revelstoke Dam was no accident.
It was part of a deliberate long-range plan
by the Socreds to create huge surpluses of
hydro in order to justify what Bennett has
now announced as official policy — massive
exports of hydro power to the U.S.

In its brief to the National Energy Board
hearing in Vancouver in March 1984, when
B.C. Hydro sought and received permission
to double power exports to the U.S., the
Communist Party warned that the granting
of the licence would open the way for the
Socred government to adopt a new policy of
building dams purely for the purpose of
exports to the U.S. Bennett’s announce-
ment at Revelstoke confirms the correctness
of the Communist Party’s warning.

Bennett said at Revelstoke that the
government would be prepared, once the
problem of transmission of B.C. power to

California is worked out, and new deals"

signed with California interests, to give the
go-ahead to the $3.2 billion Site C dam on
the Peace River, a project which was bitterly
opposed at public hearings for years. In
reply to a question by a reporter, Bennett
said, “Given a firm contract. ..You’d be on
the ground with in a year” at the Site C

~ dam

The Site C dam would saddle B.C. with
additional debts and interest payments run-
ning close to half a billion dollars. It would
flood about 30 per cent of B.C.’s developed
Class 1 and 2 farm lands which would be
lost forever. It would represent a significant
loss of forest lands and wildlife habitat, and

threaten important fisheries and Native

Indian habitat.

But the building of dams under Bennett’s
new policy would not stop there. Still on the
drawing board at B.C. Hydro are plans for
dams on on the Liard, Stikine and Iskut
Rivers, and the Hat Creek thermal plant
with its dangers to the B.C. environment
and Fraser River fisheries.

The Bennett government is using the sur-
plus of the Revelstoke Dam to saddle the
people of B.C. with a new energy policy
which, unless it is changed by outraged pub-
lic opinion, will see dams built all over the
province to generate hydro power for
export. It would provide power for new
industries in the U.S. while leaving us with
huge debts and flooded lands. And this
province would be tied inextricably into the
U.S. power grid.

Such a policy would promote industrial
growth and jobs in the U.S. as the Columbia
River Treaty has done, but not in B.C. It
would represent a giant step towards con-
tinentalism and the integration of B.C.’s
raw material economy to serve U.S. inter-
ests. It would guarantee that British
Columbians remain hewers of wood,
diggers of ore, drawers of water and
builders of dams for the U.S.

There is no doubt that Benentt, who is
the most ardent advocate of free trade with
the U.S., sees the sale of our hydro power as
part of a trade deal with the U.S. which will
probably include water, fisheries, and other
resources. He undoubtedly also sees it as
part of his election strategy — to hold out
the promise of markets and jobs for B.C.
while in actual fact selling out B.C.’s futuré
to the U.S. corporations. It’s a policy which
should be rejected by all who hold the inter-
est of B.C. at heart.

Tory, Socred policies
deepen depression,
UBC economists warn

The policies pursued by the federal
and B.C. provincial governments in their
recent budgets are doing nothing to
resolve the country’s most persistent
economic problems and in fact are
“deepening the depressian, particularly
in British Columbia,” two University of
B.C. economists warned last week.

The conclusion, which bears out the
contention of opponents of both budgets,
was the finding in two papers released
Aug. 28 by the B.C. Economic Policy
Institute, a group founded two years ago
by several University of B.C. and Uni-
versity of Victoria economists in response
to the July, 1983 Social Credit govern-
ment budget.

The first, by Angela Redish, emphas-
ized that the Socred government is off
base in its analysis of the province’s
economy and, as a result, has failed to
address the problems. Released with it
was a paper by Gideon Rosenbluth ana-
lyzing the federal budget brought down
May 28.

A third paper, a detailed 60-page
study on trade unions and the B.C.
economy was also issued by the institute
Aug. 28.

If the analysis of the budgets isn’t
exactly “hot news”, Rosenbluth told
reporters at a UBC press conference, the
problems they discuss are “‘still with us’’.

“The number one problem is high
unemployment,” he said, “yet the poli-
cies followed at the federal and provin-
cial level are not Pas c
effective in solv- } 3
ing this problem.” |

Rosenbluth told
reporters that
there are several
common features |
between the poli-
cies of the federal
Tories and the
Socreds including,
a emphasis on
government “‘res-
traint”, a “pre-
occupation with
deficit reduction
...a misplaced
emphasis on find-
ing more entre-
preneurs. ..and a

ANGELA »
REDISH

failure to realize

the collapse of

demand in the GIDEON
home market.” ROSENBLUTH

Because of that, he said, the two
governments, particularly that in B.C.,
“have pursued policies which have made
the depression far more severe than it
need have been.”

Redish pointed out in her paper that
the Socred government has mistakenly
focused on falling resource export prices
as a structural rather than a cyclical
problem while, on the other hand, the
real structural problems of the economy
— the permanent displacement of
workers, by technological change and
the depletion of resources — have been
ignored by the Bennett government.

“The important structural problems
facing B.C. arise out of the depletion of
our natural resource base and through
investments in labor-saving capital
equipment,” she said. ““These problems

Trade unions in B.C.,
page 12

threaten to reduce the level of income
and increase the level of unemployment
rate in the province...

“Employment in the forest sector has
fallen despite record level output because
new technologies have reduced the
number of man hours required to pro-
cess each unit of output.

Redish added: “The loss of jobs
caused by technological change is per-
manent and not simply a facet of tem-
porarily weak export markets. . .These
jobs cannot be regained by increasing the
quantity of output (since) the province is
“already harvesting timber at the maxi-
mum sustainable rate.”

To address the problem of unem-
ployment both in the short run and the
long term, Redish said, the government
should invest more money “in natural
resources and...in people” — specifi-
cally, a silviculture program to increase
the maximum sustainable yield and bet-
ter funding for post-secondary institu-
tions to provide a better trained and
adaptable work force.

But instead of that, she says, the
Socreds have reduced investment in silvi-

culture and have cut back on education [

funding. They have put millions into tax
concessions for business and capital
intensive projects, which are “‘questiona-
ble” in value, she said.

“Government policy is not designed
to maximize the creation of jobs either in
the short or the long run,” she stated.

Neither are federal policies designed to
provide Mulroney’s much-vaunted “jobs,
jobs, jobs,” said Rosenbluth, noting that
the Wilson budget has served mainly to
rob the lower and middle income groups
of services while providing tax conces-
sions which benefit mainly the rich.

_ The pre-occupation with reducing the
federal deficit is uncessary and counter-
productive, he argued, since in a time of
economic slack, deficits don’t “crowd
out investment” and don’t cause infla-
tion, contrary to the Tories’ argument. In
fact, if the deficit were increased through
government measures to stimulate con-
sumer demand, he emphasized, “it
would be of positive benefit.”

Rosenbluth also challenged the gov-
ernment’s policy of “tracking” high U.S.
interest rates, emphasizing that such a
policy retards the growth of business and
consumer demand, increases the debt —
load, particularly to foreign investors,
and increases unemployment.

Moreover, he stressed, Canada can
have an independent rate policy and
maintain lower interest rates than those
in the U.S. by adopting two measures:
the imposition of a tax on interest
income earned by. Canadian residents
from foreign sources; and _ selective
exchange controls to control the move-
ment of large sums of money by corpora-
tions.

“In the final analysis,” he noted, “the —
reason why Canada is deprived of the
benefits of lower interest rates is that the
government is not imposing such taxes
and controls.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1985 e 3