EDITORIAL

$11 billion bill for arms

While the federal government is trying to get a peace
resolution through parliament, it can hardly claim top
marks for single-mindedness of purpose.

Speakers at the current conference in Guelph of
Canada’s Learned Societies were painting a different
picture. Gideon Rosenbluth, a British Columbia econ-
omist, urged that Canada get out of the arms business.
It would drop employment and the gross national pro-
duct by only a fraction of one per cent, he said, “a price
well worth paying.”

He would halt government subsidies to arms
research and development, end Canada-U.S. defence
production-sharing deals, stop government assistance
to Canadian companies seeking U.S. military contracts,
and ban production of items like the cruise missile
guidance system, and Canadarm, “which will play a
vital role in Reagan’s space wars.”

John Treddenick, a professor at the Royal Military
College in Kingston, said defence officials gain support
by promising sub-contracts to areas when they go out
and spend to protect their share of the federal budget.

These make an interesting accompaniment to a scene
played out in the House of Commons on May 24.
Dedicated warrior, stalwart of NATO, and ever part of
the group that applauds Reagan’s arms escalation,

Defence Minister Jean-Jacques Blais was stung by a
questioner who called Canada’s armed forces too weak
to be of help to NATO.

To impress his Tory questioner, Blais gave some
figures which should be of interest to the peace move-
ment as well.

He said “in 1974-75 the government spent $2.5-
billion in defence expenditures. At that time the percen-
tage given to capital equipment was roughly eight per
cent. This year I will be spending $8.7-billion. That is
more than a $6-billion increase in 10 years in defence
expenditures. This year I will be spending over 26 per
cent...on capital equipment. That is a tremendous
increase...In 1986-87 I will be spending $11.1-
billion. . in order to provide the best armed forces there
are within NATO.”

As if to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, retiring NATO
secretary-general Joseph Luns added only five days
later in Washington (about the threatened Dutch rejec-
tion of nuclear missiles): “it will make it more difficult”
to counter the growing protest movement in Europe;
the peace movement “will take heart from it.”

That’s a long way from diddling with a peace resolu-
tion in parliament while boasting of a record arms
budget.

NATO blocks way to peace

The NATO foreign ministers have been huddling
over secret military studies in Washington and Mary-
land and if the final outcome is no more responsible
than views reported on day one, the world will have
moved closer to the nuclear brink.

Anti-Soviet bombast interlaced with disinformation
about NATO’s own intentions are served up for the
public, while the boss country, the U.S.., tries to force its
will on a split-strewn and rancorous alliance.

The Netherlands government plans to wait till the
end of June to decide whether to accept the 48 nuclear-
armed cruise missiles both U.S. Secretary of State
George Shultz and Canadian Defence Minister Jean-
Jacques Blais tried to shove down its throat ata NATO
defence ministers’ meeting. é :

Denmark won’t pay to establish missile bases any-
where and has no foreign military units on its soil.

France and the Federal Republic of Germany are
known to be discussing the desirability of a truly
“European” alliance — excluding the U.S.

The Reagan policy of deploying 572 first-strike
nuclear weapons in western Europe has presented the
world with a collapse of the U.S.-Soviet talks on nuclear
arms reduction, has forced the USSR defence system to
match the U.S. deployment, and has served as the
opening of a mad round of U.S. escalations — from

MX missiles, to star wars, to just plain gunboat
diplomacy.

Not only are the NATO partners prodded to approve
every new U.S. adventure — such as its foolhardy
intervention in the Persian Gulf with a giant KC-10
aerial refuelling tanker which could become the first
U.S. air casualty of that conflict — but are ordered into
the nuclear front lines by the Reagan deployment team.

Canada is a particularly obedient servant, approving
U.S. deployment in Europe and U.S. cruise testing here.
Apart from a few mild words over the brutal U.S.
invasion of Grenada, it is apparently unprepared to act
as a sovereign, independent state.

Meanwhile it is important for men and women of the
labor, peace and democratic movement to look beyond
NATO propaganda at the immense potential for peace
and disarmament in Soviet proposals: agreement on a
nuclear freeze now; a pledge by the U.S. and the USSR
not to be first to use nuclear weapons (the USSR has
unilaterally made such a pledge); agreement on aboli-
tion of weapons from space; and an agreement on
nuclear-weapons free zones. And, if the U.S. and
NATO want talks resumed on missile reductions with-
out conditions, as they so often say, all they need do is
remove the conditions they demand be accepted — the
Pershing II and Cruise missiles.

“Gentlemen, if anyone tells you we're ridin’ too low in the water, just tell them
* that’s a communist lie” za

and

Provigo Inc., Montreal, a holding company in food, drugs,
tobacco wholesaling and retailing with subsidiaries in seve!
provinces, had a 12-week profit as at April 21, of $10,016,000, UP
from $3,158,000 in the same period a year before.

IRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

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—
at

friend visiting Nicaragua brought
back an interesting note last week
which serves to show how the actions of

People and issues M any who have been readers of the

Tribune over the past 20 years will be
saddened to hear of the death in Moscow

the Reagan administration can sometimes
create ironic turns of history, producing
results quite opposite to those intended.

It seems that Avis Rent-a-Car, which
maintains two offices in Managua, includ-
ing one at Sandino International Airport,
recently began stocking its operation with
the Soviet-built Lada in an effort to head.
off any difficulties it might experience as a
result of U.S. economic blockade against
spare parts.

Normally Avis handles General Motors
cars and, in some instances, Toyotas, but
because of economic actions by the Rea-
gan administration which have virtually
cutoff spare parts moving from the U.S., it
apparently decided to look to a car with a
more reliable source of parts.

The irony, of course, is that Avis (the
“we-try-harder” people) is owned by the
huge U.S. multinational Norton-Simon
= Ky ER

f the federal Tories have been playing

their political policy cards pretty close to
their collective chests, it’s probably got a
lot more to do with the strategy of the
Fraser Institute than with the suggestion
by some pundits that they don’t have any
policy.

It was, after all, the Socreds’ backroom

adviser and Institute director Michael —

Walker who defended Bennett for not
divulging the “hidden agenda” that had

already been drafted prior to the May 5
election and subsequently dropped on the
legislature table July 7, 1983. And Walker
has also sat at the Tories’ table as adviser
on at least one occasion, at Montebello,
Quebec.

More recently, Milton and Rose Fried-
man — of Chicago School of Economics
notoriety — reteased their book Tyranny
of the Status Quo which outlined the
theory of “political concentration” which
was supposed to provide a theoretical
argument for abandoning democracy
entirely and never telling the electorate any
of the draconian measures that are sche-
duled to be enacted following an election.

Now the theory has been taken up by
Fraser Institute economist Walter Block
who devoted a column in the Financial
Post recently to an indignant defence of
Bennett’s ploy.

According to Block — whose version
reads something like Major Douglas’
explanation of the Social Credit funny
money scheme — politicians planning
massive cuts in government spending on
social services shouldn’t tell anybody in
advance because a short election cam-
paign doesn’t provide enough time for the
“silent majority” to weigh the pros and
cons of the cuts. As a result, he claims,
they’re “beguiled” by a vocal minority.

But like the rest of the Fraser Institute’s
philosophy, it is merely a justification for

political immorality. What is interesting is
that Block insists that Bennett, in not
revealing his plans, was acting on the Insti-
tute’s advice. And it’s not a big jump from
there to see that the Tories are doing the
same in not revealing their hands.

There is no doubt: the Tories do have a
hidden agenda of cuts in social spending
and alterations in long standing social
programs. And like the Socreds’ agenda,
the Fraser Institute had a hand in drafting

It. !
ok. oh,

e have a note from the Congress of

Canadian Women outlining a
request for their assistance from AMNLAE
(Women’s Association of Nicaragua —
Louisa Amanda Espinosa) which has
launched a campaign to outfit the
women’s hospital in Managua.

The CCW is asking for donations of
diapers, baby bottles, sewing supplies, cot-
ton sheets and pillow cases as well as surgi-
cal rubber gloves, all of which will be sent
to Nicaragua on the Tools for Peace ship
later this year.

Because the ship doesn’t arrive here
until December, there is no immediate
rush, but the CCW is asking that donors
hang on to any of the requested articles so
as to have them on hand when collection

begins. More information on the cam-’

paign is available from Susan Lockhart at
254-9797 or Lydia Legebokoff at 874-4806.

_ assignment as correspondent this time in

of former Pacific Tribune and Canadian
Tribune staff writer Bert Whyte who
passed away May 17 after a battle with
cancer.

Born in Cobalt, Ontario, in 1909, his
career as a journalist for the Communist
movement spanned five decades. He first
went on staff for the Daily Clarion in 1937
and ten years later, was one of the found-
ing members of the editorial collective of
the Tribune when it was launched briefly as
a daily in 1947.

He came to this province in 1949 as 4
staff writer for the Pacific Tribune; gaining
considerable following for his weekly
“Sportlight” column. In 1960 he left to
take a post as Peking correspondent for
the Canadian Tribune, returning to
Toronto in 1964 for a two-year stint on the
national paper before accepting another

Moscow.

Following -the completion of that
assignment in 1972, he remained in Mos-
cow where both he and his wife Monica
continued to work in the Soviet media,
taking work with Moscow Radio as well
as APN news agency. He was a style editor
for the international magazine Sputnik
until just shortly before his death.

He is survived by his wife Monica and
their son, Rick.

—

4e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 6, 1984

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