EDITORIAL

Free trade crossroads

Commenting on the new level of American demands on Canada in the current “free
trade” discussions, one radio commentator said “the jam is out of the jar.”

The real aims of U.S. strategy, which have been leaking out for months, were revealed
almost completely last week as Washington’s negotiator Peter Murphy bluntly said that
major changes in Canadian investment policy must take place before any deal is struck.

The Mulroney government is now faced with the decision of giving away the last vestiges
of our sovereignty. They have run out of maneuvering room, having caved in on each issue
the U.S. has raised so far.

The Tories have buried the Foreign Investment Review Act and killed our National
Energy Program. Hundreds of Canadian firms have been sold off to U.S. buyers. Canada
has been whacked with U.S. countervailing penalties. We've eliminated our drug patent
laws, soft-peddled acid rain, looked the other way on Arctic sovereignty and kept silent on
blatant U‘S. international actions such as in Central America — all in the name of not
endangering a “free trade’’deal.

Canada is at a turning point.

Will Canadians, only 23 per cent of whom still support the Tories, allow Mulroney and
his gang to complete this sellout? :

It’s obvious the government has hitched its partisan wagon to the U.S. star. In Parlia-
ment both Mulroney and International Trade Minister Carney make clear they intend to
give Reagan & Co. what they want: unrestricted, unfettered access to investment and
control of Canada’s economic life — and with it our cultural and political future.

It’s urgent that all pro-Canadian, patriotic and democratic forces unite to stop Mulro-
ney.

Practicing democracy

Communists consistently advocate the fullest extension of real democracy. Communists
have always worked toward the day when working people will be in control of their lives,
their environment, the future of their nations and, indeed of their world. That is what the
struggle for social advance and social justice is about: to release and harness human and
material potential for the good of all; to construct a society of, by and for the people.

Real democracy, was also practiced at the recent meeting of the central committee of the
Communist Party of Canada. In the CPC the member is in charge; decision-making and
policy derives from the membership.

Canadian communists are updating their program, The Road to Socialism in Canada, to
conform to new conditions and new realities. As when the first program was written and
during subsequent updatings, the process inolves every member. During the central

- committee meeting May 16-18, for example, 170 amendments were received to a new draft
document. These will now be incorporated into a draft program to be placed before the full
membership for a year-long discussion before being presented for adoption at the party's
central convention.

Thus for communists, democracy is far from an abstract concept. It is central both to the
thinking and action of this party who, as it’s program proudly states, since:its founding 66
years ago “has held high the banner of peace, Canadian independence, democracy and
socialism ...”

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~~ pene FR wet. 29 ee ot UA

rom most North Americans’ perspec-
tive, Indonesia is a far-flung corner of
the globe where events of little significance
occur. Probably the Canadian govern-
ment hopes.it will stay that way, too. Fora
note we received from Gabriola Island

People and Issues.

for their corporate backers have occupied
a lot of space on our pages. So it’s worth —
noting a few vignettes from that ongoing ~
process of divesting the public of assets
and jobs. j
Scene I: An item in the The Financial —

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reader Nina Westaway suggests that Can-
adian corporations are doing fine, busi-
ness-wise, in a country with a human
rights record that parallels that of South
Africa.

Westaway reports nothing but evasion
and ingenuous answers to her recent
inquiries to External Affairs Minister Joe
Clark in which she asked what Canada
plans to do about Indonesia’s “10 years of
holocaust” on the island of East Timor,
which the southeast Asian nation illegally
annexed in 1976. We pass on the points
about the situation Westaway made in her
reply to H.G. Pardy, an official in Clark’s
office who finally answered her queries.

East Timor suffers saturation bombing
as a result of the activities of its resistance
organization, the Revolutionary Front for
an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN).
Additionally, the Indonesian army’s
scorched earth policy has rendered much
of the island infertile. Meanwhile, a forced
influx of landless, indigenous Indonesian
peasants has strained the already limited
resources.

FRETILIN, the popular organization
of political expression for East Timor’s
people, was banned from participating in
recent elections in Indonesia’s 27 provin-
ces.
Yet Canada is the third largest western
investor in Indonesia — ploughing some

$340 million into the country during 1981-
86 — through corporations such as Bata
Shoe, Inco, Dome Petroleum and other
energy companies. And in her reply to
Pardy, Westaway asks: “As an exporter of
military hardware to Indonesia, are we a
compliant partner in U.S. efforts to exploit
the area as a very strategic military check-
point, or are we ... interested in lining the
pockets of a few Canadian-based multina-
tionals. . .?”

Westaway takes issue with Pardy’s
statement that although Canada objected
to the seizure of East Timor, “‘it is our view

that a friendly and conciliatory
approach is far more appropriate and con-
structive than adopting a negative or con-
frontational stance ....”

She replies: “ ... supporting Goliath
while he beats on David is the position
that Canada has taken in contravention of
(United Nations) principles. Canada has
abstained from voting on UN resolutions
condemning the 1976 invasion and has
voted against resolutions endorsing East
Timor’s right to self-determination and
humanitarian assistance.”

* * *

S ince 1976, the death penalty has been
abolished in Canada. But a Tory
majority in Parliament is, as we know,

debating reintroducing that form of
retributive punishment — a punishment
which has been shown to have absolutely
no deterrent effect on murder and other
violent crimes.

Marxists have always held that under
capitalism, the chief victims of death
penalties are the working class and the
poor, and a glance at the roster in most
Canadian or. U.S. prisons will bear that
out. And while he’s not exactly making
that point, the Rev. Arch McCurdy of the
United Church of Canada makes some
other telling arguments against the death
penalty.

The reverend has been sending letters
out to potential supporters in his role as
chair of the Coalition Against the Return of
the Death Penalty warning that a vote on
the issue will be conducted in the House
before the end of June. He notes that
“time is short (and) the death penalty for-
ces are well financed ....”

The coalition, consisting of more than
30 organizations — including the Cana-
dian Labor Congress — is at 168 Isabella
St., Toronto, Ont. M4Y 9Z9.

* * *

Pvatzaton and deregulation: pro-
ceeding hand in hand, these attempts
by the western world’s new-right govern-
ments to open up new vistas in enterprise

Post observes that, nine years after intro- ~
ducing its airline industry to deregulation, ~
the United States now faces new concerns ~
over safety and flight delays. It shows that ~
the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ~
found 417,000 flights were delayed by —
more than 15 minutes in 1986. Also, cor-
porate concentration — and the inevita- —
ble cutback in jobs — has seen eight —
companies command 90 per cent of the ~

market, compared to 15 three years ago.
Meanwhile, an accompanying article
informs us that Canada’s major airlines
have swallowed several smaller companies
in anticipation of the National Transporta-
tion Act, the government’s deregulation
bill that has yet to be proclaimed.

Scene II: A private corporation that —

should have been nationalized years
ago — Bell Canada, which monopolizes
telephone services in Ontario and Quebec
— is appealing a ruling by the regulatory
body, the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission — that
the company pay back six million custo-
mers $206 million in excess profits. Bell’s
action, which has temporarily frozen the
refunds by court order, will allow the
company — as National Anti-Poverty
Organization lawyer Andrew Roman
notes — to collect millions of dollars of
interest on the money, which remains in
Bell’s bank account.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 27, 1987