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 ...” = as IP MC. PRIVATIZATION: WHO CARRIES THE Cot FIRIBONE Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Business & Circulation Manager — MIKE PRONIUK Graphics — ANGELA KENYON Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5 Phone (604) 251-1186 ISSN 0030-896X Subscription Rate: Canada — $16 one year; $10 six months Foreign — $25 one year; Second class mail registration number 1560 -=— Pw OO Ont n——“*nsnD ~~ 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 — mua —=~ O A9 £60 (i? * gn Vesa gh. Dd 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