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SIGNING FOR PEACE AT HABITAT. Dorothy Thompson of the B.C. Peace Council collecting names
for the Stockholm petition at the opening session of the Habitat Forum at Jericho Beach last
Thursday evening.

—- Sean Griffin photo

Policy bankrupt

Big business budget hit

The budget brought down last
week by federal finance minister
Donald Macdonald is a ‘‘big
business budget, a bankrupt
budget, reflecting the govern-
ment’s bankrupt economic and
social policies,’’ said Canadian
Communist leader, William Kash-
tan in a statement released on
behalf of the party’s central
executive committee.

Text of the Communist Party’s
statement said:

After eliminating all the ver-
biage in the budget speech of
finance minister Donald Mac-
donald what stands out is the
following:

The government has no program
to roll back prices. Instead prices
will be ‘‘monitored’”’ in the
supermarkets.

The price of energy, food, rent,
housing and transportation will
continue to rise. While being more
than gentle with the corporations
by allowing prices and profits to
rise, the government will continue
its wage control program directed
against the working people of
Canada.

The government has no program
to cope with rising unemployment.
It intends to do nothing about
unemployment except to create
additional hardship for the
unemployed by increasing waiting
time by 50 per cent. It has no
program for young people looking
for work or for working women

seeking to add to the family in-
come. To show how ‘‘concerned”’ it
is about unemployment, it too will
be monitored.

The government will do nothing
to bring about a redistribution of
the national income in favor of the
working people through tax reform
or otherwise. The rich are to
remain rich and the poor, poor.

The government will continue its
program of curtailing social
services and cost. sharing
programs. This means further cuts
for education, for health, for
scientific research. This is what
monopoly asked for and this is
what they got.

At the same time the govern-

ment will continue to spend billions
on a useless arms program whose
main beneficiaries will be the
industrial military complex. 3

It will continue to give special

incentives to the multi-national oil
corporations, thereby enabling
them to gobble up more of
Canada’s priceless natural
resources.
’ This is a big business budget, a
bankrupt budget, reflecting the
government’s bankrupt, economic
and social policies.

The budget is based on the main
hope that the limited recovery in
the USA and in some other
capitalist countries will rub off on
Canada and create employment.
This is a false basis upon which to
build a healthy and expanding
economy geared to full em-
ployment.

The budget is predicated on the
false argument that if Canadians
are put to work they will cause
inflation.

Those who argue that way show
how utterly bankrupt they are. It is
an admission that state monopoly
capitalism is unable to overcome
economic crisis, eliminate in-
flation and unemployment and
create conditions for full em-
ployment, stable prices and rising
standards.

The budget bodes no good for the
Canadian people. It should be
rejected. It is based on the false

See BUDGET, pg. 11

Care for alcoholics
reaches crisis point |

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The treatment of alcoholics in
Vancouver, or rather the lack of
treatment, has reached the crisis
stage.

The consumption of alcohol is
increasing rapidly, the revenues of
the provincial government from
the sale’ of liquor are growing
yearly and now exceed $100 million
a year, and the profits of the liquor
companies are increasing at a
similar pace.

At the same time the victims of
alcohol are increasing in numbers
but the facilities for their care and
rehabilitation are not keeping
pace.

In Vancouver last year 14,500
people were arrested for being
drunk. This makes up almost half
of all the people arrested for all
types of violations of the law. Only

those are arrested as drunks who.

are unable to take care of them-
selves.

In addition, in Vancouver last
year of those picked up as drunks
977 had to be sent to the hospital.
These were people who were un-
conscious or semi-conscious, who
had been injured, who were ill or
elderly.

Those who are arrested as
drunks are thrown into the drunk
tank, On a busy day there are few
places in the city more vile. People
are sleeping or lying on the floor,
the smell of vomit and urine fills
the place, and the whole at-
mosphere is a challenge to even the
strongest stomach. People who
haven’t seen it can’t even begin to
imagine what it’s like.

The problem has become so bad
that Dr. Stanley Croft, city jail
physician, felt compelled to resign,
after five years of service, in
protest.

This is not the fault of the police,
or even of the city for that matter.
It is the fault of the provincial
government which. has failed to
provide facilities for treating
alcoholics.

The police have to throw drunks
into the drunk tank when they
should be sent to a hospital because
hospital facilities are not only
inadequate they are decreasing.
Hospitals refuse to take drunks,
except in emergencies.

We haven’t enough
detoxification centres. In fact we
have only one — for men only. We
have no compulsory detoxification
centres, where people will be kept
and processed for at least 72 hours.
The plans to build one at China

1 = — g

Creek were all ready to go wit
the new provincial governmé
axed it.

The alcoholic is still bell
treated as a criminal and a poll
problem, rather than as a viel!
and a health problem.

We need -at least fol
detoxification centres in Vé
couver. That is the studied opi!
of all those who have been diret
involved in this problem. We n@
compulsory detoxification cent
Voluntary centres where tht
come in one door, sleep it off and!
out the other, do nothing to S0
the problem or help the individ!

The responsibility to change
situation lies directly with ©
provincial government. It ™
simply have to provide m?
money for treatment. Spend
only $1.25 million a year |
programs for alcoholics just i
good enough. That amount needs!
be increased 10 times at least:

Last but not least the lid’)
companies who profit from #
create this problem should!
taxed to help pay the social cost’
alcoholism, which some estim@
as high as $250 million a yea!
B.C. alone.

Cyprus U.N.
action urgé

An appeal to participan
Habitat to support the *
plementation of the UN Secut:
Council’ decision (#353) for ©
withdrawal of all foreign tro®
from Cyprus, and the retur
200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees”
prisoners of war back to
homes, was made this week by"
Vancouver Greek Democl@)
Committee of Solidarity ©
Cyprus.

The committee asks for “%
demnation of intrigues by the U
and NATO which have uprou
200,000 Greek Cypriots from ™
homes, and ‘which is [0o¥)
against the idea of human
tlements presently discussed a!”
Habitat conference.’’

Support is also urged fot j
efforts of the Cypriot gover”,
of President Makarios to ag
have the Cypriot issue pn
before the UN Security Counc!
discussion.

__ PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 4, 1976—Page 2

TOM

omething like Switzerland in recent times, Canada has
become a safe haven for crooks, criminals, counter-
revolutionaries, master dope addicts, “queers” and other
specimen of the bourgeois species. This too has rapidly
become a class phenomena of modern bourgeois society
where the ruling caste of one country rushes to the rescue
of their less fortunate criminal elements.

Our Liberal minister of immigration Robert Andras is
no better (or worse) than were other Liberal or Tory
ministers who preceeded him. He will bar a Communist or
progressive leader coming from anywhere as a visitor or
guest, and throw open Canada’s doors to nazi killers,
crooks, or dope traffickers. Moreover, while government
officials may prattle about “friendly relations’ detente
and all the rest of it, the trained anti-Sovieter of the
Solzhenitsyn breed is welcomed to the echo. But a Com-
munist advocate or something less radical is invariably
held to be “‘subservive’’ and hence non persona grata!

“‘Queers’’ we get in galore. That figures since we have
an abundance of our own home-bred samples. We’ve had
racist and chauvinist prime ministers, Tory and Liberal,
who used “‘to consult with the Spooks’ (spiritualists they
used to call them) every time they had a knotty or vexing

problem of government to deal with. Just recently we

have had a famous visitor, no less a person than one of the

multi-offspring of the infamous Rasputin, giving out with
some of the dire consequences of socialism in the Soviet
Union — but who cannot give out with any sage advice
while she is in ‘“‘communication”’ with the ‘‘spirit”’ of the
scheming and lecherous Rasputin.

Or take the case of General Quong as another example.
The majority of the people of Canada did not want this
drug pusher here at any price. But Robert Andras hum-
med and hawed and decreed that he stay put until some
other country would take him off our hands — or until he
has the assurance that the people of a new South Vietnam
won’t string him up for manifold crimes against his er-
stwhile people. Such commiseration shown by Andras
towards a known international crook. drug peddler, and
killer “‘passeth all understanding” — if one forgets the
class origin and affinity between a Canadian minister and
a Vietnamese drug pusher whose heroin was no less
deadly to his people than his politics.

When Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia at Munich
to Hitler, he brushed it off by describing it as “‘a far-away
country which we know little of.’’ So it is with Canada and
Chile. During the democratic regime of Salvadore Allendi
we did little or nothing to assist that struggling
democracy, either in trade or other relations. But no
sooner had the fascist terrorism against the Chilean
democracy broken loose than our external minister got
around to recognition of the militarist-fascist regime. Did
we open the doors of Canada to the countless thousands of
Chilean refugees fleeing the nazi terror? Not so you'd
notice it. What few were allowed in were investigated and
screened with a fine RCMP mesh. The rest were left to
face the terror alone, and the Canadian government and
its monopoly bosses have arranged that we can now have

Chilean fruits for breakfast — at a handsome mark+?
course. , jie
The cases of Chile and others could be multi’
hundreds of times over. The deliberate barr iif
progressive people, whose only ‘‘crime”’ is their wo!
class outlook on things and events. On the other sid®
ready, even eager opening of Canada’s portals W® 4
every criminal, crook and political weasel who fi
admittance. All thatis required is that his class bon@ :
is in keeping and at one with the home-bred caste. asl
It is not by accident or mere chance that the ruling “4
of whatever country, Canada included, tend to think 4S
act in this manner. It is rather the nature of 4 7
divided society, to place its policies and support
where its overall interests lie. Consequently a bout?
ruling segment in Canada gives preference to thé if
derworld of its own class — and prefers crimina
worse to honest workingmen and women.
Someday, happily, the choices will be reversed.

Ris UNE

Editor — MAURICE RUSH
: Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA,
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