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Islanders oppose
Tsitika cut plan

Trade unionists and  en-
Vironmentalists are mobilizing to
prevent the devastation of the
Tsitika River valley on northern
Vancouver Island.

Representatives of labor, en-
vironmental and outdoor
recreational groups met on
February 21 in Victoria to plan a
public information campaign
aimed at reversing a recent
provincial government decision to
permit logging of up to 99 percent
of the valley.

A moratorium on logging in the
valley has been in place since 1975

when environmental groups were |

Successful in convincing the En-
vironmental Land Use Committee
of the provincial government to
take steps to protect the valuable
Tsitika watershed.

Elgin Neish of the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers’
Union was chosen chairman and
Spokesman for the ‘‘Tsitika
Moratorium Committee’ which
includes representatives of the
Victoria Labor Council’s en-
vironment committee, the Sierra
Club, B.C. Federation of
Naturalists and the B.C.
Federation of Mountain Clubs.

“The situation is no different
now than it was back in 1975, when
the previous government held a
series of public hearings on the
matter up and down the Island,”
Neish said in a statement. last
week, “It was clear then, from
most of the testimony given, that

the Tsitika is a priceless resource .

which should not be devastated in

_. the same fashion that practically

every other Island watershed has
been. If anything, the reasons for
holding off on logging are even
stronger today than they were
three years ago.”’

The proposal to allow logging of
the watershed is backed by the
“Tsitika Resource Planning
Committee”, an advisory body
established by the provincial
80vernment. The planning com-
mittee is supposed to put the “draft

Cutting plan’’ for the valley to a:

Series of public meetings for
discussion, but Neish, a member of
the planning committee, called the
process ‘‘just one grand snow job.”

A letter from R. Ostby, co-

ordinator of the planning com-
mittee, to D. O’Gorman, chairman
of the province’s Environment and
Land Use Secretariat, which was
leaked to the Tribune this week
revealed a carefully worked out
plan to manipulate the public
hearings and prevent public op-
position to the plan. ;

Ostby wrote to O’Gorman asking
the Secretariat to appoint a
chairman for the public hearings to
be held in Port McNeill, Sayward,
Campbell River and Nanaimo
during March. The letter predicted
little ‘‘hassle’’ over the plan
because ‘‘the format for the public
meetings will not be an open forum
type of discussion.’”’ The public
meeting will consist. only of in-
formation booths and a slide show
with the public given two weeks to
respond by letter.

“The chairman must be
prepared for uninvited questions or
comment, and, if necessary, steer
the program back on track,” Ostby
warned.

The series of meetings, planned
that way, should ensure that
“there won’t be any subsequent
‘crunch’ from the E.L.U.C.
Secretariat to resolve,” the letter
concluded.

“Tt’s our job to see that there is a
good ‘crunch’ before this plan goes
ahead,”’ Neish said to the Tribune
this week. The Tsitika Moratorium
Committee has planned a series of
actions to expose the rigged-public
hearings and co-ordinate op-
position to the cutting plan.

The main forest companies,
MacMillan Bloedel prominent
among them, are behind the move
to cut down the Tsitika watershed,
Neish alleged. MacMillan Bloedel
officials have threatened loggers
at the Sayward and Eve divisions

ELGIN NEISH . .. heads committee of unionists and environmentalists

to stop ravage of one of Vancouver. Island’s last watersheds.

that they may lose their jobs if the
moratorium is not lifted.

The problem is further com-
plicated by the apparent collusion
of the International Woodworkers
of America representative on the
planning committee. Without of-
ficial endorsation by the IWA, or
discussion by rank and file loggers,
the IWA representative has given
tentative endorsement to the plan,
including the rigged public
meetings.

“Two or us on this Tsitika
Moratorium Committee are union
men and we certainly don’t want to

Richard Morgan photo

see any of out brothers in the
movement lose their jobs. But
when it comes to the Tsitika valley,
there is something fishy about this
loss-of-jobs talk,” Neish said.

Before any ‘cutting goes ahead
there should be a full explanation
from the provincial government,
he said, to justify the cutting
program form a long term per-
spective.

Vancouver Island residents
interested in the Tsitika
Moratorium Committee can
receive more information. by
phoning 642-5120 or 382-6429.

Land claim
settlement
demanded

Continued from pg. 1
Native people are debilitated by
the building of the pipeline, then a
land claim is worthless.”

The construction of the Alcan
line will be similar in many
respects to that of the Alaska High-
way, he predicted. The pipeline
will bring trucks, trains, camps
and people without thought for the
Native culture and environment
before it. “It will open the way to
the destruction of the people of the
North,’”’ he asserted.

The government is pressing
ahead with the pipeline in defiance
of the demands of the CYI and even
of the recommendations of the
Lysyk Inquiry, Johnson charged.

The. CYI past chairman took
time to stress to delegates that the
concerns of Yukon Indians are
convergent with the interests of
Canada as a whole.

“Two or three years ago we.
were laughed at for saying that
there was no shortage of gas or
oil,” he said. ‘Now many people
accept it as the truth even though
the pipeline is going ahead.”

. Johnson contended that there is
tremendous uncertainty about the
economic feasibility of the pipeline
and about the impact of the capital
intensive project on the economy.
“In fact, if we stop the pipeline we
may be saving the country from a
huge bankruptcy,’ he declared.

He also took the issue with the
100,000 man hours of work that
federal minister Allan MacEachen
promised the pipeline construction
would provide. There will be far
fewer jobs, and only temporary
ones, he suggested and they “are
going to go through the hiring halls
in the South.”

Johnson, Beaulieu, Suluk and
McCallum were speakers at a
public meeting in Vancouver
Wednesday night at Chalmers
Church, as the Tribune went to
press.

U.S. manoeuvering on oil port site

Continued from pg. 1
government are “keeping their
options open” on a west coast port
site, Thomlinson suggested until
after a federal election when a
move to build a port would be
“politically safer’’.

pen” on West Coast oil port site.

ARNIE THOMLINSON ... oil companies “keeping their options. . -

Kitimat is far from dead, he
insisted, in spite of the federal
government’s claims to the con-
trary. The Kitimat Pipeline
Company’s application is still
pending before the National
Energy Board and will be heard —
and likely approved — before the
end. of 1978. :

The United Fishermen and
Allied Workers’ Union this week
drew attention to the NEB
hearings on Canadian oil needs to
begin May 24 and contirue until
September. The result of those
hearings will likely determine the
outcome of the west coast oil port
issue.

“Tt takes little imagination to see
KPL president Jack Cressey (or a
reasonable facsimile) eagerly
knocking at the door of the NEB, to
explain how his new “Canadian
content” Kitimat pipeline would
end the Canadian oil supply crisis
by delivering to Vancouver a
thousand or two barrels of oil each
day; and, oh yes, fhe surplus of
800,000 barrels per day to the’
U.S.,” the UFAWU commented
sarcastically in last week’s
publication of the Oil Port Inquiry
News.

The UFAWU accused the NEB of
being ‘“‘undemocratic’”’ and a
prisoner of the information of the
vested energy interests. Public
interest groups, including the
union, should have full participant;
status in the hearings, it deman-
ded, with adequate funding, the
right to call witnesses and to cross
examine.

The NEB hearings should con-
tinue for at least one year, the

union added, to allow time for full
hearings in all major Canadian
cities and to make an assessment
of new petroleum resources’
particularly the West Pembina and
North Eastern B.C. areas.

The government’s timetable to
complete the NEB hearings by
September is. clearly co-ordinated
with the U.S. timetable to make a
decision regarding a west coast oil
delivery system by the end of the
year.

The effect of the port develop-
ment and federal report about
Prince Rupert, together with a
recent U.S. Supreme Court
decision about tanker traffic in the
Straits of Juan de Fuca has been to
broaden the options of theoil
companies in picking an oil port
site.

Last week in the U.S. Atlantic
Richfield Company successfully
challenged a Washington state law
limiting the size of tankers in the
Straits of Juan de Fuca to 125,000
dead weight tons. The oil company
won a ruling that the state law was
unconstitutional, thereby opening
the way for supertankers to enter
the Straits.

Washington State governor Dixie
Lee Ray has been an outspoken
advocate of an oil port at Cherry
Point, Washington, just sixty miles
from the Canada-U.S. border. The
state legislature had overruled
Ray, however, with its limitations
on tanker size.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision
removes one obstacle in the way of
a Cherry Point port but it remains
blocked — at least for the moment
— by a federal law pushed through

the U.S. Senate by Washington
Senator Warren Magnuson.

The —_ ruling also adds
weight to the arguments for an oil
port at Port Angeles, Washington,
and raises the possibility of
resurrecting the “Trans Moun-
tain’ proposal for expanding the
existing oil port at Cherry Point,
Washington.

While the various oil company
interests jockey for position among
themselves — and with the
Canadian government and its
regulatory agencies — new pumps
recently added to the $10 billion
Alaskan pipeline have _ sub-
stantially increased the capacity of
the oil pipeline and increased the
pressure for a port to maximize
returns on the oil company’s in-
vestment.

It all adds up to even greater
pressure on Canada to allow an
environmentally disastrous west
coast oil port and to be locked
further into a continental energy

policy.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE=MARCH 10, 1978—Page 3