EDITORIAL Aid for oil monopolies Every time Energy Minister Pat Carney flour- ishes her pen on some new Tory document, Can- adians end up paying more for heating oil, natural gas or gasoline — not to mention the spin-off increases in transportation and other costs. Now that she and her Tory confreres have scrapped the National Energy Program, consu- - mers can bet on a new round of price increases. Government price controls on natural gas from western Canada hve been wiped out. The Tories have put Candianization in reverse, giving up to the oil monopolies the 25 per cent “Crown share” of producing Arctic and offshore oil and gas The extra mile First, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the United Nations, and now Ed Broadbent, New Democratic Party leader, have urged “the two superpowers” to walk “tan extra mile” for disar- mament. What should be acknowledged is the fact that the USSR has already gone the “extra mile” with its proposals for 50 per cent arms reductions and other proposals. It is the Reagan administration that must be urged to respond. wells. Under this part of the program, the government had a right to purchase, retroac- tively, a one-quarter share of such wells. On the other hand the Petroleum Incentives Program of the former Liberal government provided explora- tion grants, higher to Canadian companies, lower to foreign ones. These-will be phased out by 1987. The Tories instead will grant up to $250 million a year in tax incentives — but only to the biggest, wealthiest multinationals who spend more than $5 million to drill a well. This latest break for the monopolies continues the Tory program of everything for the corporate oligarchy, and less and less for the working people of Canada. The government is still facing criticism over its $1 billion tax break for Dome Petroleum last February — a donation made without benefit of consultation with Parliament — and its more recent tax gift of $500 million Gulf Oil. While the corporations line up for handouts at the taxpayers’ expense, the Tories keep harping on reliance on the private sector to save the econ- omy. With this and a dozen other credibility gaps showing, the Tory regime flouts democratic means and relies on the power of its numbers. But they are greatly outnumbered by the working-class and democratic forces across Can- ada, who need to come together on issues in a people’s majority. GENEVA: KEAGAN Goes THE EXTRA MILE es There is now widespread opinion in Canada, _ * ranging from the editors of the Globe and Mail, Stelco Inc., Toronto, with plants in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, produces about 35 per cent of the country’s steel. Its profit for the nine months ended Sept. 20 was $61.7-million, up from $31.8-mil- the Liberals and the New Democrats to the peace movement and others who urge Reagan to nego- tiate on the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDD, otherwise known as Star Wars — or drop it and concentrate on arms control. Prime Minister Mulroney and parliament should also walk that “extra mile” and adopt an ‘emergency resolution caling on the Reagan --.* administraiton to do exactly that, and begin serious negotiations. | Canada is not a participant in the negotiations but it will be greatly affected by them. Our federal government must speak up. The future of the Canadian people demands it. It's politics Canada’s Auditor-General Kenneth Dye, in his annual report on government spending and accountability, has done more than jolt people with the news that the 34 employees in Canada’s High Commission in Hong Kong paid $22,750 each in initiation fees for a fancy club. What he proved in his unique report covering the reigns of three prime ministers, Trudeau, Furner and Mul- roney is what many already knew: that in capital- ist politics the party in power is the instrument of the monopolies and the opposition is there to do enough yelling so it can be the next in line. Then it | does the very things it yelled against. lion a year earlier. IRiIBUNE Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Business & Circulation Manager — DONALDA VIAUD Graphics — ANGELA KENYON Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Stre- Vancouver, BC. V5K 125 Phone (604) 251-1186 Subscription Rate Canada $14 one year, $8 six months Foreign — $20 one year Second class mail registration number 1560 f anybody had accidentally stumbled into the convention hall of the Hotel Vancouver where the Social Credit Party’s women’s auxiliary was meeting Oct. 25, he would have had to check with the bell hop - to make sure he had not taken a wrong turn at White Rock. It’s a pretty rare sight, after all, to see 130: people, presumably all of them Canadians, standing to sing the U.S. national anthem, as the Socred women were doing. But even after the anthems were through, you still would have had to check at the front desk to make sure you weren’t at a Republican Party meeting since the _ keynote speaker was one Charles Wiley, an official spokesman for the Washington- based organization, Accuracy in Media. Now you should know that when you | bring someone in from AIM, you're not just bringing in an American speaker as part of a hands-across-the-border ges- ture at a Socred tea party — you're bring- ing the whole Reaganite, ultra-right, National Rifle Association, kill-a~Commie- for-Christ show. And you can bet that the Socreds didn’t exactly find Wiley or AIM _in the Washington Yellow Pages; his appearance here is a pretty good indica- tion of the growing connections that are being made between the Socreds and all the New Right groups that abound in the “US Wiley’s pitch at the women’s auxiliary convention was standard stuff for AIM which, in its financial appeals to Ameri- People and Issues cans, calls on people to “help us combat the disinformation and false propaganda of the media.” : According to a detailed expose of AIM in the Spring, 1984 edition of Covert Action Information Bulletin, AIM includes as its leading lights some of the most reac- tionary people outside the American Nazi Party (and possibly some of them as well.) The president is Murray Baron, an indus- trial relations consultant who includes among the organizations to which he belongs, the CIA-funded Citizens Com- mittee for a Free Cuba, the Committee of One Million — which lobbies for more military spending — and the Citizens’ Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam. Another choice director is co-founder and communications director Bernard Yoh, a former advisor to both former South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and the late Spanish dictator Fran- cisco Franco. Those are only two of a list of directors and associates that reads like a who’s who of arch reaction in the U.S. And they’re well-heeled reactionaries as, of course, are most of Reagan’s backers: the AIM budget for 1984 was estimated to be in excess of $1.5 million. It’s ironic that Wiley, in his speech to the Socreds, condemned the media for its coverage of the Vietnam War, accusing reporters of failing to give “due respect” to the returning veterans. In fact, the most pressing issue now relating to Vietnam War veterans is the extent to which they and their children may be victims of the dioxin-laced defoliant Agent Orange that was used extensively by U.S. troops throughout Vietnam. Some 90,000 vete- rans have signed the “Agent Orange Reg- istry” for medical screening. But where does AIM sit on that issue? Its two journals, the AIM Report and The Washington Inquirer have denounced the media “scare” raised about Agent Orange and the organization even went so far as to- host a meeting at which a U.S. general reported that he used to “slurp the stuff”. So much for due respect for the veterans. Indeed, AIM, like the Socreds, has no respect for anybody except its corporate sponsors. * * * t wa a lively and informative discussion at the Vancouver Indian Centre Oct. 23 as Emil Bjarnason, economist and director of — Trade Union Research Bureau; Jeff Keigh- ley, staff representative for CAIMAW; and Maurice Rush, B.C. leader of the Communist Party addressed a forum on resource issues moderated by The Fisher- man editor Geoff Meggs. Those who weren’t able to be there but wanted to listen to the debate can still catch it on Vancouver East Cable 10 in one of several broadcasts scheduled over the next two weeks. It will be televised Nov. 12 at 1:30 p.m.; Nov. 14 at 2:30 p.m. and Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. The program should be available to cable TV viewers in Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond. * * * his month’s issue of the Economic Review, put out by the B.C. and Yukon region of Employment and Immi- gration Canada offers a startling illustra- tion of just what has happened to the forest industry in B.C. under the impact of the economic crisis and the Expo and tourist-oriented policies of Social Credit. A graph shows the dramatic shift from primary and secondary industry employ- ment to tertiary (services) employment, but it is the accompanying comment that tell the story: “Perhaps it can best be illus- trated by the fact that the McDonald’s hamburger chain now employs more peo- ple than the forest industry in this region.” That should also tell you something about the much-vaunted job-creation claims of the Socreds: the jobs they’ve produced have all been of the McDonald’s variety — all in the services and all at min- imum wage levels. _ 4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 6, 1985 _