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

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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 _