Editorial The funding crisis The unprecedented 94 per cent strike vote by B.C. nurses and their initial job action in refusing non-nursing work — an action intended to reveal the effects of staff cutbacks — should dramatize to all British Columbians the effects of chronic govern- ment underfunding of this province’s health care system. Since the government’s infamous restraint program was first launched, nurses have seen their wages slip year by year — to the point that the $17.43 per hour paid general duty nurses in B.C. puts them only sixth among nurses across the country. As orderlies, clerical workers, licensed practical nurses and other staff have been cut back, it has been nurses who in many cases have picked up the slack. As their workload has increased, the level of care given patients has, of necessity, gone down — there is only so much time that anyone has to give. It only follows from that nurses have been leaving this province, snapped up by recruiters from other provinces and even the U.S. where conditions are better and wage levels more commensurate with the educational qualifications and the responsibilities that nursing requires. A Ministry of Health study acknowledges that the province needs 2,000 nurses. Yet Health Labour Relations Association, the employers group representing hospi- tals, continues the fiction that nurses are the “highest paid in Canada, on average” and that British Columbia has a “first-class health care system.” Whatever class system we may have had, it is now something substantially less as successive Social Credit governments have steadily chiselled it down. And that hasn’t changed despite the government’s much-vaunted increases to health announced in the last provincial budget. According to figures provided by Statistics Canada covering the first two quarters of 1988-89, hospital funding in British Columbia ranks just above rock bottom when compared to other provinces. Only Quebec provided less money per patient day than ns: In fact, B.C. was 19.6 per cent below the national average. What’s worse, cuts in federal transfer payments as outlined in the federal budget will make that picture even worse in years to come. Of course, Victoria and Ottawa will continue to tell us that health costs are spiralling out of control and nurses’ wage demands are excessive. They want to chisel even more from health care — as an incentive to privatize hospitals which will provide superior care to those who can afford to pay for it. The nurses’ dispute dramatizes that issue more than any other. As the front-line health care workers, they have been forced to bear the brunt of underfunding, in both cutbacks and wage restraint. Everyone who receives hospital care is paying the price. Support for the nurses is more than just an issue of solidarity and support for a group of people who deserve a substantial wage increase. It should also highlight the urgent need for Victoria to put more money — much more — into health care. And it should underscore the demand already raised across the country to dump the federal budget. HEY witere ARE Your VIRONMENTAL BIO-DEGRADag, - STUFF Coes IRIBONE EDITOR Sean Griffin ASSOCIATE EDITOR Dan Keeton BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER Mike Proniuk GRAPHICS Angela Kenyon Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C.,W/5K 1Z5 Phone: (604) 251-1186 Fax: (604) 251-4232 Subscription rate: Canada: @ $20 one year @ $35 two years @ Foreign $32 one year Second class mail registration number 1560 a ey: military buyers. Say, wanna look over the latest aerospace hardware this year? No, we don’t mean the ARMX ‘89 dis- play that has drawn acts of civil disobe- dience out of normally mild-mannered peace activists in Ottawa. We’re talking about the Abbotsford Airshow. Well, not exactly the show itself. Rather confirmed that representatives of Chile, El Salvador and South Africa were invited to it’s Airshow Canada, a newly-launched exhibition that will be held alongside the famous annual display of aerial acrobatics this year. According to an item in the magazine, British Columbia Enterprise, the new show provides a venue for North American buyers in the new, continental market facilitated by the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Air shows, much like car or boating shows, display the latest products in the field, much of it for peaceful purposes. Airport technology, for example, forms a part of the business. But the magazine’s write-up shows there’s more than air traf- fic control systems being offered: “Already of tremendous interest to the aerospace community is Canada’s deci- sion to invest $200 billion over the next 15 years in defence, reinforcing the federal government’s commitment to new tech- nology. “Airshow Canada combines the best and brightest of military, commercial and private aircraft displays,” the magazine reports. : The airshow’s military component has its companion in the ARMX ’89 show taking place in Ottawa last week, which was targeted by protests and was denied space by Ottawa city council. Organizers attend the show, which functions primar- ily as a display for Canada’s defence department. Airshow Canada is expected to draw participants from 11 countries, including some in South America. The airshow, on Aug. 9 this year, has always had a military sheen with aerial displays by CF-18 Hornets, for example. But most of the anticipated 300,000 spec- tators at this year’s show undoubtedly go for the precision flying, rather than to support militarism. Adding Airshow Canada, with its pitch to world’s military purchasers, to the agenda is a subtle way of making Canada a showground for war technology. And increased militarism was one of the key fears of anti-free trade groups. Ironically, the improved international climate has led to discussions about the _ USSR participating in the Abbotsford Airshow. Talk about contradictions. * * * et another penalty slapped against a Canadian export has put the lie to the claims that the free trade pact would mean an end to stiff tariffs and an opening up to People and Issues Canadians of the market south of the border. A press release from provincial Interna- tional Business Minister John Jansen expresses “disappointment” that the Uni- ted States has slapped a provisional duty of 3.5 cents per pound on the $13 million in pork products B.C. ships annually to American buyers. That decision follows a “preliminary determination” by the U.S. Department of Commerce that two Canadian federal government programs and programs in other provinces were “subsidies” for Can- ada’s pork-producing industry. A final decision is due by July 17, and it may go on to the U.S. International Trade Com- mission for a decision by Aug. 31. The B.C. minister complained that the ruling penalized this province unfairly, and he criticized the “assumption that all benefits provided to Canadian hog pro- ducers ‘flow through’ to Canadian pork producers.” But whether or not B.C. is unfairly treated, the bare fact is that the U.S. is using the free trade pact — as anticipated — to undermine Canadian industries, whether it’s pork, fish processing, or cedar shakes and shingles. We wonder what the minister and oth- ers in the Social Credit cabinet will say now about the memorandum of agree- ment signed by Victoria and the state of Washington on Jan. 1, making the area a single marketing region — or about the economic co-operation pact signed four days later. The minister’s assurances that Canada can appeal the ruling to the bilateral panel — a dubious institution — set up under the agreement is cold comfort indeed. * * * hades of free trade again: note this little item from a recent Globe and Mail Report on Business item. It seems that the federal government is _ country’s largest advertiser. Last year Ottawa spent $91.3 million in ads for Air Canada, Petro Canada and other corpora- tions, all of it paid to 100-per-cent Cana- dian owned ad agencies. Legislation stipulates that government advertising go to Canadian owned firms, and until last week, that meant totally. Now the government has changed its interpretation of that policy to mean agen- cies in which 50 per cent or more of the shares are owned by Canadians. The reason for the change, according to Robert Byron, co-chair of the govern- ment’s Advertising Management Group, is that U.S. firms are buying up most of Canada’s ad agencies.: That’s puzzling logic, since one would assume a government’s role is to protect national industries, rather than change rul- ings to accommodate their demise. But then, this is the free trade government of Brian Mulroney, and sellout by legislation is the name of the game. 4 e Pacific Tribune, May 29, 1989