Editorial

The energy sell-out

Ina first application of its new policy, the National Energy Board has granted
Pan-Alberta Gas a 24-year licence to supply southern California with natural
gas in excess of its supplies.

In doing so, the Tories are opening the floodgates of Canadian energy
resources and removing the few remaining protection measures for Canadian
consumers. Previous to the new ruling, natural gas producers could not export
to the U.S. unless they had a 25-year supply available for the Canadian market.

In this one case, by guaranteeing the Americans gas supplies until the year
2012, despite acknowledgement that such gas reserves do not exist, we get a
glimpse of what is to come under the “free” trade deal. What the Quisling-like
NEB did here for southern California’s natural gas needs, Mulroney’s trade deal
will do for the entire U.S. energy needs for decades to come.

Articles 407 to 409 of the FTA guarantee U.S. customers cannot be charged
more for any good (energy resources included) than Canadians — even in case
of severe shortage or conservation of non-renewable resources. The agreement
means we guarantee the U.S. that energy shipments will continue as long as they
wish to buy.

In effect, the U.S. will have won guaranteed access to Canadian non-
renewable energy resources in perpetuity, regardless of changing circumstances
or future shortages.

And what of future shortages? The NEB itself has predicted these are coming
in the 1990s, while at the same time applying the Tory policy of unrestricted,
guaranteed access to Canadian energy resources by the U.S. as long as the U.S.
requires. The dimensions and dreadful impact of this sell-out will not only be
immediate, but will be felt by our children’s children.

Natural gas, oil, hydro-electric power, water (yes, water), minerals, timber are
all included — access guaranteed — by Mulroney and his party of pan-
Americanism. What is being put in place is a continental energy policy under
which the U.S. giant will have pocketed the key to Canada’s energy cupboard.

When we add energy to the other sides of the trade deal — agricultural,
industrial, financial, cultural, social, political and military — we see the reason

~ for Ronald Reagan’s enthusiasm, and why he has dubbed it “a second Ameri-

can Revolution.”

What happens to the Canadian rabbit in the Reagan-Mulroney horse-and-

rabbit pie dish should be obvious.

| TRIBUNE

BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk

GRAPHICS
Angela Kenyon

Published weekly at

2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C.

V5K 1Z5

Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription rate:
Canada: @ $20 one year @ $35
two years @ Foreign $32 one year

Second class mail
registration number 1560

i

i
|
i
oe
y 2
i
i
q
a

aps people were too hasty last week

when they told us the right-wing Non-
Partisan Association is trying to fix the
outcome of Vancouver’s fall election by
keeping some 100,000 voters of the list.
Maybe labour-backed mayoral candidate
Jean Swanson and the civic alliance, the
Committee of Progressive Electors, were
unduly harsh on city council’s- NPA
majority for voting to do away with the
city’s door-to-door enumeration of voters.

After all, we have in our hands a copy of
an NPA leaflet which urges Vancouverites
to get out and vote. At least, that’s what it
says to some residents. The one we have
was delivered last month to the Sunset
Towers seniors’ housing project in the
city’s West End. The residence is located in
a poll which voted for NPA Mayor Gordon
Campbell in the 1986 election.

Of course, the NPA name is the only
thing “non-partisan” about the leaflet,
which, in an introduction under Camp-
bell’s signature, opines: “The divisions of
federal and provincial politics are counter
productive at the civic level.

“City government is different (it con-
tinues). It cannot be guided by ideology or
party allegiances. It must be guided by
common sense and concern for Van-
couver. I am pleased to say that most of
our elected representatives put their politi-
cal differences aside and put Vancouver
first.”

The rest of city council, it is implied,
engage in the partisan backbiting style typ-
ical of those who nitpick about cancelling
fair wage programs, evicting residents who
have the misfortune to be able to afford
only “illegal” rental accommodations,
and protecting city views and increasing
social housing through clearly stated zon-
ing bylaws. Those malcontents, the mayor

People and issues

insinuates, would return us “to the old
days of wasting time with political postur-
ing and name calling.”

Campbell goes on to list achievements
which, the tone of his piece suggests, could
only have been accomplished under an
NPA administration: senior government
funding for Science World, the Polar 8
icebreaker construction, the effort to
rescue the Vancouver Symphony Orches-
tra.

The flip side of the leaflet outdoes the
mayor in its implications of NPA potency.
Under the heading, “Did You Know?”, it
reports that “56,000 new jobs were created
last year in Vancouver,” that “Vancouv-
er’s fashion and design apparel industry
grew 20 per cent last year,” that “unem-
ployment in Vancouver dropped by 24 per
cent last year.” Few of these developments
actually have anything to do with the
NPA, whose logo is never the less promi-
nently displayed at the bottom of the list.

One item, however, definitely is an
NPA achievement. The civic alliance
claims victory for a waterfront walkway
on the north shore of False Creek “‘at no
cost to the taxpayer.” Small wonder, since
the walkway was a cheap buy-off for
council’s failure to ensure that landfill
placed in False Creek for Expo 86 was not
removed, as the provincial government
had promised to do when the world’s fair
ended. Leaving the landfill in, and hence
decreasing the waters of the inlet, made the
Expo lands package all the more lucrative
for developer Li Ka-Shing, who purchased
the former Crown holdings.

Thus does the alliance of big money in
Vancouver answer charges that its mail-in
registration form is meant to disenfran-
chise voters: it drops NPA campaign liter-
ature in key polls. Meanwhile, several
community organizations, and COPE, are
conducting intense registration drives until
Aug. 20 to get thousands of disenfran-
chised citizens, largely resident in non-
NPA polls, on the city voters list.

Regarding that NPA list of “achieve-
ments” again: although the sun will
undoubtedly rise each morning between
now and at least the Nov. 19 election date,
the NPA did not claim responsibility for it.

KK

le all know that the big business
backers of Brian Mulroney’s Tory
government are the ones who stand to
gain from the Canada-U.S. Free Trade
Agreement. Promoters of the “free” trade
deal such as Celanese Canada, a textile

manufacturer, have been urging U.S. and °

Canadian politicians to stop dallying and
pass the agreement. But, an item in the
July issue of the The Transmitter notes, the
same company also realizes the dangers
the pact poses to their own house, and is
seeking exemptions.

The item in the paper of the Telecom-
munications Workers Union cites Cela-
nese as pressing Ottawa to hold off on
plans to reduce duties on imported fabrics,
yarns and fibres, a move called for by
some key Canadian clothing manufactur-
ers. Such a development could, as unions
and other opponents of the deal have
noted, wipe out Canada’s textile industry.

The article goes on to note that U.S.
steel firms are also seeking exclusion from
the pact. They’re worried about Canada’s
capturing 3.8 per cent of U.S. steel imports
last year. Of course, the same firms
ignored the fact that last year U.S. ship-
ments comprised 5.5 per cent of Canada’s
steel imports.

Another item on the same page quotes
Noranda Forest Inc. chair Adam Zimmer-
man as saying, following a meeting he had
with U.S. officials: “I did have a strong
sense from the Americans we saw that
their view of us in the free trade agreement
(was) that we would become an appen-
dage of the American economic system.”

This helps to explain the opposition of
big business groups like the federal Liberal
Party to the agreement. Even within the
house of capitalism, the sellout pact strikes
a sour note.

* * *

espite the exploitative nature of the

capitalist system, particularly through-
out this century, some fighters for
workers’ rights do manage to live a long
and productive life. Such was the case for
Tribune reader Andy Onischuk, who died
July 6 at the age of 91.

A note from fellow member of the Vic-
toria Club of the Communist Party Ernie
Knott tells us that Andy was born in the
Ukraine. From there he came to Canada
and became a woodworker in The Pas,
Man., where he joined the party in 1926.
He came to B.C. in 1943 and worked in the
wood and ship-building industry until
retirement in 1961.

Andy, also a long-time member of the
Association of United Ukrainian Canadi-
ans, is survived by a wife and three child-
ren.

4 e Pacific Tribune, July 27, 1988

—_