EDITORIAL

A-subs: myth & reality

Long after Defence Minister Perrin Beatty has gone, along with his Tory friends,
to his just reward in political obscurity, the country may be paying the bills for his
education in the real world of defence spending. In the process, we may also get
stuck with billions of dollars worth of useless nuclear submarines, a monument to
this government's stupidity and cold war mentality.

As happens so often in the pork-barrel world of the military-industrial complex,
the weapons makers will pocket the money, leaving the dazed taxpayers to foot the
bill.

Fronting for an increasingly ambitious Canadian military brass anxious to play
in the big leagues and an equally ambitious weapons industry looking for juicy
contracts, Beatty and the Tory cabinet have produced an incredibly dangerous and
expensive White Paper on Defence, a strategy to take Canada to the end of the
century. .

Included in the White Paper, which turns the clock back two decades to the old
“Soviet threat” days of the 1950s and 1960s, is a provision for equipping the
Canadian navy with 10-12 nuclear-powered submarines.

The best guesses put the initial contract signing with contractors by 1990, with
delivery dates well into that decade. But already the shell game begins: nine months
ago, a figure of $5 billion was bandied about by the military for the U-boats. Today
the Department of Defence speaks of $8 billion — a $3 billion hike in estimates in
less than a year.

There’s more: last week the Ottawa-based Centre for Arms Control and Disar-
mament charged that DOD estimates fail to take into account huge expenditures
connected to getting into the A-sub league. These inlude shore support infrastruc-
ture, nuclear fuel, crew training, simulators, hull upgrading for Arctic duty, and
spare parts. The centre’s report graciously left out another high-ticket expense that
DOD itself admits will be needed — an independent submarine fleet communica-
tions system requiring the use of at least one space satellite.

Today’s estimate of $8 billion will barely be the down payment on tomorrow’s
Canadian nuclear submarine fleet.

A look at the incredible waste and outright theft that takes place in the U.S.

which pours hundreds of billions down the drain for planes that don’t fly, tanks that
don’t run, guns that don’t shoot and missiles that can backfire, shows the sort of
swamp Beatty is leading Canadians into. As a reference point when dealing with the
billions, consider that a Canada-wide childcare program would cost about $1
billion per year.
_ A rational defence policy means basing it on the search for peace and mutual
understanding with our neighbours. It means abandoning the “Soviet threat”
myth, replacing it with a 1980s and 1990s policy based on the hard reality that no
one will prevail in a nuclear war. It means actively pursuing nuclear disarmament
and confidence-building measures.

In short, it means going in exactly the opposite-direction Perrin Beatty and his
U.S. friends want Canada to go. The Defence White Paper’s premise ’is fatally
flawed; its A-sub option a dangerous and expensive fool’s game.

‘

IRIBONE

EDITOR

- Sean Griffin
_ ASSISTANT EDITOR
Dan Keeton

BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER
Mike Proniuk

GRAPHICS
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lack of space and the pressure of
particularly tight deadlines last week
prevented us from including many of the
Startling facts and figures about Canadian
and U.S.-controlled industry that were
part of publisher Mel Hurtig’s address to
the rally against free trade last week. But at
a time when Brian Mulroney, Pat Carney,
Joe Clark and others are out on the door-
to-door circuit selling the free trade deal
and insisting that it will create a wealth of
new jobs, it’s worth examining the statisti-
cal reality. That’s especially important
considering that some of Hurtig’s research
has only had an airing before the parlia-
mentary committee.

Consider foreign takeovers, for exam-
ple. In the period since Brian Mulroney’s
election as prime minister in September,
1984 — when he declared Canada open
for business — to June 30, 1987, a total of
1,657 Canadian companies have been
taken over by foreign, mainly U‘S.
owners, said Hurtig. The figure is the tang-
ible result of the abolition of the Foreign
Investment Review

replacement by Investment Canada which,
far from being a screen, has opened the
door wide.

But objecting to takeovers is only for
shortsighted nationalists, the Tories retort.
Foreign investment creates jobs.

The statistics Hurtig outlined Wednes-
day demonstrate just how utterly false that
statement is.

From 1978 to 1985, he pointed out,
Canadian-controlled companies increased
employment by 876,200 jobs. During the

Agency and_ its”

People and Issues

same period, U.S.-controlled companies
in Canada increased employment by only
1,400 jobs.

, Put another way, he said, Canadian-
controlled companies increased employ-
ment by 16 per cent while U.S.-controlled
companies managed only a 0.1 per cent
increase in jobs.

In the goods-producing sector, the test -

of a country’s manufacturing stature,
Canadian-controlled companies created
102,600 new jobs over the same period of
time. U.S.-controlled companies actually
reduced the number of jobs by 61,000.

Those figures are even more startling
when you contrast them with profits
tacked up by the two groups. “For every
billion dollars in profits that Canadian-
controlled companies earned,” said Hur-
tig, “they created 5,765 jobs. For every
billion dollars of profit earned by U.S.-
controlled companies, they created the
grand total of 17 jobs.” -

And that figure tells another story of the
flight of profits across the 49th Parallel
and the decline in Canadian employment
that has accompanied it. According to
Hurtig’s figures, U.S.-controlled compan-
ies took fully one-third of all the corporate
profits in Canada — yet they created less
than one-tenth of one per cent of all the
new jobs in Canada.

Another revealing note came not by
way of statistics but by a document that
Hurtig cited in the course of his remarks. It
was a confidential study on the impact of
the free trade deal on various sectors of the
Canadian economy, prepared over a
period of a year and a half by one of the
country’s leading chartered banks and
leaked to Hurtig by an employee.

Significantly, the report predicted that
every sector of the economy, except
one — the resource sector — would result
in a “net negative” as a result of the trade
deal.

Why would a bank prepare such a
report? Hurtig asked. For a simple
reason — to determine in what areas the
bank would not make new loans. In fact,
the day before he went to Ottawa to
appear before the committee, Hurtig
added, he received a call from a friend in
the Okanagan Valley who told him that
banks were already beginning to cut off
credit to grape growers — the group
which even the Tories agree will be virtu-
ally decimated by the free trade agree-
ment.

There was also one final statistic. Over
the last 10 years, he noted, Canada’s Gross
National Product has increased by 48 per
cent. Over the same period, the GNP of’
the states in the U.S. which are situated

along the Canada-U.S. border have
increased by only 28 per cent. The main
reason for the difference, said Hurtig, is
that much of the area’s industry has been
re-located to the so-called “sun belt”
— the right-to-work states in the U.S.
south.

The question that neither Pat Carney or
Donald MacDonald — or any of the
other advocates of free trade has yet to
answer, said Hurtig is: why would not
exactly the same thing happen here under
the free trade deal?

Why, indeed. Questions like that —
and the statistics that go with it — are
part of the reason that the Tories have
sought to bury all the details of the pro-
posed agreement.

* * *

s has been noted on a child’s peace

button that has been circulating
around for a couple of Christmas seasons
now, “Santa doesn’t like war toys.”’ And
Santa will be taking that message to
shoppers in New Westminster this week-
end as the New Westminster Peace Council
begins a campaign aimed at halting the
sale of war toys in local stores.

Together with council members and
supporters, he’ll be outside London Drugs
and Woodward’s stcres in New West-
minster from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., beginning
Nov. 28 and 29 and continuing each week-
end until Christmas. Anyone wanting to
help out can call president Bev Mill at
525-4852.

_ 4e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 25, 1987

SR REee aE gee Se a aT