ONTARIO FARMERS PROTEST. Photos show some of the 200 Southwestern Ontario corn growers, members of the Ontario Farmers’ non, who recently drove 100 tractors to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to demand a floor price of $1.50 per. bushel and to protest against the lood of corn now imported from the United States. The tractor caravan travelled 450 miles to put their demands before the Trudeau Sovernment. City tenants strike wins wide support For the first time in many years a group of Organized tenants in Vancouver has taken action to declare a strike against paying rent increases. Twenty-two tenants at the’ Osemont Apartments, 36 East Ourteenth Ave., have declared 4 rent strike and are refusing to Pay increases ordered by the landlord. They are picketing the apartment with signs and have Called on other tenants and labor to back their fight. The twenty-two tenants were ordered to vacate their suites by the end of November because they paid only their regular Tents. They also refused to pay a $25 deposit to insure against amage. A rally called by the new ancouver Tenants’ Organization Committee uesday night in the Eric Hamber School pledged full Support to the striking tenants. The meeting was chaired by Tuce Yorke, secretary of the City-wide tenants committee, who announced ‘his week that _ 48Sociations have already been _Set up in seven apartment blocks — with a total of 331 suites. Other public meetings are being held this week to set up additional associations. : Yorke said that the ‘‘Rosemont tenants are pioneering in a determined effort to establish basic democratic rights for all tenants in Vancouver.” Ald. Harry Rankin told the meeting that the city has the power to solve the problems of the tenants by adopting bylaws establishing controls of rentals and regulations protecting the interests of tenants. Rankin has pioneered the fight at city hall for early action on a Tenants Bill of Rights and a rent appeal board. The tenants’ committee is opening an office in the next few days in the downtown area to help spur the drive to organize the city’s tenants. i. ae FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1968 ndZ VOL. 29, NO. 41 By MAURICE RUSH policies of Socreds hit Recent disclosures indicate that the Socred government is embarked on a large scale ‘‘strip-and-get-out”’ policy towards B.C.’s mineral resources. This is shown by the fact that without giving the public any assurance that the open pit coal stripping of the Crows Nest by Kaiser and Japanese interests will not leave that beautiful part of B.C. a blackened desert, the Cabinet has already gone ahead and approved similar mining projects for other U.S. and ‘Japanese interests. Without any publicity, the Cabinet on July 17 approved the development and production of coal on nine leases in the Elk River Valley in the southeast Kootenay district for the U.S. Scurry-Rainbow Oil Company. The next day Scurry-Rainbow announced in Calgary that it had formed a partnership with the North American Coal Corp., of Cleveland, Ohio, to develop coal deposits in the Elk River area. Just before that another company, the Elk River Mining Co., made an agreement with a Seattle-based Japanese trading company to sell the coal to Japan. It has been estimated that there are reserves of more than 100 million tons of commercially mineable coal in the new field. Development of the Elk River project would put it on par with the Kaiser deal, which has reserves of about 130 million tons in the Crows Nest. The coal is to be shipped to Japan via the Roberts Bank superport. ie. The Elk River coal will be strip-mined, the same practise as is being used in the Crows Nest — a practise which was condemned by the U.S. govern- ment after. large areas of Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee and California had been ravished. Plans were also disclosed recently by an American company for a major North Vietnamese representatives at the Paris peace talks are shown arriving for a recent meeting. There was growing speculation as the PT went to press that there may be some kind of breakthrough in the talks which have been stalemated for mon halt the bombing of North Vietnam: ths because of the U.S. refusal to Open-pit copper mine at Port Hardy. The fact that the Cabinet gave its approval to the Elk River project . indicates that the provincial government knows more about this project than has so far been revealed to the public. Indications are that the provincial government has many mining projects in the hopper of this kind, but is not telling the public about them for fear of political repercussions. They are keeping their plans secret. Meanwhile, foreign monopo- lies — primarily U.S. and Japanese — are dividing up B.C.’s vast mineral resources and planning to rip our province apart to extract the ores for foreign use — leaving the people of B.C. nothing but a vast wasteland. The huge deals to give away B.C.’s resources explains Premier WAC Bennett’s many trips abroad as well as that of other cabinet members. The charge often made by this paper - that the Socred govern- ment is presiding over the liquidation of the people’s re- sources and that the Bennett government is the agent of the big foreign monopolies - is borne out by the recent dis- closures. ‘The public should demand all the facts from the government on what its plans are for B.C.’s mining industry. They should demand an end to the ‘‘strip-and- get-out” policy and instead insist on policies to process our mineral resources in B.C. to provide an expanded economy and jobs for present and future generations in B.C.