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NEW B.C. N

SKELLY ON PEACE

Many British Columbians believe that
our country has a special role to play in
reducing the growing risk of nuclear war.

The arms race has reached alarming
proportions. More than the total income of
the two billion people in the world’s poorest
countries, almost $600 billion per year, is
being spent on military buildup.

Military action by the major superpowers,
has raised rather than lowered the world
tension levels and the United Nations has
warned ‘mankind is confronted with a
choice: we must halt the arms race and
proceed to disarmament or face annihila-
tion.”

It is for these reasons that British Colum-
bians should assess the position of the
various federal political parties as we move
toward an almost certain 1984 federal
election.

Canada’s record as a force for peace
and disarmament has been blemished
by the Liberal government’s decision
to test the cruise missile system in
Canada and this reputation is further
compromised by continued use of tax
dollars to build nuclear weapons com-
ponents and guidance systems in Can-
ada. It is not helped by the continuing
policy of allowing armed American war-
eee eon Canadian

The record of the Conservative oppo-
sition under Brian Mulroney is no

better. The Conservative leader has
suggested that Canada should enter
the arms race on the side of the Ameri-
cans and the Conservatives have also
announced on several occasions that
they support massive rearmament of
Canadian forces.

On June 14, 1983, a crucial vote occurred
in the House of Commons on the issue of
cruise missile testing. Voting against the
cruise tests were 29 New Democrats, four
Conservatives and one Liberal. Voting for
the cruise tests were 76 Conservatives
and 138 Liberals; not one New Demo-
crat voted in favour.

It is time that the government of Canada
had a clear policy of promoting nuclear
disarmament through a program of bal-
anced, verifiable reductions.

As the former NDP leader Tommy Doug-
las said:

“Did you ever stop to think about
what would happen if we were to do
that? Did you ever stop to think about
the billions upon billions of dollars that
would be liberated to destroy poverty,
to rid the earth of misery, to provide
health care for the people in the far
corners of the earth, to build decent
homes and schools and hospitals, to
train nurses and doctors and teachers,
to raise the standard of living of man-
kind so humanity could go marching
forward to the great goal towards
which we ought to be marching.”

SKELLY ON JOBS

The effect of high interest policies and
cutbacks which have become the trade-
marks of right wing governments in both
Ottawa and Victoria can be clearly seen
where ordinary citizens live. -

The latest housing statistics from Canada
Mortgage and Housing Corporation show
that in the first five months of 1984 only
6,130 dwelling units of all types had been
started in all the communities of British
Columbia, down a sharp 21%.

Worse still, single family detached house
starts — the type of home almost all ordi-
nary familes dream of and work for — have
plummetted even more drastically. In the
first five months construction of this type of
dwelling plunged 47% in B.C. and it was
down a whopping 60% from the May level of
one year ago.

These serious declines have helped stall
such economic activity as forestry, construc-
tion, appliance and furniture plant and
retail trade. It is largely traceable to the
foolish cutback of the Canadian Home Own-
ership Stimulation Program grants which
had invested some of our resources towards
meeting two fundamental needs of ordinary
Canadians, homes to live in and jobs to
work in.

The right wing ideologues didn’t see those
needs as priorities and now we’re all suffer-
ing for it, including businesses forced into
bankruptcy. Yet worse is to come because of
their tight monetary policies. CMHC says
that May’s poor construction figures do not
yet reflect the coming impact of higher
interest levels!

Both the Liberals and Tories are high-
interest parties. And Premier Bennett is on
record personally urging support for Bank
of Canada monetary decisions to use high
interest policies to ‘wring out’ the economy,
as the imported gurus advocate. Is it surpris-
ing then to learn of huge political donations
to these parties from the profit-laden banks?

These policies of program cutbacks and
high interest have been devastating to
consumer confidence and construction, the
two principal reasons identified by the
Conference Board of Canada for current
economic decline despite last year’s
increased resource exports.

No wonder CMHC has revised its forecast
for 1984 dwelling construction in B.C., with
single detached homes being cut almost in
half to only 8,500. The sharply reduced total
forecast for all new dwellings this year is a
mere 16,000 units. CMHC says that will be
“the lowest annual starts figures ince 1962”
— when B.C.’s population was barely half
the present size!

Under an NDP government, Manitoba’s
housing starts increased in the last year,
and their share of Canada’s total housing
starts also increased. There is only one
party that advocates stimulation for home
construction and a ‘‘made-in-Canada”
lower interest rate policy. That is the New
Democratic Party.

THE EXPERTS IN 1895

“In Russia, fortunately, there is no

’ working class in the western sense, there-
fore, there is no labour problem.”

Sergei Witte,

Czarist Minister of Finance,

Circular dated December 5, 1895

aC

THE EXPERTS IN 1932

‘The day when they [the Nazis] were a vital
threat is gone
Hitler will end his career as an old man in
some Bavarian village who, in the bier-
garten in the evening, tells his intimates

“how he nearly overturned the German
Reich.
—Harold Laski, from the Atlantic, June/84

... [I]t is not unlikely that ©

Lumber Worker/Summer, 1984/3