RESIDENT'S MESSAGE

NDP policies must
face global realities

by Dave Haggard

ij hese days, it’s common to hear people
say we live in a globalized world. It’s
true. More than ever before in history,
people in various parts of the world
are linked together in systems of
production, distribution and
consumption or via communications

networks.

In fact, many of the most impoverished places
on earth are those not tied into these networks
or only connected to them in very
disadvantageous ways.

We need to support our brothers and sisters in
those countries or regions to ensure that the
international trading and financial systems
start to work for them too.

At the same time, though, some people jump
from the realities of globalization to some very
unwise conclusions.

There is a tendency to think that somehow
our inter-linked, globalized world is basically
bad or that on the whole, it is more destructive
than constructive. There are people who actually
want to shut down our global economy and tear
the wheels off international trade and commerce.

That’s nuts! We in Canada are highly
dependent on international trade and markets.
Our standard of living is one of the highest in
the world precisely because we have benefited
from both exports and imports.

Exports, of course, allow us to sell products —
first and foremost, wood and paper products —
that we are naturally and economically suited to
produce. We could never use or eat all the lumber
we can make.

Production for export provides several benefits
to Canada. First, it provides good, high-paying

jobs, many of them in
communities where our
resources provide the only
employment.

Second, when we produce
for export, we earn in
exchange the ability to buy
from other nations. Our
exports let us pay our way
in the world, just as our
imports let us enjoy
products that we cannot
produce as economically as
workers can make them
elsewhere: fresh fruit in
winter, computers and other
electronic goods, medical
supplies, and so on.

Third, our exports also
help us provide quality
human services that
Canadians need and expect:
health care, child care,
education, safe and healthy communities,
transportation services, and so on. A huge slice
of governments’ revenue comes from the rent
they collect as the owner of our resources and
from taxes on export-sector workers.

I.W.A. Canada members generally don’t need
an explanation of the contributions of exports to
Canada’s economic and social well-being. But
others often forget. It’s easy, for instance, for
urban-dwellers, especially those whose jobs
don’t seem to have any connection to forestry,
mining, agriculture, oil and gas or fishing, to
think they have little to gain from exports.
They might actually see industry and its
products as on the whole harmful to their
quality of life. That helps to account for the
popularity of extreme green groups.

These folks periodically need a reminder of
their own huge stake in resources and exports.
That’s why our union took a seriously-worded
resolution to the recent New Democratic Party
federal convention in Winnipeg. In our view,
the NDP - an organization to which I.W.A.
Canada is affiliated and which we expect to
speak up on behalf of all workers in Canada —
has lost sight of the need to promote and protect
our export industries. Too often, they have
unthinkingly fallen into the trendy rhetoric of
“anti-globalization” and environmentalism,

without reflecting on what
that means for workers and
communities all over
Canada.

The adoption of our
resolution will hopefull:
begin to reverse that trend.
It commits future NDP
governments to work with
companies and unions to
ensure investment in export
sectors, encouraging im-
proved plant and equipment,
more value-added pro-
duction, worker training and
research and development
spending.

It suggests that govern-
ments set targets and
standards in these areas
and assist cooperating
economic enterprises to meet
them. It notes that govern-
ments should consider the needs of export
industries to compete internationally when
they design regulatory and taxation policies.

In the realm of financial management, our
resolution also binds future NDP governments
to carefully manage the tax dollars with which
Canadians entrust them, to aim toward balanced
budgets and avoid debt to international or
domestic financiers and banks.

We are pleased that New Democrats in
Winnipeg overwhelmingly adopted our
resolution. I have already written to party
leader Alexa McDonough and new party
president Adam Giambrone, reminding them
that it is now party policy and offering support
and assistance in implementing it.

But we need to do more. At both the federal
and constituency levels we need to nominate
candidates who will take forward our message
that industry, exports and economics matter
and that we can only pay for services that we
can afford. And we need to remind them that
this policy is supported by the vast majority of
I.W.A. members and other working Canadians.

We believe we can have a democratic, caring
Canada and that the NDP is the party most
able to ensure that. But we also know that we
can only pay for it when we have a sound,

vibrant, market-driven economy. @

Do ‘mainstream’ groups
share ecoterrorist views?

by Kim Pollock

B here it was, right in The New York
Times. Debris. Destruction Damage to
| property. No loss of life — this time.The

a ‘World Trade Centre, you say? No, the

Times story detailed an attack ona
US. government facility in California, a fire at a
primate research centre in New Mexico and two
attacks on farms in Iowa.

Terrorism? You bet. In fact, U.S. law officials
say the animal rights and ecoterrorists seem to
have stepped up their attacks. They appear to
hope that the authorities will be too busy chasing
Osama bin Laden to bother with them.

Groups responsible, say U.S. officials, include
the Animal Liberation Front and Earth
Liberation Front. These are shadowy, loose-knit
groups who claim attacks on forestry, housing,
recreational, farming and other facilities.

“The groups have no formal structure, but
espouse philosophies, most publicly on the
Internet, that support sabotage in defense of
animal life or the environment. There have been
few arrests in the cases,” writes Sam Howe
Verhovek in the New York Times.

Recently for instance, two home-made bombs
were placed at a Michigan Technological
University forest research lab. The Houghton,
Michigan, college had received threatening e-
mails from Earth Liberation Front prior to
placement of the devices.

This is not new. And it is not the most
dangerous of all ecoterrorist stunts.

The Portland Oregonian, for instance, details
26 attacks by ecoterrorist groups, mainly ALF

and ELF, from 1996 to the end of 2000 and over

100 from 1980 to 1999.
Those are all in the U.S.
and include such actions
as the fire-bombing of
the Vail, Colorado, ski
resort in October, 1998,
and six attacks on forest-
sector targets.

Not included in the
Oregonian’s list of
ecoterrorist attacks are
several that happened
in Canada, such as the
torching of logging
equipment near Cochrane, Alberta in 1997; tree
spikings in the Elaho Valley near Squamish,

B.C. in February 2000;

Although the green movement was quick to
paint the Unabomber as a lone nutter, there is
evidence he attended an Earth First! meeting
about a month before his final killing — a session
called “Focus on the Multinationals” at which
Kaczynski’s victim’s company was targeted.

There is, as well, a startling consistency
between the message in the Unabomber’s
infamous “manifesto” in The New York Times
and Earth First! statements.

Both emphasize the need to destroy modern
industry and “give encouragement to those who
hate the industrial system” in Kaczynski’s
words or as Earth First! puts it: “we are trying
to subvert the system”, i.e. “the modern industrial

system.”
Indeed, John Davis,

the spiking of the Elaho
River Bridge or the
destruction of trees at
the University of B.C.
Also not included are
dangerous and enraging
actions by green groups
harassing workers;

illegal blockades
orchestrated by the

The views of many “mainstream”
groups, many of whom oppose
economic development, economic
growth & industry are not far from
those of ecoterrorist groups.

the managing editor of
Earth First! Journal,
says the group “would
like to see human
beings live much more
like the way they did
15,000 years ago.”

But even that is not
far from the views of
many “mainstream”

People’s Action for
Threatened Habitat (PATH) in the Elaho;
Greenpeacers driving their Zodiac boats into
1.W.A. members’ workplace in New Westminster.
These, too, are crazy, terror tactics, aimed at
frightening workers and completely oblivious to
their health, welfare or well-being.

The Georgia Straight, for instance, reported
that the PATH blockaders received communica-
tions equipment from the “respectable” Society
Promoting Environmental Conservation. Our
research indicates that this report was never
denied.

In fact, elsewhere, there is a curious relation
between so-called mainstream green organiza-
tions and extremists.

The most famous of all eco-saboteurs, of
course, was Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Before he was captured at his home in the
Montana mountains, Kaczynski succeeded in
killing three people, including a forest-industry
executive, and injuring 22.

groups, many of whom
oppose economic development, economic growth,
and industry.

“We already have too much economic growth
in the United States. Economic growth in rich
countries like ours is the disease, not the cure,”
according Paul Elrich, a Stanford University
biologist who advised Al Gore.

Even more troubling is the outright support
given groups like ELF, ALF and Earth First! by
“respectable” environmentalists: “I honour
Earth First! for having the guts to do the things
they do,” Audubon Society vice-president Brock
Adams told the L.A. Times. “It’s not for me, but I
understand why they do what they do. And
ultimately, we help each other.”

Indeed. It would be interesting to know more
although, as one veteran of the Elaho says, “it's
like pinning jelly to the wall.” &

Kim Pollock is the Director of Environment and
Public Policy for I.W.A. Canada.

|

Deere eee

4/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 2001