LIL

enna MRE

Wesimply must face up to the
fact that we can’t endlessly con-
tinue dumping garbage into
landfill sites. We are now
generating one million tons of
solid waste a year in the Lower
Mainland from residential,
commercial and industrial

sources. And we’re running out

Harry

Rankin

of landfill sites and can’t find
new ones. No municipality
wants a garbage dump in its
backyard. They are a health
hazard, environmentally unac-
ceptable and our citizens don’t
want them.

How long will it be before our
municipal and provincial politi-
cians get the message?

It isn’t as if we didn’t have
any alternatives. Other coun-
tries have found solutions in in-
cinerators and recycling. They

tion to produce steam and elec-
tricity and to use recycling to
reclaim valuable resources that
are now going to waste. They
are using garbage to produce
fuel and gas and to produce
humus for return to the soil.
We don’t have to choase bet-
ween one or the other — we

have been able to use incinera- '

Dumping no answer

fill sites, incineration and recycl-
ing. And it will be necessary to
separate household and _in-
dustrial garbage and to begin
separating paper, glass and
metals for recycling.

Of course it will be expensive.
Building incinerators and
recycling plants requires a con-

siderable capital outlay. It costs
more to incinerate and recycle
than to just dump. But we have
no alternative.

Disposing of our garbage in a
manner that is clean en-
vironmentally and that will con-
serve resources is every bit as im-
portant as public transporta-
tion. And just as we have a cost
sharing plan to build light rapid
transit in the Lower Mainland,
with provincial government
participation, so we need a cost
sharing formula to build waste
disposal plants.

Actually the cost would not
be that high. I am informed, for
example, that an incinerator
with a capacity of 70,000 tons
could be built for $20 million
and the electricity produced
could be sold to nearby in-
dustries to recover some of the

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Health, life threatened 7
restraints hearing told

About 10 percent of the hospital
beds in the province have been axed
due to the government’s restraints
Program, producing a waiting list
for surgery of six months to a year
— and that includes cancer and
heart operations, a commission
holding hearings into the cuts was
told May 20.

Staff layoffs at the Sunnyhill
children’s hospital, which must
close its Hartman House for

', severely disabled children, have

reached the critical point. ‘‘Must
this continue until one of our
children die?” a Sunnyhill worker
asked at the hearing.

And the four-member Public
Commission on Social and Com-
munity Service Cutbacks was told
of the chopping of more than 700
acute-care beds in the Lower
Mainland and the layoff of 1600
employees, and a ‘‘MacDonald’s”’
price list of differing quality ser-

vices at Nanaimo Regional ©

Hospital.

These comments — the former
by David Schreck, general
manager of the Credit Union and
Co-operative Health Services
Society, and the latter by Ray Mc-
Cready of the Hospital Employees
Union — were contained in some
of the more than 150 briefs and

need all three methods —land- costs.

presentations the commission has

usiness editors — perhaps in embarrassment —
gave it only the briefest of notices, but it was
there nevertheless: ‘‘Rowland Frazee has called fora
freeze on public sector wages and for voluntary con-
trols to keep average wage settlements in Canada be-
low seven percent in 1982 and even lower in 1983.’
And who is Rowland Frazee? He’s the chairman
of the Royal Bank of Canada, which last year made
such an atrociously high rate of profit that it had to
embark immediately on a campaign to explain how
bank profits really were good for the country. For
Frazee and his bank, about the only thing that is any-

uing accounts.

Last year, the Royal raked in $492.5 million after
taxes, an increase of 50 percent over 1980. More im-
portant, however, the increase in profit on domestic
— as opposed to international — operations was 73
percent, attributable to usurious interest rates.

Self-serving though they are, Frazee’s remarks are
indicative of how strident the campaign for curbing
workers’ wages has become. And just as an example
of how dutifully it is being echoed by the federal gov-
ernment, consider these remarks by federal Trea-
sury Board chairman Donald Johnston, made to the
Conference Board of Canada May 11:

“As for the government of Canada, wage negoti-
ations fall under my purview, I have no wish to go
into these negotiations with a combative or aggress-
ive posture, but our financial condition dictates that
we must take a tough line on all our expenditures
...’ Johnston said. :

““Consequently, if I had to pick an area of poten-
tial labor strife during coming months, it would have
to be between Canadian governments and the public
service unions. Since the middle ’60s governments at
all levels have gone too far, too fast in yielding power
to their unions. ”’

Somehow that all has a familiar ring to it. And
strangely Johnston didn’t mention the word
“‘bank’’ anywhere in the 18-page speech.

* * * * *

s conference organizers note, Terrace is one
Northwest town where ‘‘the unemployment
rises dramatically every time lumber prices fall,’ asa
result of a “‘boom and bust mentality that has gov-
erned resource development in Canada for the past
century.’’ And it is to counter that mentality and to
propose alternatives for Canadian northern devel-
opment that a major Northwest Study Conference
has been organized in Terrace for June 4, 5 and 6.
It will open June 4 with an address by leading U.S.
writer and erivironmentalist Richard Grossman, the

Daemnlle ramel issues

where near seven percent is the interest paid on cheq-

co-author of the book Environmentalists for Full
Employment and an activist in the organization by
the same name. Following that address there are
more than two days of workshops and conference.
discussions on such subjects as employment and ed-
ucation, environmental management, aboriginal
rights, social development, occupational health and
the global perspective on northern development.
There are a number of people scheduled to lead var-
ious workshops including trade unionists Bill Gan-
non, John Jensen and Peter Burton, labor econo-
mists Dave Fairey and Ben Swankey as well as Haida
researcher Gary Edenshaw and Neil Sterritt, the
president of the Gitskan Carrier Tribal Council.

Fr ore information about the conference you
cal _.tact Northwest Study Conference, Box 207,
Terrace, B.C. V8G 4A6. The phone number is
635-2014. : '

* * * * *

t’s an example of the extent to which thousands

of people across the country have put a priority
on the achievement of disarmament that some MPs,
having sensed that urgency, are making it an issue -
among their constituents. A recent example we note
is the constituency report from Kamloops-Shuswap
NDP MP Nelson Riis who devotes two full pages of
his report to the minority report on security and dis-
armament and states: ‘‘We must raise a unified
voice in protest of the senseless, costly and terrifying

arms race that is now — with the likelihood of Cruise .

missile testing in our neighboring province — threat-
ening to spill over on to our own doorstep.”’ :

To take action, he urges constituents to contact
the Kamloops Shuswap Peace Council.

* * * * *

e had a note last week informing us that long-
WwW time Tribune reader Stuart Kennedy passed
away in Langley Memorial Hospital May 16 at the
age of 73. ;

Although ill health had plagued many of his later
years, he continued his work in the printing business,
following a vocation that originally took him to Un-
ion Printers which he managed briefly. He was a
member of the Communist Party for many years
and was a section organizer until he moved with his
family to Britain in the early 1960s.

Funeral services were held in Henderson’s Fu-
neral Home in Langley on May 20.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 28, 1982—Page 2

‘

gathered in its weeks-long tour of
the province.

The commission, a joint
endeavor of the B.C. Federation of
Labor, the B.C. Teachers Federa-
tion and the HEU, will compress
these comments into a report slated
for public release soon. Judging by
what was heard at the
commission’s final hearings in
Vancouver May 20and 21, it will be
a damning indictment of the
Socreds’ restraints from a broad
section of British Columbians.

In Vancouver, the commission
heard from Mosaic, a multi-lingual
community service for thousands
of Vancouver’s immigrants; the
North Shore United Way; and the
mother of a disabled child
representing the Parents’ Commit-
tee of the Association for Care.of
Children’s Health. Such organiza-
tions are not normally known for
public comment on governments’
financing decisions.

The commission, headed by
Vancouver school trustee and ex-
mayor Tom Alsbury, also included
BCTF staff member Tom Hut-
chinson, HEU president Gordon
MacPherson, and B.C. Federation
of Labor vice-president, Joy
Langan. Teachers, trade union
bodies and women’s organizations
were some of the other groups that
have addressed the commission,
which is the B.C. Fed’s response to
the restraints program. —_

In the health care field, those in-
volved have taken more direct ac-
tion. Nurses and patients at New
Westminster’s Royal Columbian
Hospital demonstrated at lunch
time May 21 in one of the first of a
series of localized rallies planned by
the Alliance to Save Health Care in

ees ©.

A similar effort has been set for
Lions Gate Hospital Monday, —

©

SOPHIA HANAFI...school cuts
expected this fall. _

Meanwhile, the 24,000-member
HEU was set to announce plans for
its “Don’t get sick in B.C.” cam-
paign- Friday. Their program,
reminiscent of a well orchestrated
campaign by Vancouver’s civic
workers concerning the garbage

pile-up in last year’s civic strike, _

will focus on the province’s
lucrative tourist industry.

If there is one thing the public
commission’s Vancouver hearings
revealed, it was the scope of the
cuts entailed by the provincial
government’s restraints. Whether
it was health care workers com-
plaining of declining services and
layoffs, workers telling of wage
cuts, or a community organization
faced with drastic program reduc-
tions or extinction, all came out
against the restraints measures.

DAVE SCHRECK...health benefits

will run out.

. And all warned of its conse

quences,

CU&C’s Schreck said the
backlog in elective surgery woul
keep many of the co-operative’s
members on the sick list well past
the maximum time allowed undef
their weekly indemnity plans. It
would either force the recipients
back to work and further com-
plicate their injuries, or force them
onto the UIC rolls. It could eve®
result in death, said Schreck, ech0-
ing recent comments made by B.C.
health officials. :

Tom Beardsly and Sophia
Hanafi of the Defend Educational
Services Coalition (DESC) said the
effect of cutbacks to the province’s
universities, colleges and high
schools ‘‘will become apparent
next fall.’ Cancelled special educa-
tion programs, hiked tuition and
restricted accessibility are increas-
ingly the norm for B.C., said the
representatives of the six-member
coalition of campus unions and
student groups.

Many of the organizations
represented — including DESC,
HEU and the Vancouver and New
Westminster. and District labor
councils — aimed their fire at the
Socreds’ megaprojects. :

“To build a giant new sports
stadium while the sick go untreated
suggests we are entering a kind of
Alice in Wonderland world, where
nothing makes sense,” said Paddy
Neale of the VDLC.

Instead, “‘the government could
be encouraging and directing
public investment into affordable
housing, and into the development
of necessary public facilities, ex-
tended care hospitals, and com-
munity recreation facilities,’’ he
said,
The restraints also hit at what for
some unions has been a recent ma-
jor gain — equalized base wage
tates, which is seen as prelude to
establishing equal pay for work of -
equal value. So argued Shiela
Rowswell and Marion Pollack of
the Equal Pay Information Com-
mittee, an informal group set up
following the Vancouver civic
workers strike last year.

By limiting all workers to the
same percentage of wage increases,
the provincial government’s Com-
pensation Stabilization Program
will widen, rather than decrease,
the gap between men’s and
women’s wages, they argued.

“EPIC believes that the wage
control program is a well-planned
concerted attack on workers in an
attempt to maintain profit returns.
They are not simply a Bennett-style
election trap,’’ said Rowswell,
arguing a more militant response —

from organized labor. Se