hose who read our item in this column last week

on Tallulah’s Treats, please take note. We er-
red. We didn’t check our information and as a
result, we were off base.

In fact, Tallulah’s Treats is not a South African
company. All of its products are made either right
here in British Columbia or come from elsewhere in
Canada.

Acall first thing Monday morning from company

director Glynis Sive and a subsequent phone conver-
sation with vice-president Sarrel Barwin set us
straight. Both were critical of us for not checking our
facts although Barwin did acknowledge that some
of the problem lay with a company salesman who
had told prospective clients that the company was
South African. It was through the apparently misin-
formed salesman that our original information
came.
Sive was also particularly dismayed with the
report since she herself is South African but left the
country because she could no longer tolerate the
apartheid system.

Although we did check with the registrar of com-
panies in Victoria, we erred in not following up after
an initial phone call to company offices in Van-
couver was unsuccessful in reaching a spokesman.

The Tribune apologizes for the error and for any
t it may have caused for Tallulah’s

reats.

* * *

rom the pages of the October Economic

e Review, the departmental review put out by
employment and immigration Canada, comes yet
another illustration of the massive folly of the
Socred government’s Northeast coal project.

According to the report, Japanese steel mills on
which the NE coal project depends for sales now
have more metallurgical coal than they can use. In
fact they have reduced purchases for the July to
September period by a whopping 35 percent.

“Unless there is a sharp upturn in world steel pro-
duction, Western Canada will have a large surplus
of metallurgical coal,’’ the review states. “‘At the
same time, the demand for thermal coal (also slated
for export from the NE fields) used in electricity
generation has been cut by reduced energy con-
sumption and softer oil prices.”’

Of course, the directors of Teck Corporation
scoff at the plummeting economic indicators but
even the government’s own economists admit that
the less demand for coal, the longer it will take for
the project to pay for itself.

Given the magnitude of the public subsidies that
will go to provide infrastructure including roads, rail
lines and townsite development, it was always in
question whether the project would ever pay for
itself — or whether taxpayers would pay for years to
come to export coal to Japan. And now the huge
world surpluses of coal serve to underscore that
original deal for just what it was — a sellout.

T he same-report also has a startling glimpse of
‘the automation plans of the U.S. automakers —
and the drastic consequences for the workers in the
industry.

Quoting from Occupational Outlook Quarterly,
published by the U.S. labor department, it states:
“Research has shown that nearly 500,000 operative
workers in U.S. manufacturing of automobiles,
electrical equipment, machinery and fabricated
metals could be replaced by non-sensor based
robots, and servo-controlled robots could replace up
to three million workers over 20 years.”’

Closer to the present, it estimates that 100,000
auto workers will be replaced by robots within only
the next eight years.

And already, of course, the big corporations are
absolving themselves of social responsibility.
‘Although industry is assuming some of the respon-
sibilities for . . . worker retraining,”’ the report
says, ‘‘it cannot be held responsible for the entire
problem of unemployability . . .”’

Some might recall a well-known conversation bet-
ween Henry Ford and Walter Reuther many years
ago when the two men were touring a Ford plant.
Pointing to the workers on the assembly line, Ford
told the United Auto Workers president. ‘‘Some
day these people will all be replaced by machines.”’

Reuther stopped him and asked: ‘‘Who, then,
will buy all your cars?”’

As the auto industry. prepares to embark on a
new, job-cutting automation program, that ques-
tion still remains.

* * cd

or years he was a familiar sight at meetings

and rallies organized by the progressive move-
ment and he was just as frequent a contributor to the
Tribune and the peace movement. But last Wednes-
day, Oct. 27, Nick Stooshnov’s life came to aclose at
the age of 81.

Although he was born in Saskatchewan, he got
his political education in this province in the midst of
the depression, and in 1931 he joined the Maxim
Gorky club, a Russian language workers’ organiza-
tion that later became part ofthe Federation of Rus-
sian Canadians.

After the war he began a small trucking business
known as Three-Quarter Transfer (the name was
often ametaphor for the state of repair of his truck,)
and over the years he managed to keep it going, in-
cluding delivery of the Tribune among his many
jobs.

He continued his support for Tribune after his
retirement and was many times listed as a honor
press builder during the financial drive.

A memorial service was held Oct. 30 at which
Walter Gawrycki paid tribute on behalf of the FRC.
Nick had asked that donations be made to the B.C.
Peace Council in lieu of flowers.

Harry

~ Rankin

Davis is ‘haywire’ |

on ALRT figures

Sol Jackson is a town plan-
ner who lives in Vancouver.
He’s also a COPE aldermanic
candidate in the current civic
elections. One of his chief
fields of interest is public tran-
sit. He put together some of his
ideas in the form of an article
and asked to publish it as a
guest column. Here it is:

I’m not a forecaster, I’m a
planner, but Ican see that Jack
Davis, the chairman of the
government appointed Rapid
Transit 1986 Committee, is
just a day-dreamer when it
comes to transit in the Lower
Mainland. _

I’mso sure that this political
soothsayer’s dreams will turn
into a nightmare by 1986 that
I’m quite prepared to have this
article together with Davis’
predictions, placed in concrete
under one of the guideway
pillars along Terminal
Avenue, to be opened in 1987.
Then we’ll see who is right —
Davis or his many critics.

In the meantime let me
point out how haywire Davis’
predictions really are.

He claims that the number
__ of passengers in the first year
of operation will be 30 million. +
Michael .O’Connor, : the,
government-appointed -pro-
ject administrator for B.C.
Transit makes an even wilder
prediction - 40 million! These
pipedream figures are
politically motivated, wishful
thinking at best. The actual
number will be much closer to
15 million. Bob Bose, head of
the GVRD’s transit committee
predicts that the figure will be
as low as 5 million!

Jack Davis claims the cost
of the elevated transit system
will be $718 million. Anyone

COPE ‘FOLK BENEFIT’

Folk and labor songs, fiddle music and dancing

Sat. Nov. 13, 8 p.m.
Ukrainian Hall, 805 E. Pender

with Frosty Mountain String Band, Threesome Reel,

Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat, Tami Lundy and Jill King

Election Day

Get-out-the-Vote

=

Tickets

$4/$2

Election Night

who knows anything about the —

cost of the ALRT system

knows that this is also a

politically motivated figure,
based on wishful thinking and
not on facts. The system will
cost over $1 billion. As Ma
Murray would have said:
“‘That’s for damn sure!”’

The $718 million figure is

based, among other things on |
the hope that Ottawa will lend |

B.C. Transit $600 million in-
terest free. Can you imagine
finance minister Marc

Lalonde, after his recent |
speech in parliament about the |)
national deficit, increasing |

that deficit still more by a gift —

of this magnitude to B.C.?
You haveto be off your rocker
to entertain this kind of an illu-
sion.

The $718 million figure does

not include cost overruns |

which are absolutely inevitable
because the contract does not
include a fixed price.
Unspecified extras are yet to be
determined.

The $718 million does not
include the cost of taking an
elevated system across the
Fraser River to Surrey. Nor

what it would cost to build an”

ALRT system in ‘Surrey and

Coquitlam. Nor’ the cost of :

Park and Ride facilities.

I could go on and on. But
the conclusion would be in-
escapable. The ALRT system
forced down our throats by
Bill Vander Zalm when he was
minister of municipal affairs
threatens to choke all of us.

__ Itshouldbescrapped before |
it’s too late. The section now |

being built along Terminal
Avenue could be the federally-
funded ‘‘people mover”’ plan-
ned for Expo ’86.

We should get on with |

building a conventional transit
system now with immediate
provisions for extending it to
Surrey and Coquitlam. It will
cost half as much and the ex-
perience of Toronto and other

cities proves that it will work |
very well.
\

oe @ e
Civic meetings |
An all-candidates meeting fo!
civic candidates Nov. 8 jointly
sponsored by the Canadian Unio#
of Public Employees and the Vat"
couver, Municipal and Regional

Employees Union, is one of sev
slated over the next two weeks.
will be held at 7:30in the Plaza
Hotel, 12th and Cambie.

A day earlier, on Nov. 7, COPE

incumbents Harry Rankin,

Wilson and Pauline Weinstein #

Campaign
Door knockers needed!
The most important thing you can do for

the COPE campaign is to get out and
door-knock for COPE on election day.

Contact the COPE office
at 873-5221.

Phoners and scrutineers also needed.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE— NOVEMBER 5, 1982—Page 2

Centre

Vancouver Indian
Centre
1607 E. Hastings

after 8 p.m. All welcome

well as mayor Harcourt will a0
dress a meeting at 2 p.m. in Walt
Moberly School gymnasium, 5%!
and Ross. The meeting is spo?”
sored by the Support COPE Co”
mittee of Indo-Canadians.

Not directly related to the ele
tion but focussed on the issue
transit is a meeting, set for Nov. 14
7:30 p.m., called by the Indepe®
dent Canadian Transit Union. It
slated for Templeton auditoriu™