EDITORIAL

Welcome exchange visits

The potential for Canadian-Soviet
understanding, — business-like exchange,
and progress on disarmament measures is
being tested, in a sense, in current move-
ments of people between Canada and the
USSR.

Tourists regularly move in both direc-
tions, a trickle of professional exchanges
have begun again after the Ottawa boycott,
and recently a large group of Canadian
journalists visited the USSR. During the
month of May three different Soviet dele-
gations will be in Canada.

One of these is a four-person delegation
of Soviet peace activists, here at the invita-
tion of the Canadian Peace Congress, who
will visit Canadian cities from. Montreal to
Vancouver. (Another of their number was
denied a visa by the Canadian authorities
— not the way to build mutual confidence.)

Then there is the 11-person high-level
Soviet Government delegation, much re-
ported, but not well elucidated in the
Canadian media.

And shortly, a group of 12 from Soviet
youth organizations will attend a two-day
conference with young Canadians. That’s
on May 21-22, in Toronto.

All this suggests, first, that such ex-
changes are possible even in contentious
times, given a willingness by two sides to
seek solutions to problems of mutual con-
cern. It also suggests that Canada’s federal
government Can act in a more enlightened

way than the PM’s remarks would some-
times lead one to believe.

While the capitalist press — whether of
the opportunist or the sour reactionary
stripe — looks for confrontation, for Soviet
vulnerability or failed Canadian-Soviet re-
lations to sell its fish-wrappings, the ex-
change goes on between rational people,
and the yapping dogs go on yapping.

It is worth a moment to contemplate the
likelihood of such exchanges under a
prime minister of the Crosbie, Clark, or
Mulroney kind. It is €qually worth a mo-
ment to lament — or face brutality — that
the dark age of Reaganism is the worse
enemy of such clear-headed exchanges.

What meetings like these between Cana-
dian and Soviet men and women confirm
is that people equally interested in survival,
in disarmament, in exchanges of every var-
iety (scientific, cultural, educational, trade
union, peace, women’s and youth groups,
religious, agricultural, and aboriginal) —
begin to see what are the barriers to under-
standing — and eventually the way to
understanding.

‘The Soviet visitors currently in Canada
are welcome harbingers of broader ex-
changes between our two countries. May
the remaining restrictions on delegations
which promote learning, or trade, gov-
ernment to government relations, worker
exchange, or the arts be lifted up and the
grand provisions of the Helsinki Final Act,
signed by Canada and the USSR in 1975,
raised to humanity-serving heights.

Labor's high tech battle

High tech in industry — that is, high
technology, utilizing robots and computers
to an intense degree — is talked about
everywhere. Corporations see high tech
slashing the workforce and boosting pro-
fits. The Canadian Government pictures
high tech as the open sesame to advantage-
ous world trade with cheaper products put
out by machines. Labor is becoming in-
creasingly worried about this boon to pro-
duction contributing to mass unemploy-
ment and plummeting living standards.

The labor movement has good cause for
concern, and equally good cause and ‘a
serious responsibility to fight against the
misuse of high tech for corporate enrich-
ment at the workers’ expense.

In an alleged secret government study
leaked by the Globe and Mail, it is esti-
mated that between one-quarter of all jobs
in business and financial services will be
eliminated over this decade by techno-
logical and structural change.

In contrast to this, is the picture of what
is needed, according to the director-
general of the International Labor Office in
Geneva — the creation of one billion jobs in
industrial countries by the year 2000. He
said there are 500 million unemployed and
underemployed in developing countries
alone.

A different view of high tech is taken in
socialist countries, where labor shortages
tend to slow the pace of development. In
the Soviet Union, for example, there has
been no unemployment since 1930.

The Communist Party of Canada, dis-
cussing jobs, mass unemployment, high
tech and related topics at its recent Central

Committee meeting, concluded that it is
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 27, 1983—Page 4

the system — state-monopoly capitalism —-

which cannot solve. the contradiction
thrown up by the development of high
technology.

The recent flurry of federal government
ministers’ statements would seem to con-
firm this view. The labor minister, the
employment minister and the minister of
economic development all agree that
gloomy forecasts are bad for the temper of
workers. But the most they can ‘offer to
resolve the problem is some form of tripar-
tism whereby government, business and
labor will somehow help workers find

non-existent new jobs. They ignore the

fact that we are in the throes of a deep
recession which aggravates technological
job losses. What the government privately
believes is that it “may have to accept 8 to 10
per cent unemployment as_ full
employment.”

Particularly in the case of the jobless
youth, instead of rudderless plans to qual-
ify one for unemployment insurance, or
to lure young people into the army, educa-
tional and retraining programs must be
developed as part of the high tech
revolution.

What is immediately placed squarely be-
fore the trade union movement is the need
to battle for reduced hours of work with no
reduction in take-home pay. To this must
be added the demand for the trade union

_movement to have a say on all questions of

economic policy and technological change.

Capitalism is showing that it cannot pro-
vide full employment to ensure techno-
logical change is in the people’s interest. It
raises more sharply than ever the necessity
for fundamental social change.

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py
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y aKer
GooP wi pon
put

ROO OCTOA
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Flashbacks

25 years

50 years

DANGER IN
LEBANON

The Soviet government
warned that interference by
any outside power into the in-
ternal affairs of Lebanon can
have “grave consequences
endangering world peace.”

The warning came as the
U.S. was rushing ships and
troops into the vicinity of
Lebanon and dispatching
transport planes to West
Germany “in case they are
needed in an emergency”. °

The struggle against Presi-
dent Chamoun’s betrayal of
Lebanon’s independence to
the US. oil monopolies under
the terms of the Eisenhower
Doctrine developed into a
sharp battle following the as-
sasination May 8 of the editor
of the newspaper “Tele-

graph”.
Tribune,
May 26, 1958

A Awa pr

Ws 2 ae | |
ae os. Profiteer of the week |
mmm 725 AY

ie” Ss,
ye ae
KA

Gaz Metropolitan Inc., of Montreal had a neat $17,075,000 aft
tax profit for three months ended March 31. Not bad, you say?" /
year ago netted $20,730,000."
dropped only a smidgen, "

good, say they. Same period a
dividends on preferred share
$1.40-million to $1.32-million.

BEEFING UP |
THE MILITARY |

The Department of Yj]
fence has issued an Orde!)
Mobilization which orde™
both the permanent %
non-permanent militia t
placed on a fighting basis:

The non-permane,
forces, according to the ®
der, are to proceed at 4
with intensive training, *
which an increased mili
budget appropriation P!
vides. The instructions s¥
specifically that the mill
must be drilled in ‘close
mation work”, i.e., repe!
“mob attack”. Bayonet dri
to be increased 4)
machine-gun training !
tensified.

It is also reported that
RCMP is to be given
hanced importance in ©
plans of the Department”
National Defence. a

The Wor,
May 20, 197

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RIBUNE |

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O‘CONNOR

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