oot a*a eee eee!

"seceeeat

te

“I will not have any totalitarian organisation opposing
my personal power!”

ee
%

EDITORIAL

High payoff - low job

inane the anti-Bill 33 Exhibition Forum labor rally,
‘Sponsored by the B.C. Federation of Labor, the Vancouver

and District Labor Council, and the New Westminster Labor
Council back on April 7?

On the platform were leaders of the NDP, the Canadian Con-
gress of Labor, and the representatives of 130,000 trade unionists of
B.C.

At this rally the compulsory arbitration aspects of Bill 33 was
unanimously condemned, as was its heralded ‘mediation commis-
sion,” the. instrument designed by a. Social Credit government to

- apply compulsion to labor when the government deemed it ‘‘in the
public interest’’ to do so. :

In the prepared address given to the rally by BCFL president
E.T. Staley, an address unanimously approved by the BCFL Exec-
utive and by the 2,500 in attendance, there was an element of con-
jecture on the structure and content of this ‘‘mediation commis-

» sion,’ but none whatsoever of the calibre of any so-called ‘‘labor’’

representative who might permit himself to be enticed into its
Socred anti-labor dispensary. - ,

Said BCFL president Staley: “... the only problem here is to
find a man to represent labor. No self-respecting labor could accept
such an appointment while knowing one of his duties would be to re-
voke freedom and enforce compulsion.

Workers beware. Any man who purports to represent labor by
accepting an appointment to the commission will be someone who,
for the sake of political appointment and personal gain, is prepared
to sell his principles and become a tool of a government that has no
understanding or sympathy for labor.’

It is one of the ironies, al too frequent in labor history, that the
type of a man “prepared to sell his principles” was sitting up there
on the platform, and, as 4th vice-president of the BCFL had not only
approved of the text of President Staley’s address, but joined in the
thunderous applause which greeted its.reception by an audience of
working men and women. re

The new “‘labor representative” on the Socred Bill 33 “‘media-
tion commission’’ is one Pen Baskin, $12,300-a-year B.C. and Yukon
area supervisor for the United Steelworkers of America, executive
member of the BCFL, etc., etc., all of which he will now relinquish
for the more attractive $40,000 annual stipend. A very attractive
“30 pieces of silver indeed,’ but then in such cases the “‘servant is
ries worthy of his hire’ as any High Priest of Socredia will con-

irm.

Thus between “‘bugging”’ and ‘“‘sell-out”’ artists the BCKL seems
to have had more than its share of such ‘“embarrassments” in recent
times. For such problems there are no ready remedies except
greater vigilance, greater unity, and greater attention to the class
nature of modern society.

Today, as the designers of Bill 33 have so well demonstrated, it
only requires one who is “‘prepared to sell his principles” to achieve
their objective: to find one rotten apple in the hope of spoiling a
barrelful.

Now part of Bill 33 — Baskin can be buried with it.

ra

edition, Canadian Tribune

Editor—TOM McEWEN
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,
Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.

Associate Editor-—MAURICE RUSH

Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $2.75 for six months.
North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $6.00 one year.
All other countries, $7.00 one year. Authorized as second class mail by the
Post Office Department, Ottawa, and for payment of postage in cash.

Pessoa S PPERERS SSE ee eE,

RANKIN SAYS:

‘City should share tax revenues

with Musqueam Indian Reserve’

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The Indian Band from the

. Musqueam Reserve (just off S.W.

Marine Drive in the Shaughnessy
Golf Course area) has asked the City
of Vancouver for a share of the taxes
that the city collects from non-Indian
lessees on the reserve. Council has
given them the cold shoulder.

The facts, as I understand them,
are as follows: The Indian Band
Council, through the Indian Affairs

‘Department, leased out most of the

land in the reserve to private non-
Indian companies, such as the
Musqueam Development Company,
Shaughnessy Golf Course and
Musqueam Recreation Golf Course.
Another section of the reserve is
leased to Chinese gardeners.

The city collects taxes from these
lessees and provides services to the
properties. In the past nine years it
collected $247,000 in taxes, three

- quarters of this in the last four years.

The arguments of the Indian Band
are:

(a) Section 82 of the Indian Act
states that the Indian Band may
assess and tax lands within the
reserve, and does not specifically
exempt land leased to non-Indians.

(b) Section 87 of the Act states
that any laws ina province which are

inconsistent with the Indian Act shall
not apply to Indians.

(c) The Band must supply
services to Indians within the
reserve, but is not receiving any
taxes from wealthy lessees for this
purpose. It is left in the impossible
position where the only way it can
meet its deficits is to sell or lease
more of its land.

The Band coné¢ludes that it has
been unfairly treated and that
corrective measures are needed. It
doesn’t want to tax the land leased
out, but since it has the right to do so,
it wants an arrangement with the
city of Vancouver for a sharing of tax
revenue and service expenditures.

The argument of the city’s.

Corporation Counsel and the
Director of Finance is that the
Indians’ right to tax within the
reserve does not include land leased
out to non-Indians.

They argue further that to rebate
any of the taxes the city collects to
the Band would constitute a grant
and the city has no right under its
charter to make grants of this kind.

My opinion is that it is wrong for
the Indian Affairs Department to
encourage Indian Bands to lease
reserve lands to non-Indians for

private exploitation. Any projects
undertaken by private developers
could just as well be undertaken by
the joint effort of the Indian Bands
and the Indian Affairs Department.

The Native Indians can gain the
necessary know how and experience
to carry through such projects just
as quickly as any other sections of
the population. Federal officials talk
a lot about the Indians becoming
independent and self supporting, but
refuse to create the work and
business opportunities to make this
possible.

In the case of the Musqueam
Reserve, I think the city should
continue negotiations with the Band
and see if some suitable tax sharing
agreement cannot be arrived at.

I can’t for a minute accept the
argument that the city charter
prevents such an agreement. The
charter also forbids a subsidy to
Cemp-Eatons for Block 42, but the
agreement for this passed all the
same, and without any objections
from the city’s corporation counsel
or director of finance.

The Musqueams say, and I agree
with them: ‘‘Let us have a fair deal.
We are legally, morally and
economically entitled to one.”

LABOR SCENE:

Liberals ‘waive the rules’
to rob UFAWU men of jobs

As a monopoly with an Atlantic
seaboard frontage and a domina-
ting control in sugar production,
fisheries and pulp and paper, plus a
most considerate Establishment at
Ottawa in the matter of lavish
subsidies in the building of its tuna
fishing fleet, the Atlantic Sugar
Refining Company in St. John’s, New
Brunswick, just cannot miss.

Controlling over 40-percent of the
sugar market in Eastern Canada and
the bulk of the deep sea fisheries in
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland, Canadians now have
the picture of this sugar-pulp-and-
fishing octopus with four of its five
tuna boats tied up in Panama, its
Canadian skippers and crews
summarily fired, and being replaced
by U.S. skippers and mixed foreign
crews as a means of upping company
tuna profits.

One of these five Canadian tuna
boats, the Atlantic Gennis, is man-
ned by a crew from British Colum-
bia, all members of the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Un-
ion (UFAWU). These men are sit-
ting tight with their boat, refusing
to budge to make way for the At-’
lantic Sugar Company’s U.S. crew
takeover. At the moment, according
to a UFAWU press release, ‘‘a U.S.
skipper and mate with a full Costa
Rickan crew have been hired to
replace them,’’ and just waiting to
take over the boat, but the B.C. crew
and skipper refuse to budge from
their ship — incidentally built by
Canadian taxpayer subsidy.

All of the crews on the other three
boats have either been fired,

replaced, or flatly refuse to sail
under the new conditions of
employment, reduced to peon labor
levels. These crews are mostly from
Canada’s Atlantic seaboard.

Commenting on_ recent
developments involving these
Canadian vessels in Panama, Jack
Nichol, business agent of the
UFAWU stated this week “‘it was
doubtful whether Canadian
taxpayers will view without concern
the disgraceful sight of a company
evicting Canadians from subsidized
ships and replacing them with
foreign crews — all with the blessing
of government departments in
Ottawa.”’

Bob Cook, national president of the
Canadian Merchant Service Guild,
has also charged the company with
“breaking faith with its Canadian
crew members’’ and similarly
blasted the federal government for
“‘waiving shipping regulations
requiring British subjects with
proper certificates to handle the jobs
on vessels built with Canadian
government subsidies’’, thereby
enabling this Atlantic fishing
monopoly to replace its Canadian
crews by foreign crews.

“What right has the Canadian
agovernment,’’ demanded Cook, ‘‘to
make special arrangements to suit a
company which has received
hundreds of thousands of dollars in
subsidiaries?’’ A lot of Canadian
taxpayers are asking the same
question.

While the B.C. fishermen still stay
with their boat in Panama as a

means of forcing the Atlantic Sugar
Refining Co. to live up to the terms
of its agreement with the crews of its
tuna fishing fleet, their case should
be aired on the hustings during this
federal election campaign at every
opportunity. Is this the Liberal
‘‘justice’’ Trudeau boasts about?

* kK

IWA Local 1-127 over the signature
of president Syd. Thompson has
addressed ‘‘An Open Letter to
MacMillan-Bloedel Competitors.”
This letter draws attention to all
lumber operators not under the
thumb of MacMillan-Bloedel to the
recent public threat of M-B
chairman. J.V.-Clyne -to the effect
that, “‘if the unions (IWA) persist in
their wage demands... . the
industry will have no alternative but

to refuse.’’ In other words close

down.

The IWA letter also draws
attention to the installation of ex-

.attorney-general Bonner as a senior

vice-president in the MacMillan-
Bloedel lumber empire, thereby
consolidating the growing menace of

‘government-monopoly ‘‘influence”’

over the B.C. economy.

The IWA strike vote, now
completed, showed a total of 20,291
in favor and 1,759 against, or 91.9-
percent favoring strike action to
back up wage contract demands.
Forest Industrial Relations (FIR)
and the IWA resumed wage

negotiations ‘Wednesday ofthis’ —

week,