British Columbia By BRUCE YORKE The Canadian Peace Congress was founded in 1949 at the beginning of the cold war and at the start of the ruinous arms race. At the time it was the only major voice for peace in the country. Forty years later, there are hundreds of peace groups across the land, and the peace march in Vancouver attracts tens of thousands annually and involves people from all walks of life. In the last three years, the horror of the responsibility of a nuclear holocaust has been receding, thanks to several successful summit meetings and the efforts of mil- lions of peace activists. The first disarmament treaty between the U.S. and the USSR has seen the remo- val of all intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe. Troops are being withdrawn from various countries. Negotiations have started on arms reductions in Europe, and talks aimed at cutting in half long range missiles will begin in mid-summer. There is heated controversy in Europe over the third ‘“‘zero-option,” the elimination of short range battlefield nuclear weapons from that continent. Here in Canada, nuclear-powered submarines have been cancelled and seven obsolete military bases are about to be shut down. Some influential persons are saying that the cold war is over. They may be right, but it is clear that peace has not broken out everywhere on this globe — yet. Powerful, military-industrial interests want the arms race to continue, want to see the “enemy image” maintained. Their power and profits are at serious risk, Moreover, the philosophy of deterrence, the pre-atomic, old way of thinking, still dominates. Hence, the question arises — what is the role of the peace movement today in - these changing circumstances, and in par- ticular the role of the membership based Canadian Peace Congress and its affiliate the B.C. Peace Council? Last February, the national board of the Canadian Peace Congress met and decided to answer the question with a long-term campaign across the country. Central to the campaign is the belief that the peace movement as a whole needs to project a positive action program to make the peace trend irreversible. What is required is a vigorous political program that will force a change in government policy, a program that projects all the pos- sibilities of full employment in an econ- omy converted to meet basic social needs. In a nutshell, the resources of Canada need to be fully geared to peace time pro- duction, and the vastly swollen ‘“‘defence”’ budget drastically slashed to reasonably sufficient levels. In the two-year period 1985 to 1987, defence spending has increased by 18 per cent. Despite all the hoopla over the so- called cuts in the current Wilson budget, military spending for 1989 will be up 1.3 per cent over 1988. Worse, the increase has been set for five per cent per year for a number of years thereafter. Basically, the notorious 1987 White Paper on Defence remains in place at a time when many billions projected to be spent on new equipment could be safely cut and redirected to meet peace-time needs. For instance, the government could be forced by an aroused peace movement to pull its armed forces out of Europe and close the bases associated with them. Pres- sure could be mounted to force the ‘Dialogue’ opens on new peace agenda MARION DEWAR. ... at opening meet- ing of peace dialogue June 12. government to put resources into pro- grams in Canada that would stimulate peace-time employment — a big national affordable housing program and measures to address major environmental prob- lems, to mention but two of the most pressing issues before the country. The Canadian Peace Congress cam- paign will begin in Vancouver in June and will include Toronto and Ottawa by early summer. It will be conducted in an open, dia- logue fashion, designed to involve all those interested in jointly arriving at a concrete program of positive political action and a corresponding membership structure to implement it. The campaign is simultaneously aimed at helping to stimulate the broad organiza- tional coalitions such as the Canadian Peace Alliance and the End The Arms Race, in their efforts to oppose all attempts to heat up the arms race, such as Star Wars, cruise testing, nuclear weapons free zones and ports, modernization of weapons and low-level flight testing. The Canadian Peace Congress, follow- ing discussion with prominent members of the peace movement, plans to open the campaign-dialogue for a new peace agenda in Vancouver on Monday, June 12,8 p.m. at the Vancouver Planetarium. All peace activists are invited to attend. The featured speaker will be Marion Dewar, one of the country’s leading peace activists. The former long-time mayor of Ottawa has spearheaded the quest for peace among municipal governments, notably in the referendum campaigns for balanced nuclear disarmament and nuclear weapons free zones. As vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Mayors and Municipalities she has been the prime source of a number of peace initiatives by local authorities across the country. Dewar was elected MP for Hamilton in a special byelection in the summer of 1987 but was narrowly defeated for re-election in the 1988 federal election. She is the immediate past national president of the New Democratic Party and currently a member of its national council. In her address, Dewar will present some of the ingredients for a new peace agenda, including alternatives to the new federal budget, and proposals to convert from massive overspending on the military to socially useful programs. Bruce Yorke is an executive member of the B.C. Peace Council and is on the national board of the Canadian Peace Congress. CP convention elects Wilson as B.C. leader — Delegates to the provincial Communist Party’s 27th convention May 13-14 elected its organizer of eight years, Fred Wilson, to the top leadership post of provincial leader. Wilson’s election by the direct vote of the delegates marked a change from past procedure and in fact instituted a regular leadership review, Wilson told the delegates gathered in Vancouver’s Maritime Labour Centre. Party members and supporters honoured outgoing leader Maurice Rush at a special banquet Saturday night, and the conven- tion elected a new, 35-member provincial committee. Wilson hailed the “democratic advance” in the party’s election procedure and called on the Communist Party to “become more explicitly the voice of the socialist left.” RUSH BANQUET, page 3 The party must “project a new image of socialism that will break with the cold war stereotypes and the distortions of the so- called period of stagnation,” he told the convention. ee Wilson said the party was “decentralizing a bit (to) encourage more collectivity, elan and fighting spirit, and to get more initiative and responsibility out of all of us.” A recent poll showed 23 per cent of the respondents favoured socialist solutions to Canada’s problems, compared with 18 per cent three years ago, he observed. That means thousands of Canadians “have no political voice. We can be that voice, providing (we meet) the highest ideals of our working people and offer realistic alternatives to our technological age and our interdependent world,” Wilson said. National leader George Hewison also Thousands of people who support socialist solutions have no political voice. We can be that voice providing we meet the highest ideals of working people and offer realistic alternatives to our technological age and our interdependent world. — Fred Wilson a called for a renewed commitment and an ideological struggle within the party. He said a start was made with the restora- tion of the 1967 Kiev Report, which had been withdrawn for its mild criticisms of “russification” in the Ukraine. “By denying life as it really is, we do play into the hands of the class enemy,” Hewison said. Despite some setbacks for world socialism — he used the example of the governing party losing touch with the masses in Poland — ”J have every confidence social- ism will prevail,” the CP general secretary declared. “You havea united leadership and a uni- ted party,” Hewison said. During the two-day convention delegates debated and adopted key resolutions on the party’s political program — entitled “Block the Socred/Tory agenda” — organization, ideology and press. The convention also handled several gen- eral resolutions, including one on peace that noted the federal Conservative government, although it has scrapped the submarines program, is still tied in with U.S. cold war military strategy. It called for a broadening of the peace movement to include more trade unions and turn the government to policies of peace and disarmament. The environment took a higher profile with a resolution to endorse the party’s recently released draft policy in principle and to commit the B.C. branch to give “priority to the struggle for a safe and clean environment. ..which places the well being and future of the people before corporation profits.” The resolution commits the party to establish an environmental commission. Wilson, who ran uncontested, was elected by a 73 per cent vote of the 95 delegates (previously, part leaders were elected by the provincial committee). Acknowledging the 27 per cent who voted “no,”: Wilson pledged to work for a collective style of leadership and to give renewed effort to organizing in regions out- side the Lower Mainland. The new provincial secretary said the key challenge facing Canadians now is the fed- eral budget, designed to facilitate the res- tructuring of Canada’s economy along U.S. lines which is called for in the Free Trade Agreement. “The more people learn about it, the more unpopular it becomes, and the clearer they will understand it as the free trade budget,” Wilson said. The national Pro-Canada Network and regional anti-free-trade coalitions have made the connection. But these organiza- tions are not large enough to exert a major influence on Canadians’ thinking, and the trade union movement has not been brought into the movement enough, he observed. Regional coalitions exist in the Greater Vancouver, but “there ought to be a coali- tion everywhere in this province,” Wilson said, suggesting this was a task for the new provincial committee. He noted a mass demonstration planned when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney attends a fundraising dinner in Vancouver on June 8. “There ought to be thousands of people confronting Mulroney,’ Wilson declared. Pacific Tribune, May 22, 1989 « 3.