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Canada

Cuts to VIA ‘do the bidding’
of private transport firms

Continued from page 1
soa lines will cease operation after Jan.

Response from unions and _ citizens’
organizations was immediate and angry.

Jim Hunter, president of the Canadian
Brotherhood of Railway, Transport, and
General Workers, said that the union had
already spent “thousands of dollars on a
campaign against the cuts,”

“But we’re sure as hell not going to give
up. We'll go on mobilizing and keep on
fighting to expose the Tories for the liars
they are,” he vowed.

Hunter suggested that the fact that the
government is not cutting Via as deeply as it
originally intended indicates that the cam-
paign to protect the system has had an
impact.

Some lines through New Brunswick, the
Gaspe Peninsula, and Ontario that were
initially slated to go, were spared the axe in
Bouchard’s announcement.

Harry Gow, the Eastern vice-president of
Transport 2000, a citizens’ transportation
organization, told the Tribune that the
Conservative government’s motives run
deeper than simply wanting to address
deficit problems.

He said that the current attack comes
after cuts of 20 per cent that the service
suffered under the Trudeau government,
and is part of a project to “finish off the job
within five years.” Gow suggested that the
devastation of Via is linked to the govern-
ment’s willingness to do the bidding of
organizations such as the Canadian Bus
Association.

Cutting Via radically also plays to the
interests of such firms as Greyhound and
the Canada Steamship Line, he said.

The organization takes a dim view of the
potential contribution of the Royal Com-
mission on Transport that the federal
government announced in tandem with the
cuts.

Bouchard’s project will go ahead, says
the government, long before the results of
the Commission’s study are known. It will
be a “whitewash royal commission” staffed
by Tories and individuals sympathetic to

JIM HUNTER
continue.

the destruction of passenger service, that
will legitimize government policy, said
Gow.

H e added that the project is one more
example of the results that accrue from a
government “in adoration of the American
model.” Transport 2000 sees a close link
between Tory attitudes to Via and the
repeated (and less than successful) attempts
of the Reagan administration to cut off U.S.
federal monies to Amtrak.

Ironically, analysts have suggested that
Amtrak will be one of the big winners in the
demise of the Canadian system. Many Sas-
katchewan residents for example, who are
to see rail service to some nine southern
communities eliminated, will now likely
take trains from Montana and North
Dakota when they go to the Pacific coast.

Montreal is a city where the impact of the
Via cuts will perhaps be most devastating.

... CBRT campaign will

Of 2,761 jobs scheduled to go, one-third of
them will come from the area. According to
the CBRT, direct job losses in the city will be
just the tip of the unemployment iceberg;
some 3,000-4,000 workers in related and
dependent industries will likely also find
themselves jobless.

Across the country, almost 30,000 direct
and indirect jobs may be threatened.

Critics of Tory policy have criticized the
government's contention that the Via debt
cannot be managed while the system serves
the country in a comprehensive way. And
they have contrasted the Canadian cut-
backs with policies in such countries as
France and Japan that have maintained
and even expanded passenger rail service.

Transport 2000 cites climbing revenues
(20 per cent over the last two years) and a
decline last year in maintenance costs as
evidence that Via’s finances do not have to
be critical.

There remains the central contention that
there is absolutely nothing wrong with run-
ning a public transportation system at a
“loss” — paying fora good one is recogniz-
ing an infrastructural cost that modern
industrial societies have to shoulder.

And it is a weak argument, certainly in
the view of the left, that cutting transit is
either an effective or honest way of address-
ing the deficit. The mneo-conservative
method of cost-cutting is introduced in lieu
of any attempt to reform a regressive tax
system that fails to collect even legally-owed
corporate tax.

Finally, critics of Tory cuttings question
whether Via can help being a debt-plagued
operation given the conditions of its birth.
When the system was created in 1977 it was
immediately placed in a financially untena-
ble situation, forced to operate without its
own track and rolling stock, all of which
had to be leased them from CN and CP.

“The first spike contributing to Via’s
death was the Liberals’ decision to force Via
to pay between $70 and $80 million (to the
two companies) for their dilapidated rolling
stock. No company could survive on its
own with that degree of debt,” NDP MP
Ian Angus recently wrote.

Innu renew protest despite ruling

ST.JOHN’S — Newfoundland’s Court
of Appeal last week overturned the acquit-
tal of four Innu leaders who had been
charged with trespassing on the Goose Bay
airfield in Labrador. However, the court did
not specifically order a new trial and none
has yet been set in the case.

The ruling was
immediately criti-
cized by defence
lawyers and other
legal observers for |
overturning last
April’s decision by
provincial court

ity. The appeal court
ruled that the earlier
verdict was null and
void because four people had been tried
jointly on the basis of four separate “‘infor-
mations.”

Judge Igloliorte had ruled in April that
Chief Daniel Ashini, Elizabeth Penashue,
Peter Penashue and Ben Michel were irno-
cent of charges of mischief and trespassing
because they truly believed that the land
occupied by the air base belonged to the
Innu people.

Judge Igloliorte also ruled that his court
could not uphold the Crown’s property
assertion, given that the true and rightful

ASHINI

_ ownership of the land is still in question.

The appeal ccurt decision may however
confound the plans of the provincial
attorney-general’s office to proceed with
new charges against the protesters because
it would require separate trials for each of
the offenders charged with mischief. During
a series of protests at the Goose Bay airfield
which began last fall, over 200 Innu demon-
strators have been arrested and charged.

The Innu people have stepped up their
campaign to oppose low-level flying by
Canadian, West German and other fighter
jet aircraft on training missions over their
hunting and fishing grounds in Nitassinan.
They are also strongly opposed to Canada’s
bid to upgrade the airfield to the status of a
full NATO training base, as this would lead
to the accelerated militarization of their
homeland.

On Sept. 19, another five Innu crossed
the fence on to the Goose Bay airstrip, inter-
rupting military air traffic. Arrested in this
latest protest were Rose Gregoire, Martha
Hurley, Jackie Ashini, Raphael Gregoire,
and Joachin Selma.

Raphael Gregoire described to the Trib-
une how they secretly crossed the barb wire
fence enclosing the base around 2:30 a.m.
and hid in bushes until 9:30 that morning
when they saw the jets taxiing on the run-
way and then ran to intercept them.

“The jet came at us... it didn’t even slow
down. Rose and I stayed put [and] the jet
had to turn sharply not to run over us. The

military police then surrounded us,” Gre-
goire related.

Following their arrest, the activists were
taken to lock-up at the Labrador Correc-
tional Centre. Within minutes, the jail was
surrounded by dozens of supporters
demanding their release.

Raphael Gregoire has since refused to
sign an RCMP undertaking that he will not
attempt to re-enter the base and remains in
police custody. “I’m willing to lose my free-
dom to demonstrate our dislike for the mil-
itary use of our lands,” he said. “If the
airplane had run me over, I was willing to
give up my life for what I believe in.”

In a separate interview before her arrest,
Rose Gregoire, a mother of four, described
the struggle against the proposed NATO
base as a ‘“‘matter of life and death” for her
people. “We don’t need any more negative
development that would be harmful to our
livelihoods or our culture,” she said. “The
government has manipulated a lot of native
people over the years ... they won't do it
this time.”

Innu lawyers are currently preparing an
application for an injunction against further
low-level flying on the grounds that the
Royal Proclamation of 1763 ceded the land
of Labrador in perpetuity to the Innu peo-
ple.

With files from Goose Bay and Happy
Valley, Labrador.

Meeting
crisis

Progressive foresters, environmental
activists and forest industry workers
from around the Pacific Northwest will
be gathering in Nanaimo Oct. 27 and
28 for a State of The Islands conference
aimed at finding solutions to the cur-
rent crisis in Vancouver Island’s forests.

Conflicts over forest use and man-
agement have been particularly acute
on Vancouver Island in recent months,
pushing such names as Carmanah Val-
ley and Meares Island into national
and international headlines.

“The general public is becoming
alarmed and angered,” said conference
spokesperson Des Kennedy. “Van-
couver Island’s ancient forests are being
clear-cut to liquidation and replaced
with tree plantations. Second-growth
forests on the Gulf Islands are being
clear-cut in a way that many islanders
find unacceptable.”

The recent controversy on Lasqueti
Island over clear-cutting on private
land follows similar disputes on Gali-
ano, Read, Saltspring, Malcolm and
other islands, he said.

Tourist operators are also becoming
concerned about logging practices as
are those in the fishing industry. And
Native people are seeing their claims to
aboriginal title overrun by the boar-
droom decisions of distant corpora-
tions, he said.

But while the rate of timber harvest-
ing is accelerating, “fewer and fewer
workers are being employed to harvest
more and more wood,” Kennedy
noted.

The weekend conference will be
aimed not only at pinpointing the prob-
lems, but also finding solutions.

The two-day and evening event will
include such prominent names as
Oregon forester Dr. Chris Maser,
author of The Redesigned Forest, and
B.C. forester Herb Hammond as well
as Native leaders Lavina White from
the Haida Nation and Nuu-Chah-
Nulth Tribal Council co-chair Simon
Lucas.

A Friday evening forum will include
representatives from government, the
IWA-Canada, the Truck Loggers
Association and Fletcher Challenge
Canada.

The conference opens in the Beban
Park complex in Nanaimo Oct. 27 and
moves to Merv Wilkinson’s woodlot in
Ladysmith for five workshops Oct. 28.
Costs are $28 for Friday and $10 per
workshop, or $30 for all five, on Satur-
day. For registration write: State of the
Islands Conference, Box 986, Station
A, Nanaimo, V9R 5N2 or phone 758-

1177. For further information phone
753-5212 or 335-0400.

aw cree tae. Mai
-DES KENNEDY

Pacific Tribune, October 16, 1989 « 3