Strangers to truth

AIL MAME MLL LILIA) TEL 1)

Plenty for social needs,
but look who crys ‘foul’

By ALDERMAN HARRY RANKIN

The hypocrisy of government
bureaucrats in Ottawa is some-
thing out of this world..A good
example is the pamphlet just
issued by the Unemployment
Insurance Commission called
“The Case for Honesty”’ dealing
with abuses of unemployment
insurance benefits. It claims
that in 1968 about 22,000 persons
made fraudulent claims
involving about $3 million, and
estimates that about six percent
of claims are fradulent.

The pamphlet approvingly
quotes editorials from six large
corporation-controlled daily
newspapers, as well as elec-

trical contractors and the Cana-
dian Chamber of Commerce. All
of them are indignant at the
frauds and support a govern-
ment crack-down on all
offenders.

_ The transparent purpose of the
pamphlet is to create the impres-
sion that the ranks of the unem-
ployed drawining insurance
benefits are filled with (to quote
the pamphlet) ‘‘freeloaders’’,
people who are ‘incompetent
and shiftless”, using insurance
benefits to ‘finance an extended
holiday”’ and to obtain ‘‘generous
dividends,” ‘‘a handy nest egg”’
and a “‘soft touch.”

he Good Book says, inter alia, that ‘“‘the wages of sin

is death.” It is now apparent however that while
such venerable homilies were set down for the guidance and
good of Homo Sapiens, modern politics, i.e. capitalist politics,
have rendered them obsolete. Today it should read that the
“wages of sin, etc. . .” is election to the peerage, the senate, a
monopoly directorate, a university administration, or any
score of soft Establishment billets at a handsome stipend!

The thought struck as when we noted in last week’s press
that another pair of top social democrats from the defunct
Wilson ‘Labor’ government of Britain, had been appointed to
the “‘peerage.’’ We recall the late prime minister Clement
Atlee and other leading “‘socialist’’ notables in British politics
winding up an illustrious career of selling out British workers
in that outmoded and somnolent chamber of reaction, the
House of Lords, knee britches, cocked hat and all! In
Canada, our parliamentary system patterned much along the
same lines as in Britain on the two-party setup, with social
democracy a ‘left’ caricature of the two, we have no House of
Lords to stand guard (during their waking hours) on the class
rights and privileges of our most venerable institutions. But we
do have a non-elective Senate where deserving party wheel-
horses may sleep away their retiring years — at a handsome
salary from the taxpayers. It is only incumbent upon any
senator to wake up if, as and when the proletariat may become
a bit restive in their demand for social change; that, and
getting to the pay wicket to draw a wage — which has no
relationship with ‘“‘death’’!

To speak of such incumbents of the ‘Lords’ or Senate as
sinners, one must of course go to the record of their earlier
political careers; be it Tory or Liberal, Republican or
Democrat, ‘Christian socialist, or right-wing social democrat.
Broadly interpreted, that record will generally reveal political
racketeers, embezzlers, real estate sharks, corporate
monopoly heads, etc., all rendering a great ‘‘service to the
country’’ by fleecing it to line their own pockets — and/or the
party coffers. Such ‘sinning’ pays off handsomely, with no
funeral forecasts to worry about!

There is another specie of ‘sinner’ whom we:nearly over
looked, and who certainly deserves an early demise if anyone
does, viz, the retired army brass. Trained and highly skilled in
killing (as in Vietnam) this sub-human, quite contrary to
Biblical prophesy, gets promoted at retirement to the
directorate of some huge monopoly enterprise, invariably one
which. specializes (and profits) from the armament and war
industrial merchandise; a director of Merchants of Death,
Unlimited!

Thus we can say, although the subject is by no means
exhausted that the ‘‘wages of sin. . .’’ is no longer ‘‘death,”’
but a nice cushy billet at a five-figure income in one of our
modern state institutions, and especially in those institutions
primarily designed to keep the great ‘have-not’ dispossed
majority toeing the Establishment line. They, and not the
venerable prophets of yore determine what the ‘‘wages”’ will
be for ‘‘services rendered” in the preservation of the Status
Quo.

Happily the new “‘socialist’’ peerages in Britain are not
hereditary!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 1970—PAGE 2

“4 e ¢ - pe * an Fs
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SPOON SRA J

Committee of Progressive Electors

The pamphlet quotes a
“distinguished journalist’’ as
saying that illegal claims on
unemployment insurance are
“the biggest fraud in Canada.”’
That is so far from the truth that
any journalist making such a
statement can be distinguished
only for his ignorance or worse.

If 22,000 claimants received $3
million fraudulently they
received an average of $136 per
person. Compare this to the
income tax frauds each year
which must surely run into hun-
dreds of millions of dollars.
Three cases were recently
reported in the press involving
Vancouver businessmen. The
owners of a large store on
Hastings Street handling used
goods were fined half a million
dollars for unreported income.
A chartered accountant had to
cough up a quarter of a million
dollars that he tried to getaway
with. Another case involving a
big businessman and a huge
amount of money was settled out
of court. Scores of other cases
were settled quietly without
charges. If in Vancouver they
amount to millions of dollars,
think what they must amount to
right across the country!
Furthermore, big business
firms have hundreds-of ways of
claiming expenses to escape
income. tax, where the working
man has none. These may not be
fraudulent in a legal sense, but
they’re certainly not honest
either.

Compared to these cases, the
fraudulent claims of working
people for $136 are peanuts.

The government is crying
“thief? at working people but
says nothing about the rich who
defraud on income tax. A
working man who fradulently
receives $136 goes to prison, but
a business man who tries to
steal a million receives only a
fine.

It’s worthwhile again noting,
too, that this government which
is so stingy with pensions for
senior citizens and unem-
ployment insurance benefits for
those out of work, is quite
generous with its own members.
Recent legislation provides that
when a member of parliament
has served six consecutive
years in the House of Commons
and is “‘laid off’’ by the voters,
he immediately gets a pension of
$3780 a year for life, no matter
how young or old he is. And if he
has been an M.P. for 25 years,
his pension is $13,500 a year!

I don’t condone fraudulent
unemployment insurance
claims, anymore than you do.
But I also know that in most
cases they arise out of economic
necessity. An adequate system
of unemployment insurance
would eliminate most abuses.
Reforms needed include:

- Raising present low benefits
to 75 percent of wages, with a
minimum of $75 a week for a
single person.

- Make benefits available for
the whole period of unem
ployment.

- Include in the benefits. the

See ‘foul’ pg..7

Sleeping Giant

IF THAT FELLOW EVER
WOKE UP HE WOULD
REALLY CHANGE THE WORLD/

HUMAN
Goopwitt 5
SS 5

y
YA) Ay
Z

at pollution culprits

By MABLE RICHARDS |

SPEC, the Scientific Pollution
and Environmental Control
Society, has presented a far-
ranging and detailed brief to the
Public Inquiry into Industrial
Practises held by the B.C. Pollu-
tion Control Board.

It presents scientific answers
to problems of pollution which
hitherto have been presented to
the public as being almost insol-
uable, or financially prohibitive.

Setting out the nature of the
problem as it relates to pollution
from forest industries, the first
part of the brief is written in
simple layman’s terms. The
second part, presenting various
scientific answers, will be
unintelligible to the average
reader, but should -go far to
convince such literate men as
there are within the provincial
forestry department that
answers are there if their govern-
ment bosses will take action.

Boundaries are no longer
relevant where ecology is
concerned, the brief makes
clear. The Bennett Dam in
Northern B.C. causes terrible
destruction to a delta in
Alberta. The off-shore winds
from Harmac mill near
Nanaimo do not realize that the
city of Vancouver has an air
pollution by-law. Water areas
leased to oil companies in the
Georgia. Strait are not likely to
define the limits of future oil
spills. The Northwood Pulp Mill
which discharges polluted
waters into the Fraser is a

source of concern as far south as
Mission. Fishermen from
Steveston may regret the ope™ _
pit copper mine at the north en
of Vancouver Island if its sea-de-

posited effluence causes the
salmon, in time, to refuse 10
return to their spawning
streams. by,

In those few lines the brief
demonstrates how closely inter
woven are our lives and our live
lihood ( and those of our children
and grandchildren).

CONTROL NEEDED

Dealing specifically with the
forest industry, the SPEC brief
states: ‘‘Either it is possible t0
harvest wood, size it, produce
lumber, pulp, or other products,
and package and ship these
without causing net deter-
ioration of the environment
necessary for life generally, oF
else it is not. 2

‘In the case where it is not
... . then such activities must be
systematically phased out. No
new activities of an ecologically
unacceptable kind should be pet!-
mitted to develop. Whatever
controls on industry, location,
population, or the rights of

property which this policy may .

require must be put in hand.”’
SPEC urges the government to
commission an agency of the
Crown to carry an educational
program to the public, and to
replace the present patchwork
quilt of environmental legis-

lation with a broad statute con-

See SPEC pg. 8