Resources:

selling off our future

— page 3

Wednesday, May 9, 1984

Newsstand Price 4o: Vol. 47, No. 18

Trades rally
as Expo 86
exhibitors

_tour site

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Restral

Building Trades workers demonstrated at the old courthouse in downtown Vancouver Monday to reaffirm their demand for union wages
for all construction workers as representatives of various countries which will have Expo pavilions met across the street in the Georgia
Hotel before touring the Expo site. Unionists staged a similar rally in Kelowna to make the samé point to the western premiers’ meeting
there. Building Trades Council president Roy Gautier also issued a Building Trades workers’ Charter of Rights during a press conference

in the Okanagan city.

_ News that the Social Credit government
passed Bill 11, the misnamed “human
rights Act” into legislation Monday is
grim news for thousands of British
Columbians — particularly trade union
supporters, minorities, women and ren-

_ ters, on whom “open season” by discrimi-
-nators has now been declared.

Almost as disheartening is the news that
the Tribune press drive — despite out-
standing donations by some readers — is
lagging far behind the usual pace. As of
last count, it stood at $17,995.

At this time last-year, the drive stood at
well over $20,000 — and even that figure

was short of the achievement experienced
in previous years.

That’s partially because the economic
crisis, aided and abetted by the Socreds,
has been particularly hard on our mainly
working-class and unemployed suppor-
ters. And that’s all the more reason why
readers who, perhaps a little better off
than others, should make a little extra
effort so we can achieve our target this
year.

We remind our readers that the target
for 1984 is $85,000 — and that it’s only a
short time before the Tribune Victory
Banquet June 23.

Through more than four decades of
struggle the Tribune and its predecessors
have fought hard for human rights, trade
union rights and for peace, jobs and eco-
nomic security. It has done this because its
supporters have made all-out efforts to see
that B.C. has a working-class press to con-

tinue that fight.

This year, progressives are calling for
the rebuilding of the Solidarity fightback.
Reaching and surpassing the financial
target would be the perfect complement,
and help ensure there are no more Socreds
and their “Bill 11s.”

tunjustified,
worsens recession,
economists

Several University of British Columbia
economics professors took on the provin-
cial government’s economic policies this
week, issuing five papers which challenge
the rationale for “restraint” and provide
statistical evidence to show that the Socreds
are primarily “concerned for the rich at the
expense of the poor.”

The papers were released at a press con-
ference Monday by the British Columbia
Economic Policy Institute which was set up
by a group of professors at the department
of economics at UBC last year in response
to the July 7, 1983 Social Credit budget.

The group issued two studies last year
debunking the “restraint” arguments put
forward by the Socreds for eliminating
human rights and cutting back education
funding.

The papers issued Monday are more
extensive in analyzing the government’s
social and fiscal policies and refute the
government’s own claims of restraint. They
also take into account the 1984 budget
brought down by Finance Minister Hugh
Curtis in March.

The five papers are: :

@ “Is there a Case for Minimal Govern-
ment?,” an analysis of the right wing argu-
ment for reducing “big government,”
written by David Donaldson;

e “Hiding Behind Medicare”, a study of
health care funding in B.C., written by
health economist Robert Evans;

@ “Is there a Social Policy in British
Columbia”, an analysis of government cuts
in social services and their effects, written by
Angela Redish;

e “British Columbia’s Budgets and the
Need for Restraint”, challenging the
government’s rationale for its restraint pro-
gram, written by Gideon Rosenbluth and
William Schworm;

@ “The Economic Impact of the British
Columbia Restraint Budget,” challenging the
William Schworm.

Central to the series is the paper jointly
authored by Rosenbluth and Schworm
which states in its introduction: “. . although
the recession has caused severe economic
difficulties for B.C. , there is no financial
justification for the policy of restraint.”

“In his budget, Finance Minister Curtis
told us that British Columbia has a ‘structu-
ral’ deficit, that is a tendency to run deficits
even when conditions are good — and
therefore we have to impose restraint,”
Rosenbluth told reporters.

“So what we did was to run a statistical
analysis on the historical record to see if it
showed a structural deficit.

“And what we found was that the B.C.
economy has a tendency structurally to run
surpluses, not deficits,” he emphasized.

That is in marked contrast with Ontario,
Quebec, the Atlantic provinces and Manit-

See RESTRAINT page 10