- Campaign for Fair Taxes rouses
big support for April 7-9 actions

British Columbia

It’s been called the Grief and Suffering
Tax, the Gouge and Screw Tax, or the
Gouging and Stealing Tax.

Whatever the handle, the Conservative
government’s Goods and Services Tax is
the no-way tax, as far as trade unions,
community groups and dozens of other
organizations — and according to polls,
millions of Canadians — are concerned.

They'll be mounting a nationwide protest
against the threatened seven-per-cent con-
sumer tax on April 7 and April 9, with
anti-GST cards, speeches, demonstrations
and a variety of other actions, under the
general direction of the Pro-Canada Net-
work.

Organizers of the Campaign for Fair
Taxes in B.C. say they’ve seldom seen such
enthusiasm, with dozens of church, women’s
and community groups, and trade unions
requesting thousands of ballots to lodge
votes against the unpopular tax.

The campaign works like this: On Satur-
day, April 7, booths will be set up in popular
locations such as shopping malls and com-
munity centres. The public will be asked to
fill out a card registering their vote.

On April 9, the campaign moves to the
workplace as thousands of trade union
members sign their opposition. Demonstra-
tions are planned that day in several B.C.
centres, and the results will be phoned in to
two major centrals, the B.C. Federation of
Labour and the local office of the Canadian
Labour Congress.

At a working session in Vancouver
March 17, network chair Tony Clarke
quoted a Native leader in terming the GST

| part of “an undeclared war against people

in communities, an undeclared war against
democracy.”
Clarke told the session, which included

Narn

Count me in for the Campaign for Fair Taxes
eae ae Y rer ;

fom file mee iatremation

CAMPAIGN FOR FAIR TAXES CARD
April 7-9.

leaders such as Jeff Rose of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees and Saskat-
chewan Federation of Labour president
Barb Byers, that the GST was definitely a
part of the free trade pact which the PCN
was formed to fight.

Labour is a major component of the anti-
GST fight, but the leadership of the April
actions comes from the network, according
to local-CLC representative Gordon Lar-
kin.

Most of organized labour is involved,
including CLC affiliates and Confederation
of Canadian Unions affiliates such as
CAIMAW, he noted.

Nationally, major groups such as the
National Action Caucus on the Status of

The Tory government is “on the ropes
and if we can all give a push, I think we
can defeat the GST,” author and trade
union educator Ben Swankey told dele-
gates to the Vancouver and District
Labour Council Mar. 20.

The Goods
and Services Tax
is the “biggest tax
grab we've ever
faced in Cana-
dian history,”
said Swankey,
noting that the
GST will “take
$3 billion out of
our pockets for

_ every one per
cent of tax.”

And although the initial rate has been
set at seven per cent, it will be pushed up
later, as the experience of other countries
has shown, he said. Similar taxes in
France and Britain, currently at 18 per
cent and 15 per cent respectively, ‘all
started at a lower rate.”

Swankey was given a standing ovation
by the council, which was mobilizing
union members for the April 7-9 days of
protest against the GST. Called the
Campaign for Fair Taxes, and organized
by the Canadian Labour Congress in
conjunction with community and other
groups, the effort will see thousands of
cards against the GST signed across the

—
|

SWANKEY

Push against GST could
shake Tories, labour told

ployment Insurance program, and a

Swankey emphasized that the GST
would be unnecessary if the federal
government took steps to lower its
unconscionably high interest rates “and
if the wealthy corporations in this coun-
try paid their share of taxes.”

The GST is also part of a larger pack-
age of Tory government policies which
include privatization of Crown corpora-
tions, sweeping changes to the Unem-

dramatic shift in taxation from the
corporate sector to individual Canadi-—
ans.

With the changes to UI, Canada joins
the U.S. as the only other country which
provides no federal funds for unem-
ployment insurance, he told unionists.
And there is further evidence of the tax
shift even in the 1989-90 fiscal year, when
personal taxes went up 9.9 per cent while
corporate taxes declined 2.4 per cent,
Swankey said.

What is worse, he said, is that the
government is intent on imposing the tax
despite overwhelming opposition across
the country.

“They say we live ina democracy, but
here we have 80 per cent of the people
opposed to the tax and the government is
telling us that they know best what is
good for the country,” he said.

He urged unionists to participate fully
in the campaign to defeat the GST. “If
we do,” he added, “I think we can defeat
this government soon.”

Postal Cache

set Cthawwee, Chea

... hundreds of thousands to be signed

Women and the Assembly of First Nations
are part of the fight.

“We’re starting to get calls from groups
we hadn’t contacted,” said Rhonda Spence,
who works for the PCN campaign in the
Lower Mainland.

The Lower Mainland campaign, which
works out of the Vancouver office of
Oxfam-Canada, held an open house
Thursday for participating organizations,
which Spence said includes ethnic groups,
student organizations and community cen-
tres.

Organizer Peter Norris noted he had met
with some 30 church groups and an equal
number of community centres, and several
other organizations.

He stressed the campaign will not end
after April 9. “The network is collecting
names of those who want to carry on. You'll
be hearing more from us.”

That sentiment is echoed by the CLC’s
Larkin, who said the PCN’s Vancouver ses-
sion stressed the long-term nature of the
fight. :

“We're looking for millions of people to
protest this Tory tax,” he said.

“Pve been doing this organizing for a
long time, and [’ve never seen such enthusi-
asm.”

Joy McPhail, communications director
for the B.C. Fed, said rallies are planned so
far in Port Alberni and Prince George for
April 9. (None, however, are set for Van-
couver.)

“Many other urban centres have put in
requests for speakers,” she added. :

CUPE is one of the unions taking a major
role in the anti-GST fight. The union
reports its member locals are already bar-
gaining for extra increases to cover the
anticipated jump in inflation for the first
year of the tax.

“Inflation will raise prices, on average,
right across the board by 22 per cent to 3
per cent, like that,” CUPE president Rose
told the union’s national convention last
October.

But, “CUPE is not going to wait until the
GST hits, and then look at it in the rear-
view mirror like we usually do with infla-
tion, before putting up a fight,” he said.

Organizers stress they are not joining for-
ces with some right-wing groups who
oppose the tax but call for cuts in social
services spending as an alternative.

Alternatives to the GST include hitting
corporations for deferred taxes. Clarke told
the PCN: ““We’re going to have to have in
place an alternative economic and social
policy agenda for this country around
which progressive groups and movements
can coalesce.”

Apology is
demanded
for racist
newsletter

Native groups want a public apology,
not only from UBC engineers but also
from the president of the University of
B.C. fora racist and sexist newsletter put
out by the university's Engineering
Undergraduate Society last week.

Laureen Weget, chief of the student
body at the Native Education Centre,
said that -the centre, together with other
Native groups, would be pressing the
demand and would likely be taking up a
petition on the issue.

“There must be a full public apology
to all Native people for what has
appeared in this newsletter,” she said in
an interview March 21.

Weget’s call followed the appearance
on the UBC campus last week of a
mimeographed newsletter published by
the EUS — called 4 ~~
the Neuslettre
— which was rid-
dled with offen-
sive comments
aimed at Natives,
women and gays.

One particular-
ly racist section
included an “‘ap-
plication for
employment” for —
Natives which WEGET
suggested that applicants “don’t need to
include a picture because you all look
alike anyway.”

Weget said that the same material had
appeared a couple of years ago at the
university in Manitoba. “It’s the kind of
stuff that circulates in bars — it’s racist
and it should be unacceptable to any-
body,” she said.

The sexist material contained in the
newsletter has also been seen as espe-
cially disturbing, since it comes only
weeks after Marc Lepine murdered 14
women in an anti-feminist fury at the
university in: Montreal.

EUS officers and the newsletter editor
have apologized for what they acknowl-
edged was the “offensive content of the
Neuslettre” and the university has hinted
that the students involved may be sus-
pended or even expelled. But Weget
wondered: “What would have been done
if we and others had not spoken up?”

UBC students noted that the same
engineering newsletter has a pattern of
printing offensive jokes and other mate-
rial and contained a racist cartoon only
two weeks.ago, although no action was
taken at that time.

The inclusion of the latest material in
the newsletter was reportedly the work of
six particular students who are all part of
a fraternity on campus.

Weget said there should be no ques-
tion that the students who are shown to
be responsible should be disciplined by
the university, including expulsion.

She also called for the university to
suspend any funding for the newsletter
and to inquire into the fraternity to see if
it is in any way involved in the perpetua-
tion of the racist views.

Weget noted that it was a sad com-
ment that engineering students were pub-
lishing racist jokes using university
money at exactly the same time that the
federal government was cutting off fund-
ing to several Native publications across
the country.

UBC president David Strangway said
Tuesday that the funding for the EUS
would be withdrawn.

Pacific Tribune, March 26, 1990 « 3

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