BRITISH COLUMBIA

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Policy alternatives crucial
as B.C. vote decision nears _

- By MAURICE RUSH

The political pot in British Columbia is starting to boil as all political parties gear
__ up for an election which Premier Bill Bennett can call at any time. Most predictions
_ put it some time around next June although that is by no means certain. Much
depends on whether the Socreds consider that they have put together an attractive

enough program to win the next election.

Recently the cabinet met in a secret ses-

Sion, which was followed by several key

policy announcements which indicated
what the strategy will be. An election will
likely be called when the Socreds think they
have all the pieces in place.

The government, which is now running

behind in popular opinion polls, is aware
that it cannot win re-election just on the
euphoria expected around Expo, or on the
building of the Coquihalla highway and
Annacis Island bridge.
_ The economy and jobs are the central
issue and the Socreds realize that to get back
into’ office they will have to show they are
turning the economy around and have a
program to overcome the deep economic
crisis which has engulfed B.C. largely as a
result of their own restraint policies.

Bennett’s main activities in the last few
weeks have been to attempt to put together
an economic program that he thinks will go
Over with the voters, outflank the NDP, and
ensure his re-election. The extra insurance
he is counting on is the redistribution which
added 12 seats, 11 of them in Socred terri-
tory. The premier and a high level delega-
tion recently returned from talks with
government and business leaders in Cali-
fornia and other U.S. financial centres. For
a man seeking the spotlight on every occa-
sion, he was amazingly mum when he
returned on the results of his negotiations in
the U.S. That could indicate that a deal with
USS. interests is being cooked up, but the
premier doesn’t want to talk about it pre-
Mmaturely, and wants to time an announce-
ment when it will do the Socred re-election
chances the most good.

It should be clear from what Bennett said _

at the Revelstoke dam opening, and in a
Series of public statement since, that the
Socred strategy is to put together a deal with
USS. financial interests. Bennett is the fore-
Most advocate in Canada of free trade
arrangements with the U.S. Without wait-
ing for Ottawa-Washington negotiations,
he wants to ‘push the whole process ahead
with a deal on a continental energy and
trade agreement involving B.C.

The central piece in such a deal would be
an energy agreement which would likely
involve -the integration of B.C.’s hydro
Tesources with the western U.S. states, par-
ticularly California,in a hydro grid, and a
contract for large scale long term export of
hydro to the U.S. As part of this deal the

‘C. government has already indicated it
will go ahead with Site C and other dams to
Provide power for the U.S.

However, the deal he is negotiating may
80 further than that. Talks are now going
ahead with federal Energy Minister Pat

arney to deregulate natural gas prices,
Paving the way for the massive export of
B.C. gas to the U.S. at cut-rate prices. Car-
Ney is expected to announce the price

deregulation’ decision by Nov. 1. Also, the »

Tecent Pearse royal commission report on
water resources has cleared the way for the
export of B.C. water to the U.S. If the
recommendations are approved by the

Ory government in Ottawa, it would open

© Way to-expand the present trickle of
water exports to large scale exports using
Pipelines and water tankers. If, as part of
this free trade package,the Bennett govern-
ment could get concessions on lumber
tariffs and pose as the savior of lumber
Markets in the U.S., the Socreds calculate

€y would have a program with which to

- 80 to the voters.

Such a deal would represent a major
giveaway to U.S. interests, a giant step
towards integrating B.C. into the U.S.
economy. It would permanently reduce the
people of B.C. to hewers of wood, diggers of
ore, and builders. of dams and pipelines to
carry B.C. resources to the U.S. for eco-
nomic development and jobs in the U.S.

This right wing giveaway program which
Bennett is now trying to put together must
be blocked and the Socred government
ousted in the next election. In its place, B.C.
needs a new government pledged to carry
through far reaching alternative policies
which will reject restraint, adopt a new eco-
nomic direction for B.C. based on large
scale government intervention to get the
economy going, and to take action to undo
the damage done by the Socreds to the
economy, social services, education, labor
and human rights.

It’s in this connection that progressive
people in B.C. need to assess where the New
Democratic Party and its leader Bob Skelly

is going. Everyone recognizes that despite .

noises being made by the provincial Liber-
als and Tories, the NDP offers the only
realistic government alternative at this time
to the Socreds. Therefore the policy posi-
tions taken by the NDP are of major impor-
tance to progressive people who want a
change in government, and especially to
working people and the trade unions.

While Skelly announced some worth- -

while reforms in recent policy statements he

has so far failed to come forward with a
strong alternative program around which
all anti-Socred forces could be rallied. He,
and the top leadership of the NDP appear
to be ignoring completely the lessons of the
defeat suffered in the 1983 election. In 1983
post-election statements, many New Demo-
crats, among them Burnaby MP Svend
Robinson, attributed the NDP defeat to a

policy of trying to caputre votes in the cen-
tre by “fuzzifying” NDP policies. If any-
thing, the Skelly leadership is moving even
further to the right than the NDP did in

_1983 in the attempt to win middle voters.

On many key issues the NDP seems
neither for nor against. Ambiguity on major
questions seems to be deliberate and
appears to be aimed at presenting the image
Skelly mainly wants to project — thatis an
image of political conciliation, as opposed
to the Socreds’ “confrontation.”

How else do you explain the statement on
housing which, while containing some good
proposals, says the NDP wants legislation
which will protect both the tenant and the
landlord? Or take his statements on free
trade. Both the Canadian Labor Congress
and NDP federally have taken a stand
against free trade. But Skelly, speaking to
the B.C. Association of Professional Econ-
omists in Vancouver recently said: “Free
trade is one of those ideological issues that
people believe in. It’s a good term to believe
in because it starts with free and ends with
trade.” Now what the hell is that supposed
to mean?

Before leaving for Australia last week
with a top level delegation of NDP and
trade union leaders, Skelly said they were
going to study the free trade arrangement
between Australia and New Zealand, as if
there was any similarity with the economic
and political issues involved in a Canada-
U.S. free trade agreement. What else does
this position do but create doubts about free
trade, weaken the fight against it, and create
illusions that there might be something in
free trade for the working people of Can-
ada?

Or take as another example Skelly’s
statements to the press before he left for
Australia. In an interview, Skelly said that
the Australian model of labor-government-
employer co-operation offers a clear alter-
native to the “confrontation” policies in
B.C. ““You can achieve restraint in wages by
voluntary agreement, and from our point of
view that is better than the Bennett program
of ramming restraint down labor’s throat.”

Saying that labor would have to make
sacrifices in return for gains, Skelly said: “I
don’t think any government in this province
can win the confidence of the electorate if
voters feel it will give the store away to
organized labor. We want an accord with
labor to show this won’t be the case.” Labor
hasn’t exactly been getting “the store” the
last few years. But this attitude to the trade
union movement is extremely damaging to
the hopes of a strong united campaign to
oust the Socreds.

Here again, the NDP is repeating the

-mistake of 1983 when similar statements

were made by the NDP leadership in seek-
ing to keep the trade unions at arms length.
The tactic reduced the largest mass mem-
bership organization in B.C. to a role of
providing donations and election workers.
In the main, labor’s just demands were
ignored and labor’s own voice was muted
throughout the ill-fated election campaign.

Many trade union leaders admitted in the
1983 post-election analysis that they made a
mistake in burying the trade union move-
ment and not bringing labor’s independent
demands to the fore during the election
campaign. The result, as NDP campaign
manager Yvonne Cocke said after the elec-
tion, was that “people we felt should be our
natural supporters, like some of the people
who have been hit pretty hard, groups such
as the teachers, labor, were not solid like
they should be.”

In the 1983 elections, many workers felt
that they had no direct interest in the out-
come of the election because none of the
major parties supported their demands and
many of their issues were ignored or
muffled in the NDP campaign. The B.C.

Federation of Labor set up a phone bank in
the campaign to canvass trade unionists and
found out one week before the election that
of those canvassed, 50 per cent had not
made up their minds how to vote and of
those, one-quarter said they would not vote
NDP.

The NDP made the mistake of taking the
working class vote for granted. To repeat

“Skellyhasnot
come forward with a —
strong alternative —_—
program and is —

that same mistake again would be utter
stupidity. The mass public invovlement of
the trade unions in the Vanocuver COPE-
Unity campaign did not weaken the fight
against the right wing NPA. On the con-
trary, it strengthened it.

Perhaps the event that has shocked
people most recently was the announce-
ment of a reception with Skelly for 300 top
businessmen at the Terminal City Club,set
for Oct. 23. The reception, to be hosted by —
Vancouver Mayor Michael Harcourt, is
obviously an attempt to convince big busi-
ness that it has nothing to fear from an NDP
government. Otherwise why stage this kind
of event?

The provincial committee of the Com-
munist Party, which met in Vancouver on
Sunday, Oct. 6 noted these negative trends
in NDP policy and warned that by failing to
come forward with a clear cut, anti-big bus-
iness program to meet the crisis in B.C., and
steps to unite all anti-Socred forces in a
movement to oust the Socred government
when the election is called, the NDP isin _
danger of repeating the disastrous mistakes _
which led to the defeat in 1983.

The Communist Party believes there is
still time to change direction if labor and-
other people’s organizations press the
NDP to halt the shift to the right, and to
adopt fighting alternative policies. The Oct. —
6 meeting agreed to step up the distribution __
of the Communist Party’s Unity Appeal _
and to work for all-in unity to oust the
Socreds. The provincial committee stressed
that the minimum program suggested in its
Unity Appeal could provide a basis forrally-
ing the broadest sections of the population —
to rid B.C. of the right wing Socred
government.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 16, 1985¢3