ee oe ee

: control.

The despoilers
must be stopped

GEORGE HARRIS, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian section of
the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, wrote the following
column in the Jan. 20 issue of "UE News,” the union's paper published
in Toronto:

Accidents, big and small, occur with such regularity that
most people casually limit themselves to reading the headline,
and perhaps a paragraph or two of the newspaper story, This
was probably so on Nov. 26, 1968, when the Globe and Mail and
other newspapers carried a short story of an accident in British
Columbia, in which two people lost their lives.

The tragedy of this accident is not limited to the relatives
and friends of those who died. It is a tragedy which concerns
all Canadians, and for this reason we quote the following from
the press account:

“NATAL, B.C. - Two bodies were recovered yesterday
from 300,000 tons of mud, rock and mine waste which
thundered across the southern Trans-Canada highway on
Sunday.

“The bodies of John Louis La Paire . . . and his wife,
Elaine, were found in their late model car under 15 feet of 14
bulldozers.

“The slide, which covered about 600 feet of the highway to
a depth of 30 to 40 feet, occurred 375 miles east of Vancouver
. .» The slide was caused by an underground stream that
loosened waste material on the side of a dome-shaped
mountain about 4,000 feet high.’’

“C.E. Balsley, general manager of Kaiser Coal Corp.,
which owns a strip-mining coal operation near the site of the
slide, said the debris was overburden from the mining
operation.

“The strip-mining operation is part of a $45-million
contract Kaiser has with Japanese steel interests.”’

What stands out to this point is that two Canadians lost
their lives, under a landslide caused by a mining operation
owned by an American company which ships the coal, for a
profit of course, to feed the blast furnaces of the Japanese steel
industry.

EXPORTING CANADA’S FUTURE

The Kaiser operation in British Columbia is just another
example of the treachery of successive governments in
Canada, whose policies have been geared to serve the interests
of the fast-buck investors who loot our raw-material riches for
shipment to other countries, primarily the United States, to
feed their industries. '

For more than two decades the UE has_ vehemently
protested against this betrayal of the real and lasting interests
of Canada, interests which require the use of as much of our
raw materials in Canada as is necessary to accelerate
industrial development here to meet population growth, 10 and
20 times our present numbers.

UE and others have never tired of repeating that
manufacturing provides many more jobs than the extractive
industry, and that it is only common sense to gear natural
resources to development of manufacturing in Canada, and not
to the manufacturing needs of other countries. We have
hammered away at the fact that Canada is tremendously rich
in raw-material resources, but not inexhaustibly rich, as is
shown by the United States, once also very rich in raw
materials, but now reaching the stage where her store has been
almost depleted in many vital areas.

It is natural that the United States, and other raw-material
poor countries, should look to and séek access to our present
abundance. It is neither natural nor sensible that Canada
should open the door to the unlimited export of our natural
wealth.

The natural wealth of a country, is the inalienable
property, indeed birthright, of its people, and no government
can be given, or take the right to give ownership of it to any
other country.

WHO IS TO BLAME

The fact is that vast areas of our country, containing the
riches of Midas in natural resources, are now in the firm grip
of U.S. industrialists and bankers with papers of ownership in
their pockets. The blame for this rests squarely on fast-buck
Canadian capitalists and Canadian governments. They have
sold and continue to sell Canada short, and from the standpoint
of the vital interests of the Canadian people, are traitors of the
first water.

Certainly up-front among the sell-out forces is the
government of British Columbia. The ‘Kaiser operation
involves title to mineral rights the size of England, in the
mountains of British Columbia, For each ton of coal exported

-by Kaiser to make Japanese steel, this American corporation
will get dollars in profit, and Canada a few pennies in royalties.

B.C. Premier Bennett, it will be recalled, was the leading
light in the conspiracy which handed over control of the mighty
Columbia River to the United States, for exploitation of its
power to keep the wheels of American industry turning, while a
vast area of B.C. remained without industry.

Successive Canadian governments under St. Laurent,
Pearson, Diefenbaker, and now Trudeau, share equally in the
blame. They have facilitated and encouraged the U.S.
takeover,

What can Canadians do? We must agitate and protest, we
must mobilize and organize, to make governments halt the sell-
out, and begin the process of returning Canada to Canadian

ny
d te it ’ ,i¢?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 31

1969—Poge 12.0)

peti th nts

‘the province needs. -

Hospital crisis arouses

demands for quick action

Echoes of the growing hospital
crisis continued to roll across the
province this week with a report
issued by the Greater Vancouver»
Regional Hospital District Board
calling for increased facilities;
and the dean of the University of
B.C.’s medical faculty
threatening to put his job ‘‘on the
line’ in his fight to get greater
aid from Victoria for the new
psychiatric hospital.

The UBC dean, Dr. J.F.
McCreary, called for the setting

up of a commission to
investigate the dispute over
financing the psychiatric

hospital. The modern hospital
was completed in November but
has not yet opened because the
Socred’ government refused to
agree on a financial formula to
meet the additional costs,

The new psychiatrict unit is
considered one of the most
advanced in Canada for
treatment of mentally ill
patients; as well as being a
centre in which psychiatrists,
phychologists, social workers,
nurses and other health profes-
sionals for the province can be
trained,

The unit will be closed Feb. 6
and the highly skilled staff
released unless the provincial
government broadens the
present BCHIS formula to meet
financial costs. Medical groups
in the province have urged that
“‘in the interests of the health of
the people .. . that action be
taken to modify the present
procedures of the Hospital
Insurance Service to permit the
unit to open,”’

The psychiatric unit at the
UBC has been ready to accept
patients since November 18, 1968.
The tragedy is that despite the
urgent need for such care, it has
not opened because of the

SOCREDS

Cont'd from pg. 1

provide the main fireworks at the
1969 session.

Above all B.C. needs a new
resource policy — a policy that
will make it more profitable to
manufacture than to export in
raw form, providing more jobs
and more revenue. In essence we
require to put an end to the
subsidization of raw material
production such as the three-year
tax-free periods for strip-mining,
and subsidization of export
facilities like Roberts Bank.

Instead we need (a)
preferential treatment for
processing and manufacturing
before export; (b) establish-
ment of Crown corporations to
provide the smelters, oil and gas
refineries, wood and coal
processing plants private capital
will not; (c) effective laws to
control pollution, reforestation,
land restoration and compel
delivery of ores and raw
materials to government
processors; and (d) eventual
halting of raw material exports.

It is to this problem the Com-
munist Party in B.C.intends to
direct its main effort during this
session. And it is around such
policies that not only will job
opportunities be expanded, but
the added revenues be found to

provide the tax relief, housing, ’

hospital and educational Needs ,

a

wseeseceees» Welfare, Plan, covering, . un

4

financial hangup. Its 60 beds and

out-patient services will greatly

augment the scarce psychiatric

facilities of the Vancouver area.
***

A report released last
Wednesday in Vancouver by the
Regional Hospital District calls
for new major hospitals to be
built in Burnaby and Coquitlam,

and 377 new extended care beds.

added to Vancouver hospitals.
The report says that in
Burnaby there is the need for
indore hospital facilities for 500
acute care beds. In Coquitlam, it
Says, a new hospital to have 245
acute and rehabilitative beds
and 85 extended care beds are
needed by 1976. It also urges that
213 more acute and rehabili-
tative beds be added at Lions

Gate Hospital on the North
Shore.

The report also calls for
extension of hospital beds at
Royal Columbian Hospital in
New Westminster; encourage.
ment for a new hospital in Delta
with 110 acute and rehabilative
beds and 38 extended care beds:
expansion of the Richmond
General Hospital and Surrey
hospital with additional beds for
acute and rehabilitation cases.

Also urged in the report is a
large expansion of emergency
departments in all Vancouver
hospitals and increased
laboratory capacity. All in all,
the report underlines the urgent
need for rapid expansion of
hospital facilities on the Lower
Mainland.

Strike votes on tap;
MC boss feels pinch

Two big unions are in the local
headlines this week in their
announced plans for a union
strike vote to back up wage
demands; the United Steel-
workers with jurisdiction in
some 56 plants in the Greater
Vancouver and-Lower Mainland
areas, represented by the Metal
Industries Association. The
other is the Amalgamated
Transit Union (ATU) involving
some 2,000 bus drivers and other
maintenance personnel of b.C.
Hydro. ,

Negotiations between ATU and
Hydro were broken off after the
ATU and Hydro both rejected a
settlement proposal but forward
by commission ‘‘mediator’’
Clark Gilmore. ATU nego-
tiations cover Hydro transit
employees in Vancouver, New
Westminster and Victoria.

The Transit Union has decided
to take a strike vote February 7,
mantime wage negotiations will
remain suspended until the vote
tally is in. (Under the provisions
of Bill 33 government super-
vised strike votes by B.C. trade
unions are no longer required).

One of the key points in dispute
between the Steelworkers Union
and the Metal Industries Associa-
_tion centers around the industry

ion

Te eves

members,
etc. The Steel negotiating com- i
mittee are scheduled to meet —
Saturday of this week at whichit —
is expected an immediate call for i
a union strike vote will be issued. —
“** '

This week B.C,’s Bill 33 —
Mediation
chairman John Parker got into

the news media to inform al] and —

sundry that his mediation squad —
“doesn’t want to force itself into —
any union-management wage dis-

pute. . . if the parties can settle
it themselves.’’ ;
What commissioner Parker

should have said, ‘where it is not
wanted’’, a position already well
illustrated by organized labor
in B.C. in its opposition to
Bill 33 with its standing threat of —
compulsory arbitration; a threat _
which hard-nosed employers are
and _ will

refusal to bargain in good faith —
with the unions of theif
employees. j
A brief poll of labor opinion on
the Parker ‘‘sales-talk’’ for the
Bill 33 Mediation Commission
would indicate that the com-
mission is feeling the pinch from
labor’s non-co-operation as
projected by B.C. Federation of

Labor policy,

its administration, —

Commission ©

use to the fullest re
advantage in their customary _