THE WESTERN CANADIAN

LUMBER

4
.

WORKER

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

38,000 copies
printed in this issue.

Published ence monthly as the official publication of the INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA

: Western Canadian Regional Council No. 1

Affiliated with AFL-CIO-CLC

2859 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. Phone 874-5261

Editor — Pat Kerr Business Manager — Fred Fieher

Advertising Representatives — Elizabeth Spencer Associates

Forwarded to every member of the IWA in West¢rn Canada in accordance with convention decisions. recess D> 2
Subscription rate for non-members $2.00 per year.

GUEST EDITORIAL

OUR FUTILE FIGHT
AGAINST INFLATION

¥ people think we’re going to lose
our nerve, they should think again.
We’re not.”

There was no mistaking Prime
Minister Trudeau’s intention when
he uttered these defiant words a few
days before Christmas. Where infla-
tion is concerned, he was telling us,
we are blessed with a government
that knows what it is doing and has
the courage to do it no matter what
the political consequences.

t

In a way, we have to agree. It
takes a kind of courage to tell a na-
tion that the government will stand
by its austerity program even if it
means 6 percent unemployment this
year.

But there are several things wrong
with it. It is a self-centred kind of
courage, for one thing. While the
government compliments itself on be-
ing willing to risk votes in the fight
against inflation, the real sacrifices
are being imposed on others. There
are many thousands of Canadians
to whom austerity and inflation mean
nothing more or less than unemploy-

| ment. At what point does a jobless
man lose his nerve?

F The real indictment of the govern-
3 ment’s brand of courage is that it is

futile. With much patriotic shouting
" the Canadian people are being led
: in a charge up the wrong hill, against
| the wrong enemy, and they are be-
| ing exhorted all the while to ignore
| the casualties. It was this kind of
& courage that persuaded the Polish
; in 1939 to send horsemen

German tanks.

In a fiscal strategy riddled with

: false assumptions, the government's
; fundamental error lies in overestimat-

aes role in the general scheme of
and, indeed, in overestimating
the role of the Canadian economy it-

fact is that we have very lit-
tle to say about inflation in our own
most entirely fino perf swan aoa
by ormance in

the U.S. and transmitted to Canada
imports. John Weldon, Mc-
economist, estimates

the amount of “play” that exists
Canadian and U.S. price be-

amounts to no more than 1

w
&

estimate is correct, it means
»ple are being put out of work,
al progress is being placed in the

deep-freeze and the resources of the
Canadian government and people are
being thrown mightily into the job of
playing around with a small margin.

Domestic inflation is, in fact, the
wrong enemy. The real enemy is in
the U.S., where it is out of reach of
our policies and exhortations. So far
as our own prices are concerned, the
best we can hope for is to stay on the
right side of the marginal difference
in performance between our two
countries — and it doesn’t seem to us
that this should require the entire
resources of a nation.

The value of such an analysis
doesn’t lie in the chance of blaming
someone else for our troubles. Ities
in the realization that we must do an
about-face in our thinking about in-

flation, its causes and its remedies. :

We must start by accepting that
we can’t beat someone else’s infla-
tion and that beating inflation is
therefore not our national task.
Rather, it is to maintain our social
goals in spite of inflation and to pre-
vent rising prices from destroying
human lives willy-nilly like some med-
ieval plague.

For Ottawa, this would mean a
complete reversal of most current
policies. Instead of withdrawing from
our national life like a spider in a
rainstorm, the central government
should be extending itself vigorously.

Instead of pleading austerity at
every turn, it should be using its re-
sources more generously than ever
to ease the load of rising prices on
the many Canadians who find they
can’t compete — people on fixed in-
comes, the unemployed and working
poor, residents of depressed regions.

These people need help and they
can only be helped by a central gov-
ernment that senses the urgency of
the times and sees the human suf-
fering that lies behind the charts and

graphs.

To start spending money is hardly
the conventional way to react in a
time of rising prices. But Ottawa has
to concede that the conventional re-
action hasn’t helped either — and
Espediene are being hurt in the bar-
gain.

If we must make mistakes in fiscal

policies — and it seems nations are
condemned to that — let’s at least
make sure that we are erring on the
side of people.

Toronto Daily Star

MARCH, 1970

NEVER MIND YOUR FIFTEEN YEARS LOG-
GING EXPERIENCE ... WHAT COLLEGE DID
YOU GRADUATE FROM? :

ISLAND SPEC GROUP
COMMENDS LUMBER WORKER

The Editor:

Your February number of
the Lumber Worker includes
a two-page insert featuring
pollution.

The President of our local
SPEC group has asked me to
write to you requesting 100
to 200 copies of this feature

article. Our purpose would be
to distribute these to our
members.

If it is possible for you to
comply with this request, we
thank you.

And, we commend you on
publishing this material.

Yours sincerely,

HARRY HARRIS

IMMORAL OLD LOGGER
IS NO SOCIAL CREDITER

The Editor:

I must even at this late date
answer bouquet and_ brick-
bats. How naive can some of
the workers be. Don’t they
realize that the present gov-
ernment jumped on the band-
wagon when Canada was en-
tering a period of expansion.
Who do they think is respon-
sible for the improved high-
way. For your readers’ bene-
fit there is less road mileage
on a per capita basis than
there was in the depression.

‘Thank organized labour
who gained more purchasing
power for the worker. Before
the war one in a hundred
owned a car, now it’s probably
one in eight. Revenue from
fuel sales and licensing. They
had no choice across Canada
regardless of what form of
government was in power, the
improvements had to be
made.

What is this socialist

scourge one writer refers to?

Perhaps like Rip Van Winkle

I have been asleep. Pollution «

almost to the point of no re-
turn. One in five Canadians,
two in five in the Maritimes
living in poverty. Token of-
ferings to social services. Our
heritage sold down the river,
literally.

The unjust society (Harold
Cardinal read it!). Fear en-
gendered in some workers to
the point in our own structure
where they would desert the
ship. The coward’s way.
Bring her safely to harbor,
then if you wish to join an-'
other ship do so. I thought -
these evils were under capit- ~
alism. Some day the worker

will awake but there are none <

so blind as those who wish to

be blind.
To union wife I waft a bou-

quet of flowers and sign my ___

name. .
An Immoral Old Logger.
Ken Davidson, Y

Box 153, Beaver Cove.

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