High Society eee teletetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetsteteteteteteetetetetetetntate « : —Carless in UE News ‘Cuba 69 rally theme “Cuba 1969"' is the theme of a travelogue and social evening scheduled for the Fishermen's Hall, 138 East Cordova Street, Vancouver, on Saturday, March 1 at 8 p.m. Colored slides and commentary by Mr. A.E. Olsen and Mrs. Eunice Parker, a display and sale of Cuban handi- crafts and refreshments will be features of the gathering. sponsored by the Canadian Cuban Friendship Committee. Mr. Olsen and Mrs. Parker were members of a group of 27 NATO Cont'd from pg. 2 resolutions against Canada's participation in the aggressive alliance. The mass of Canadian workers, he said, know of the dangers involved, and can exert mass pressure against further committments by our govern ment. “If there is a vast demand for increased grants for education, for housing, health and pensions, the government will have to listen. With the money that is wasted on NATO used for peaceful purposes in Canada, we could have a reduction in our taxes, not an increase!”’ “The trade union movement, farm organizations, young people, the NDP, all those who believe that we can’t have guns and butter too; who believe that Canada should strike out on a new course of national development and foreign aid, must make their voices heard!”’ M.M. tourists from Western Canada who toured Cuba for three weeks at the beginning of the year. They attended the giant rally of one million people in Havana on January 2, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, where Fidel Castro spoke. Proceeds from the admission fee of $1.50 (students 75¢) will be donated to the Abel Santa Maria School for blind children in Havana. Hope of the Committee is that it can raise sufficient money to furnish the school with a special typewriter for the blind. Visiting Cuba, many for the first time, was a fascinating experience for the tourist group, ' said tour director Mrs. Gladise Bjarnason, ‘‘and they have a most interesting story. They will tell it as it is. Here is an oppor- tunity for anyone interested to get first hand and up to date information on what is happening in Cuba. Most of the group of 27 will be in attendance and happy to answer questions."’ LEE gemaere oe ose te | ANNUAL VOCHENBLATT BANQUET Hear JOSEPH GERSHMAN Editor ‘PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST’ SUNDAY - MARCH 9th - 6:30 pm PERETZ SCHOOL LOUNGE 6184 Ash St. Full Course Dinner Served Admission $2.00 — Everyone Welcome PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 28, 1969—Page 12 i, LF: eee. , ae Sa, Se Fe P MINING AND OR TRAIL SMELTERWORKERS SAY ITS... Later than you think The Trail Local of the United Steel Workers Union, formerly the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, published the following editorial article entitled “It may be later than you think!” in its January, 1969 edition of ‘The Commenta- tor’, voice of Local 480. It is slightly abridged: It is very easy to ignore the horrors spawned by open-pit and strip mining. It’s easy, because our province is so vast and supports such tremendous hidden wealth, and the despoilers are “after such a small part of it'’— Kaiser wants a few square miles, Cominco has spoken for its share and the ravaging is already in process on a huge scale on Texada Island, as well as at nearby Phoenix. The Highland Valley is being blackened by open pit copper and molybdenum mining and the bowels of the earth are being exposed at Babine Lake, Endako, Port Hardy and many more locations in B.C. It is easy to overlook this travesty of nature because it poses no immediate threat to the well-being of the shoe salesman ar waiter, or miner in Trail or Kimberley or wherever. Or does it? Strip mining is an extremely efficient and cheap method of extracting mineral wealth from beneath the earth's surface. The work is performed, in the main, by huge machines and manpower is not a factor. At the moment, strip mining (in the individual's mind) is associated with coal. But strip mining lends itself equally well to other mineral re- sources. More and more, foreign interests are invading B.C. with large bank rolls and no conscience. Their purpose is to procure, as cheaply as possible, our mineral bearing ores in raw and unprocessed form, and carted off to smelters in Japan, United States, France, Belgium and any number of other countries. The smelters in these countries, in turn, support huge and beneficial secondary industries employing thousands upon thousands of workers. It is a safe bet, that much of the economy of these countries, built on secondary industry, would suffer severely if the supply from B.C. were choked off. Our province contributes the lion’s share to this cycle of. primary extraction, recovery and secondary industry, yet our rewards are minuscule. The jobs created in primary extrac- tion by strip mining can hardly be numbered in the thousands. Yet so efficient and so cheap is this method of extraction, that inevitably properties, such as Kimberley, Bluebell and Benson Lake, which rely upon conventional underground methods for ore extraction, will be deactivated as more and more open pit mines come into production. This phenomena was demonstrated by Cominco when they brought their Pine Point property into production. The second effect of this cheap ore which foreign corporations are packing out of B.C., is that a combination of the more expensively mined ores and our higher wages in the smelting industry will not allow us to compete. This is,not idle speculation! The only owner of a lead-zinc smelter in B.C. - Cominco Ltd., is exporting a larger percentage of its raw ores since its open pit operations came on stream in Pine Point. It is no secret that MONOPOLY Cont'd from pg. | This was confirmed by a statement of Dave Herd, president of the B.C. Lumber Industries Ltd., a major building supply company. Expressing criticism of. rising plywood prices, which, he says, have been climbing steadily ‘‘and mysteriously’’ since last October. Unsanded grades have gone up by 31 percent and sanded grades by 25 percent. FIX PRICES Herd told a reporter of the Vancouver Province that the plywood increases were surprising because they weren't related to the effect of the severe winter, He said: “Just a call every two weeks or so tells us another price increase is here. Another spokesman for the building supply companies in B.C., who would not divulge his name for obvious reasons, urged a government inquiry into plywood sales. ‘‘It is strange, in what is supposed to be a competitive market, that when one supplier raises his prices his ‘competitors’ do the same — all at exactly the same time.” Another lumber retailer said, “We're repricing in the lumber yards every few hours. And another added that prices are “fantastically high. They've gone up another $10 in the past week; we've just about lost track of it. It's a question now of how much higher the prices will go.”’ The attempt to shift the blame on the ‘‘severe log shortage’ and the IWA for deciding not to allow its members to work overtime, was a ruse by the forest monopolies to cover up the fact that they have gone ‘‘profit mad,”’ and are trying to squeeze everything they can out of the public. When profit figures for the past few months are available they will probably astound the public. The last financial statements available are up to Dec. 31, 1967. These show that three of the major companies made _ the following profits before taxes: MacMillan Bloedel, $74,100,000; Crown Zellerbach, $19,522,000; B.C. Forest Products, $10,742,000. The total profits for these three companies was $104,364,000. That should be enough for the greediest corpora- tions — but not the forest companies in B.C.! Trudeau's ‘‘just society’ is more than ‘‘just’’ for these forest giants. It’s time the Federal government was compelled by public opinion to crack down on these profiteering monopolies. The place to start would be an immediate investigation into price-fixing and monopoly practises in B.C.’s_ forest industry, and an immediate order to bring down prices to protect the public. Cominco is investing in smelters in numerous foreign countries, and the prospect is, that like its underground mining operations, local smelting and recovery of metal values will be de-empha- sized in favor of exporting a larger percentage of raw ore While it may be an exaggera- tion to say that this development is solely the result of open pit mining, there can be no doubt that this cheap and efficient and devastating method of ore extrac- tion is the chief contributing cause to this adverse shift in industrial development. So even if you are a little worried that strip mining will drain your favorite fishing hole dry, or that the 50 yard shovels will engorge your favorite deer run, what does it signify’ Because you may not have a job to hold you here to enjoy God's bounty (if we are successful in preserving it) nor to bemoan the lack of resources if the strip miners continue to success{ully defy the desires of the people Cont'd from pg. 1 fully aware of the Common- wealth Trust “shambles. as described by one of its top managerial staff, or didn't ‘have time” to enact all necessary safeguards for Commonwealth Trust depositors, whose only media of protest so far, (aside from Opposition protest and demand in the B.C. Legislature) is summed up in the widening cry, “Where the Hell’s the money?”’. In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court of B.C. on February 20 by gov't-appointee A.D. Peter Stanley it is estimated that three firms of Commonwealth Trust, ie., Commonwealth Acceptance Corporation, Commonwealth Savings Plan Ltd., and Common wealth Investors Syndicate, have in their combined efforts, “mislaid” or gone in the “red” by “nearly $13-million’’. Finance Minister Bennett didn’t waste any time in digging up $3-million to salvage a ‘‘free- enterprising’ corporation. The depositor on the losing end should have the right of similar consideration from his govern- ment. If, as NDP Bob Strachan says Finance Minister Bennett holds to the idea that ‘‘every company has the God-given right to go broke’’, why hand out $3- million of the taxpayer's money to circumvent that ‘‘right”’ without similar due concern for those who have been ‘‘taken for 4 ride’’ on the Commonwealth Trust bandwagon? With the Opposition’s demand for the resignation of Premier Bennett as finance minister, there is every possibility that before the legislature debate on the Commonwealth Trust scandal ends, the Bennett govern ment itself may be forced to resign because of its too intimate association with Common- wealth, plus its obvious non association or concern with Commonwealth depositors.