British Columbia

PREMIER BILL VANDER ZALM AND CABINET ... under fire in New Westminster.

Legislation to prevent
plant closures demanded

: Continued on page 12
and plywood mills in favour of more lucra-
tive pulp production.

The boisterous audience, which
dwindled to a few Socred faithful after trade
unionists filed out in frustration following an
hour of questions, hit the premier and

cabinet for failing to penalize such corpora-
tions through a reduction in their annual
allowable cuts, and demanded protective
legislation against plant closures.

Most of the explaining fell to Richmond,
who claimed he told Fletcher Challenge it
faced either a reduction if it closed the Delta
Plywood mill, or a loss through transfer of
cutting rights to the buyer if the mill were
sold.

On the other hand, Fraser Mills is “anti-
quated” and the company faces no penalty
over its closure, Richmond said.

_ He said the corporation was claiming a
combined loss of $32 million from the two
operations since 1982. Fletcher Challenge
- moved into B.C. in 1983, acquiring first
Crown Forest and then B.C. Forest Products.

Rejecting claims that an New
Democratic government would be better
than the current Socred administration, the
minister also said that when “preser-
vationists” demonstrated against logging (in
the Carmanah valley) at the legislature last
year, “the NDP was there.” But when TWA-
Canada locals protested in favour a week

later, “the NDP was not there, but (former
Socred forests minister) Dave Parker was.”

A laid-off woodworker told the cabinet
he was 54 years old and, “If you think I can
find a job in today’s economy, you’ve got to
be smoking something.”

Another woodworker charged that com-
panies were using top-grade saw logs to
produce pulp. “They (large corporations) get
all the wood they need while small business
is excluded.”

The woodworkers left the meeting after
telling the cabinet, in town on what is
regarded as a pre-election junket, that they
were not answering the questions.

“What made me upset was all the
philosophizing about the freedom of people
to come. in (to the province) and buy up all
the resources they want,” Leclair told
reporters later, referring to remarks by
Vander Zalm.

He said the key issue is that “the govern-
ment has no legislation in place for foreign
multinationals who buy up companies and
shut them down.”

The union plans actions over the closure
to coincide with its annual convention early
next month. Members will leaflet the public,
demonstrate outside Fletcher Challenge’s
offices and may even stage a sit-in, Leclair
said.

covered in the Sept. 10 Tribune.

The CBC is failing to let people know about the effects of the Canada-U.S. Free
- Trade Agreement, demonstrators charged in a_ protest outside the
corporation’s building in downtown Vancouver on Sept. 14. Members of
Citizens Concerned About Free Trade were protesting the lack of coverage
given to a talk by the group’s leader, David Orchard, on Sept. 8. The talk is

PHOTO CCAFT

- Students, teachers say

lack of funds behind
enrolment crisis

Huge registration lineups resulting in
hundreds of students being tured .away
from colleges and universities across the
province show that the provincial gov-
ermment’s much-touted “access for all”
strategy is bankrupt, student and faculty
leaders have charged.

Registration reached crisis proportions
early this month, due to increased enrolment
coupled with faculty layoffs and course can-
cellations. Anear-riot at King Edward Cam-
pus of Vancouver Community College en-
sued when hundreds were tured away
during registration for English as a Second
Language courses.

’ Chronic government underfunding of
post-secondary education and poor planning
are to blame, charged the Canadian Federa-
tion of Students and the College-Institute
Educators Association.

“The money put into access programs
may look good on paper, but having students
walk away unable to register or without the
courses they need, tells us that the money
needed is clearly not there,” said CFS
Pacific Region chair Brad Lavigne ina state-
ment.

“The real problem is that students’ expec-
tations have been raised, but the government
has not come across with adequate funding
or planning to fulfil those expectations,”
said CIEA president Ed Lavalle.

CFS researcher Jean Karlinski said stu-
dents who do manage to get into the system
often take courses they don’t want or need,
are forced to attend part-time when they
wanted a full course load, or must even
register at more than one institution to get
required credits.

Karlinski cited a survey by the student
union at VCC’s Langara Campus that
gathered more than 1,000 names from
would-be students who failed to get any
courses. Another 2,500 were forced to take
one or more courses they didn’t want, she

reported.

Around the province, the picture is much
the same. Information compiled by CFS
members from registrars and student union
surveys found:

« At Douglas College, students were
forced to take courses at Simon Fraser
University.

¢ Some 150-200 students at Cariboo Col-
lege in Kamloops found no courses, while
400-500 were forced to attend part time.
Some 1,000 first and second year students
had to enrol in up to three courses they didn’t
want, while seminar classes swelled to ap-
proximately 36 froma projected 12 students.

+ Malaspina College in Nanaimo has 900
students on a waiting list.

+ In Castlegar, Selkirk College has 200
students wait-listed.

e Third- and fourth-year students at the
University of Victoria were forced to take
first- and second-year level courses to retain
full-time status. Departments like geog-
raphy and history have waiting lists of some
1,000. Students are taking longer to achieve
degrees, increasing their personal debt load.

Capital expansions are under way at
some institutions, but these are too few and
too late for this year’s registration, the stu-
dent federation found. ‘

“At Langara, a student union official
found that in nine out of 10 classrooms, one
or two students had to sit on the floor,”
Karlinski said.

She said the overcrowding at institutions
around the province puts the lie to the claim
of Advanced Education Minister Bruce
Strachan that students in the Lower Main-
land should try registering elsewhere.

Enrolment is steadily increasing yearly.
The CFS reported that at Malaspina,
registration for full-time university transfer
courses at the third- and fourth-year levels
increased 29 per cent; for part-time, it was
an astronomical 70 per cent over last year.

Despite this, financially strapped institu-
tions are cutting back. The CIEA’s Lavalle
reported layoffs at Northwest College in
Terrace, termination notices for the entire
faculty of the popular graphic arts program
at Selkirk, and the imminent elimination of
the college’s co-op education program. —

(Co-op education, in which students
work for employers as part of their educa-
tion, receives federal government seed
money in the first and second years. The
province is failing to fund administrative
costs as the federal money declines in the
upper levels, the CFS reported.)

ets Students forced
into part-time studies
also face a heavy debt
from student finan-
cial aid, Karlinski
noted. The province’s
aid package requires
full-time — students
begin repayments six
months after gra-
duation, when inter-
est starts accruing.

STRACHAN
But part-time students must begin repay-
ments 30 days after the loan commences.

The 30-day period is “based on the
probably false assumption that most part-
time students are working, when nowadays
(they are part-time) because the courses
they’re seeking they just can’t get,” said
Karlinski. Less than three courses is con-
sidered part-time study.

The penalty is more severe considering
the province grants reductions in the prin-
ciple of the loan if a student completes the
degree on time — usually four or five years.
Those forced to complete their degrees
through part-time study accrue thousands of
dollars more in debt, she said.

When the Socred government imple-
mented the access-for-all program last year,
it began pumping more money into the sys-
tem: $35 million last year. “It was supposed
to create new spaces for students, and trans-
fer upper level courses to institutions outside
the Lower Mainland,” Karlinski related.

This year’s funding is $68 million, which
is still inadequate, she said. “We need $35
million again just to create spaces for all
those who wanted to be first-year students
this year.”

“The fact is that unless more realistic
operating grants are allocated to the post-
secondary system, this access-for-all pro-
gram is not going to work,” said Lavalle.

In the 1989-90 academic term, the col-
lege and institute. system was educating 27
per cent more students with seven per cent
less funding than in 1982-83. The increase
the system received this year — $30 million
— is less than a 10-per-cent increase. After
accounting for “a modest inflation rate of
five per cent,” the remaining five per cent is
inadequate, the CIEA noted while observing
that enrolment increased by six per cent last
year.

“Such increases are not even meeting the
real demand, let alone allowing for some
repair to a system badly damaged by years
of fiscal restraint,” Lavalle said.

Pacific Tribune, September 24, 1990 * 3