GVRD school tax hikes draw anger

— page 2

March 6, 1989
SOS

Vol. 52, No. 8

Halt layoffs or lose
TFL says IWA local

The IWA-Canada local whose members willbe _ live up to the provisions of the TFL legislation to
hardest hit by impending layoffs at Fletcher- provide stable employment.
Challenge Canada called on the government Sat-

urday to cancel Fletcher-Challenge’s Tree Farm The company should maintain its existing
Licence in the area if the company is not prepared | ¢mployment levels, the resolution stated, but fail-
to maintain current employment levels. ing that, the government should cancel TFL 46.

Unionists at a meeting of Local 1-80 in Local members also decided to make the resolu-
Nanaimo voted unanimously to endorse the tion public and to take the campaign against the
motion which noted Fletcher-Challenge’s record _ layoffs out to the community.
of mismanagement of the forests and its failure to see VICTORIA page 3

The Meech
Lake Accord:
a ‘document

of division’
By KERRY McCUAIG

and LEANNE MacMILLAN

The Meech Lake Accord is a doc-
ument of division. Women’s groups
seeking equality are pitted against
Quebeckers seeking national rights;
immigrant groups charge the Cana-
dian-born with ignoring their contri-
bution to nation building; the First
Nations maintain it leaves them per-
manently and purposely excluded.

Constitutions are a reflection of the
balance of class and other social for-
ces at the time of their writing. They
are then formally amended or inter-
preted through court decision to
accommodate subsequent changes in
this balance. When the current rela-
tionship of forces cannot be contained
within the original framework, a con-
stitution crisis erupts.

Canadian constitutional history
has been one of permanent crisis.
Efforts to accommodate the national
demands of Quebec by piecemeal

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

Frank Kennedy, president of End the Arms Race, hands copy of a statement on cruise missile teting to secretary in the arrangements keep failing. Required
office of Conservative MP and Junior Minister of Defence Mary Collins (West Vancouver), while flanked by EAR is a rewriting of the constitution ona
delegation and members of local peace organizations Wednesday. The statement called on the federal government to democratic basis to recognize the
discontinue testing the U.S. first-strike weapon and expressed the peace umbrella group’s particular concern over plans to national interests of Quebec and
allow testing of the new, longer-range stealth cruise. The peace activists had an appointment to meet with Collins, but Native Peoples and to provide protec-
were told by special assistant Valerie York that no such meeting had been agreed to, and that at any rate, she was not tion for the rights of women, minori-
prepared to meet with a delegation. Despite York's claims that an appointment had been set with herself — she said ties, and other oppressed groups.
Collins was in Ottawa and is unavailable until the end of the month — not until the following Tuesday (March 7), EAR

spokespersons stick by their claim that a meeting had been agreed to for March 1. “‘It looks like the old run-around,” said a The official explanation of Meech
member of the delegation. Lake is: ‘“‘Quebec was left out of the

agreement that led to the Constitution
Act, 1982, and adoption of the
Amendment will bring it back into the
Canadian constitutional family as a
full. and willing partner in future pro-
gress.”

see ACCORD page 7