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EDITORIAL

NATO a danger to life

A reason for the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion’s problems of splits and dislocations among its
member-countries is not hard to find. In an age when
the overwhelming majority of informed humanity is
determined to end the threat of nuclear war — and
human annihilation — NATO goes on trying to devise
ways to make the idea of nuclear war acceptable.

In addition, the new powers sought by NATO
supreme Atlantic commander, U.S. Admiral Wesley
McDonald, and the commander-in-chief for the Eng-
lish Channel, British Admiral William Staveley, are
chilling indeed.

They have demanded the right to shoot first if they
feel “threatened”. At present, in the absence of a higher
directive, they are authorized only to return enemy fire.
The admirals argue that “high-precision, long-range
guided weapons” make them sitting ducks. The truth is
that today’s nuclear arsenals make the whole world a
sitting duck, and that is why disarmament, not more
fingers on triggers, is the need for the human race.

Cooler heads have always maintained that sharp
East-West differences can only be settled politically, not
left to the judgment of the military with its single
recourse. That truth still prevails despite the fact that

with the advent of the Reagan regime a reasoned politi-
cal agreement is hard to come by.

In other NATO — or perhaps more correctly,
US. — difficulties, U.S. Defence Secretary Caspar
Weinbeger warned the Netherlands that refusal to
accept deployment of 48 cruise missiles would upset
NATO’s strategy. Turning the thing on its head, Wein-
berger claimed deployment would force the USSR back
to arms negotiations, when in fact, it was the U.S. -
deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles that
scuttled the talks.

“You will notice we have stopped saying we expect
the Russians to be back at the negotiating table soon,”
said a NATO official in Brussels, Mar. 29. So Reagan’s
boast of bringing the Soviet Union to heel through
deployment has boomeranged as have so many of his
provocative pronouncements.

The peace movements around the globe are giving
valid answers to NATO’s menacing policies: an end to
deployment, a nuclear freeze, negotiations for arms
reductions, nuclear weapons-free zones, a refusal to
further test cruise missiles in Canada, and directing of
weapons dollars into the peacetime needs of all
people — East and West.

Polls and Tory reality |

The latest Gallup poll which shows the Progressive
Conservative Party with the support of 54 per cent of
decided voters (30 per cent of those polled were unde-
cided) should send a chill up the spine of every working-
class and democratic Canadian.

True, these results (based on 1,037 interviews) focus
on the federal Tories, but for an honest picture of Tories
in power one need only turn to Tory provincial
governments, their budgets and their legislation.

Listening to Brian Mulroney’s Reaganesque purring
one might forget his familiarity with the board rooms of
the corporate elite from which the class struggle is
conducted against workers and for the monopolies.
Viewing crude Tory provincial power, no’such forget-
ting is possible. Neo-conservative measures there, by the
Tories and their Social Credit clones, are already a fact.

In Ontario’s Tory aristocracy, 34 years in power,
Premier William Davis is painted as an affable father

figure. But like other Tory provinces, Ontario banned .

public sector collective bargaining in its 6 and 5 wage
restraint program (Bill 179). The Mar. 20 Throne
Speech showed contempt for the half-million jobless
and injured workers, denied youth a future and
imposed cutbacks in hospital care and education.

In Tory Saskatchewan the Grant Devine govern-

ment recently chopped $9 million from social assistance ~

programs, while 30,000 go jobless. Yet $12 million is
given to employers to subsidize their payroll expense.
The grossly inadequate day care provisions are being
Studied with a view to slashing that service further. The

Mar. 21 budget promised job creation, but the Tories
immediately began firing public service employees.

In response to the big stick of the Peter Lougheed
Tory regime in Alberta, Solidarity Alberta was formed
in February, linking together union organizations in
and out of the Alberta Federation of Labor, health care
workers, churches, the jobless, tenants, civic groups,
education representatives, organizations among peace,
women’s consumers’ and Native groups, and the work-
ing poor.

The recent Alberta budget calling for a “lean and
efficient” government exposed a callous, anti-people
government, attacking education and labor (nearly 20
per cent unemployed), approving gouging by doctors
and hospitals, and “efficient” only at plying the oil
monopolies with incentives.

When Premier Bill Bennett’s Socreds brought down
their budget Feb. 20, it Seemed that all depths of neo-
conservative virulence had been reached. Far from
relenting, the Socreds went on another program of
abolishing social programs, firing public service
workers, deregulating industries and offering corpora-
tions under-the-table tax cuts. Citizens? They gota new
health tax. This government, which a year ago wiped
out the Human Rights Commission, and has been
challenged by the Solidarity Coalition, consistently
works to destroy the trade union movement and to roll
back democratic gains.

It, together with Tory governments across the coun-
try, shows right-wing reaction in power — a revealing
comparison with the charade of Tory speech-making.

~

Drawing

by H. Kurz-Goldenstein

for the Artists for Peace

on the occasion

of the Peace March

in Vienna,

Austria in October 1933.
wt

calen
1982

Profiteer of the week

Food prices have been good to Kelly, Douglas and Co. Ltd.,
Burnaby owners of numerous food companies: Westfair, Meteor
Meat, Fairview Farms, Foremost Foods, etc. After-tax profit for the
dar year 1983 was $17.3-million compared to $1 6.7-million in

——}

TRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
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all

Accoizs to the free enterprise credo,
the main feature of life in the “new
reality” is the “bottom line”. And we’re

People and Issues

Pinochet.

Next, no doubt, Bennett will be quoting

constantly being reminded of that by cor-
porate executives, usually with the pur-
pose of trying to force another concession
from wages.

But there is also a bottom line for work-
ing people, one which the corporate set
usually ignore. If you don’t have a decent
wage — or a job at all — it doesn’t mat-
ter how much the cost of a product has
been reduced, you stiH don’t have the
money to buy it. In these times, in fact, it’s
no longer a question of a bottom line —
the bottom has almost dropped out
entirely.

We were reminded of that when Air
Canada’s vice-president for facilities and
supply, B.R. Aubin wrote the Vancouver
and District Labor Council to explain, in
response to a council protest, why the
Crown corporation had bought its stain-
less steel flatware from Korea.

Aubin said that when the purchase was
made, bids were accepted from Canadian
companies (although, significantly, only
one manufactured the flatware in Canada)
but ultimately accepted a Korean com-
pany’s bid because the airline “needs to

~have the freedom to seek competitive
sources of supply.”

And then came the bottom line.
“Unfortunately, in many cases,” said

Aubin, “‘it is the labor content of North -

American prices that puts suppliers at a
competitive disadvantage.”

Certainly, wages in South Korea aver-
age about $3 an hour, a fact which

prompts hundreds of corporations to.

uproot their domestic manufacturing and
move it to Korea and other low wage
areas.
But Aubin forgets the other bottom
line. If Canadians are denied manufactur-
ing jobs because companies like Air Can-
ada buy in Korea, who the hell is going to
ride the airlines? It certainly won’t be the
Koreans — not at the wages they make.

“We at Air Canada are doing our
utmost to operate a viable commercial
enterprise that makes a positive contribu-
tion to the Canadian economy...” Aubin
claims. But how can it make a “positive
contribution” when its purchasing policies
actively contribute to the de-industrial-
ization of the country and the impover-
ishment of the work force?

It’s not surprising that at the same time
as jobs are being exported to Korea and
elsewhere, Air Canada, together with other

airlines in this country, is facing massive
reductions in air travel. People who don’t
have jobs, those whose wages have been
cut and who are forced to pay higher taxes
and user fees imposed by “bottom-line”
governments don’t have money to take
trips.

In fact, it is companies like airlines that
have a major stake in Canadians enjoying
a high standard of living and full
employment. :

“ Without that, the bottom line is there
will be few people to ride the airlines —
except, perhaps, corporate executives tra-
velling to their low-wage operations in
Korea.

* * *

s though it were not enough that

Premier Bill Bennett takes his political
ideas from Thatcher and Reagan, even his
denunication of those opposing his poli-
cies as “bad British Columbians” is out-
right plagiarism.

On Feb. 8, the chief of Brazil’s general
staff and the heads of the armed services
issued a special communique terming
those who “devote themselves entirely to
agitation” as “bad Brazilians.”

Roc who perused the story last
week about the Kemano Completion
Project will have noticed that the conten-
tious project must first be approved by the
B.C. Utilities Commission before Alcan
can proceed. Whether in fact approval will
be granted is still an open question —

even though the project is contrary to the -

province’s stated energy policy of not
allowing companies other than B.C.
Hydro to generate hydroelectric power —
but the fact is that the project has not been
approved and Utilities Commission hear-
ings have not even been set.

But you would never know approval
was still pending to read the propaganda
brochure put out by Socred MLAs for’
Surrey, Bill Reid, and Rita Johnston. In a
piece entitled “Projects build B.C.’s
future”, they have listed the Alcan Van-
derhoof smelter as one of several projects
already in progress including ALRT,
Expo 86, B.C. Place, claiming that it will
create 1,875 total jobs.

Do Reid and Johnston — and the
Socreds — know something the B.C.
Utilities Commission doesn’t know?

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 11, 1984

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