Canada

The throne speech delivered in the legis-
lature March 16 was more significant for
what was left out than what was in it.
Generally, a throne speech outlines in
broad terms what the government’s main
program will be without spelling out too
many of the details, which usually come in
the budget and subsequent legislation.

This year’s throne speech promised aid
for the poor, for tenants, disabled, seniors
and action on the environment. When the
details of the government’s program
become available it may prove to be a lot
of froth — like Premier Bill Vander

One of the proposals which will require

close scrutiny is the promise that a new '

Medical Services Act will be brought
down to ensure the system “remains fis-
cally responsible.” This proposal comes
only a few weeks after the government
increased Medical Services Plan premiums
by another 6.4 per cent. The increase came
on top of a 45 per cent increase last year.
MSP premiums have risen by 70 per cent
since Vander Zalm took office in 1986.
Last month, B.C.’s health and finance
ministers attended a conference in eastern
Canada to urge changes in the national

Maurice Rush

Zalm’s promise in the last election cam-
paign to provide cheaper beer for workers.

There will be a panel on unemploy-
ment; a panel on the environment; a pre-
mier’s council on native affairs; a ministry
of state responsible for women’s issues.
We have seen Vander Zalm set up panels,
ministries, commissions before. The results
speak for themselves. ;

The Socred’s sudden discovery that
there are poor, disabled, tenants and
seniors who have serious problems, and
their sudden discovery that our environ-
ment is in danger undoubtedly has a polit-
ical motive. The Socreds are obviously in
deep trouble as the two recent byelections
demonstrated. The trouncing which the
Socreds took in Nanaimo and Point Grey
was not unexpected, but the scope of the
voters’ rejection of the Socred government
was overwhelming. The Socreds are now
anxious to mend some fences.

But the government’s record on the
plight of the poor, the tenants, seniors,
women and unemployed and Native peo-
ples is well known and one shouldn’t
expect too much. The government is ina
position to make some concessions
because of the huge surplus which it
accumulated through privatizing the peo-
ple’s property, cutting social services and
increasing user fees. It can now use some
of that money to make a show of generos-
ity by returning a few crumbs to the vic-
tims of its neo-conservative agenda.

THE PROVINCE

health act to allow provinces to impose
user fees.

It is important to note that the B.C.
government’s revenue from the higher
premiums now rivals its revenue from the
forest resource. In view of this record,
what can one expect from the newly pro-
posed Medical Services Act other than
further cuts in medical services, higher
user fees and privatization of some medi-
cal services?

It is most likely that the new Act will
take B..C. a long way towards adopting
the privatized U.S. health care system.
This would be in line with the free trade
agreement which calls for “harmonizing”
Canadian services with those in the U.S.

Left entirely out of the throne speech
was any recognition that the forest indus-
try Is in severe crisis and that the govern-
ment’s plan to expand the Tree Farm
Licences and turn reforestation and B.C.’s
forest service over to the multinational
corporations is widely opposed. The min-
ister of forests is turning a deaf ear to the
overwhelming public demand for repeal of
Bill 28 and for a full public inquiry into all
aspects of B.C.’s major resource industry.

Forests Minister Dave Parker announ-
ced after a series of stormy meetings called
to explain he government’s plan to more
than double the Tree Farm Licences, that
he will give the government a report on
these meetings some time in July, well
after the present session is over.

Gaps in Throne Speech reveal
Socreds’ threadbare policies

Also left out of the throne speech was
the government’s plan to proceed with the
privatizing of B.C.’s energy resources and
that the first contracts with private com-
panies, including large foreign conglo-
merates, will be signed in July. Under
present Socred plans our forests are to be
mowed down and our energy wheeled to
California and the legislature is not to be
allowed to have any debate on these major
developments for B.C.’s economy.

Nor did the throne speech have any-
thing to say about the government’s anti-
union legislation. Instead of facing up to
the reality that labour will not and cannot
live with the existing labour legislation, the
Socreds are adamant in continuing with
Bill 19. Even worse, the chair of the Socred
caucus, Langley MLA Carol Gran, pub-
licly urged the Langley School Board
recently to reject the teacher’s demand and
take a stand for an open shop.

Also neglected in the throne speech is
the problem of unemployment. In a pro-
vince in which one out of ten workers is
unemployed the only proposal the
government has come up with is to set up a
panel on unemployment with the objective
of recruiting 1,000 youth to protect the
environment and fight future oil spills.

Various proposals are suggested to aid
tenants and relieve the housing crisis but
most of them are band-aid measures. No
action is in the cards to undertake a mas-
sive program of affordable housing, to
stop rent gouging through the establish-
ment of a system of rent controls, or to
stop speculation in housing which is push-
ing housing costs out of the reach of most
people.

The public need to mount massive pres-
sure to compel the legislature to deal with
the real people’s needs. The government
must be pushed to enact meaningful legis-
lation to help the poor, the tenants,
seniors, disabled, the unemployed and
Native peoples in their fight for aboriginal
rights. Along with that they should
demand that the government allow a full
debate on forestry and energy, on labour
legislation and action on unemployment.

These issues are urgent and the current
legislature most not be allowed to con-
clude without a full airing of these: vital
questions. The NDP opposition, which
has announced a number of good mea-
sures that they will place before the legisla-
ture should also be urged to take up the
fight around the issues the Throne Speech
does not address. B.C.’s trade unions and
people’s coalitions should press for action
by the government on the real people’s
agenda.

Forest layoffs devastating — mayor

Tahsis mayor Tom McCrae, whose vil-

has been reduced from 2,100 to 1,100 as a
result of layoffs by the village’s main

public information sessions on the govern-
ment’s forest privatization policy were

OSS
DA

Cockburn given
missile peace

A Canadian peace organization has
presented singer-songwriter Bruce
Cockburn with a fragment of a Soviet
SS-12 nuclear missile, destroyed under
the INF agreement.

The presentation was made by Bill
Thompson of Hamilton, Ontario who
collected the piece after witnessing the
missile’s destruction in Kazakhstan,
USSR last summer.

Thompson, a member of the Cana-
dian Peace Congress, presented Cock-
burn with the fragment mounted on a
plaque. He said the singer was chosen
because “his music and his actions have
consistently presented the visions of
many who work for a more peaceful and
healthy world.

“We take great pride in presenting
Bruce with some of the first fruits of the
world-wide movement to eliminate
nuclear weapons.”

The Juno award winner has devoted
two of his albums to highlighting human
rights struggles in Central America and
has also been active in the anti-apartheid
and disarmament struggles.

The presentation was made imme-
diately following Cockburn’s perfor-
mance at Hamilton Place, the first per-
formance of his current tour.

Canada opens
trade with SU

Canada has become the last member
of NATO to remove restrictions on some
exports to the nine Warsaw Pact coun-
tries along with Vietnam and North
Korea.

The group of countries will no longer
appear on the Area Control List (ACL)
which bans the export of high-technology
products, including all computers, soft-
ware, telecommunications equipment,
aircraft, helicopters and four-wheel-drive
vehicles.

However, the Warsaw Pact nations
will remain on the Export Control List
which prohibits the export of nuclear
and military products to those on the list.

External Affairs Minister Joe Clark
announced the changes, saying they will
bring Canada in line with new regula-
tions already implemented by other
NATO countries and Japan.

South ‘Africa has been added to the
ACL list. Libya remains on it.

Manitoba holds
Meech hearings

The Manitoba government will be
holding two weeks of public hearings in
April in preparation for the meeting of
first ministers in Charlottetown later in

lage population has been cut in half by
forest industry layoffs, called Saturday fora
“change in policy direction” in the forest
industry, warning that multinational com-
panies’ control of the forests was leading to
devastation of communities across Van-

couver Island.

-the spring.

Premier Gary Filmon had withdrawn
the Meech Lake Accord from the legisla-
tive agenda following Quebec’s passage
of Bill 178 which modified its French
language rights Bill 101, in response to a

employer, Canadian Pacific Forest Pro- |
ducts Ltd., former CIP Ltd.

And those layoffs are attributable to “big
forest company practices,” McCrae said.
He cited the case of CPFI’s sawmill which is

completed.

In the last six months, 2,400 jobs have
been lost on Vancouver Island, McCrae
noted, and “communities ... are going to
have to bear the brunt of problems that
arise as a result of layoffs and plant clo-

“We've tried hard to bring the situation
to light. The message is quite clear: there has
to be a change in policy direction if we are to
put the forest industry economy back on
track,” he told the Association of Van-
couver Island Municipalities convention In

Sidney.

“It has to be put back in the hands of
people who own the resource,” he said.
McCrae said the population of Tahsis

capable of sustaining three shifts a day, five
days a week, but the company is contracting
logs to mills on the Lower Mainland while it
puts local sawlogs into the more profitable
pulp sector.

Significantly, despite its failure to main-
tain stable employment in the area, CPFI
applied last year to increase the size of its °
Tree Farm Licence 19 from 195,000 hec-
tares to 347,000 hectares. Hearings on the
application were postponed until after the

sures.”

On Sunday, the 225 delegates to the con-
vention called on Forests Minister Dave
Parker to convene a royal commission of
inquiry into the province’s forest industry.
A further resolution urged Victoria to call
an inquiry into forest policy, emphasizing
that the inquiry should aim to increase utili-
zation of the harvested timber, reduce
environmental damage through improved
logging practices and cut log exports.

successful Supreme Court challenge.

Filmon, who as leader of the Conser-
vative opposition led a vicious campaign
against the extension of language rights
for Franco-Manitobans, has undertaken
the role of the defender of English minor-
ity rights in Quebec.

The task force conducting the hear-
ings is headed by Wally Fox-Decent, a
political studies assistant professor at the
University of Manitoba.

Pacific Tribune, March 27, 1989 « 3