EDITORIAL ——_________—

Dangers in

There is ever-growing pressure on public opinion
to accept a Tory policy that’s in the Trojan Horse
category — free trade with the U.S. The pressure
comes from the multinationals, the Reagan regime
itself, the Tory government in Ottawa and monopo-
lies on both sides of the border. However, it should
be noted there is a lack of unanimity among the
different sectors of business in Canada.

The free trade line being explored by the Mulro-
ney government represents a severe danger to Cana-
da’s economy and the well-being of the working
people. It also represents a complete change in the
policy pursued until now.

The latest to jump on the free trade bandwagon is
Donald Macdonald, chairman of the Royal Com-
mission on the Economic Union and Development
Prospects for Canada. Although the commission
will not be presenting its report until March, a big
gun like Macdonald, firing on the side of the Tories,
is needed now. So, presto! Macdonald has burst
upon the media, talking about “a leap of faith.”

Faith in what? Reaganomics? A sellout of Cana-
dian sovereignty?

Significantly, Macdonald was speaking among a
select group of about 40 in a closed conference on
Canada and the United States, at Harriman, N.Y.
He was ready to repeat his remarks for the media,
however. Otherwise what impact could they have?

It’s useful to remember that Macdonald is a
former Liberal minister of finance, and as a private

‘free trade’

consultant was appointed in 1982 by then prime
minister Trudeau to probe the economy and offer
solutions. The commission has so far cost taxpayers
$20 million.

There was speculation that the new Tory govern-
ment might end the group’s work, but on Nov. 8,
Mulroney wrote to Macdonald that he should press
on. Undoubtedly a leap of faith, and nowit has paid
off with Macdonald (minus his still-laboring com-
mission) heralding the glories of the Tory free trade
plan.

Macdonald points to the fact that the days of
pump it up, dig it up, chop it down and ship it out,
must eventually end. His view is negative on pros-
pects for trade in quality manufactured goods with
Europe and the Pacific Rim countries (he doesn’t
even acknowledge the huge market in socialist coun-
tries). That eliminates everything except falling in
with the United States Reagan line.

The U.S. however, not only wants what is left of
our resources, and little in the way of manufactured
goods; it wants them on its terms without any inter-

~ ference from Canadian economic or political inde-
pendence.

It is a plan most Canadians will resist, including

some parts of the business community; certainly

- labor should resist it to preserve jobs and incomes.

There are alternatives to the Tory free trade plot, and

it is the alternatives that should be put into opera-
tion. :

Protest horror in Chile

The Nov. 10 attack on civilians in La Victoria, a
working-class suburb of the Chilean capital,
resembled nothing so much as an armed forces
offensive against enemy positions.

The helicopter-borne troops, under orders from
Chile’s fascist dictator, swooped on the helpless sub-
urb and rounded up all males between 15 and
55 — give or takea few years — a total estimated to
be 2,000. Facing paratroopers, soldiers with auto-
matic rifles and armored vehicles, the captives were
transported by police buses to San Eugenio stadium,
made infamous by the Pinochet regime in its first
days of cruelty, torture and murder — 11 years ago.
Since then, thousands have disappeared, suspected
of being opponents of the dictatorship.

Under a state of siege proclaimed on Nov. 6,
police arrests, and an earlier similar raid on a poor
district supposed to harbor enemies of the regime,
are meant to convey the utter ruthlessness of the
regime. Hundreds of those-rounded up remain in

custody.

What is inexplicable to Canadians is the fact that
the Canadian government does not see fit to make
any form of protest. For a government that is ever so
prissy about free, fair and democratic elections, and
which make interminable pronouncements about
human rights, its silence is shocking.

Here is a gang of militarist butchers who seized
power by murdering the elected president, and took
the presidential palace by force of heavy tanks, a
regime whose reign of terror and human disposals
outrages humanity, whose latest round-up of males
is an exact duplicate of the actions of the Hitler Nazis
in Europe.

And here sits a Tory government in Ottawa, smug
in its nit-picking about the number of parties partici-
pating in Nicaragua’s democratic election, but with
its eyes closed to the crimes of the Chilean rulers.

What does it take to stir the Mulroney govern-- -

ment to respond in words and deeds to this outrage
in our hemisphere?

FIN OCHET SPors
ANOTHER Sur VERSIVE

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To paraphrase an old saying: Now you’re cooking with — doll
bills. Consumers’ Gas Co. Ltd., of Toronto had a nice, after-ta
profit for the year ended Sept. 30, of $87,951,000. The figure for thi
previous year was $73,366,000.

—TRisUNE

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Sea across the province who
had an opportunity to meet with Brit-
ish National Union of Mineworkers repre-
sentative Frank Clarke and his wife Val
earlier this month will be interested to
know that the couple had to return to

People and Issues

eens SS ASSESS

low-wage scheme, they have only to loo’
at the latest issue of Employment and
Immigration Canada’s Economic Review. —
Readers will recall that Amca’s Domi
ion Bridge division tried to strike a sw
theart deal with the officers of Local 712:

Britain earlier than expected because of an
illness in the family. But in their place,
Brian Dakin, also from Yorkshire, and his
wife Irene have picked up the tour and will
carry it across Ontario, Quebec and Atlan-
tic Canada as planned. Already, the two
have appeared before the Ontario Federa-
tion of Labor convention where the appeal
and delegates’ remarkable response brought
in cheques and cash totalling $25,000.

It’s worth noting that as Clarke was
speaking to trade unionists in Vancouver,
Nov. 8 one of the miners’ staunchest sup-
porters in the British Parliament, labor
MP Tony Benn was addressing an
audience in Toronto. And one of the issues
he took up was the hysterical campaign
waged in the British press over the meeting
between the NUM and Libyan trade
unions and government officials.

According to Benn, the press had
known of the meetings three weeks earlier
but had orchestrated the story’s release to
coincide with the collapse of talks between

the NUM and the National Coal Board
facilities.

And then came the capper: Benn noted
that the union and the Labour Party only
learned much later that Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher had bought 400,000
tons of Libyan oil — as part of her cam-
paign to break the coal miners’ strike.

The press ignored that too — but then
the British press has had but one objective
throughout the strike: to smear the NUM
and its president, Arthur Scargill, as it did
the British autoworkers union and its

leader Eric Robertson who waged an ear-

lier, unsuccessful, battle with the current
coal board chairman, Ian McGregor, over
cuts in auto industry jobs.

So bad had been the press coverage, in
fact, that it occasioned a special report by
Simon Jenkins, editor of the right wing
Economist who slammed the newspapers
for their crude bias against the miners,
suggesting that they were putting the
“mantle of socialist martyrdom” on Scar-
gill by providing the union with “regular
evidence of blatant distortion.”

The burden of Jenkin’s argument, of

‘course, was that the twisted press coverage

had not achieved the desire result of turn-
ing public opinion against the miners. But
that should make his criticism all the more
damning, especially since that bias was not
limited to Britain but was transmitted to
newspapers in this country which have
echoed Fleet Street’s hysteria.

And a final note on the British miners.
A letter came this week from Washington
Communist party activist Elmer Kistler
enclosing a cheque for U.S. $46. He had
passed along copies of the Nov. 7 Tribune
with the stories on the British miners and
the $46 was the result, he says. It was

followed two days later by another $25

from a Seattle couple.

We’ve passed both donations along to
the Vancouver and District Labor Coun-
‘cil’s solidarity fund.

* * *

f anyone thought that the Amca project
had gone into oblivion after the U.S.
multinational failed to push through its

the Ironworkers Union to put up a o
module fabrication project at the D
Point Industrial park. The deal involve
signing a collective agreement for lo
wages even before the contract to buildt
project was secured. And when the Iro
workers membership twice gave thum!
down to it, newspapér columnists 2
government ministers joined in an orche
trated chorus of indignation on how lab
was throwing away. 750 jobs.
Well, the effort to get a low-wage co
tract hasn’t gone away — it’s just mo
up coast, according to the Review. Here
the item from the November issue:
“An American firm is looking into the
possibility of developing a $20 milli
facility to build modular units used in ¢
ling for offshore oil. They are hoping
establish a plant employing 300-400
manent workers in the Port Alberni
The establishment of the contract is co
tional up a ‘favorable labor contract.’
looks remarkably like the Amca proj
that was originally proposed for
Nanaimo area...” ae

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 28, 1984