Calling itself ‘An Energy Policy for Canada”’ the 700-page report on energy resources made public last week
by Ottawa contains no energy policy but rather outlines what we have or haven't got. Nowhere is there any
projection of the need for a cross-Canada hydro system linking together our vast hydro resources to serve
Canadian needs. Hydro lines like those shown above, joined together ina vast hydro grid, is vital toprevent

the giveaway of this resource to the U.S.

—B.C. Gov't photo

Fishing industry
poised to strike

In a coastwide ballot con-
ducted last weekend, salmon
fishermen voted 85.1% infavor
of strike action to support sev-
eral demands for minimpm
prices on net caught salmon. The
joint United Fishermen and Na-
tive Brotherhood committee
that has been conducting the
negotiations unanimously
recommended rejection of the
offer from the Fisheries Asso-
ciation.

The decisive strike mandate
follows closely strike votes taken
in both the tendermen and shore-
worker sections of the industry
where fish companies stub-
bornly refused to budge oncen-
tral union demands despite
substantial profits. A strike
deadline of noon, Friday July6
is set for the whole industry.

On minimum salmon prices
the offers made by the Fisheries
Association are substantially
lower than the union’s scaled
down demands and the Associa-
tion refuses to pay one-half the
cost of the Canada Pension Plan
and one-half the cost of the medi-
cal dental plan. In addition the
union wants one-half cent per
pound of allnetcaught salmonto
go to the salmon welfare fund.
The Association has offered
only one-quarter cent.

A relatively new source of
profits which the fish companies
refuse to acknowledge is the
sale of salmon roe in Japan
where a considerable market

has been developed over the
past few years. But while the
companies receive upwards of
$2.25 per pound for the roe, they
pay the fishermen nothing, con-
tending that the value of the roe
is included in the price paid for
the whole salmon.

The fishermen want the option
of dressing the fish and selling
the roe. An indication of the
lucrative market was given
when one independent company
offered to pay $2.50 per pound to
fishermen for all species of roe.

Further costs to the fisher-
men have also been set by the
companies who haveraised the
top price for boat rentals $400
per season and have increased
the labor charge for repairs.

At Tribune press time, shore-
workers were preparing to vote
on the latest company offer pre-
sented during the last round of
talks Tuesday. The negotiating
committee, determined to end
long hours and wage discrim-
ination against women, was
recommending rejection and
results of the vote were ex-
pected some time Thursday.

The companies retrated from
their previous position of try-
ing to subsidize wage adjust-
ments made necessary by the
equal pay demand by paying
smaller increases in the lower
wage categories, but still
offered only $1.10 over two
years. Shoreworkers are ask-
ing two dollars over two years.

OKANAGAN

Annual Labor-Farmer Picnic

SUNDAY JULY 22 — 1 p.m. to ?

OY AMA COMMUNITY HALL AND BEACH
swimming — sports — basket lunch —
folk singer
Auspices— Okanagan Regional Ctte.,
Communist Party of Canada

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 6, 1973—PAGE 8

Salmon fishermen met early
Wednesday with the Fisheries
Association for more mini-
mum price talks but the associa-
tion refused to modify its posi-
tion even slightly.

BREAD PRICES

Cont'd. from pg. 1

inanattemptto justify the impo-
tent prices board.

Meanwhile, the Coordinating
Committee of Concerned
Organizations is continuing its
postcard campaign for a prices
board with power to curb and
roll back price increases and
last week the New Westminster
and District Labor Council
added its voice to the public
outcry against monopoly pri-
cing.

Delegates to the council
adopted aresolution ‘strongly
condemning the profiteering of
national and multinational food
chains and demanding the estab-
lishment of a representative
prices review board which will
have the power to review and
where necessary roll back exces-
sive food prices.”” The execu-
tive board statement blamed
the food chains’ pricerigging for
exorbitant food prices.

Delegates also noted that ‘‘par
for the course, the national food
chains are blaming rising labor
costs, rising grain prices, ris-
ing transportation costs and, in
fact, nearly everything except
the profiteering which these
chains are guilty of for the spiral-
ling prices and runaway infla-
tion.”

Carpenters delegate Bill
Zander called for action by the
B.C. Federation of Labor to
expose the sources of high
prices. ‘‘It’s about time labor
took some action in this line to
show the public where the real
rip-off isin the food industry,’’
he said, ‘‘it certainly isn’t in

- labor costs.”’

PT staff member
reports on progress

of Soviet people

before the war. Since 19450vel |

By FRED WILSON

As Nixon and Brezhnev sat
down in Washington to discuss
questions of world peace there
were no more: attentive onlook-
ers, no people more sincerely
concerned with the outcome of
those vital talks, than the people
of the Soviet Union.

This I canattest to, foronJune
14 I touched down at Moscow
International Airport, amem-
ber of a delegation of young
Canadian Communists, where
only a few hours before ‘‘Com-
rade Brezhnev,” as the average
Soviet citizen refers to him, had
left from on his historic trip to
the U.S.

It seemed as though every eye
was focused with anticipation
on the U.S. talks. Each news-
paper and bulletin, every televi-
sion and radio station were glued
to the events, plotting the devel-

opments, projecting analysis |

and printing and reciting each
agreement in their entirety.
And everywhere people were
reading, watching and lis-
tening. It was unescapable.

Over the next sixteen days the
significance of this concern be-
came clearer. There was ab-
solutely nothing artificial or im-
posed about it. It truly repre-
sented the real hopes and desires
of a people that stemmed from
their history. It became clear to
me that tounderstand the Soviet
people itis necessary tounder-
stand the war and how it af-
fected them.

The memory of the last world
war is deeply embedded in the
minds of the Soviet people. Not
only in the living memory of the
millions who suffered through it,
but it is equally alive in the
minds of the young generation.
It lives in the monument
erected barely a mile from the
edge of Moscow which denotes
the point where Hitler was
beaten back. It is there in
Leningrad, at the cemetery
where 500,000 people are buried,
victims of the Nazi siege.

As we travelled throughSov-
iet Europe the war wasarecur-
ring theme in the thousands of
museums and monuments. It be-
came almost a dominant one
which had its reflection in every-
thing we saw.

The reflection of the war was
perhaps strongest, not in the
monuments for what has been
destroyed, butinthe progress,
andinwhathas been built since
then. This is especially so in the
small Baltic Republic of Lith-
uania. It is difficult to imagine,
looking out over the modern
apartment houses, shopping
complexes and holiday resorts,
that just thirty years ago this
country was decimated.

One in every three Lithu-
anians died in the four years be-
tween 1940 and 1944. Where there
was once one of the largest Jew-
ish populations in Europe, now
only 3% of the 3,000,000 popula-
tion can claim Jewish heritage.
We visited ‘‘Fort IX,’’ a concen-
tration camp outside Kaunas,
where during the Nazi occu-
pation 80,000 were slaughtered.

. Today Lithuania boasts an in-
dustrial output thirty-one times
greater than the peak year

seven times the amount
housing was built than was built
in all the time before the war.

national culture that had erode
under twenty years of Polis!
bourgeois rule, and wasnearly
exterminated by the Nazis, now

permeates every aspect of Lith .

uanian life. ‘
The cultural level of Lithuaml@
is indeed staggering. Where

the entire population roughly ,

equals that of metro Toronld,
they have no less than 7,
libraries, five universities
music and art, and the numbe!
of people who pass through the if
museums’ throughout

of

republic each year is equal tothe

whole population.
The struggle against reactiom
still continues in Lithuam@
There are four radio stations”
the republic, but any child with®
transistor can receive UP
twenty foreign broadcasts from
America, Britain, Israel 4!
West Germany, 24 hours a day:
But the defeat of fascist rea®
tion is inseparate from the vi“
tory of Socialism. In spite oft
barrage of foreign propaga” ‘
more than 40% of all young work
ers are members of the Youn
Communist League. The mar
sive ideological offensiT
against Lithuanian youth 1 iy
form of western pop cultuf

falls futile in the face of thet
tional folk choir with 30,
youth in its ranks.

FRED WILSON

By coincidence, as We arti
in the Soviet Union on the 44)
Brezhnev’s departure, we pal
turned home the same day
the Soviet leader arrive hin
in Moscow. Seeing so muCc
only two weeks gives ris€ tig
sands of impressions af Find
ions about the Soviet peoP!@
their socialist society.

But one could not he

whelming concern with thé,

i
come of the peace offens abe

The results of the Nixon rat?
nev talks brought satisfac ‘nel
each Soviet citizen that W
Almost without excepl0. jn
commented on its mea” inf
terms of security a”
dence. el”
With this new and fuller uit

existence really means, é gs
undying support by the ™ ,
of Soviet people, our delé
could not help but brit
confidence back to Canada.

his

to tho”

ip sharite i
with the Soviets then out

—