CANADA Tories tum [YY into a ‘cruel joke’ There is no greater economic problem facing today’s youth than unemployment. It is the Major concern of 70 per cent of young Canadians, the Young Communist League has told the Special Senate Committee on Youth in a brief. Its claim is backed by 1984 Statistics Canada figures indi- Cating 533,000 people under 24 were actively seeking work, while a further 200,000 discouraged job Seekers did not show up in the Official figures. The Senate Committee, which has just ended a series of public hearings in major centres across the country, was established in response to the United Nations International Year of the Youth for Participation, Development and Peace (IYY). Canada is a sig- natory to the declaration designat- ing 1985 IYY, which commits its participants to highlighting the rights of. youth. The: *Y CL. “brief...accuses governments of turning the three main themes of the year into a ‘“‘cruel joke’’ for this country’s youth. ‘Participation has meant being left out of decision-making about education and economic pros- pects. Development has meant young people. registered. studies’’ in the military. being slashed. You’re in the army now! OTTAWA — The Department of National Defence seems to have become Mulroney’s vehicle for his promise of jobs for In a June 5 press release, DND announced six jobs schemes with a total expenditure of $84.3-million to provide temporary jobs for some 17,650 young people. The main thrust, however, is clear: it’s not job creation, but strengthening the military. Taken alone, the creation of 17,650 jobs pales beside the figure of some 533,000 jobless youth between 17 and 24 years — and that figure does not include additional hundreds of thousands not Taken separately, here’s what Mulroney has come up with: e Canadian Forces Youth Training and Employment Program: Duration one year. Budget, $32-million. Jobs, 2,500. ‘“In addition to basic military training, emphasis is on the acquisition of useful skills and trades .. .’” DND says. ‘‘Regular Force selection stan- dards are being used ... all enrolments are processed through Canadian Forces Recruiting Centres,” it informs. e Civilian Temporary Employment Program: Duration, six months. Budget, $1.3-million, 400 places. These will simply be enrolled in the Primary Reserve. minor maintainence and construction categories’ for the mili- tary. Canada Manpower handles this scheme. e Summer Youth Employment Program: Budget, $16.7-mil- lion. Duration, summer, 1985. Jobs, 9,600. These will train with the Militia and Naval and Air Communications Reserves and be supervisors in cadet summer camps. e Katimavik: (A Liberal initiated program where young people are paid $1-a-day to do community work). Duration, three months. Budget, $1.3-million. Jobs, 400. These will simply be enrolled in the Primary Reserve. e Student Summer Employment Program: Budget, $5-million. Jovs, 1,250. Duration, summer, 1985. Students will provide cleri- cal and manual labor at Canadian Forces bases and stations. e Co-operative Student Employment and Summer Internship Program: Duration, summer, 1985. Budget, $1.3-million. Jobs, 400. This plan simply promises ‘‘jobs in work related to their This is what the Tories parade as ‘‘job creation’’ for Canada’s youth. In fact, it’s nothing more than an opportunity for the military to corral 17,000 more young people under the cover of job creation, provide cheap labor for the armed forces and kid the public that it is concerned about jobless youth. In addition, it’s a $84-million squandering at a time when essential services are ‘\ o> Continued from page 1 asked to sign a statement saying they agree to implement some employment equity standards, although there will be no strict Tules to stipulate what these might entail. In the first year under the new Process, there will be ‘‘spot Checks’? to determine whether Companies are beginning basic Steps. Then, after the third year, if a company is found not to be doing anything, it will be ‘‘talked to’, and then possibly — al- though not necessarily — re- Moved from lists of potential bidders. ___ Insight into the Tory about-face 1s provided by Carole Wallace, __- Member-at-large of the NAC exe- _ Cutive, who in the June issue of Status of Women News cites the President of the Quebec Em- ployers Council, Ghislain Dufour, as saying: ‘““The Abella report has clearly shown that quotas are not the way to go. We can only say Bravo’. Wallace herself goes on to prophetically comment: ‘Here indeed is eloquent proof of the in- terests which are served by the Abella Report. And aclear indica- tion of how this report will be used against us in the coming months’’. And so it apparently has with the new affirmative ac- tion guidelines. ae The Tory axe is also hitting other areas. According to leaked cabinet documents, the govern- ment is planning hefty cuts in support for research, transporta- tion and fisheries. Although much of what the more education cutbacks and worsening employment oppor- tunities and working conditions for youth. Peace has been marked with ever growing threats of a nu- clear war spearheaded by plans to militarize space’’, the youth group says. The brief takes issue with the federal government’s approach of relying on the private sector to create jobs. This approach, it says, has turned young people into a low wage ghetto which em- ployers use to undermine the established labor force. Government job creation schemes for young people, it says, have in the main been direct ‘‘giveaways’’ to business in wage subsidies, with few benefits or permanent opportunities for re- cipients. The federal government also came under fire for its lack of commitment to post-secondary education. Although university and college enrollment has in- creased by 27 per cent and 36 per cent respectively, government support has only increased by 2.5 per cent. The May budget an- nounced a further $2-billion cut to education in the next five years. In its recommendations, the YCL calls for a ‘“‘civilian full em- ployment program based on re- vitalizing Canadian manufac- turing, raw materials and construction industries’’. It wants a comprehensive apprenticeship program for young people inte- grated into the universities, high schools and industry. A special fund is also required for first-time job seekers, the brief says, and demands an end to dis- criminatory wage and social ser- vice scales affecting young people. Affirmative action programs designed to help women and mi- norities break through the road- blocks in education and employ- ment need to be implemented, the brief says. In its submission to the Senate Committee, the Communist Party of Canada emphasized govern- ment responsibility in “‘rolling back the danger of nuclear holo- caust.”’ It warns that a generation: which is being lost to unemploy- ment could permanently perish, along with all others, if nuclear war is not averted. It argues that a cut in military spending and job creation are inseparable. ‘‘The federal government, while telling working people to tighten their belts, never has dif- ficulty finding billions each year for socially worthless military spending. It is @ well known fact that the multiplier effect of mili- tary spending is as little as one- third to half as effective as spend- ing on socially useful areas such ‘as housing, education or health’, the CPC stated. Liberals betray equal pay TORONTO — With only a week in office, the new Liberal government has already reneged on one of its major promises to voters. Premier David Peterson announced in a speech to the legislature July 2 that the long awaited equal pay for equal value law would be limited to the public sector, and ‘‘a staged approach”’ would be adopted for its imple- mentation in the private sector. Women’s and labor groups immediately charged the government with a ‘‘complete be- tryal of a decade of promises”’ to act speedily on full equal pay legislation. In a statement read to a press conference July 8, Marjorie ‘Cohen of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women said the decision goes against all major statements made by the Liberals on the subject and contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other inter- national conventions Canada has signed. “The legislation will be very limited and affect only a small proportion of the female labor force in Ontario. The position the Ottawa plans massive cuts documents reveal is not new, appearing in documents made public with the Wilson budget, what is new is the intention halve the budget of the Science Coun- cil, dump over 200 jobs in the fed- ‘eral patent office and severely re- duce its budget, and develop plans for certain ‘‘sunset”’ (declining) industries. One of the leaked documents also calls for a report by mid- September on what staff and budget cuts can be made to the Department of Regional Indus- trial Expansion. - Tory watchers should not be surprised at the decision to slash the scope of the Science Council —— it echoes the privatization pol- Icy in the arts and culture, where the CBC, National Film Board and Canada Council are the prime targets for cutbacks. Liberal government is taking on this issue is no different from that which the Conservatives pro- posed’’, charged Cohen. Peterson’s skittishness on the proposal was apparent in his July 2 speech when he explained “‘there is a great deal of appre- hension about the introduction of equal pay, particularly in the pri- vate sector ... our responsibility is to allay their fears.” But Mary Cornish of the Equal Pay Coalition queried the government on its responsibility to fulfil its commitments to vot- ers. She said the Liberals catered to women and labor when the party needed their support during the election campaign, but once in office *‘they are basically catering to the business community”’. Peterson outlined the govern- ment’s approach saying “‘we will proceed with equal pay for work of equal value in the public sector. Second, we will proceed on the base of contract compliance in the private sector, and the third stage will be fully throughout the pri- vate sector’, but he failed to commit his party to a time-table. Attorney-general Ian Scott, the minister responsible for women’s issues, said he was looking at hav- ing a green paper ready for the fall, and hoped for full imple- mentation by the end of the year. The New Democrats, who ag- reed to full equal pay for equal value legislation in their accord with the Liberals, said they would be satisfied with the timing. But Cohen charged that ‘‘the establishment of a task force to study the issue... is merely a delaying tactic which indicates to us that the government is not se- rious in its commitment to bring about real change for working women. We are particularly con- cerned that the staged approach the government is advocating is a way of avoiding having to imple- ment the legislation before it has to face the electorate again.” The head of the Ontario Federation of Labor, Cliff Pilkey, also hit the Liberals for stalling. ‘“‘The government would not be pioneering any new concept’’, he said. ‘‘That concept has already — been established in this country and in other jurisdictions around the world’. Both the federal and Quebec governments have had full equal , value legislation in place for the past decade. Equal pay for equal value has been a high priority with the labor and women’s movements since the 1930s. A 1984 Labor Canada report revealed that women work- ing full time outside the home earned 58.9 per cent of what men did in the labor force. Using 1981 figures (the most recent available), the report stated that women earned an average salary of slight- ly more than $13,000 annually, compared to a man’s average wage of $22,700. In Ontario alone, the absence of equal pay for work of equal value legislation costs women workers $7-billion a year in lost wages. By John Fox By Andrei Kozyrev LEFTIST TERRORISM By Victor Vitiuk - Soviet Writers People’s Co-op Bookstore NEW TITLES UNDERSTANDING CAPITAL, Volume Il. THE ARMS TRADE: A new level of danger. THE TWELVE MONTHS: Fairy tales by 1391 Commercial Dr., Van., B.C. VSL 3X5. Ph: 253-6442 p.b. $8.95 p.b. $3.25 p.b. $3.95 h.b. $6.50 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 17, 1985 e 3