ac A | Y YY TY ABY A : VERE See eaes <3 _ sis SS | BRITISH COLUMBIA Main fire must be directed at Tories Continued from page 1 Of Canadians that there is no choice tween Turner and Mulroney. Further, a Marginal increase in NDP support across the country shows voters do not see the Social democrats’ program as a strong alternative. The hoped-for surge in support for the iberals in B.C. has not materialized, When the federal election was called the Tories held 17 of B.C.’s 28 seats, the NDP 11 and the Liberals none. Indications now are that the Liberals will be lucky to take the two Seats on which they are concentrating — Yadra and North Vancouver-Burnaby. €sent reports from other ridings throughout B.C. show little in the way of a Tevival of Liberal support. € latest public opinion poll commissi- Oned by the CTV network, released Aug. 3, Teported that British Columbians give 43 Per cent of their support to the Tories, 29 Per cent to the Liberals, and 26 per cent to the NDP Allowing for the fact that public opinion S are notorious for changing rapidly, and that a three-per cent error either way is Possible, we must nevertheless take a Serious View of the trends shown at this late Stage in the election campaign. In the 1980 federal election the Liberals Polled 22 per cent of the popular vote in the “AS the Tories 41 per cent, and the NDP : ee cent. Allowing for a slight change in Poll results, the figures show that the. Ores are gaining slightly in strength; the iberals have increased their vote by a few Percentage points, but are not at present in * Serious contention and the NDP vote has declined somewhat. It should be noted here that in the three- way Split in the B.C. ridings between Tories, Liberals and NDP, the NDP has been most successful in electing when the old-line party vote was closely divided between Tories and Liberals. With the increased Tory strength not seriously challenged by the Liberals in most of the ridings, there is a great danger that the Tories could hold on to their pres- ent seats and add a few more. This would be a serious setback in the fight to block the right in B.C. In light of this situation it is necessary to sharpen the attack,on the Tories in B.C. where they appear as the main right wing threat. In line with this the Communist Party will undertake the mass distribution of a statement in ridings where it is not running with an appeal to voters to defeat the Tories and will call for “critical support” of the NDP candidate in those ridings. In the 10 ridings where the Communist Party is running candidates they will direct their main fire on the Tories while putting forward the Communist program which is the only program advanced in this election which calls for real change to meet the crisis facing Canada. This is extremely important in a federal election in which the Tories and Liberals are avoiding debate on the major issues, and the NDP, while offering some worthwhile reforms, is in the main putting forward band-aid solutions. In this way the Communists aim to clar- ify the major issues in the election and con- tribute to the defeat of right wing candidates, which in B.C. are primarily the candidates of the Conservative Party. Maurice Rush is B.C. leader of the Communist party, and CP candidate in Van- couver Centre. Communist election Cp CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES. ..top, Jo ' *4nn (I) and Beth Chobotuck silkscreen 8wn signs, while New Westminster- Oquitlam candidate Rod Doran addresses all-candidates meet at New West market. / campaign hig hlights Here is the itinerary for Communist Party candidates and CP election state- ments and ads for the week Aug. 16 to 23. Aug. 16, Vancouver East candidate Miguel Figueroa is at Grandview Park, 7:30 p.m. Aug. 18, Vancouver Centre candidate Maurice Rush is at the West End Community Centre, 1 p.m. ; Aug. 19, Rush will be at the Firehall Theatre in Vancouver for a Co-op Radio | “cultural debate.” Aug. 20, Rush will on the Bannerman Show, CKNW radio, 11:05 a.m. Aug. 21, Rush will be at Kits Neighbor- hood House, 7 p.m. North Vancouver- Burnaby candidate Reg Walters will be at St. Andrew’s Church in North Vancouver, 8 p.m. Aug. 23, New Westminster-Coquitlam candidate Rod Doran is at the Fraser River Co-op, 7 p.m. Kingsway candidate Bert Ogden is at the Kensington Community Cen- tre, 7:30 p.m., while Rush and Figueroa are at the Unemployed Action Centre, 7:30 p.m. East End Vancouver residents have been camping on grounds along Burrard Inlet to demonstrate the Downtown Eastside’s need for a waterfront park. While a months-long effort by the loca! Create a Real Available Beach organization has won the support of the city government and parks board for a park located within the area between the Seabus terminal and Main Street, the Expo 86 megaproject has plans to blacktop the land, currently barren except for a small heliport, to accommodate 1,250 cars for the Expo attenders. Some 50 people have plans to stay camped on the grounds until Sept. 30. Gov't privatization move behind transit shutdown We’ve been without bus service in the _ Lower Mainland now for over eight weeks. Furthermore there are no indica- tions that the dispute between the Inde- pendent Canadian Transit Union and B.C. Transit will be settled in the near future. This is no ordinary dispute between union and management over wages and working conditions. The issues involved are much more fundamental. First of all, the bus drivers are not on strike. They have been locked out by management, on the orders of the pro- vincial Social Credit cabinet. There are three aims of this lockout. The Vancouver Sun, in an editorial Aug. 9, hit the nail right on the head when it declared “the government has pretty well confirmed that its main objec- tive from the start was to crush the Inde- pendent Canadian Transit Union.” Crushing the union, however, is still only the means to achieve another major objective, namely to reduce the quality and quantity of transit service. The pur- pose of this is to reduce the government subsidy which helps to keep the transit system operating. The final aim is to privatize the transit system, to turn the operation over to private business to operate on a user-pay basis, which means that fares would be triple or quadruple what they are now. The Sun suggests another reason why the government wants to keep the buses off the road for some time yet, and that is to make sure this year’s PNE is a loser. That would enable the government to avoid the issue of spending money to renovate the PNE grounds. I would suggest that it would also give the government the excuse it wants to privatize the PNE and turn the grounds over to private developers. To bring about a confrontation with the union and provide an excuse for a lockout, the cabinet and its stooge, B.C. Transit, announced that they would hire 380 part-time drivers to replace the regu- lar drivers. They claim this will save the bus system over $2 million a year. Experience in other cities where this has been tried shows that it results in cuts in service, that it is used to erode job security and that it results in a great increase in costly accidents because these part time drivers receive only one-third of the training that regular drivers get. The stand of B.C. Transit, and the provincial cabinet, is that they won’t even negotiate this demand. Their “take it or leave it” position makes a negotiated settlement impossible. The government in this dispute is tak- ing the same stand as in Expo 86. There, every time the building trades unions negotiated a settlement with Jim Patti- son, who is in charge of construction for Expo 86, the cabinet vetoed it. : There too the government does not want a settlement. It wants to smash the unions and bring down wages at a time when inflation is still high and profits of business are climbing once again. The tactic of the provincial govern- ment appears to be to take on and beat down one union at a time. It appears to be confident that labor solidarity and labor militancy in B.C. area thing of the past, and that it can, with impunity, defeat the unions. Harry Rankin The government appears confident that Operation Solidarity and the B.C. Federation of Labor are not prepared to take job action in support of either the construction unions or the bus drivers. The bus drivers have been more than reasonable in their efforts to end the dis- pute and get the buses rolling once again. They have offered to turn the whole issue over to an industrial inquiry commis- sion, one that would hold an open public inquiry not only into the dispute, but into public transit service in the whole province. That, of course, is the last thing the government wants, for then its aims would be exposed. Its actions wouldn’t stand up under public scrutiny. The bus drivers are not only fighting for their rights; they are fighting to main- tain and expand a vital public service. They deserve the full support of every citizen, of every community organization and of every trade union. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, AUGUST 15, 1984 e 3