EDITORIAL

Jan. 30 — and the future

The trade union movement and broad spectrum of
people’s organizations united in the Solidarity Coali-
tion are waiting apprehensively for the Bennett
government to reveal its intentions when the year-end
ceasefire expires next Monday with the re-opening of
the B.C. legislature.

The relative silence from government may indicate
that there will be an attempt to defuse the confrontation
with the people set off by last year’s disastrous session.

July 7, remembered as Black Thursday, began what
was surely the most ignoble session ever of this provin-
ce’s legislature. It was a comment on the governing
party and the political system which made it possible
that the most democratic moment during that session
was its adjournment, called to allow the government to
deal with Solidarity over its anti-democratic legislative
program.

The Socreds return to the legislature with their pro-
gram partially intact, partially defeated. The corner-
stone of that program, Bill 3 and the elimination of
seniority in the public sector, has been rendered impo-
tent, at least for now. Bill 2, which sought to gut the
B.C. Government Employees’ Union agreement; Bill 5,
which sought to strip tenants of rent controls and just
cause for eviction; and Bill 27, which eliminated the
Human Rights Commission and protection against
unreasonable discrimination, remain as unfinished
business.

The government was forced to pay lip service, at best,
to a consultative process over the critical issues of edu-
cation and health budgets, social services and labor
legislation.

If the government interprets the participation of the
Solidarity Coalition in the consultative process or the
decision by Operation Solidarity to defer further job
action over education layoffs — however questionable
these decisions may have been — as signs of weakness
and a signal to renew the legislative attack, it will repeat
the error of July 7.

But the government must also be made to under-
stand that adopting different methods — or the failure
to restore fundamental rights that have been lost
—will not be allowed to accomplish the same
objectives. :

Rent controls, which have been eliminated by regula-
tion, must be restored. Just cause for eviction, which
remains the law of this province, must be enforced.

The B.C. Human Rights Act, which also remains law
in B.C. and which provides for a commission and
enforcement, must be given substance by establishment
of an agency free of government interference.

Massive education layoffs which hang over B.C.’s
school system must be forestalled by a restoration of
school board budgets.

GAIN recipients, their numbers at record levels,
deserve respite from the cruel poverty imposed upon
them by a substantial increase in GAIN rates and the
full reinstitution of the Community Incentive Program.

These are the minimum measures required by the
provincial government if it is to begin to reach a rap-
prochement with the people. And with the new revela-
tion that the government deliberately overestimated is
deficit by $300 million or more to justify its right wing
assault, they should be well within its means.

So far, however, the signals from Victoria point in the
opposite direction. New budget announcements con-
tinue to shock and dismay. Only the most recent is the
stunning 33 per cent increase in student tuitions at
UBC, the result of a six per cent cut in provincial
funding and the refusal to distribute an increase in
federal grant money earmarked for the universities.

It must be assumed that this session of the legislature
will hold out nothing but more bad news for B.C.
Solidarity should await the session with vigilance and
mobilization, for just as the last sitting required the
formation of a strong extra-parliamentary opposition,
this sitting is likely to put that opposition to the test
again.

Kaplan bill echoes 50s

In retrospect, parts of the “puzzle” of political
harassment of the late 1950s fit snugly together. Omi-
nously, they fit all too readily into today’s instruments
of harassment.

Trade unionists, the political left, outspoken demo-
crats, peace champions and advocates of international
cooperation, enemies of fascism and of U.S. Senator
Joe McCarthy, as well as a lot of innocent bystanders,
were railroaded out of jobs, refused entry to U.S. and
spied upon, questioned and harassed by officers of the
law, employers, and the government’s bevy of hired
brow-beaters.

The recently declassified papers of former Liberal
Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (who held that office
from November 1948 to June 1957) literally flame with
the red scare, rumor-mongering, perceived communist
threats and guilt by association that marks the period.
Worse, they reveal the federal government bowed down
with craven cowardice before the U.S: administration

and all its agencies.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ever at the

service of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, handed
over many thousand of names of Canadians whom they
branded a threat to U.S. security, who are forbidden to
cross the misnamed “unguarded” border between Can-
ada and the U.S. Some 3,000 are still on that list.

Also, the other list of some 800,000 Canadians is
juggled in the hands of the state police and the minister
of justice. Are they suspect? No one will say.

Bill C-157, sponsored by Kaplan, would have made
illegalities legal. Telephone tapping, planted listening
devices, breaking and entefing, burglary, searches of
premises — whatever the police might want to do —
would now be legal. A new bill before parliament would
only make the process more sophisticated.

If it were not for the high level fightback mood of the
Canadian working class, and the strong resistance of all
the democratic forces against authoritarian shackles,
the repression would be smothering.

But that fight goes on. It needs to be taken up again
with the demand that the government’s new security bill
be withdrawn immediately.

Cy Hawes Vas //ty
NEWS ITEM: In the 14 months since Brian Mulroney, then
president of the Iron Ore Co. of Canada, closed the company
down in Schefferville, Quebec, the town itself has been

gragually closing down andis on its way to becoming a ghost
own.

The year ended back on Oct. 31 for the Canadian Imperial Bank 4
of Commerce, and nicely, with an after-tax profit of $314,873,000.

Second class mail registration number 1560

n the course of events, one frequently runs up against
things decidely coarse in nature. But it’s seldom the party
responsible actually admits it.

We refer to the letter Vancouver alderman Libby Davies
received inviting her to the “World Affairs Dinner” spon-
sored by the Junior League and the Arts, Science and
Technology Centre. Set for Feb. 22, it is to feature the man
infamous for the bombing of Cambodia, the toppling of
Chilean president Salvador Allende, and, most recently,
for recommending increased funding and U.S. military
presence to prop up the crumbling reactionary forces in
Central America: Henry Kissinger. 5

In extending the invitation to the $150-per-plate affair to
city council members, the event’s organizers noted the
affair would include “a full coarse (sic) dinner and drinks.”

Of coarse...er, of course, the organizers had made a
mistake, just as they had in inviting to the city the person
whose name has become a modern byword for war crimes.
They haven’t yet acknowledged the latter mistake, but they
did apologize to Davies — who, incidently, was addressed
as “Mr. Davies” in the initial invitation — in a subsequent
letter.

The follow-up letter was prompted by Davies’ response
to the invitation. Like the other COPE aldermen, she
opposes the use of the publicly funded Arts and Science
centre in bringing Kissinger to the city, and replied that she
was “unable to attend your coarse dinner.”

Other people also think the whole affair a coarse one.

People and Issues

They'll be planning protests over the visit (story, page 11),
and its sponsorship by the centre, which, incidently,
received grants from the city of $68,900 and $9,000 last
year.

x*« * *

t’s not uncommon for the corporate elite’s various

groupies to recall some personal anecdote when a major
executive passes on — but the ink that has gushed out
about Ray Kroc the MacDonald’s hamburger baron who
died Jan. 14, is harder to swallow than a month-old Mac-
Chicken sandwich.

The worst was Vancouver Sun columnist Denny Boyd’s
Horatio Alger piece on Jan. 20 which recalled an anecdote
by another restauratuer about the time Kroc came to visit a
MacDonald’s franchise in Richmond and — praise be! —

got right down on his hands and knees to inspect the
grease traps to see if they’d been cleaned.

The same issue of the Sun carried a full page advertise-
ment in memory of Kroc which said: “On behalf of the

-millions of people around the world whose lives have been

touched and brightened by this extraordinary man, we
honor the memory of a business pioneer, a humanitarian
and a below friend.” It was signed by the “employees,
franchisees and associates of MacDonald’s.” ;

It boggles the mind — especially since Ray Kroc prob-
ably did more that any other person in either the U.S. or
Canada to ensure that young people under 18 earned less
than the minimum wage.

In fact, Ray Kroc was so notorious for that role that the
various pieces of legislation in both this country and the

U.S. which exempted those under 18 from the minimum ~

wage law became known as the “MacDonald’s laws.”

Readers may recall the campaign launched by the
Young Communist League in this province in 1975 calling
on the then NDP government to include under-18 workers
in the minimum wage law — and the outcry it provoked
from. MacDonald’s franchisees who threatened legal
action when members leafletted MacDonalds outlets.

That same year, a former MacDonald’s representative
told a food workers conference that MacDonald’s fran-
chise managers had been instructed to lay off employees on
their 18th birthday and, if they didn’t, they would risk
losing their franchises.

So, it’s not surprising that Kroc rode the golden arches
to towering heights of business success — he successfully
exploited cheap teenage labor and passed it off as “‘provid-

ing employment and opportunities for advancement for’

thousands of young people.” And his sycophants now call
it “humanitarianism.”

If the flags are flying at half mast — it’s fora man who
paid wages at half price. :

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 25, 1984

That’s not counting a provision for loan losses of $381-million. And a
just to prove that “recovery” is here for some, profit was up from —
the previous year’s $280,840,000.

TRIBUNE

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