Letters Letters MLAs state to Tories’ , Vancouver East residents are overwhelm- Ingly against the nine per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST) introduced by the Tories in Ottawa and supported by the Socreds in Victoria. This GST in unfair and means that Can- adians will be paying an extra $5.5 billion in taxes in the first year alone. The GST will Taise the cost of almost everything you pur- chase as well as increasing the cost on almost all services you use. For example, we can add nine percent on books, magazines, new homes, taxi rides, take-out foods, pos- tage stamps, movie theatre tickets, haircuts, diapers, funerals and the list goes on. The GST is part of a Tory/Socred trend toward cutting taxes for large corporations opposition sales tax while increasing them for average citizens. In the last few years alone, the Socreds have cut $500 million off the taxes big business pays, and made up the difference by increas- ing the taxes you and I pay by $500 million. And now, instead of pushing for fair taxes, the Socreds are lining up in support of the GST, and have actually put forward a plan to grab a share of this new tax. We must stop this unfair Goods and Ser- vices Tax. Let us know if you are opposed to this tax too. We will make sure your voice is heard in Victoria. Glen Clark, MLA Vancouver East Bob Williams, MLA Vancouver East Get on GST campaign now I wouldn’t want to be 30 again for all the tea in China, if Canada doesn’t stop its proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST). Every time people get to the point where acquiring a home seems possible, they move the goal posts, this time, by inflation and the . GST. And tenants are denied rent controls, leaving them with the dilemma of paying as much and more than, their incomes can bear, keeping them at a week-to-week ser- ' vile existence. ne This very situation then follows through achain of events, which will affect everyone - down the line, including small shopkeepers and everyone not big enough to be “tax free” like big business. We have to realize that if we are united and have a will to bring change, we can do something, even it is only by sheer numbers. So let’s get with it. Stop the GST. 2 sea bs Eileen Babuick, Kamloops Start out without war toys _ This year Christmas should take on spe- cial meaning as the potential for world peace is greater than ever before. Even Reader says Trib coverage valued Our paper is very valuable in reporting news that is not in the capi- talist media. In reading over the issue just received I was really enlightened by a letter from Gary Swann (‘Suit ‘dan- gerous precedent,” Tribune, Nov. 27, 1989). The questions he raises help to understand the things you sometimes miss. - Also the letter from Nina Westa- way about the situation in El Salva- dor (“Canadian government echoing U.S. on El Salvador”) was very timely. Ed Skeeles, Nanaimo The Tribune welcomes letters to the editor and particularly com- ments on articles which have appeared in the paper. We strive to run letters in full but reserve the right to edit for length. though world shaking events are happening on a daily basis in Eastern Europe, Canada continues with a military budget that ignores the recent shift in world politics. Our children reap the seeds that we sow. Lowering the military budget would pro- vide many social services, instead of the steam roller of cutbacks and proposed taxes presently on Canada’s agenda. The New Westminster Peace Council urges everyone this season to remember that change is not given — it is won. Our children will receive this world from us. Let us leave them a world that they can feel pride in. Let us teach them co-operation, tolerance and love. Please don’t buy war toys! Mark Beeching, New Westminster Peace Council Or from whom, the poor in the ditch. (By Yanks) in the night, And our Maritime Shore. On a (nuclear) dump. Some Christmas couplets to delight ‘Lyin’ Brian’ That one’s called “Brian, the Baie Comeau cheat.” (The name rhymes with lyin’, and goes with deceit.) He tried to out-fashion the Marcos (in clothes?); “Imelda” they call him wherever he goes. He snarls at health care, hates UIC (And feels the same about you and me who frustrate his final, big-fantasy play: To hand it all over — become USA). He salivates sloppily, pulse pushing faster Dreaming of new ways to flatter his Master (Who gives him a shiny, fat U.S. dime * When he was a kid — paid every time He sang Yankee songs for Baie Comeau bosses, And learned how to profit from Canada’s losses. He learned how to sneak, and snivel, and crouch. He learned who to tap when he wanted a pouch Full of gold to launch his first try at the top; But he never would tell-how much money he got But we see who it was that purchased his clout As we look at him snivel and sneak and sell-out To the ruthless, the racist, the Yank — all the rich Who rape, wood, ocean — and This vacuous robot, this sleazebag in power leads but to deny the needs of the hour. He joins OAS — then turns from the sight Of six priests and two women killed (Or murdered with their guns, and for U.S. pay) — But who did it? Damn! He really can’t say. You ask, ““What’s the point of his OAS scheme?” Why, to top up the work on his puppet regime. Defying ecology, the Third World, and his own, He sprawls in the dust and gnaws on a bone — A child’s femur or rib-cage that sinks in the sun: “Third World fare” if you please. “Bri thinks it’s good fun! It was thrown, you see, from a window as pay For letting his Masters go their own way With Nicaragua, Free Trade, our cultural lore, De Havilland, El Salvador, These Christmastide words are sent out today As the country is being Free Traded away. Resolve in the New Year to fight and to fight Till all of his grafters are put into flight (With the Mounties Mulroney coerced from “the right’’), And till Brian the lyin’ is hauled by the rump To the place he belongs — — Robin Matthews, Vancouver Opening of debate on CP, socialism urged Socialism is changing. The USSR is res-" tructuring and Hungary and Poland seem to be moving closer to capitalism. The governments of Czechoslovakia and the GDR have given up their monopoly on truth as well as the mostly-unearned role of institutionalized vanguard. In other parts of the world — China, North Korea and Romania, to name a few — distortions of socialism seem harder to overcome. To most of us communists, it is becoming painfully clear that our ideal of socialism was characterized by corruption as well as by bureaucratic, administrative, patriarchal and undemocratic centralism. The non-capitalist societies which deve- loped after the October Revolution are no longer a model to guide us. Rather, they ought to be viewed as experiments from which we can learn the positive as well as the negative. Canadian communists need to answer many questions. We must re-evaluate old concepts and policies and overcome our own forms of stagnation and conformism. Inviting and providing an open forum for discussion and dialogue with the Left in the pages of the Tribune is integral to the revi- talization and renewal of the Communist Party of Canada. At the same time, there is need to develop a free and open debate on issues relating to the politics and current state of the CPC. The tacit idea that communists should not “wash their dirty linen in public” and the CPC members must appear united in public, is one of many taboos in the way of real democracy. After reading a recent Tribune commen- tary on the declining membership of the Socialist Unity Party in the GDR(“ Wishful thinking cited in GDR _ leaders’ self- criticism,” Tribune Nov. 27, 1989), I would, for example, like to see a Tribune commen- tary on the declining membership of the CRE Martin Robbert, St. John’s, Nfld. Pacific Tribune, December 18, 1989 « 15