New

STRIP MINING IN KOOTENAYS. Operation

e Kootenay Valley apart leaving it a vast wasteland. Last week the C
$650 million deal to send coal from the Crows Nest
Will get the coal, and we'll get the devastation.

giveaway looms

——————————————

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1968

e by the Kaiser interests would tear
PR and Cominco announced a new
to Japan. The CPR and Cominco will get the profit, Japan

s such as the one shown abov

VOL. 29, NO. 45

In a joint statement issued
Thursday, Nov. 14, N.R. Crump,
chairman of Canadian Pacific
Railway, and W.S. Kirkpatrick,
chairman of Cominco, aCPR sub-
sidiary, announced that a deal
was underway to sell up to $650
million worth of Kootenay coal
to Japan under a similar arrange-
ment signed some months ago
between the U.S. Kaiser inter-
ests and Japanese steel
companies.

The two industrial tycoons
announced that talks on a sales
contract are due to start shortly
in Japan. Involved will be an
expected 45 million long tons of
East Kootenay coking coal over
a period of 15 years. Plant con-
struction is expected to start
about mid-1969 and coal produc-
tion will begin in 1971.

The statement released last

End Vietnam war parley i me
emisphere support

gets

The Hemispheric Conference

to End the Vietnam War is >

aining support as the opening
date, Thursday, Nov. 28,
approaches. The conference
Convenes in Montreal and will

Tun for four days, until
December 1.
Recently the Smothers

Brothers, currently rated in the
top bracket of North American
television, have advised officials
Of the Hemispheric Conference
that they ‘extend their best
Wishes to the success of your
Worthwhile endeavor.”

They are among a number of
‘ artists and entertainers in the
United States, Latin America,
and Canada, who have indicated
their support for the Conference.
A special poster created by
Mexican artist David A.

Siqueiros, famous muralist, is
now being sold to help finance
the historic parley.

This week the Conference
Organizing Committee
announced that Senator Coleman
Young, majority leader of the
Michigan Senate, has agreed to
be among. the speakers to
address the parley. Senator
Young is a member of the
National Committee of the
Democratic party.

Among other Hemispheric
Conference speakers coming
from the United States will be
Private Dennis Mora, Pic?
James Johnson, and Private
David Samos, known as the Fort
Hood Three — the first U.S.
draftees to refuse to go to
Vietnam. who were recently
released after serving two and a

a

Thursday said: “‘The property
has proven strippable reserves
metallurgical grade

that this giant operation, like the
Kaiser one, will be open pit strip
mining — a form of mining
strongly condemned
United States and outlawed in

‘ . ma ‘
half years for their refusal *‘to I ee that the CPR and
kill or die in this illegal, Cominco have publicly
immoral, and unjust war.” canoancka. thes pending

Sponsors from the USS. include
Ossie Davis, playwright-actor,
and Burton Lane, lyricist. Other
Latin American artist sponsors
include Antonio Miranda
Fernandez, co-ordinator of
Brazilian Universities Theatres:
and from Argentian, Sussy Kent
and Corrado Corradi both well-
known stage personalities, and
Mario Luisa Anido, concert
guitarist. Former president of
Mexico, Lazar Cardenas, has
indicated his intention to send a
message of solidarity to be read
at the Conference.

Canadian sponsors include
Jean-Louis Roux, Director of the
Theatre du Nouveau Monde.

See VIETNAM, pg. 12

negotiations would indicate that
they have already won approval
from the Socred government.

The CPR-Cominco coal will
come from the famous Balmer
seam, a fabulously rich coal
seam which extends throughout
the Crowsnest area. It is
reported to have good qualities
for the coke used in steelmaking
which the Japanese steel
monopolies covet.

The CPR-Cominco coal
property is on the Fording River
in the Elk River Valley about 52
miles north of Fernie. Three
companies. including Kaiser are
now shipping coal out of Burrard
Inlet. Recently the PT disclosed

in the

By MAURICE RUSH

Last week another giant project was announced
which would speed up the giveaway and destruction of
B.C.’s vast coal deposits without regard to the present
and future interests of the public.

that a fourth operation — the
Scurry-Rainbow Oil Co., and
North American Coal Corp. of
Cleveland, Ohio — had won
Cabinet approval for a giant give-
away deal. :

The CPR-Cominco deal will be
the fifth large-scale operation
underway to tear up the East
Kootenay landscape, and to ship
hundreds of millions of tons of
coal to Japan — coal which could
well be used in B.C. to create a
steel industry here.

By 1970, when the now-building
deepsea port at Roberts Bank is
completed, it is expected that
the CPR-Cominco coal will move
to Japan over the bulk loading
facilities which Kaiser is
building for fast loading of coal
carriers.

In a front page story in the
October 18 issue of the PT this
paper condemned the ‘‘strip-and-
get-out policies’ being approved
by the Socred government. The
charge made then, that the
Bennett government is
presiding over the liquidation of
B.C.’s_ resources, is ther
underlined by last week's CPR-
Cominco announcement. We
warned then that other big
sellout deals were coming. This
warning to our readers is now
proven fully justified.

With the provincial legislature
due to open in January it is now
more urgent than ever that
maximum pressure be brought
to bear on Victoria to call a halt
to the vast giveaway of our
resources, and to take up the
demand for new economic
policies to process B.C.’s
resources here, thereby creating
new industries and jobs.

A good place to start would be
to launch plans for the building of
a steel industry in B.C. to use the
fabulous coal and iron ore
deposits we have for the good of
the people and not for the profit
of U.S. and Japanese monop-
olies.