t ‘Stop plundering B.C.’s | mine resources -Morgan By NIGEL MORGAN Signing of the $60-million Japanese- Canadian Brenda Mine deal last week serves to underscore the urgent need to overhaul B.C. mining policy to end the shovelling up of B.C. ores for processing and manufacture in foreign lands, and to establish a new, genuinely representative Mining Commission to regulate promotion and development of mining prospects, initiate smelting and secondary _ production, and call a halt to strip- mining in the public welfare. The Brenda deal — biggest mining finance deal yet concluded in B.C. — is a ‘‘joint venture’ of Noranda Mines, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Nippon Mining and the Mitsui Co. Ltd. of Japan. It is a typical Japanese “investment-loan’ scheme NIILO MAKELA CLUB — providing little employment for Canadians, ridiculously low returns for the Provincial treasury. and no protection against the ‘‘strip-out, and get-out”’ plundering of irreplaceable resources — while guaranteeing raw materials the Japanese want to supply world markets (including Canada; with manufactured goods. This deal will create the largest base metal open-pit mine in Canada some 15 miles west of Peachland in the Okanagan. with 24,000 tons of copper and molybdenum ores carted off per day in massive 150-ton trucks for foreign manufacture. And unless controlled. leave in its wake giant barren’ furrows and ugly scars gouged from the countryside by strip mining methods. The interests of the people of this | province requires strict controls against such a plundering of resources, and corrupt and wasteful speculation. A respresentative Mining Commission. under democratic public control, is needed to regulate the promotion and development of mining prospects; bring under public ownership the sale and’ smelting of all ores, and initiate a crown development company to guarantee production and manufacture of such secondary mineral products as can be profitably produced in B.C. It is time we called a halt to the ; ““stripping’’ of Canadian job opportunities and insist on a reasonable return for the public treasury to help provide for pressing educational, health and other government services. Plans for B.C. in the Communist Party’s federal election campaign were GREETINGS disc d at a special meeting of the Party’s B.C. Provincial Committee in Vancouver last weekend. i cae ie ii ini Holes in the ground and deeper in debt The picture above shows the result of strip mining in the U.S: which has now been virtually outlawed. Strip mining companies from the U.S. and Japan are moving to B.C. and large parts of the province are threatened with being turned into vast unproductive wastelands like those above. Once the ore is extracted and the foreign profiteers leave, this is the heritage we will be left with. Last week the Marine Workers and Boilermakers Union presented a brief to the Vancouver City Council in support of a Canadian Merchant Marine and for preservation of resources needed for a steel industry. In their brief the union pointed out that B.C.'s treasury wil get 10¢ a ton royalty for the coal extracted at the Crows Nest Pass. In addition, they pointed out, millions of dollars will be taken out of the public treasury to build Deltaport to ship the coal to Japan on Japanese built ships. The PT presents below an extract from that brief dealing with the Kaiser-Japan coal deal which has aroused widespread concern in B.C: The coal which Kaiser proposes to sell to Japan is to be obtained from the 100.000 acres of land it temporarily purchased from another U.S. firm, the Crows Nest Industries Ltd. Kaiser has arranged the financing of the sale in such a way that no capital movements out of the USS. will take place. His lawyers are also confident that the whole. transaction is tax-free as far as Crows Nest Industries is concerned except for some production payments which start in 1978. The coal will be produced by what the Vancouver Sun calls ‘‘strip underground mine, at a spot called Sparwood where the provincial government had previously planned to relocate the coal dust impregnated towns of the Crows Nest. Kaiser estimates that total taxes to be paid over 15 years will be $79 millions, or $4.6 millions per year. The provincial treasury will get 10 cents per ton royalty, the 15 percent mining tax on gross profits, and the 10 percent corporation tax. Assuming the continuation of thesé rates, the tax returns to B.C. will be $2.08 millions per year from all threé sources combined. The federal share will be $2.52 millions. Using Kaiser’s estimates of his taxes as a base, it can be shown that the same amount that we have previously estimated will be the cost ‘of rehabilitating the resulting waste lands. The $2.52 millions per year for 15 years that the federal government will receive will not be enough 10 May Day Greetings mining’, an industrial euphemism he expects to net $3,145,000 per year for ripping the countryside open in after taxes. to all giant furrows. ? OU R FRIENDS i The $2.08 millions per year for 19 This will be done at the 6,000 foot years that the provincial treasury from the level, 7 miles north of the present will receive comes to approximately lite