EDITORIAL

Refuse nuclear war role

Canadians, to their chagrin, are becoming ever
more familiar with the Mulroney government’s
strategem of offering profound assurances and
denials, while going deviously ahead with its neo-
conservative sell-out of Canada’s sovereignty and
independence.

Many organizations and astute public figures
have warned against the plot to commit Canada
to U.S. imperialism’s Star Wars, as they have
opposed U.S. weapons testing on Canadian terri-
tory, and other betrayals of Canadian interests.
One of the most recent voices to be heard was that
of scientist and broadcaster, David Suzuki, who
warned that the Star Wars program of Ronald
Reagan will not prevent nuclear annihilation, and
will not create jobs.

The prominent U.S. economist John Kenneth
Galbraith also clashed with the Ottawa Tories as
he ridiculed the “. . impression that the technical
dynamic of the arms buildup makes jobs. . .It is
an incredibly inefficient way of making jobs.”

Deputy Prime Minister Erik Neilsen calls it

“creative fiction” to assert that the Tories are step
by step ensnaring Canada in Reagan’s global war
strategy. For the record, the “‘creative fiction” has
been crafted by Mulroney, and Canada is indeed
closer to total involvement in — and total sub-
ordination to — the U.S. war machine.

It was reported May 28 that the U.S. Defence
Department is devising, to quote the New York
“Times, ‘“‘...a nuclear war ‘plan and command
structure that would integrate offensive nuclear
forces with the projected anti-missile shield” (Star
Wars). A U.S. administration official suggested
all would be under “‘a new nuclear war-fighting
command.” That would inevitably include Can-
ada’s North Warning System, and the Canada-
U.S. NORAD agreement going on active nuclear
war service.

Intensified resistance to these moves is urgently
needed. Canada should promptly get out of
NORAD and have no part of U.S. imperialism’s
mad plot to destroy the world and its peoples.

Challenging the budget

The federal budget, brought down on behalf of
the monopoly corporations, transnationals oper-
ating in Canada, and the wealthy, smells worse
the more it is diagnosed. Diagnosis from a
working-class standpoint exposes it entirely.

A Communist Party of Canada statement the
day after the budget focuses on key issues side-
stepped or papered-over by Finance Minister
Michael Wilson.

Besides challenging the budgetary pronounce-
ments and the class bias of the government, the
Communist Party advances specific measures to
reverse the assault on working people, low
income earners, the elderly, and the disadvan-

taged.
It proposes a $10-billion investment program

to create jobs across Canada. But the finance
minister, well aware that even by official figures

1.4 million Canadians are unemployed (a rate of
10.9 per cent) can do no more than predict 10 per
cent joblessness through next year.

Inflation in Canada is forecast at 4.4 per cent
next year (presently 3.9), yet the Wilson-
Mulroney budget wipes out indexation for infla-
tion in income taxes, family allowances and pen-
sions.

To top it off, Wilson plans to chop $2 billion
from transfer payments to provinces (covering
health, education) over the next five years when,
predictably, their needs will increase.

’ This attack on working people calls for action
to compel the government to respond to the real
needs of the people. A people’s majority outside
parliament to counter the Tory majority inside
becomes more urgent with every day of this
budget’s ominous existence.

CY REVS Ube (2/4

Budget day re-runs

The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Ltd., which owns things like
the Toronto Dominion Centre (50 per cent), and mints money in all |
phases of real estate development, had after-tax profits for the —
year ended Feb. 28, of $65,298,000, up from $27,631,000 the year
before.

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n introducing his budget May 23,
Finance Minister Michael Wilson, with
the Tories usual manipulation of reality,

People and Issues

Relief Camp Workers’ Union where he
was better known as Gerry Winters. One
of the youngest members of the leading

crowed that 200,000 new jobs had been
created since the Tories came to power
Sept. 4.

Undoubtedly, it is on the basis of state-
ments like that that the Mulroney
government is going to insist that it has
fulfilled its promise of “‘jobs, jobs, jobs.”
But Wilson’s claims are worth about as
much as R.B. Bennett’s statements from
50 years ago when he told relief camp
workers that the unemployed were better
off in Canada than anywhere in the world.

It may be that the work force in Canada
grew by 200,000 between Sept. 4 and May
23. But it is also true — and this figure
means a hell of a lot more than
Wilson’s — that the rate of unemploy-
ment went up from 14.1 per cent in Sep-
tember, 1984 to 15.4 per cent in April,
1985, according to statistics compiled by
Employment and Immigration Canada.
And since, according to Wilson, the size of
the labor force has grown, the number of
unemployed are getting larger all the time.

In this province, it’s even worse. The
size of the B.C. labor force actually
declined from 1,427,000 workers in Sep-
tember, 1984 to 1,422,000 workers in
April, 1985.

If you put those statistics together with
a report prepared by the federal Finance

valid today, according to tax experts —
you get a picture of what Tory policies will
really do to jobs in this country.

According to the study, a report of
which appeared in the Globe and Mail
May 30, 1985, the Tories’ budget plans to
remove the tax on capital gains will put
more money in the hands of the rich with-
out having any significant effect in increas-
ing investment and will force the govern-
ment to look to other areas of taxation to
raise money.

That, of course is exactly what Wilson
did in his budget. He took much of the tax
burden off the multinational coporations
and upper income Canadians and socked
it to the rest of us with gas taxes, sales taxes
and higher income taxes. As we noted last
week, in 1986, we’ll be paying in excess of
$1 billion more in income taxes while bus-
iness will be paying $540 million.

But it won’t create one new job. And
that’s the true Tory reality, not the manip-
ulated version created by Wison.

* * *

Fy tape recorders, which are invalu-
able in providing a verbatim account
of conversation, are sometimes imperfect
instruments especially when it comes to
transcribing the spoken word into the
written form. And that’s what happened

when we taking some of the information
from an interview with Stan Lowe for the
On-to-Ottawa trek supplement.

In the section, “The Hungry Thirties”
Stan speaks of “hanging around carnivals,
passing lists from one to the other of places
you could go to get a handout.”

For the historical record, that shouldn’t
have been “carnivals” but “Con Jones
pool room” which, Stan tells us, used to be
on Hastings Street near Carroll. Obviously,
those years spent in the steel fabricating
industry did something to the editor’s ears.

* * *

ormer On-to-Ottawa trekker Gerry

Tellier knew that he was dying of
cancer when we interviewed him in March
for the 50th anniversary supplement on
the Trek. But he was looking forward to
seeing the special edition, particularly
since he’d been a part of the events it was
commemorating.

Sadly, Gerry passed away at eight
o’clock in the morning on the day the issue
went to press.

Born in Montreal, Dec. 13, 1916, Gerry
came to this province in his mid-teens with
his brother Louis and quickly became
swept up in the organizing work of the

strategy committee of the camp workers’
strike, he was appealing for funds at the
Market Square meeting July 1, 1935 when
the police attacked, provoking the Regina

riot that ended the trek.

Following a stint in the Canadian Air
Force in the early years of World War II,
he later joined the merchant marine,
becoming an active member of the Cana-
dian Seamen’s Union. He was later a
patrolman for the union in the port of
Montreal.

With the demise of the CSU in 1949,
Gerry returned again to this province and
worked through various unions including
the Marineworkers and the United
Fishermen before shipping out again as a
seamen on the coastwise runs as a member
of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway,
Transport and General Workers in 1962.
For the last decade before he retired in
1981, he had worked out of Local 97 of the
Ironworkers. A generous contributor to
Tribune drive, Gerry was also a supporter

. of the Committee of Progressive Electors

and volunteered in the office during the
1984 civic election campaign.

A memorial service has been set for
June 15, 2 p.m. at the Carnegie Centre, at
Main and Hastings. His executor has
asked that in lieu of flowers any donations
be made to the Tribune.

Department five years ago — but still

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4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 5, 198