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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1968

1 TTT TTT Tat

PUBLIC DEMANDS VICTORIA ACT

STOP STRIP

This is what B.C. will look like if laws
Companies.

are not passed protecting the province from

“strip-and-get-out”’ mining

‘Unity to defeat Bill 33
best answer to betrayal’

“Appointment of two former
trade union leaders as mediators
Under Bill 33 is nothing but a
Caiculated attempt by the

Ocred government to
Undermine the solid wall of
Opposition to their reactionary
anti-labor legislation,’ Nigel

Organ, provincial leader of the
Communist Party charged this
Week.

_ “The Bennett administration
1s attempting to buy off the top
€chelons of the trade union
Movement in order to perpetuate
Itself in office, hold labor in
Check for the U.S. and Japanese
trusts that are increasingly
dominating the economic and

political life of this province, and
carry through the foreign
surrender of our natural
resources,” he said.

“The Socred government’s
position has slipped to the point
where they have decided to
spend a large sum of money to
buy off certain top leaders in the
hope that they could thereby
defuse the poweful movement
not to comply with the Mediation
Commission and for repeal of
the compulsory arbitration pro-
cedures of Bill 33.

“The acceptance of
appointments as Bill 33
mediators by former progres-
sive spokesmen of the Van-

couver Labor Council comes as a
shock and bitter disappointment
to all genuine trade unionists
and friends of labor. Particu-
larly is this so in the case of
Charlie Stewart, although it
must be noted that he terminated
this association with the Com-
munist Party as long as nine
years ago,” Morgan stated.

“Tabor leaders come, and
labor leaders go. But the growing
exploitation of working people.
at the hands of the capitalist
class throws them into incessant
conflict. with their exploiters,”’
he said. “The rising economic

See BILL 33, pg. 12

Tribune

VOL. 29, NO. 47

Legislation to end
devastation urged —

Shocked by reports of widespread devastation
caused by open pit mining in B.C., and disclosure of the
fact that the Socred government has failed to adopt any
laws to protect the province from “strip-and-get-out”’
mining operations, has led to a public demand that all
strip mining be stopped until there has been a full
legislative inquiry when the House meets in January.

The protest over the

destruction of large areas of

B.C.’s landscape, and the
wholesale giveaway of the prov-
ince’s mineral resources, was
spurred by the announcement by
the president of Kaiser Coal,
Jack L. Ashby of Oakland, that
his company has a sales team in
Japan now seeking to double the
size of its present three-million-
ton-per-year contract.

At present Kaiser holds a
formal contract for the shipment
of 45 million long tons over 15
years starting in April 1970.
Kaiser holds reserves on 130
million tons of coal. The latest
announcement indicates the
company is anxious to speed up
its ‘‘strip-and-get-out’’ opera-
tions.

Nigel Morgan, provincial
leader of the Communist Party,
told the PT that the issue of the
wholesale giveaway of B.C.’s
mineral resources and the
turning of large areas into
blackened wastelands will be a
major one at the coming provin-
cial legislative session.

“The Bennett government is
not only selling out our coal, but
in recent years the major shift in
all mining in B.C. has been
towards open-pit operations,
which are the most profitable for
the monopolies and requires the
least number of workers. ‘Quick
profits, and the public be
damned,’ is the motto motivat-
ing the big monopolies and their
agent,-the Bennett government.

‘Trreplacable mineral re-
sources, on which a _ vast
metalurgical processing in-

dustry could be created in B.C.,
are being carted off by mech-
anical giants for export to for-
eign countries for processin

This senseless policy is against
the interests of British
Columbians today and robs

future gererations of their
birthright.
“The Communist Party

strongly urges that Ottawa and
Victoria call a halt to open-pit
mining now and stop all further:
deals which alienate our mineral
resources to foreign companies
until the whole issue is reviewed.

“‘We also call on the people of
B.C., and particularly the labor
movement, to speak up before it
is too late to halt this betrayal of
the public’s interest.”

Adding weight to the public
protest this week was New Demo-
cratic Party deputy leader Alex
Macdonald ‘(Vancouver East
MLA), who charged that the
government ‘‘is giving the green
light to promoters to. turn vast
areas of this province into waste-
land, without any laws whatever
for the protection or reclaiming
of the land.”’

Macdonald announced that he

_will propose a full legislative

inquiry at the next session of the
legislature into the ‘‘devasta-
tion of the terrain of the
province’ by massive open-pit
strip-mining operations.

“In a few short years, our
irreplaceable natural heritage is
being scarred forever to pile up
corporate profits in Cleveland
and New York and to feed blast
furnaces thousands of miles
from this province. There are a
few jobs in B.C. where one earth-
moving machine can pick up two
million pounds of this province in
one bite. Before our eyes, we are
witnessing the loss of recreation
areas, the spoiling of wildlife

See STRIP MINING, pg. 12