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Wega

By MAURICE RUSH

The photo on the right is
a graphic illustration of _ |

he way B.C.’s valuable
Mineral resources are
being plundered by private

and Japanese
Monopolies for profit,
without any restrictions
Placed on them by a
Compliant provincial gov-
ernment.

The photo shows a mountain
on Texada Island being torn
apart by open pit mining to
extract iron ore for J apan’s steel
mills, Docked alongside the
miming operation is the MS
Texada, a specially-built bulk
Carrier loading 68,500 tons of iron
concentrates. Many such ships
and larger ones are now being
built by Japan to haul away
B.C.’s coal, iron, copper, and
other precious ores in raw and
unprocessed form.

Not Only are foreign
monopolies plundering our
mineral] resources, but in recent
Months they have turned to open
Pit and strip mining to get at our
ee Unees, quickly and cheaply.
rey are threatening to turn
Ge areas of “beautiful British

olumbia’’ into a wasteland of
Slag heaps and overburden to
make quick and big profits.

€ Socred government has
€ncouraged these foreign
Monopolies in their “‘strip-and-
get-out”’ Policies.

he latest mining venture to
“ announced came at the end of
camber when the U.S. Kaiser

Oal Co. said that it had reached
an agreement with Japanese
Stee] interest for the shipment of
a additional six million tons of
: al_on top of an earlier
een to ship 45 million tons
he pan, starting in 1970. That

Tings the total coal being
extracted from the Crows Nest
area by this one U.S. company to
51 million tons, with an option to
re an additional four million

To get at this coal some 500
oe: of surface soil, rock and
arious earth formations are to
Temoved so that the coal can

EXHIBITION GARDENS

RALLY (astincs & RENFREW)

TUES. JAN. 14-8 P.M.

= — i

Tribune

‘VOL. 30, NO. 2

‘Mountain of iron ore being loaded for Japan at Texada Island

10¢

TOP THE PLUNDER

F B.C.’s MINERAL RESOURCES

. be stripped by mechanical

monsters and sped to the
superport at Roberts Bank on
specially-built unit trains for
export to Japan.

The same thing is happening in
other areas of the province. At
Phoenix an entire copper-
bearing mountain is being

sheered off by the Granby

Consolidated Co. The Highland
Valley is being blackened by
Open-pit copper and
molybdenum mining. The same

thing is happening at Babine.

Lake, Endako, Texada Island
and Port Hardy, to name only a
few. -

There is also a _ strong
suspicion that the Socred

‘government has entered into

deals with other foreign mining
companies which have not yet
been revealed.

The tragedy of the present
plunder of B.C.’s_ mining
resources is that in a world
growing increasingly desperate
for such resources, the B.C.

government is giving them away

to foreign investors for a song.
And in the process of doing this
is allowing much of our beautiful
landscape to be devastated.
These rich mineral resources
— which cannot be replaced —

could provide the basis for a vast
smelting, refining and
manufacturing industry in B.C.
if used to develop our province
instead of enriching foreign

monopolies.
Why not a steel and eopper
smelter in B.C. instead of

‘sending B.C.’s ores to Japan and
the U.S.?’

Why not build industries in
B.C. which could provide
‘hundreds of thousands of new
jobs for present and future
generations instead of exporting
these jobs to other countries?

It’s time the people of B.C.
called a halt to the present

SPEAKERS FROM SOUTH VIETNAM
NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT

(SEE STORY PAGE 12)

plunder of mineral
resources.
On January 23 the next

legislative session will open in

our

‘Victoria. Premier W. A. C.

Bennett announced last week
that legislation will be
introduced that will give the
government ‘“‘broad powers” to
“deal with any situation’? which
may crop up in the mining
industry. But what precisely the
legislation will be was not
spelled out.

The Socred government is
under great public pressure to

See RESOURCES, pg. 2