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Trafficking in apartheid

The mountain labored and produced a mouse.

The Mulroney government’s long-awaited “tough
new measures” against apartheid in South Africa have
come in, not with a bang but with a whimper.

Announced by External Affairs Minister Joe Clark,
following a weekend inner cabinet meeting, the 12
steps proposed by the Tory government range from
“encouraging” Canadian banks not to sell South
African Kruggerands to appointing a labor officer at
Canada’s embassy in South Africa to “follow the
labor scene.”

Canadian companies doing business with apartheid
will continue to do business. Banks will continue lend-
ing money, Canadian investment will continue. The
entire issue of a so-called “code of conduct” by Cana-
dian firms doing business there is reduced to asking
them to fill out a standard reporting form which Joe
Clark will review once a year. Pretoria must be shak-
ing in its boots.

Revealing that Canada has been processing Nami-
bian uranium, something that has been steadfastly
denied for years by Ottawa, Clark announced this
country will cease doing so, but not until three years
from now — in 1988!

The whole range of week-kneed proposals has
already been criticized by opponents of apartheid here
as “symbolic”, not touching at the heart of the issue
which is the complete isolation of a regime which is
branded as illegal and anti-human by the United
Nations and most governments.

Admitting that $3-million worth of Canadian com-
puters had found their way into the hands of the South
African police, another fact denied by Ottawa in the
past, Clark said Canada will now “restrict” exports of
such materials.

He did, however, use the occasion to make a tough
speech, with all the right words in the right places. The
so-called sanctions then quickly proceeded to make a
mockery of the words.

_ The fact is that a growing public revulsion, mass
actions outside and inside South Africa have forced
this government to publicly address the issue. And it
will be mounting anger and revulsion against the gen-
ocide of apartheid that will entually bring about its
complete international isolation despite the hypocrisy
of Clark in Ottawa and Stephen Lewis in New York.

Simply wholesale robbery

Last week the Conservatives announced they are
watering down affirmative action plans to mere guide-
lines which will require companies bidding for
government contracts simply to declare themselves
equal opportunity employers. There will be no legisla-
tion, no quotas, nothing but reliance on the “good-
will” of corporations.

It’s another Tory broken promise.

Leaked Cabinet documents came next. Plans were
revealed for slashes in research, transportation and
fisheries. Staff and budget cuts are planned for the
Department of. Regional Industrial Expansion.

These came only days after Finance Minister
Michael Wilson, fresh from his defeat on pension
de-indexing, socked it to every Canadian by adding
another one cent per litre on top of the two cents per

_ litre gasoline tax — money which will go straight into
the coffers of the big oil transnationals.

A federal task force was then appointed last week to
“review” the Unemployment Insurance system — not
for the purpose of providing better coverage for the two
million jobless — but to examine ways of cost-cutting.

These steps, added to the entire raft of anti-people,

pro-business proposals in Wilson’s budget, speak

volumes about both Tory philosophy and Tory plans.
_ In a hard-hitting pamphlet published last week,
“People’s budget, Yes; Tory Budget, No”, Commu-
nist party leader William Kashtan examines both the
Conservative philosophy that “free enterprise is the
motor of progress” and the hard reality of what this
means for millions of working Canadians.

Kashtan argues that Tory policies, rather than
creating jobs, will cost 150,000 jobs over the next two
years. He shows that Mulroney lied to the Canadian
people when he called universality of social programs
“a sacred trust”, and points to a widespread attack on
universality being mounted by the Tories.

The pamphlet examines the Tory taxation
system — another Mulroney lie when he spoke about
“fairness” in taxation — and says that by 1990 corpo-
rations’ taxes will decrease by $2 billion while personal
income tax will rise by $4 billion and sales tax will
climb by $3 billion.

“Clearly,” Kashtan writes, “what is claimed to be a
‘fair and balanced’ budget is nothing but wholesale
robbery of working people including the middle class.
The aim is to transfer $9.6 billion from the working
people and the middle class over the next five years
and hand it over to the corporations and the wealthy.”

The pamphlet not only exposes the crass inequality
of the budget and calls for a fightback against it by a
people’s majority outside parliament — it also
advances an alternative: new economic policies of job
creation, economic expansion, increased people’s pur-
chasing power and strengthened social programs.

“Tt’s not enough to throw out the budget,” Kashtan
writes. “The authors of the budget also need to be
thrown out — and the sooner the better. Canada
needs new economic policies and a new government to
implement them. A new government which would put
Canada first — for peace, jobs and independence.”

cen. & THE LOO Lome

oF THE UNITED STATES - -

Chief executives at Molson Cos. Ltd. of Montreal, which besides
the well-known suds, also owns the hockey Montreal Canadiens -
and Beaver Lumber, must be weeping in their own beer. Profits for
the year ended March 31, 1985, were a mere $45.2-million, com-
pared with $51.3-million a year earlier. Blame it on the philistines —
who guzzle all the new American swill.

IRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125
Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada —~$14 one year; $8 six months

Foreign — $20 one year;
Second class mail registration number 1560

f the Socreds were trying to pass them_
selves off as a reformed bunch — posing
as advocates of “co-operation” and
“renewal” as the countdown to the elec-
tion begins — somebody had better tell

People and Issues

pundits put the date for the provincial
election. Are Rogers and Fraser telling us
that the Socreds plan to make forest indus-
try negotiations an issue in the next elec-
tion?

the boys writing the newsletter copy down
} in Vancouver South. There, it appears, the
people selling the Socred line for Socred
MLAs Stephen Rogers and Russell Fraser
are telling it like itis — and what it is is the
same old Socred “new reality.”
The lead item in the newsletter reports
the federal-provincial agreement on refo-
-restation announced with much breast-
beating by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
But Rogeres and Fraser finish with that
program in scarcely two sentences in order
to get on with what they really want to talk
about — the forest unions responsibility
for the depression in the industry.
Citing an editorial in the North Shore
News — the only paper left in the world
__ § that carries a column by resident bigot
} Doug Collins — they quote the following:
“The truth is that the industry’s present
woes are not caused by inadequate refo-
_ restation. The drastic drop in forest pro-
ducts exports is due to a global market
slump in which high B.C. labor costs and
mediocre productivity put the province at
a competitive disadvantage.
“Planting more trees won’t overcome
that disadvantage. Aside from technolgical

innovations by management, the labor costs
and productivity problem lies squarely in
the hands of the forestry unions.”

So there you have it. Never mind that,
according to the Council of Forest Indus-
try, the industry sold more board feet of
lumber in 1984 than ever before in the
history of the province — and produced
that lumber with 25 per cent less workers
than in 1980. Never mind that the industry
is So competitive in its major market, the
US., that the U.S. forest industry is clam-
oring for protectionist legislation. As far as
Rober and Fraser — and all the rest of the
Socreds, for that matter — the problem is
“high priced union labor”.

(The comments should also give people -

a pretty good idea on how much value
they put on reforestation. On a list of
Socred priorities, it ranks just slightly
higher than Vancouver schools.)

But, of course, the two MLAs will insist
that they’re just quoting editorials. In fact,
they do it again on another item, this time
quoting columnist Jack Clark specifically
on the issue of co-operation between labor
and management. But since Clark’s com-
ments weren’t direct enough, Rogers and

Fraser make it very clear what the Socreds
mean by the new “‘spirit of co-operation”:
“There are two choices for unions lead-
ership today,” they say, “whether to rec-
ognize the needs of the members and the
circumstances of the employers and thus
take a realistic approach to the economic
circumstances of today or, to decide to
adhere to the past and ignore the fact that
employers, whether public or private, can
no longer afford the high labor costs.”
When you consider that Adam Zim-
merman, the boss of Noranda who calls
the shots for MacMillan-Bloedel, has been
button-holing any business reporter he
can to tell them about the need for wage
rollbacks, you get the general idea about
the kind of co-operation the Socreds are

looking for — the kind that has brought

first-quarter profits to the forest giants but
left 20,000 woodworkers with nothing
more to look forward to than an
exhausted unemployment insurance claim.

And consider one more thing, if you
will: talks on new collective agreements in
the forest industry — the current con-
tracts expire in June, 1986 — are likely to
be opening right around the same time as

* *

We: been offered this tidbit as a
“chuckle”. And we have to admit we
find a few laughs — while noting its more
serious implications — ina circular that’s
been showing up in parts of Vancouver
recently. :

A reader tells us he found copies of a leaf-
let, “Communist Rules” around the Kitsi-
lano area, alongside notes for right-wing —
let’s make that very right wing — former
Non-Partisan Association Bernice Gerard’s
gospel radio and television broadcasts.

According to the rules Communists are
supposed to live by, corruption of youth is
high on the agenda. We’re supposed to be
working night and day to “get them away
from religion. Get them interested in sex.
Make them superficial, destroy their

ess.”

That’s only Section “A”. Section “B”
contains a seven-point plan of conquest.

Our reader tells us that, once a member
himself of Gerard’s church, he no longer
subscribes to the anti-Communist “non-

sense” such groups spread.

4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 17, 1985