JACK HIGGIN Comox MIKE DARNELL Delta“ BRUCE STEPHENS Vancouver-South CHRISTINE BEYNON Coquitiam Corporate probe a sham Cont'd from pg. 11 especially through the Farris family. Among its most prestigeous clients are such cor- porate giants as B.C. Telephone, Kelly Douglas (part of the Weston food chain), Pacific Petroleums, an Oklahoma-owned oil monopoly involved with Nadeau’s Petrofina in the Alberta tar sands development. 2 ¢ Robert Bryce, chairman of the Commission, is one of the towering figures in the corporate world in Ottawa, and has put together a staff which leaves no shred of doubt where their interests lie. Among them is Martin Freedman, legal counsel to the Commission. He is a partner in a Winnipeg law firm whose partners hold direc- torships in the Bank of Montreal, Great-West Life Insurance, Canada Safeway and Moffat Communications. Also included in the staff in the key position of research director of the Commission who has con- siderable power in determining what aspects of corporate power they will examine, is Donald N. Thompson. Last year he appeared as an expert witness on behalf of General Electric, Westinghouse and Sylvania when they were charged by the federal government with violating the anti combines law. He has worked for Coca Cola Ltd. and Proctor and Gamble Ltd. When the competence of Pierre Nadeau was challenged at the Vancouver hearings last week, because of his involvement with large corporations, he defended his “impartially”? and, as was to be expected, he was backed by the other two members. of the Com- mission. The Commission was set up to “inquire into, report upon, and make recommendations con- cerning the nature and role of major concentrations of corporate power in Canada; the economic and social implications for the public interest of such con- centrations; and whether safeguards exist or may be required to protect the public in- terest in the presence of. such competition.” Can anyone in their right mind really expect the present Com- mission to do the job of exposing monopoly power and its harmful consequences for the Canadian people? MORGAN Cont'd from pg. 1 Bruce Stevens in Vancouver South, Mike Gidora and Nick Podovinikoff in Vancouver Centre, and Christine Beynon in Coquitlam. The CP’s provincial organizer and campaign manager Jack Phillips appealed this week for donations to fulfill the party’s $20,000 election budget. He said that disruption of the mails by federal post office officials has created considerable difficulties for the campaign and called on all party members and supporters to get campaign funds to the provincial office. Phillips noted that campaign contributions are now tax deductible under the new federal income tax regulations. Receipts are available at the provincial office, he said, which will allow all contributions over $25 to be deducted from next year’s income tax payments. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 21, 1975—Page 12 WILT I | The 2,000,000-member Canadian Labor Congress told the federal government in a brief submitted to the Commons Finance Committee holding hearings Tuesday on the new wage and price freeze bill, that the organized labor movement “Ys not prepared to accept Bill C- 73, either in principle or in prac- tice.” Presented by CLC vice-president Shirley Carr, she said the CLC will not support the government’s bill “because you cannot clean up, doctor up or patch up something that is not going to work. “‘The government at no time has given the Congress any assurance that prices and profits can or will be controlled tothe same degree as wages,”’ she said in the brief. Mrs. Carr told the committee that organized labor cannot support an anti-inflation program that does not include measures for a massive home-building program, increased pensions, reinvestment of profits in job creation and control of energy costs. : The labor congress has taken steps to challenge the bill before the courts on constitutional grounds. Asked what the CLC will do if the bill is passed by parliament anda legal challenge in the courts fails, Mrs. Carr replied: “massive non-compliance, in- cluding strikes, may take place if the bill is not withdrawn.” In reply to a question by a Liberal MP that if profits were curtailed ‘‘where does the money come from to create jobs? Mrs. Carr said that corporate profits do not result in higher employment if they go to foreign head offices or into the shareholders’ pockets. Louis Laberge, a CLC vice- president and head of the Quebec Federation of Labor, government’s bill “is iniquitous, hateful and unjust because it dishonestly implies that the worker is responsible for inflation and it does not fight the true causes of inflation which are prices.”’ A brief tabled by Laberge on behalf of the 280,000-member Quebec Federation of Labor, said that under the bill ‘‘monopolies and the great financial powers are still free to fix prices as they see fit.” He said that union representatives might have a different attitude ‘‘if this sacrifice was to be imposed on all citizens — on multinational Mike Gidora, Communist can- didate in Vancouver Centre told .about 300 people at an_ all- candidates meeting last Saturday that “what is at stake in this election is the whole question of what standard of living are the working people of this province to have. “With the introduction of Bill 146, with the Barrett government’s tacit approval of Trudeau’s wage freeze, and the proposed emasculation of B.C.’s rent control legislation, that question becomes central to the whole provincial election. ‘We all know the legacy of 20 years of Social Credit rule in B.C. when the working people were made the brunt of every right-wing drive to protect big-business; and to return to that would be un- thinkable,’’ he said. ‘‘But what we didn’t know was that an NDP government would bow so easily to these same pressures from big business.”’ Gidora said that the Communist Party was pledged to support labor’s right to free collective bargaining without government interference, whether it be in the form of provincial back-to-work legislation, or in the form of a federally imposed, provincially supported wage freeze. “Our party is calling for a genuine fight against inflation, one which would attack the causes of inflation and not the victims,” he said in calling for an indefinite extension of the provincial price freeze. In response to a question from the audience about rent control, Gidora said that there “‘is no justification whatsoever for rents to rise more than four or five per cent per year. In fact, in view of overcharging in past years, it is difficult to conceive of any reason for rents to go up any amount.’’ He said that anumber of specific changes were needed in the proposed new rental legislation. “There are so many loopholes in those proposals that their in- troduction would effectively destroy any vestiges of rent control in this province. ‘But rental legislation alone will MIKE GIDORA not solve the housing crisis in this province. We are calling for the immediate launching of a massive, low cost public housing program. Private enterprise is unable to solve the housing crisis, only: strong government action can do Sort Gidora also called for the im- mediate takeover of B.C. Telephone, as well as steps to bring the province’s resources under public ownership and control, and changes in B.C.’s taxation policy which would. shift the burden of taxation from the working people. to the corporations. corporations as well as everybody else.”’ The CLC brief said the govern- ment must take ‘‘a significant part of the blame for the domestic causes of inflation.”” She added that government expenditures have not enhanced those in need in Canada, ‘‘and have served no other purpose than to drain money away from the average income earner.” Asked to give an example she singled out the Anti-inflation Board with its proposed initial budget of $5 million for 5-1/2 months. said the: ~ POSTAL Cont'd from pg. 1 Tuesday evening, Peter Whit- taker, president of Vancouver local of CUPW told delegates to the Vancouver and District Labor Council that the application for the injunction was part of the cam paign to ‘“‘bust our union.” He accused. the post office of “deplorable tactics” on the picket line to provoke an excuse for al injunction application. ‘Local management has provoked all of the incidents on the picket line,” he charged. “It is disgusting -— they have even distributed iron bars t0 the commissionaires at the post office doors.”’ Whittaker reminded delegates. that the post office strike is a strike against the government’s wage guidelines and appealed for financial and moral support from the labor movement. According to Whittaker, at least one local of the IBEW _ has petitioned the international office to revoke the membership card of postmaster-general Mackasey, a8 he’s “‘no friend of labor.” The VLC agreed to work with the B.C. Federation of Labor 1 provide financial assistance to the strike fund and for a mass meeting to rally public support to be scheduled soon. Both the B.C. Federation o Labor and the Canadian Labot Congress have attempted to apply pressure to the government return to the bargaining table. In 4 CLC statement issued last week the national labor body accus Mackasey of attempting to “‘crealé dissension within union ranks: The CLC said that postmaster general’s refusal to bargain ‘“‘is n0 a sign of toughness as Mr. Mackasey seems to think, but indicates a stubbornness that is n0! in the public interest.” An emergency telegram from the B.C. Federation of Labor to @! B.C. MPs urged that they ‘act 0” behalf of your postal workef constituents and demand thé postmaster-general Mackasey return to the bargaining table immediately and make evel effort to negotiate a realist settlement.” We need your sub NOW Within a short period of time our paper could face serious difficultie® — unless our readership can be mobilized to pull the 1975 circulatio" drive out of the fire. There is no need for the Tribune to repeat the constant barrage of propaganda about the inconveniences of a postal strike. The simP e fact is that without a mail service the subs and money that usually. would have come in has not. The difference for us is that we supP® the strikers and are prepared to suffer through these necessary hardships. Still, as we approach the year end there is less than 300 subs in on out 900 target. Some elementary mathematics will indicate how ™U revenue we are short as a result. We know that there is both subscriptions and money out there waiting for the strike to end. But we need it now. We appeal to out readers to send in their renewal or the new sub they have sold. Contae the Tribune agent in your area or phone us at the office 685-8108: 1 tittle extra effort now could make a lot of difference to our finan¢ position as we wind up the year.