British Columbia

Free-trade inspired UI
culs a corporate giveaway

The proposed cuts in Unemployment
Insurance and the job retraining pro-
gram announced by Employment Minis-
ter Barbara McDougall are deceitful,

mean and obscene.

The retraining program is deceitful
because it is portrayed as a scheme that
will create new jobs, when in fact it will
retrain workers only for existing jobs. If
the retrained person in a factory, plant;
office or fast-food joint should find a job,
it will simply be at the expense of some
untrained person who will be laid off.

The retraining program is deceitful
also because McDougall is concealing
the fact that her $800-million retraining
fund is actually a subsidy to the corpo-
rate sector. Until now, employers paid
for their own retraining programs.

According to McDougall’s own depart-
ment reports, the private sector in 1987
spent $1.4 billion on retraining pro-
grams. IBM, specifically, spent $29.6 mil-
lion. :

The proposed cuts in UI benefits are
deceitful also because McDougall con-

cealed the fact that they are exactly the
same as UI cuts recently instituted in the
U.S. These cuts are part of the free trade
deal which requires that social programs
in Canada and the U.S. be on the same
level.

Today it is the Canadian UI program
which is on the chopping block. Tomor-
row it will be medicare, which the U.S.
does not have (except for the elderly).

The proposed cuts in UI are mean
because they make it much harder for
people who have lost their jobs to get on
UI, and the benefit period will be greatly
reduced. This will cause increased hard-
ship for the unemployed whose numbers
are again growing because of the free
trade deal.

These cuts are a direct concession to
employer groups who have been demand-
ing them for years. Employers who are
too greedy to pay a decent wage expect to
benefit because they know that destitute
people are more likely to take any job,
even those that don’t pay a living wage.
For employers these UI cuts are a means
of reducing wages.

The proposed cuts are obscene
because they violate all the promises the
Mulroney government made, time and
again in two election campaigns, that it
would not cut social programs.

They are obscene because McDougall
suggested in the Commons that the exist-
ence of unemployment insurance is itself
a cause of unemployment. The logic of
this approach is that if UI and welfare
were abolished, everyone now unem-
ployed — all 1,147,000 of them —
would suddenly find jobs, whether they
exist or not.

Blaming the unemployed for being
unemployed is a nice way to get the
government off the hook for its failure to
introduce the job creation programs it
also promised in two election campaigns.

Behind this whole scheme is the real |

government in Canada: the Business
Council on National Issues (BCNI). It
represents the 150 biggest corporations
in Canada, foreign-owned and domestic
(those with assets of more than $7 bil-
lion). It was the main force behind free
trade. It financed the Tories in their two
election campaigns. Its members have
consistently demanded cuts in UI.

Now comes the payoff. Next, and even
worse, will be Finance Minister Michael
Wilson’s April 27 budget which will cut
more social programs and impose huge
new taxes on working people.

The media recently carried stories on
the salaries received by executives of
some of the corporations associated with
the BCNI. Twenty of them, from such
well-known corporations as Nova, Inco,
Seagrams, Falconbridge, and Alcan,
make more than $1 million a year.

Forty-nine others belong to the over-
$500,000 club. One of them is A.J. de
Grandpre, chair of Bell Canada Enter-
prises which made a profit of $887 mil-
lion last year. His 1988 salary was
$852,000. This is the same de Grandpre
who chaired the government’s advisory
committee on adjustment to free trade.

His report said nothing could or
should be done for those laid off because
of free trade, but recommended that UI
funds be reallocated to retraining pro-
grams. And that is exactly what the
government has done.

The deficit in Canada has one main
cause — big business is not paying its
fair share of taxes. Now working people
will be compelled to reduce it by paying
increased taxes and having their social
programs cut.

We don’t need are cuts in UI. We need
a job creation program. And there are so
many other things we need — affordable
housing, new water and sewer systems

- for our cities, a genuine reforestation
" program for B.C., Canadian-owned

manufacturing industries.

We have the money and the man-
power. The only thing lacking is the will
and that’s because our governments are
controlled by big corporate interests
which use them and our taxes to feather
their own nests.

Occupation protests cap

zoreetee

Native students and supporters occupied
the regional Department of Indian Affairs
office in Vancouver April 19 as similar
actions across the country rallied support
for students maintaining a fast over cut-
backs to Native student financial assistance
in Ottawa.

Students from post-secondary institu-
tions and supporters from the Squamish
Band entered the DIA offices at 800 Bur-
rard St. at 12 noon and left shortly after 4
p.m. But they planned to continue the
action until the federal government changes
its mind on capping student financial aid.

Four students in Ottawa are maintaining
a three-week old hunger strike over Indian
Affairs and Northern Development Minis-
ter Pierre Cadieux’s refusal to negotiate
changes to cuts the protestors say chopped
funding for single students to $4,800 from
more than $7,400 a year on April 1.

At a press conference inside the offices,
Oscar Swanson, president of the Native
Indian Students Association at the Univer-
sity of B.C., said protests would continue
until Cadieux agreed to rescind the cuts.

“We have to step up the campaign, we
have to get our message out to the public
loud and clear,’ Swanson, speaking for
Inter-campus Native Students Network,
said.

resident Ron George of the United
Native Nations said the protest raises the
overall concern of aboriginal title and
rights, which is in the Constitution but
which remains undefined.

“Hopefully, what the students are doing
now will put a new focus on this issue.”

The action has the backing of the Cana-
dian Federation of Students, whose local
chairperson, Pam Frache, charged the fed-
eral government with backtracking «on its
obligations to Canada’s Natives.

The government is now claiming that
post-secondary education is not guaranteed
as a treaty right, but for years, Ottawa has
been acting in that vein, Frache, of the CFS
Pacific Region, said.

“Tt is reprehensible that they are cutting
Native student assistance in order to trim
the deficit,” she said.

Native students draft protest letter during sit-in at Vancou

Native student aid _

sbisatee nese ne.

ver DIA branch.
Owen Anderson, director general of the

DIA’s Pacific Region, and regional director —
of education Ron Penner, said the overall
budget increased marginally for 1989 — in.

the Pacific Region, it rose to $15.1 million
from $14.5 million — but acknowledged
that single students living at home face a
monthly cut to $290 from more than $600
last year.

“We're not expecting to turn people
away,” Anderson said.

But Swanson said the federal govern-
ment’s capping of overall funding at $130
million will mean less Native students will
be able to enter post-secondary education.

The capping means cuts to funding for
such things as daycare, special lab clothing
and tutorials, states a press release from the
Inter-Campus Native Student Network.

Frache noted that previous increases in
Native student aid tripled the number of
Native students attending post-secondary
institutions, from 3,000 in 1975 to 15,000

last year.

“Those people are the resources for
Native people in the future. To prevent
these people from getting into the system is
to sabotage their ability to address their
own needs,” she charged.

Around the country protests mounted,
with the third rally on Parliament Hill draw-
ing some 1,500 supporters who came by car
caravan and heard addresses from speakers,
including chief George Erasmus of the
National Assembly of First Nations.

Offices were occupied in several parts of
the country, including large sit-ins in
Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout, Ont.
Several have been arrested during sit-ins in
Manitoba.

Two students, Emil Bell and Leon Soop,
are continuing a total fast in Saskatoon.
Fasting continued around the country, with
Melinda Sault of Thunder Bay marking her
26th day of fasting.

Fourteen students originally began the
fast in Ottawa, but 10 withdrew on the
promise of talks with Cadieux. However,

they left a meeting with the minister unsatis- -

fied with his response, Swanson said.

Only good
sub is
a Trib
sub

By the time this issue reaches you,
many will have joined the tens of

thousands declaring their support for a

nuclear-free and environmentally safe
world, by marching in the annual
peace walks.

They'll be marching to demand a
Canadian foreign policy free of Cold
War rhetoric. Walking for peace is
people’s way of telling the political

decision makers that we demand better
housing and daycare instead of nuclear

powered submarines at $1 billion a

pop. :
Placing peace on the agenda is a

moral obligation for everyone.

When the federal Tories try to feed
us the line of deficit reduction, we
know that it is not the size of the cake
but how you cut it which ultimately
determines who gets their fair share. In
the name of making life better for
Canadians, the federal government
subsidizes their corporate friends at the
expense of the taxpayers.

But your ongoing commitment to
the Tribune has helped counter Tory
myths. To date, your contributions to
this year’s drive have totalled slightly
more than $10,000. We know that the
pace must continue as we rapidly
approach the critical halfway point in

our drive, and we are counting on you
to get us on schedule and on target.

We might add that the drive is a
perfect way to introduce the paper to
your friends. We add all new
subscriptions to the drive total.

It will be your way of contributing
to the’ succéss of the drive as well as
letting us know that the only good sub
is a Pacific Tribune sub.

And it will go a lot further in
making this a safer and more sane
Canada. Help us raise $ 20,000 by the
end of April. We’re counting on you:

2 e Pacific Tribune, April 24, 1989

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