EDITORIAL

Should get out of NORAD

Opposition to Canada’s participation in the North
American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) agreement
is rapidly increasing. It needs to be turned into a
protest powerful enough to compel the Mulroney
government to refuse to renew the pact.

NORAD is widely acknowledged as a component
of President Reagan’s Star Wars program — the
Strategic Defence Initiative which would scuttle an
important basis for serious arms reduction talks, the
1972 U.S.-USSR Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The impact on Canada is direct and dangerous.
This country’s participation in NORAD in today’s
context means committing Canada to the whole Star
Wars scenario, with anti-missile weaponry deployed
in our back yard. The U.S. Army’s Braduskill project
is charged with developing a ground-based rocket
with just such potential.

The folly of tying Canda to Star Wars is recognized
across this country. The reality that NORAD is a
component of Star Wars is rapidly being recognized as
well. Major sectors of the labor movement and the
peace movement, plus the New Democratic Party and
the Communist Party demand that Canada withdraw
from NORAD.

Pauline Jewett, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, is

one of the spokespersons of her party urging Canadi-
ans to tell the prime minister “not to renew the

NORAD agreement.” She points out: “It is clear that
Canada will be drawn into the active nuclear military
policies and operations of the U.S. if Canada remains
a participant in NORAD.”

Frank Kennedy, president of End the Arms'Race iri”
Vancouver, notes the establishment two months ago
of the U.S. Unified Space Command, in the same
headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain and sharing the
same general who is in command of NORAD.

The Strategic Defence Architecture 2000 program
for “the development and integration of Star Wars, is
being conducted under the auspices of NORAD,”
Kennedy points out.

It’s true some opponents of NORAD say they
would relent if a clause, secretly deleted in 1981, were
re-inserted — exempting Canada from the U.S. anti-
ballistic missile system. Meanwhile, their opposition is
very important. However, there is no reason to think
such an exemption can be made as NORAD and Star
Wars become ever more intimately integrated. On the
other hand, what if such assurance were given by the
Mulroney government which is committed to a pro-
gram of deceiving Canadians about its relations with
the U.S.?

What is essential at this point is for all the organiza-
tions and parties of the working people and the demo-
cratic forces of Canada to come together to compel
Canada’s withdrawal from NORAD.

Tory policy kills jobs

Tory dedication to monopoly and to satisfying the
appeties of transnational corporations has. seldom
shown itself more explicitly than in the actions of the
Mulroney government.

___ This is exemplified in the recent sale of a Gulf

Canada Ltd. refinery in the east end of Montreal to

: i wned Ultramar Canada Ltd. The first act of
- Ultramar was to announce the closing of the refinery,
_ since it had its own near Quebec City and wanted only
Gulf’ distribution network.

This will cost some 450 workers their jobs and was
dramatized by the resignation from the Mulroney
cabinet of Suzanne Blais-Grenier, until then the Min-
ister of State for Transport. It was further publicized
when the union of the majority of the workers, the
Association of Petroleum Workers, sought an injunc-
tion to prevent the closing, and when other Tory MPs
expressed sentiments similar to those of Blais-Grenier.

Damaging enough for the Mulroney forces was
Blais-Grenier’s accusation that the big oil companies
“blackmailed” the cabinet into approving the sale.
Even more damaging was the assertion by a number

of Tory MPs that French Canadians are denied their
proper expression in Cabinet.

As to the Gulf-Ultramar affair, there are feasible
solutions in such cases. One would be to re-establish
the Foreign Investment Review Agency and put more
teeth in it than the Liberals ever did. But more to the
point, in the interests of the communities and the
workers affected by such corporate juggling, the
enterprise should be nationalized, under democratic
control.

That is why the Communist Party of Canada has
consistently called for — and worked toward —
nationalization of the key sectors of the economy,
including such entities as the banks, the multi-
nationals, energy and natural resources.

That kind of program is in the interests of the
working people, as opposed to Tory policies which
bleed the working people to bloat the monopolies.
Around a genuine program for jobs and Canadian
sovereignty, all anti-monopoly forces need to be
rallied to put a stop to the anti-labor, anti-people
crusades of the Mulroney government.

Poverty and Toryism

It’s reported that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is
seeking a “fresh look” for his pro-U.S., pro-
corporation government. If the latest Gallup poll is
correct, he’ll need more than deodorant to camouflage
what’s rotten in Ottawa. The poll, conducted in early
December, gives the Tories only 37 per cent of popular
support, the Liberals 38 per cent and the New Demo-
crats 24 per cent.

RIBUN

Editor
SEAN GRIFFIN

Assistant Editor
DAN KEETON

Business & Circulation Manager
MIKE PRONIUK

Graphics
ANGELA KENYON

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_ 4 PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 15, 1986

A few immediate steps the government might take
include keeping its hands off family allowances, quit
trying to raise income taxes for workers while giving
concessions on corporation tax, and rescinding the
$500,000 bonanza for speculators given them in capi-
tal gains exemption. All these are now before parlia-
ment.

At the same time, while horrendous stories continue

_ to surface about spreading mass poverty in Canada,

food lines, homelessness, and the working poor, ’tis
the season for pay increases for Mulroneymen. Projec-
tions are that the prime minister will get a 1986 pay
package of $133,000 ($78,000 basic and $54,200 tax-
free allowance). In 1985 he made only $129,900, tak-
ing a cut from his 1984 pay of $130,700. Things were
tough all over in 1985.

For 1986, Mulroney’s 40 cabinet members will a
$112,900 each.

One shouldn’t quibble too much about “decent”
pay for members of a federal government if it is
serving the interests of the people of the country. But
the Mulroney Tories are engaged in such trickery as
providing $45.75 million to the U.S. Boeing Corpora-
tion to help it modernize the deHavilland aircraft

~ plant recently sold to Being by that government.

Furthermore, by placing a given quantity of orders in
Canada. Boeing is permitted to write of $65 million of
the purchase price.

While the government can’t find money to create
jobs, or to provide low-cost and low-rent housing, it
can find all its needs for aid to the transnationals, to
itself, and to the recipients of its rich patronage plums.

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CUTS : :

The National Bank of Canada, with headquarters in Montres
had, as of July last year, 577 branches across Canada. And, as
result of doirig what banks do it had an after-tax profit for the ye,
ended Oct. 31/85 of $153.7-million. That’s up from $114. as
the year before.

. Squarely on the reasons

Rome trial: :

enough is enough

Later this month the
defence at the Rome trial of
Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian
citizen charged with complic-
ity in the 1981 assassination
attempt against the Pope,
will begin its summary.

The entire “case” against
Antonov consists of the tes-
timony of Mehmet Ali Agca,
a Turkish right-wing fanatic
now serving a life term for
that criminal action. Agca’s
rantings during the earlier
stages of the trial embar-
rassed the prosecution and
shocked spectators. He
claimed he was Jesus Christ
and demanded the Catholic
Church recognize this claim.

The spectacle would be
pure comedy were it not for
the fact that Antonov has
been held in an Italian jail for
three years and that the
whole procedure has been
engineered as an anti-Bul-
garian, anti-Soviet provoca-
tion. ;

It was only 18 months in
custody and with careful
coaching that Agca deve-
loped his “Bulgarian connec-
tion” tale. He has since been
visited by the Pope in prison
and enjoyed the interna-
tional limelight in a fashion
quite unfitting for a con-
victed criminal.

Antonov put his finger

able to testify before the
panel of Italian judges: “Can’t
you understand that they are
slandering my nation, my
people and my self,” he
asked the court.
As the trial adjourned
over the holiday season,
press speculation is that the
trial will collapse. Pinning an
entire international conspi:
racy theory on the word of a
demented, self-confessed
assassin — and not anothe
shred of evidence — appears
too much even for sorely-
tested Italian justice.
Add your yoice to
mounting international

travesty of justice. Send a let
ter or wire to: Premier Bettino
Craxi, Prime Minister of
Italy, Palazzo Chigi, Piaza

Colonna 370, Rome, Italy.

behind his persecution last RX

October when he finally was