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Victoria labor
proposes energy

plan for Island

VICTORIA — The Victoria
and District Labor Council has
circulated a proposed energy
plan for Vancouver Island to af-
filiates and other Island labor
councils,

The energy plan contends
that Vancouver Island can meet
its energy needs without the $1
billion Cheekeye Dunsmuir
transmission line proposed by
B.C. Hydro.

Alternate energy sources in-
cluding natural gas, wood waste
and undeveloped hydro electric
sites can meet the Island’s needs
without the transmission line
and at the same time reduce
dependency on oil, the plan
says.

The development of alternate
sources of energy would in fact
cost less than the transmission
line, it added, and would
eliminate the need for Hydro’s
electric power rate increases
which take effect April 1.

B.C. Hydro should instead
proceed with the proposed
natural gas line to Vancouver
Island, the energy plan con-
tends. The gas could be used to
convert the Bare Pt. thermal
plant which feeds electricity into
the Island grid system and could
substitute for oil in forest in-
dustry operations and home
heating systems.

More effective use of wood
wastes by the forest industry
could meet all of the industry’s
n and feed excess power
pack into the Island’s electric

id system.

The cheap bulk rate which in-
dustry currently pays B.C.
Hydro for electric power, 1.5
cents per kilowatt hour, should
be revised upwards, the plan
suggests, so that the forest in-
dustry will find it economically
attractive to install the boiler
system necessary to produce
more power from hog fuel.

Power supplied from natural

and wood waste has the least
adverse environmental impact,
and construction of the gas
pipeline would produce several
hundred permanent jobs, the
plan stated.

The proposed energy system
would ‘“‘be part of the publicly
owned system”’ and eventually
link into a ‘‘provincial and na-

The energy plan will go back
to Victoria labor council for
adoption when comments are
received from other unions and
councils.

Nanaimo council
sends peace
motion to CLC
NANAIMO — The Nanaimo

taken a strong stand for disar-

mament and an independent

foreign policy for Canada.
Aresolution by the council at

warded to the Canadian Labor
Congress convention this May

tional energy grid from coast to
coast.””

and District Labor Council has’

its Feb. 21 meeting and for- -

-Provincial Notes——_

ment to rafify the SALT II trea-

ty; pull out of NATO and.

NORAD and develop an in-
dependent foreign policy based
on the interests of the Canadian
people; reduce arms spending
significantly and use the money
on socially useful programs like
housing and a coast guard; op-
pose the Trident nuclear sub-
marine base at Bangor,
Washington.

In other business, the council
joined in the campaign to sup-
port the striking woodworkers
at Boise Cascade in Ontario by
“adopting” a striker with a $25
per month donation for the
duration of the strike.’ United
Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union delegate Walter Tickson
reported that Local 15 of the
UFAWU had also adopted a
striker and he challenged other
affiliates to do the same.

Northern Tier
plan unpopular

in Wash. State

SEATTLE, WASH.—The
Northern Tier pipeline proposal, a
target of wide opposition in this
province, has also come under fire
in Washington State where several
environmental groups have warned
that residents “‘are being asked to
sacrifice their environment to keep
a few large corporations, most of
them out-of-state, productive.”’

Bruce Shearer, aspokesman for
Save the Resources Committee,
one of the groups, warned last
week that a leak in the pipeline,
part of which would run under
Puget Sound, ‘‘could go on for
days or even weeks”’ before it was
detected, causing severe damage to
the fishery.

Present equipment can only.

detect leaks greater than .5 percent

of the approximately one million
gallon capacity of the line.
Moreover, Shearer said, a leak is
areal possibility as is a rupture of
the line because the Puget Sound
area is considered a highly active
seismic area, prone to earthquake
activity.
_ He also warned that the
pipeline, though touted as a job-
creating project, would bring
little employment to
Washington residents since
most of the workers would be
drawn from the company’s base
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with only
some 80 jobs going to workers
in the state.

The Northern Tier consor- .

tium is made up of several giant
U.S. multinationals including
U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, Burl-
ington Northern Railway, the

~ construction firm MAPCO and

Western Crude Oil which was
recently taken over by Getty Oil.
The consortium has already
spent some $40 million pro-
moting the huge project.

Several other organizations in-
cluding the No Oil Port in Port
Angeles Committee and the Skagit
River Indian Tribes protested the
pipeline at public hearings in
Mount Vernon last month. One in-
tervenor was applauded when she
read an editorial from the New
York Times which termed the
pipeline ‘‘a needless 1,500-mile
ditch.”

in Winnipeg warned of an in- —_—-U.S. president Carter endorsed
creasing danger of nuclear theNorthern Tier proposal Jan. 17
holocaust. over other proposals advanced by

The resolution calls on the Trans Mountain and Foothills. It
CLC to demand that the Cana- has been widely opposedin British
dian government: support the Columbia because ofits plan to br-
call for a United Nations spon- _ ing Alaskanoil by supertanker to
sored world disarmament con- anoil port at Port Angeles on the

& ference; callonthe U.S. govern- Olympic Peninsula. J

BCRIC deals a sellout -

The calculated myth about the
dramatic share purchase by the
B.C. Resources Investment Cor-
poration (BCRIC) last week was
that the BCRIC deals were extend-
ing B.C. — and public — control
over the two most important cor-
porations in the province.

BCRIC president David Helli-
well shocked observers Monday,
March 3 with the announcement
that the corporation had signed a
deal to acquire 13.4 percent interest
in MacMillan Bloedel from the
CPR’s holding company; Cana-
dian Pacific Investments (CPI),
and simultaneously had signed an
option to purchase 4.7 million
shares of Kaiser Resources from
the U.S. Kaiser Steel Co. The CPI
shares had a price tage of $100
million; the Kaiser shares, if
bought, will cost over $200 million.

With lightning speed, premier

Bennett called a press conference ©

Tuesday in Victoria to say that the
acquisitions were ‘‘consistent with
the philosophy of the govern-
ment.”

Bennett was smug about the
BCRIC move. His declaration that
“B.C. is not for sale’’ had forced
the CPR to back off its attempt to
take over MacMillan last year. And
now BCRIC, the Socred creation,
was supplanting the ‘“‘eastern inter-
ests”’ in MacMillan and the U.S. in-
terests in Kaiser with red-blooded
B.C. capital. Moreover, the share-
holders of BCRIC would now, per-
sonally, profit from the exploita-
tion of B.C.’s forest and coal re-

_ sources. The credit for all of this

should go to the premier, of course.

The premier was not anxious to
discuss the matter in detail, how-
ever, lest the deception be exposed.

What the BCRIC purchases in
fact have done, as Communist
Party provincial leader Maurice
Rush pointed out in a statement
this Tuesday, is to “pump hun-
dreds of millions of dollars of
money subscribed by the public to
further strengthen the domination
of these two giants in the forest and
mining industry.”

BCRIC raised the $500 million
in cash it is now throwing around
from the general public on the basis
of a political appeal from the gov-
ernment to ‘‘invest in B.C.” The
money is now being used to buy mi-
nority interests in multinational
corporations in the business of ex-
porting the province’s resources.

The government has a respons-
ibility to ensure that the swollen as-
sets of the former crown corpora-
tions in BCRIC are managed in the
provincial interest to expand the
economy and create jobs, Rush
contended, ‘‘but not a penny of the
$320 million involved in these deals
will go towards strengthening man-
ufacturing and processing in B.C.,
rather it will strengthen the raw ma-
terial nature of the economy.”

More ominous, he added, is that
the linkup of MacMillan and Kai-

- ser with BCRIC, ‘‘a politically con-

trolled and motivated company
which has the ear of the govern-
ment,’’ foredooms bigger resource
giveaways to these companies in
the future. : ;
The NDP opposition ‘‘should
not allow the directors of BCRIC
and the Socred government to con-
tinue with their present sellout of
the public’s interest,’’ said the CP
leader. ;
“The legislature should act to
protect the interests of B.C. by
placing BCRIC under public own-

ership, thus ensuring that the cap-
ital in the hands of BCRIC will be
used to establish a strong public
sector in manufacturing and pro-
cessing,’’ he said.

A more disappointing statement
from NDP critics. Ernie Hall and
Charles Barber March 4, however,
termed the BCRIC purchase of
MacMillan shares ‘‘a sensible in-
vestment.’’ The only reservations

ANALYSIS

expressed by the NDPers was that
BCRIC bought out the CPR rather
than ‘‘foreign interests.’’

The NDP’s response begs the
question: If BCRIC had bought
out U.S. interests in MacMillan,
rather than the CPR, would it have
made any difference in the dpera-
tions of the multinational?

Some analysts maintain that
BCRIC’s purchase of the CPI
shares was the price that Bennett
had to pay to prevent the CPR
from following through its take-

of province's interests

over bid of MacMillan. Unlike
BCRIC, the CPR doesn’t want to
tie up large amounts of capital in
minority investments over which it
has little control.

The option on Kaiser is a more
glaring case of political duplicity.
The option is to buy only half of the
shares held by Kaiser Steel. The
other half are being bought by Kai-
ser Resources itself. The effect of
Kaiser Resources buying back its
own shares is that a Japanese steel
consortium will become the largest.
shareholder with 40 percent of
shares, without spending any of its
own money. Kaiser has handed the
Japanese controlling interest in or-
der to secure bigger export sales to”
Japan. Ironically, BCRIC’s pur-
chase of Kaiser Steel’s shares will
now have to be approved by the
Japanese.

It may turn out that BCRIC’s
option to buy Kaiser shares is noth-
ing more than a political cover for
the seliout of yet another major re-
source corporation to foreign in-
terests.

Ocean Falls ‘a victim
of inaction by gov't’

Continued from page 1

ince last Thursday and thereit is—

the mill’s being closed.

“That afternoon I got a call
from Local 312 in Ocean Falls say-
ing that they just got a communi-
que from Williston confirming the

~closure,”’ he said.

But worst of all to the CPU is the
refusal of both the government and
Williston to give a commitment to
the union that its members will get
the jobs slated for the new wood

“Press reports have suggested

‘that the operation is going to be

scaled down from 410 jobs to 100,”
Payne said, ‘‘but as we see it so far,
it’s going to be scaled down from
410 jobs to zero.”

‘“We don’t even know who the
employer is going to be — if it’s a
private company or a crown com-
pany,”’ he said.

The CPU has been told that
there will be a four- to six-month
delay between the closure of the old
pulp mill and its conversion to a
wood chip and lumber — which, as
far as the union is concerned would
give adequate time for any retrain-
ing that might be required.

He said that the CPU would be
“putting a lot of heat on Victoria’
to compel the government to give
Ocean Falls workers priority in any
new jobs.

‘People want to stay here in
Ocean Fails. If there is to be a new
mill, they should get the jobs,”’ he
said.

Payne also noted the present
pulp and newsprint mill, although
probably past the point of being
saved now, was nevertheless ‘‘the
victim of high costs — and govern-
ment inaction.”

The corporation has always
lacked equity capital, he said, forc-
ing it to borrow and carry a heavy
burden of debt.

In addition, because it had no
timber allocation, it was forced to
buy timber on the open market as
well as kraft pulp. In that market, it
often faced pressure from private
multinationals seeking to squeeze it
out.

“Years ago, the government

‘could have saved the mill — but it

did nothing,’’ Payne said. ‘“Now
it’s a victim of government in-
action.”

Continued from page 1

them under the GAIN program.
The government knows their sit-
uation, but has decided to make
no significant increases in wel-
fare payments, despite the large
surpluses it has accumulated.

Transportation is another
area where the government’s
priorities are out of whack.
Some money has been set aside
to replace buses, but there is still
no money for rapid transit. In-
stead over $300 million for high-
ways and $30 million to begin
work on the unwanted Annacis
Bridge will be spent to move
more cars, not people.

The highways budget puts the

L lie to the so-called energy con-

- Tax cuts ‘deceitful’

~

servation measures in the
budget. The paltry tax breaks
given consumers of natural gas,
wood stoves and fuel efficient
cars will haveno meaningful im-
pact on the energy situation in
B.C. Indeed, the new highways
will burn more fuel than the
other measures will save. But
how can the government talk of
conservation when its real en-
ergy policy is to sell out our
hydro, gas and coal resources?

This budget will not get the
government out of its present
difficulties. It shows how much
out of tune with the people and
how much in concert with the
big corporations the Socreds
are.

y,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 14, 1980—Page <