Canada

Business newspapers, like the Financial
Post, always tell it like it is. Last week in an
article entitled “Canadian Labour needs
to shift focus,’ Fred Blaser went into great
depth in telling trade unions to smarten
up.

The message was conveyed in a condes-
cending manner. I suppose the author’s
position as an international trade lawyer
accounts for part of this.

Blaser starts his article: “My favorite
Martian is Leo Gerard, who helps run the
Canadian steelworkers union, likes hockey
and takes his coffee regular, but he is not
fooling anyone. When he talks about how
he would manage Canadian trade policy,
it is obvious he is from another planet.

“One idea he would consider is a special
tariff on goods imported from developing
countries, run by governments which
oppress their workers. The amount off the
duty would be the difference between a
fair Canadian wage in the industry that
makes the particular imported product,
and in the exporting country.”

: He contends that Gerard’s argument
_ would be that these funds could then be
used to modernize Canadian facilities to
make them more competitive, and to
partly fund useful development projects in
developing countries. These projects would
try to be somewhat independent of the
transnational corporations.

The corporate vision — and labour’s

| John

MacLennan

Although not convinced, Blaser says
that “from a labour perspective, it is the
existing system that is grossly unfair. In
most of the Third World, the argument
runs, police spies and military repression
are the means by which producers get their
labour-cost advantage.”

He goes up in smoke over labour’s
demands that there should be controls to
prevent producers in developed countries
from freely shifting capital to low labour-
cost countries.

He states “deciding which developing
economies should be subject to an oppres-
sion tax would be ultracontentious. As for
curtailing foreign investment by Canadi-
ans, this has the same effects as restricting
trade, it wipes out the benefits countries
get from comparative advantage.”

In a truly blatant and unabashed way
Blaser rationalizes “‘It is true that imports

LABOUR
IN ACTION

take jobs from domestic workers. The mis-
take is to value those jobs at their nominal
rate of return.

“If Canadian employees are paid more
than foreign workers for performing the
same operation, Canada is not richer
simply because we maintain full employ-
ment in existing jobs. On the contrary,
uncompetitive workers do not create real
income, they just get transfers from all
other Canadians.”

Then Blaser gets to his advice for the
movement.

“If unions are to provide a better deal
for Canadian workers, they must lead
events, by switching their primary focus
from being negotiators to becoming
information managers. The first step in the
process is to recognize that international
competition is not inherently unfair.

“Developing country workers perform
tasks for one dollar an hour, not for the

most part because they are economic
slaves, but because the jobs pay better than
an an alternative.

“When Canadian capitalists set up
operations in low wage countries, they are
not for the most part exploiters: they are
sensibly trying for the most part to maxim-
ize resources on the broadest possible
base.”

If I told you that Mr Blaser was a great
advocate of the free trade agreement, his
views would probably come as no sur-
prise.

His main argument is a familiar one; the
labour movement has to adapt to com-
pete. But as many in the labour movement
have asked, where does the quest for com-
petitiveness stop?

There will always be some country that
will be able to work for lower wages. It
would be a tread mill for Canadian
workers, with only the employers who’d
benefit. Workers would be pitted against
each other in the same town, province,
country, and so on.

What is needed is a comprehensive eco-
nomic alternative popularized and won by
and for working people. This has to start
first with Canada’s union movement.

And it should be embodied in the action
plan that will come to the floor of the
Canadian Labour Congress when it con-
venes next month in Montreal.

Agreement signed on Temagami forest

By PAUL OGRESKO
On April 23, the Teme-Augama Anish=

nabai took a first step towards achieving
control over a land they have called their
home for more than 6,000 years.

It was not an easy step to take. For 113

years that right to their land had been
denied by government bureaucracy and by
court legalities. Now, with the formation of
a joint stewardship council with the Ontario
government, they have at least gained a
semblance of authority
Menan — their homeland.

over n’Daki

In the past 113 years a lot has changed.

The days when Temagami was merely a
spot on the map are long gone. It has
become a “major issue’”” — a word as much
as any other, at least in Ontario, synonym-
ous with concern for the environment in
Canada.

Ten, even five years ago, few knew or
cared that a group of Indians were fighting
in) the courts to have their entitlement to
land recognized. Few outside of campers
and wilderness buffs were aware that the

area was home to one of the last, most

precious, old growth forests in the province.
Logging practices were not the focus of
media attention or under public scrutiny.
Then the environment became the issue
of the day and along with that new phrases
to add to the public consciousness — global
warming, ozone layer, acid rain, Chernobyl,
toxic waste, recycling ... the list goes on.
Green has become, at least in the deve-
loped world, the colour of the decade and
while many, quite rightly, question this or
that aspect of the environmental movement
— the hypocrisy of government and the
buy-out of causes by corporations, the neg-

‘lect, subjugation and continued impover-

ishment of a third of the world — few
would deny that the world, and humanity
with it, is in danger.

_ On Earth Day 1990 thousands of trees
were stenciled on the sidewalks of Toronto

‘and nearly every image had one thing in

common — the word Temagami written
beside it. ;

Joint council called ‘a first step’

Many, perhaps most, were thinking only
of the trees when they wrote that word and
not of the people it is derived from — the
Teme-Augama Anishnabai. But even if the
primary concern of Earth Day 1990 was not
aboriginal rights, the actions of April 22 in
Toronto could not be lost on a provincial
government quite adept at counting votes
and assessing public opinion.

So we come to the announcement one
day after Earth Day of the formation of a
joint provincial-Native stewardship council
over 40,000-hectare tract of the Temagami
forest. It is, as Chief Gary Potts described it,
a “first step” for the Teme-Augama Anish-
nabai. The first nation gains an equal
representation with the province in matters
dealing with an area that includes the dis-
puted old growth forest in the Red Squirrel
Road area that was slated for logging. Potts
has said that forest is now safe — the abo-
riginal people have no intention of destroy-
ing what is the integral, spiritual heart of
their nation.

Outside the stewardship council area the
province has issued timber licenses for nine
lumber mills in the district but this decision
is unlikely to comfort, those 70 workers at
the William Milne and Sons mill who have
now, almost definitely, lost their jobs.

And this is where Temagami will still
present some difficult and dicey questions
for many progressives.

On one side, as the Teme-Augama
Anishnabai begin to assert their aboriginal
title to land, jobs of unionized workers in
the area may be lost. That is not a frivolous
thing.

On the other side is the potential for
antagonism between the first nation and

those in the environmental movement who
take a “no cut” position regardless of abo-
riginal rights.

The Teme-Augama Anishnabai have
argued, and surely reality backs them up on
this, that they have an intrinsic relationship
with the land — unlike even three genera-
tion loggers in the area. The Native culture
and spirituality is centred with the earth, the

animals — the cycle of life, death and life —

that is part of an old growth forest.

The death of that natural cycle will be the
death of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai
culture. é

The first nation has said they are willing
to share the land with those around them:
whether it’s workers in the area or campers

‘from Toronto. But any logging that may

“take place in the future will have to be
sustainable and only after environmental
studies on long term impact have taken
place.

And the old growth is excluded.

The Teme-Augama Anishnabai have a
vision and it is not one based upon imme-
diate exploitation and greed. They know
how to live with the land... __

Meanwhile, in the short term, there will
be hardship for those who have made their
living by logging in the area.

But, in the long run, there exists the
potential for a sustainable future where the
forest, the workers, environmentalists, and
the aboriginal people can co-exist.

And that future, if it comes to pass, will
provide employment and sustenance for all
the people of the north far longer than the
10 years or so of logging that was left for
everyone if the Teme-Augama Anishnabai
had not taken that first step.

Pacific Tribune, May 7, 1990 « 7