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EDITORIAL

Canada and nuclear tests

Last year, Canada’s Minister of External Affairs,
Joe Clark, told the Fortieth Session of the United
Nations: “For Canada, the achievement of a com-
prehensive test ban treaty continues to be a funda-
mental and abiding objective. Our aim is to stop all
nuclear testing.”

Since then, dead silence.

The unilateral Soviet moratorium on nuclear
weapons tests turned one-year-old last month, was
extended by Mikhail Gorbachev for the fourth
time, and once more rejected by the Reagan admin-
istration.

From the Canadian government, defeaning
silence.

If the test ban is indeed a “fundamental and
abiding” Canadian policy objective, then surely
Canada has something to say about these events? If
the Soviet Union is promoting a measure that we
consider to be in the best interests of Canada and
world peace, why won’t our government admit it?

Sticking to

A diplomatic war is heating up, ostensibly over
the case of Nicholas Daniloff, an American corres-
pondent who was arrested and charged with
espionage in Moscow earlier this month. In reality,
the central problem is whether or not the Reagan
administration is prepared to seriously negotiate a
new arms control regime with Soviet leader Gorba-
chev at a summit meeting this fall.

The matter of Daniloff, while serious, should not
be allowed to interfere with critical global concerns.
Whether or not the American journalist is guilty of
espionage will be decided in court, where evidence
will be presented and he will have ample opportun-
ity to defend himself.

The Reagan administration has turned this case
into a major sticking-point for East-West relations

» through wild charges and inflammatory rhetoric.

And if the U.S. is resisting this goal, then that
deserves to be said as well. Loudly and publicly.

The discrepancy between flowery rhetoric before
the world body and everyday political practice
needs to be bridged. Only strong and unrelenting
public pressure can force the Mulroney government
to give up its servile hypocrisy, and come out fully in
support of what everyone knows is the right thing.

This is the central thrust of last week’s Commu-
nist Party statement which appears elsewhere in this
issue.

The statement describes the Soviet moratorium
as an historic opportunity, and calls upon all Cana-
dians to join hands in demanding that our govern-
ment use its power and prestige to help pressure the
Reagan administration into accepting it.

By doing that we could strike a blow for world
peace and for our own independence at the same
time.

real issues

The circumstances in no way warrant such a hyper-
inflated response, yet for Ronald Reagan diversions
of this sort have always seemed preferable to sin-
cere, good-faith bargaining with the USSR. ‘

The right-wing and the big media, have seized
upon the Daniloff affair — much as they did the
KAL 007 incident three years ago — because it
seems tailor-made for their purposes. Perhaps, just
maybe, it was tailor-made.

As with the KAL 007 tragedy, the truth about the
current spy furore may eventually filter out.

Meanwhile, let nobody lose sight of the crucial
issue: the Reagan administration must be com-
pelled to respond favorably to the Soviet nuclear
testing moratorium, and agree to a schedule for
nuclear disarmament. The fate of our world hangs
upon the resolution of these questions.

FIRPRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
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f it wasn’t patently obvious a year ago,

it should be so now to even the most
nearsighted and fog-brained Tory that sits
in cabinet — that negotiating a free trade
deal with the U.S. will be something like
selling a Ford LTD with a 450 V-8 to a
used-car salesman who has a lot full of
them. You'll only get a deal if you throw in
a stereo, a color TV, a three-room group
of furniture and washer and dryer — all
for free.

Even for those Tories who still can’t see

that, the words of U.S. trade negotiator
Peter Murphy last week should be clear
enough. “You want preferential access to
this (U.S.) market?” he told the Financial
Post. “Well, we’re going to establish the
tules of the game.”
_ According to the same Sept. 20, 1986
issue of the Post, two representatives of the
U.S. International Trade Commission
(ITC) have already been doing that,
snooping around in food and liquor stores
as well as a textile and electronics plants in
Montreal in Toronto to find out if Cana-
dians are using enough U.S. products.
Their conclusions? “We were surprised to
see virtually no U.S. wine or distilled spir-
its on the shelves,” they said. “Similarly, in
the grocery stores, we observed little evi-
dence of U.S. canned goods.”

It doesn’t take a lot of insight to under-
stand what that’s all about. Opening up
Canadian markets to two areas which are
particularly vulnerable to foreign competi-
tion — food processing and distilling —
will be yet another demand that the U.S.
puts on the table. That’s in addition to all
the other concessions the U.S. is seeking.
_ Inthe U.S. Congress, the roster of meet-
ings arranged by various committees to
discuss trade with Canada and to com-
plain about competition from Canadian

People and Issues

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goods is growing almost by the hour. And
practically every day, another complaint
about unfair Canadian competition surfa-
ces in the press. The complaints are
groundless but that hardly matters to US.
officials. They’ll pursue them anyhow and
since they basically write their own trade
rules, that’s not difficult to do.

Just as groundless is another familiar
U.S. complaint — that U.S. companies
are more and more restricted in their
access to the Canadian market, a claim the
ITC representatives apparently wanted to
emphasize when they visited stores in
Toronto and Montreal.

Even Finance Minister Michael Wilson
didn’t like that claim. He took pains dur-
ing a speech to the American Council for
Capital Formation in Washington D.C.
Sept. 5 to point out that Canadian imports
from the U.S. have grown by 31 per cent
since 1982. And that, said Wilson, “was
during a period when U.S. exports as a
whole grew by only two per cent.”

There also another myth perpetuated in
the boardrooms in Ottawa, that requires
comment. It’s the idea that the Reagan
administration has put U‘S. self-interest
aside and is committed to free trade.

The New York Times Sept. 14, 1986
had some telling statistics on that notion.
It pointed out that ten years ago, only
eight per cent of the goods coming into the
U.S. were covered by some form of protec-
tionist device. Last year, however, that
figure had risen to 21 per cent.

But even when the handwriting’s on the
wall and the walls are rapidly closing in,

the Mulroney government continues to
cling to to the notion that a free trade deal
can be negotiated. But if it can — as we
noted at the outset — it will only be if the
Tories throw a lot more into the deal.
Substitute Canada’s water resources for
the stereo and unlimited access for U.S.
agricultural products for the TV and you
begin to see the enormous dimensions of
the problem. Free trade may, indeed, cost
us Canada.

All of which should cause every Cana-
dian to sound the alarm bells at news
reports last week that the Mulroney
government is prepared to conclude a free
trade deal with the U.S. before the next
federal election. Mulroney told reporters
in Ottawa that a deal could be signed
before the vote, leaving Canadians only

the opportunity to express approval or:

disapproval in a general election. He spe-
cifically rejected any idea that the election
would be held before the deal was signed.

For Canadians, concerned about this
country’s economic, political and cultural
sovereignty, there’s only one course open:
to step up the opposition to free trade.
And for the Mulroney government, there’s
also only one sane course open: to with-
draw immediately from the free trade
talks.

* * *

erhaps a description from a former
fellow worker as “one of the best
people to work with” would suffice. But,
‘as the record shows, there was far more to
the life and accomplishments of Tillie

Garneau, who died Sept. 13 after a lengthy
illness.

Born Tillie Garr — she was an aunt to
former Province columnist, Alan Garr —
in Montreal in 1910, Tillie got her first
trade union experience through her role as
a piano player in her father’s theatre, as an
accompanist to the silent movies of the
day. She became a member of the Interna-
tional Association of Theatrical Stage
Employees, attending the union’s Chicago
convention in 1946. :

No one is certain when she joined, but |
Tillie is on the record as a delegate to the |
Labor Progressive Party national conven-
tion in 1945, making her a veteran of more
than 40 years membership in the LPP and
the Communist Party. She was a member
of the Harbord Club of the LPP in j ©
Toronto during that time, and a secretary |
in the party’s national office.

In the late 40s she moved to Vancouvel,
along with her former husband,
union organizer, unemployed organizer
and Communist, Fred Collins, who died in
the early 50s. For some 20 years, encom-
passing the mid-50s to the mid-70s, she
was a secretarial worker in the office of
Vancouver lawyer Harry Rankin, was 2
member of the Office and Technical
Employees Union and her local’s delegate
to the Vancouver and District Labor
Council.

During that time, and up until diabetes
eventually forced her to curtail activities, |
Tillie was involved in several progressive |
organizations, including the B.C. Peace
Council and the B.C. Chapter of the Con-
gress of Canadian Women. She was 2
member of the Vancouver East club of the
Communist Party for several years until }
her death. Tillie is survived by her hus- |
band, Ray Garneau. s