~ more than 25,000 signatures will start off * from Vancouver city hall Sept. 30 to begin the long cross-Canada tour that will ultimately take them to Ottawa for the culmination next month of the Peace Petition Caravan Campaign. COPE alderman Libby Davies, the author of the Vancouver city council motion declaring the city a nuclear wea- pons free zone, will give the official send- off to the group at the ceremony outside ’ city hall Sunday at 2 p.m. The car caravan, although not expected to be particularly large’as it sets - out from Vancouver, will pick up more participants as it makes its way across ~ Canada towards the country’s capital. Another caravan will leave St. John’s, Newfoundland at approximately the same time, and is also set to arrive in Ottawa some time around Oct. 19. The petitions, gathered from around the country, are to be presented to the federal government at a mass rally in Ottawa Oct. 22. The bulk of the petitions from this province will go down with the car caval- cade but signature-gathering will con- tinue until Oct. 15 and the last petitions will be mailed to organizers in Ottawa for the final presentation. The Peace Petition Carvan Campaign, or P2C2 as it has become known, calls on the federal government to: @ Refuse cruise tests and_ reject research, production or testing of nuclear weapons; @ Declare Canada a nuclear-weapons free zone and become actively involved in the multilateral de-escalation of the arms race; @ Halt wasteful spending on the arms race and divert the funds to human needs; @ Put the above objectives to a free vote in Parliament. US. visit Continued from page 1 But there are more than just formal pol- icy connections that link the Reagan admin- istration and the Mulroney government. The Financial Post revealed Sept. 22 that the relationship bewteen Mulroney and Reagan came about as a result of Mulro- ney’s interest in the right-wing International Democratic Union (IDU) which has among its members several leading Tories, includ- ing Allan Lawrence, the group’s treasurer. The IDU, which merged the reactionary European Democratic Union and the Pacific Democrat Union, was formally launched in London in June, 1983 with a tirade by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher against the Soviet Union and socialism. She told the founding IDU members, which’ included U.S. vice- president George Bush and German Chan- cellor Helmut Kohl, that socialism had no future. ‘““‘The future belongs to the free democracies and that is the march of his- tory,” she said. According to the Post, Mulroney also shares a mutual interest in the IDU with the vice-chairman Richard V. Allen, the former Reagan cabinet member who was responsi- ble for setting up the initial Reagan- Mulroney meeting in June. Allen was the first National Security Adviser under Reagan but was forced out of the position in 1981 admist allegations that he had accepted bribes. Before that, he had been one of the founding members of the Committee on the Present Danger, a group of right wing hawks who had established © themselves as a powerful lobby group in the years before Reagan’s election to under- mine detente and kill SALT II through exaggerated and fabricated accounts of a massive Soviet arms build-up. The commit- tee was eminently successful and went on to become the single most important influence on U.S. foreign policy. Despite his departure from a formal White House post, Allen has maintained a close relationship with Reagan. He has been appointed as a consultant to the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and is national security adviser to the powerful Republican National Committee. That Allen should have been Mulroney’s go-between to organize the meeting with Reagan would suggest a much greater con- vergence of views between the two men that many Canadians might have realized. Certainly Mulroney’s pronouncements on foreign policy have often sounded like the utterances of the members of the Com- mittee on the Present Danger. He has talked of political leaders needing to be vigilant “to avoid becoming a pawn in Soviet strategy.” ~ Still, whatever Mulroney says at the White House it may be difficult to obtain details on the significance of the talks since the prime minister’s office has specifically ruled out any formal press conference at which reporters might probe issues in depth. Washington June 21. (Interestingly enough, that restriction on information is also the'style of the IDU — which barred questions from the floor during the press conference following the founding meeting — and of Reagan, whose press aides see to it that the U.S. president dis- cusses only the issues he wants to.) But Canadians have a right to know if the Tory government is going to move more and more into lock step with Reagan policies — because those policies are not only at odds with Canadian interests but also with prevailing opinion across this country. c The first policy initiative has already pointed in that direction. At the recent meeting of Commonwealth finance minis- ters in Toronto, new Tory finance minister Michael Wilson lined himself up with the U.S. position on international debt re- scheduling, at the same time distancing himself from the position adopted by most Commonwealth countries. : Included in his — and the U.S. — policy is continued support for the sweeping aus- terity measures imposed by the Interna- tional Monetary Fund on debtor countries — measures which have the effect of greatly reducing living standards and shifting the distribution of wealth in favor of multina- tional investors. But probably more immediate to most Canadians are the issues that were expected to be on the agenda in Washington — policy in Central America, arms control and Can- adian and USS. relations with the Soviet Union. During the first federal election debate, Mulroney was asked by a reporter whether his insistence that the U.S. be given “the ’ benfit of the doubt” included support for test of Tory policy MULRONEY, REAGAN. . .talking to reporters during Mulroney’s first visit to the CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors. He vehemently replied that it did not. But so far there have been no official voices in the Tory government pressing for an end to the secret U.S. war against Nicaragua. There has already been considerable demand aross the country for the U.S. to refrain from any direct intervention in Nica- ragua and for the federal government to forge closer relations with the Sandinista government in Managua. But there will cer- tainly have to be massive pressure on Mul- roney to compel him to live up to the spirit of his election statement and to reflect Can- adian opinion by separating himself sharply from the Reagan administration’s policy on Central America. Similarly, the overwhelming public sen- timent for a nuclear freeze and the less deci- sive but nevertheless majority opposition to cruise testing have not been reflected in Tory policy despite the new government’s election night pretence of “representing all Canadians.” Instead, Mulroney has given Reagan what he wants without consulting Canadians — an unqualified ‘“‘yes” to cruise testing. In that sense, the meeting Tuesday will only be onestep. Inevitably, it will mark the formal establishment of closer ties between the Tories’ Ottawa and the Reagan White House. But it should also mark the beginning of a renewed campaign, particularly by the peace movement across the country, to ensure that the Mulroney government reflects Canadian opinion in its foreign policy — and not the reactionary opinions of his friends in the IDU and the Reagan administration Safety issue in gas cuts warms OTEU The Office and Technical Employees Local 378 warned last week that planned cuts to B.C. Hydro’s gas div- ision staff, part of the massive layoffs the Crown corporation intends to con- duct throughout its operations, “could have serious consequences for public safety.” OTEU Local 378 President Anne Harvey said Sept. 20 that the union had been informed that day that 50 jobs would be cut in B.C. Hydro’s gas div- ision. The announcement was particu- larly disturbing since a reorganization report published only a month before had stated that B.C. Hydro’s gas div- ision was already operating with too few workers. That report, an internal B.C. Hydro study on the reorganization of the gas division prepared by Victoria man- agement consultant’H.E. Thiela, stated . that the division was too “‘lean” in ser- vice personnel. In order to achieve an average level of customers per employ- ees, it said, B.C. Hydro will have to hire- an additional 252 people. The report also emphasized: “‘Natu- ral gas is classified as a hazardous commodity and in today’s society too lean an operating corps would not be acceptable and might be perceived as negligent.” “People pay enough for their gas and .electricity and they should be able to expect a reasonable level of safety and service for their money,” Harvey said in a Statement. The apparent intention of B.C. Hydro to proceed: with the layoffs against the recommendations of its Own internal report has given sudstance to charges that both service and Hydro employees would suffer as the Crown corporation proceeds with its plans to cut spending by $220 million over the next three years. The spending cuts were neccessitated by years of mismanagement which saw millions of dollars — most of it bor- rowed at premium rates on U.S. money markets — spent in developing hydro- electric mega-projects which ultimately have been used to generate power for export to the U.S. at cheap rates. The massive debt has dictated that almost 50 cents in every dollar go to debt servicing. And the burden has become particularly onerous in recent years as a result of the falling Canadian dollar. The employees — and the public — will be compelled to pay the price of that management policy if the announced cuts go through. What is worse, the number of layoffs may go as high as 1,300 according to estimates by the manager and Profes- sional Employees Society at B.C. Hydro. Together with the 2,000 already pared from Hydro’s staff since July, 1982, the new layoffs would mean a 41 per cent reduction in the work force — a cut which could only result in reduced service. Vancouver city council noted Sept. 11 that the layoffs would result in a reduction in service to city residents and would be a blow to the civic economy. It called on the provincial government to cover Hydro’s projected deficit from the $145 million collected from the Crown corporation for water taxes in 1983-84. A public demand should also be raised calling on the government to insist that staff levels be kept up at Hydro to ensure that service and safety standards are maintained. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 26, 1984 e 3