THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

MAY, 1979

GUEST EDITORIA

ED SHOWS THE WAY

FTER a fortnight of campaigning,

each of the three major party
leaders has carved outa strategy uni-
quely his own on the rhetorical battle

ground.

NDP leader Ed Broadbent offers
detailed solutions to complex ques-
tions. Tory leader Joe Clark offers few
detailed answers to complex ques-
tions and Prime Minister Trudeau
responds to complex questions with
insults and rhetorical questions of his
own.

Of all three, it is Broadbent who has
thus far taken the highest road, con-
centrating on issues and refusing to
be dragged into personality-bashing.
He has promised a Canadian mer-
chant fleet (an idea rejected by the
government before the election),
energy self-sufficiency based in part
on the elimination of exports, and an
industrial strategy aimed at turning
Canadian resources into Canadian-
made manufactured products.

He has promised a comprehensive
program to give women equality in the
employment marketplace and is well
on the road to enunciating a new pol-
icy direction every day of the cam-
paign. Broadbent acknowledges unity
as a vital issue, but not the only vital
issue. ;

Joe Clark still ducks the substance
of the issues. He persists in harping on
the sorry record of the Trudeau
government, which is justified, but he
does not satisfy the electorate’s need
to know in detail what they can expect
in the future from the Tories.

When it comes to providing hard
answers, Clark is great at coming up
with ill-considered generalities. He
has not successfully refuted Jean
Chretien’s charge that Tory promises
of mortgage interest deductibility and
capital gains tax elimination will
further undermine the economy. And

he is still burdened with the stupid
responses to questions about energy
management and police illegality that
earmarked the first week of the
campaign.

His most recent policy pronounce-
ments include an optimistic growth
rate and sharply reduced unemploy-
ment in the next six years — in making
those predictions he sounds like no

one so much as Jean Chretien atelec- —

tion time.

The prime minister has draped him-
self in the flag and concentrated on
personality and leadership skills. He
hasn’t avoided the issues, as Clark
has. He’s subverted them.

He has come out swinging against
the provinces for their demands for
increased powers. Yet it was he who
was prepared to make major conces-
sions to the provincial premiers in
order to get a constitutional agree-
ment at the February first ministers’
conference. Now he is branding the
Tories as proponents of a Chamber-
lain-like “peace in our time” with pro-
vincial governments.

The Pm’s mouth has tended to run
away with him as well. His shot at
farmers, whom he labelled complain-
ers, and his comment about the treas-
onable act of those who don’t buy his
position on unity are but two exam-
ples of the statesmanlike quality miss-
ing from his campaign — a quality that
Trudeau would have voters believe is
the difference between himself and
Joe Clark.

There are more than six weeks left
in the campaign — a long time in this
kind of political exercise, time enough
for the early mistakes to be forgotten
and new ones to be made, time
enough for ideas in their infancy to
mature or abort.But after 10 days, the
best performance has been by the
NDP.

—The Ottawa Citizen

LOGGERS’ SPORTS DATES

ae ST een

The Canadian Loggers’
Sports Association (CANLOG)
has added two new communi-
ties to its schedule of sanc-
tioned events for 1979.

The additions of Port McNeil
and brings to 13 the
number of communities

hos t competi-
mage B.C, a
year.

Alberta this

W. D, “Bill” Moore, Chair-
man of Festival of Forestry
and CANLOG, said ers’.
sports, the official in
sport of British Columbia, are

competitions based on the
skills of the logger, many of
which have been replaced by
automation.

He said that only areas
which meet CANLOG safety
standards are awarded sanc-
tioned competitions and the
right to stage a Canadian
Championship in the 15 events
that make up a typical logger’s
sport program.

“We welcome Port McNeil
and Kamloops to our growing
list of communities interested
in staging events,’’ Mr. Moore

‘said. “In our eleven years we

have also introduced loggers’
sports’ to Alberta, Ontario,
Quebec and New Brunswick.

“We are proud of our
progress,’ he added.

The 1979 schedule opens in
Port Alberni, May 20; followed
by Terrace, June 2-3; Powell
River, June 9; Port McNeil,
June 16; Gold River, June 23;
Lumby, July 1-2; Sooke, July
21; Mission, July 22;
Squamish, August 4-5; Lady-
smith, August 6; Grande
Prairie, Alberta, August 5-6;
Prince George, August 11-12;
and Kamloops, August 26.

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AP
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When he starts relivin’ his highriggin’ days it’s time to

go!

PLANT ROBOTS WILL

ge

United Auto Workers vice-
president Irving Bluestone
warned unionists that it is now
a fact that a totally automated
assembly line is possible.

He told delegates to the UAW
production worker conference
in Detroit that although work-
ers have become accustomed
to computer equipment in
plants robots are beginning to
enter.

“In more recent years the
industry has begun to in-
troduce robots. Worldwide it is
estimated that there are only
about 5,000 robots in place in
industry — about 500.of them in
the U.S. In GM there are ap-
proximately 150 total, that’s
not a large number. of robots.”’
Bluestone also said that the
robots are being used for
handling parts, performing
spot-welding operations ‘and
other work on an assembly
line. rales

Bluestone ‘said the sophisti-
cated second generation
computerized robots ‘‘are
designed and instructed to pick
up various different contours
of parts as they come down the
conveyor line and see those
parts through a television
camera, which then instructs
the built-in computer in the
robot to pull out its fingers,
pick up the parts and put those
parts in different sections
around the conveyor belt.”

The implications for parts
sorting operations or in-
spection operations by these
changes are evident he said.

The newest robots will have
a sense of touch and hearing,
and “‘it will not be too far down
the road, the next several
years, when they will have

REPLACE WORKERS

developed robots which ac-
tually hear and will conform
with instructions which are
given to them verbally,’’ Blue-
stone said.

He said that these develop-
ments will be taking place
quickly, in the next decade.

“This is why it is feasible in
the foreseeable future that
assembly lines will be -run in
large part by robots, which will
replace human beings because
they will replace the human
senses that we have,’’ he
stated.

Bluestone said it was im-
portant for delegates to see
that the collective bargaining
program takes notice of these
developments and formulates
a program which ‘‘will create
more job opportunities in order
to take care of those who will
be displaced by this increas-
ingly accelerated introduction
of new technology.”

' BOARD
ALLOWS
CLAIMS

The Ontario Workers’ Com-
pensation Board has allowed

two claims of a rare form of .

cancer, caused by exposure to
asbestos dust in a gas-mask
plant in Ottawa during the
Second World War.

The board said in a state-
ment that three other claims
were denied and one is still
under investigation.

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