our united to challenge Devine

_ BCGEU going all-out
against privatization

Circus dazzles crowds

| Soviet policy
‘Is shaping a
new future’

The restructuring of Soviet indus-
try and society will not lead to the
restoration of capitalism in the USSR,
but is designed to enhance the coun-
try’s socialist system, a leading
academician and expert on Canadian
affairs told B.C. audiences last wee-
kend.

Dr. Leon Bagramov, Canadian
department head in the USSR’s Insti-
tute of the USA and Canada, said in
Victoria and Vancouver that the pro-
cess known as glasnost will also
ensure that Stalinism never returns to
the Soviet Union.

“How do we know that it will never
return? There is only one guarantee,
and that is democracy. And we are
doing all we can to develop demo-
Cracy, glasnost, in our country,”
Bagramov told some 400 people in
Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Play-
house Nov. 8.

Bagramov gave a similar speech to
more than 100 people, including sev-
eral university students, in Victoria
the preceding night. Both events
Marked the 70th anniversary of the
Russian Revolution.

Saul Holoff, president of the Victo-
tia chapter of the Canada-USSR
Association, praised the academi-
Cian’s “amazing candour” during his
Speech and the following question
Period.

see PEACE page 3

— page5

November 11, 1987
40°

Vol. 50, No. 42

More than 200 delegates to a special B.C.
Government Employees Union conference
on privatization Thursday voted unanim-
ously to “commit the total resources of the
union, both financial and human, to fight
privatization.”

And moments later, B.C. Federation of
Labour president Ken Georgetti pledged
the complete support of the federation and
warned Premier Vander Zalm: “If he wants
a repeat of June 1 (the one-day general
strike against. Bill 19) again, again and
again, we will deliver that.”

The resolution committing the total
resources of the union to fight privatization
came as some 230 delegates were winding
up a special one-day membership confer-
ence, originally called by the BCGEU on
Oct. 23, the same day as Vander Zalm’s
announcement that two Crown corpora-
tions and I1 government services would be
sold off as the first phase of privatization.

Delegates moved the resolution from the
floor as an amendment to the union’s action
plan. It followed more than 1% hours of
discussion in which one union member after
another rose to warn that privatization
would threaten members’ jobs, reduce the
level and quality of services and open the
door to decertification as government oper-
ations were sold off to the private sector.

The resolution echoed the pledge by
BCGEU president John Shields in which
the union leader had declared his intention
to “commit the total resources of the union
to fight ... this insane attack on our way of

life.”
see JOB page 12

Nothing more represents the Mos-
cow Circus that the famed Yarovoi
bears and they continued to delight
audiences in Vancouver as they
went through their paces, including
a performance of the sailor's dance
with trainers Irina and Ivan Yarovoi.
In Vancouver for an_all-too-brief
five-day run, the circus continued to
draw huge crowds and unrestrained
enthusiasm from four generations of
kids as it wound up its perform-
ances — which included dazzling
high wire and perch acts — in the
Pacific Coliseum Sunday. The nine-
week, cross-country tour, which
began in Halifax in early September,
was the first for the Moscow Circus
since 1977 and involved moving
more than 70 people, 19 animals
and 10,000 tonnes of equipment
through nine cities across Canada.