EDITORIAL Tories the real culprits . The federal government, specifically the prime min- ister and the minister of justice, should lose no time in dropping the charges against Richard Price, the senior civil servant fired from the Indian Affairs Department for allegedly leaking a secret cabinet document. Price was charged with breach of trust for which a guilty verdict could carry a five-year jail term. The government displays a paranoia about secrecy that suggests its own guilt in using the furore to cover its own indecent act. It was this Tory government which ordered the preparation of a study which showed it how to pocket $312 million by filching it from funds for Native pro- jects. What was at stake was not anything frivolous but basic, elementary needs of people. To save a relatively few dollars the Mulroney Tories had it in mind to deny Native communities funds for health, education and housing. If those are not criminal acts, but letting them be known is a criminal act, then we know clearly what system of values guides the Tory majority in Ottawa. The real indictment is against the Mulroney . government. This episode not only exposes that clique once again as active agents of the corporate elite, it lays bare the fact that their attitude toward the Native people, mirrors their feelings about the working class and the trade union movement, working farmers, the unemployed and the poor. The attitude behind the prissy smile is utter disdain. The crux of the case of the leaked document is that the Mulroney hatchetmen were, and probably still are toying with ways to cheat the Native people, and in the manner of this cheating — health, education, hou- sing — to relegate them to some nether world beneath Canadian society. If anyone should be put on trial it is the Mulroney Tory government which, had there been no public knowledge of the plot, might even now have launched its campaign of ill health, ignorance and homelessness it planned for the Native people. Speaking of human rights There is something of an imbalance in the media across Canada on the issue of human rights. On the one hand the Soviet Union and other socialist coun- tries are given disproportionate time and space under this heading, while proponents of human rights in Canada are muzzled. On the other hand the hand- wringing editors, dedicated to the capitalist system, never discuss the human rights that exist in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. In short, the Canadian public is done out of the truth on at least two counts. A researcher could provide a voluminous work on these “forgotten” aspects of human rights. A few current examples help make the point. Across the country municipal and provincial governments are lamenting the soaring costs of food banks for the poor, relief payments, lack of subsidized housing, and so on. In Ontario, where Tories made their fortunes for over 40 years, the new Liberal government admits itis . wrestling with the problem of providing food grants to charitable organizations which hand out groceries to the hungry. Rev. Dennis Drainville, of an Anglican Church food distribution centre, estimates that 100,000 people in Metropolitan Toronto, Canada’s largest city, need the free food. Ontario’s minister of community and social servi- ces, John Sweeney, says the $720,000 given last winter . to churches and agencies in the Oct. 31 to Mar. 31 program is now badly needed in summer, when the need matches the worst days of winter. Not surprisingly, a recent Gallup poll found 54 per cent of Canadains consider unemployment the coun- try’s most urgent problem. Another 21 per cent saw inflation and high prices in the lead. Almost everyone laments the situation — govern- ment members, opposition and not least the media. The Toronto Star has its reporters do exhaustive research to show the mass agony. Its readers contrib- ute to both a Santa Claus fund and a Fresh Air fund — (to send kids to summer camp), presumably because it grieves for the victims of the system it so vigorously supports. It makes certain its readers never hear that virtually all youngsters in the USSR have the oppor- tunity and means to go to summer camp. For the media, a distorted presentation serves to hide the fact that these are human rights issues. They and their politicians condemn the Soviet Union using names of people whom Soviet authorities find have broken Soviet laws. But what laws have been broken by Canada’s 1,293,000 (officially) unemployed (10.5 per cent) to justify denying them the human right ofa job? How is that 84 per cent of the people who are on social assistance in Metro Toronto do not live in subsidized housing, but are gouged by landlords, while the waiting list for subsidized family units stretches to about three years? The big business media would rather cry over a waiting list for cars in Mos- cow. Why do they not report that Soviet rents are a mere pittance of earnings? Why no mention that while Canadian youth is being cheated of learning oppor- tunities, education in the USSR is free — all the way up? Why do they never headline the fact that the USSR has had full employment since the 30s? All Canadians — not just those friendly to the Soviet Union — are justified in resenting being led by the nose in these matters, because the misleading is being done to control ideas, not to further human rights. George Weston Ltd., Toronto makes its money from food, supermarkets and forest products — and is doing very well. For the six months ended June 30 the after-tax profit figure was $33.5-million. Inthe same months a year earlier the owner of many subsidiaries had to settle for $30.7-million. IRIBUNE —— Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR Graphics — ANGELA KENYON Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Stre: Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125 Phone (604) 251-1186 Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year; $8 six months Foreign — $20 one year: Second class mail registration number 1560 im Buck Boulevard — the street that bore the name of the former leader of the Communist Party of Canada marked the labor militancy, class struggle and the growing popularity of left-wing ideas that People and Issues aS Gallery Aug. 16. Mitchell, who toured the country under the auspices of the National Film Board’s former Still Photography Division, and, surprisingly enough, with financial support - Swept the nation in the mid-30s. __ It, and the left-wing council elected by its working class constituents to run the town of Blairmore, Alta., in the Crows Nest Pass, were a sign of the times. And, we dare to hope, it may be a sign of the return to working class consciousness in Canada that Blairmore’s top municipal official is urging that the main street again bear the name of Tim Buck. According to a front-page article in the July 23 edition of the Crowsnest Pass . Promoter, sent to us by Tribune readers Nick and Ann Tarasoff, Blairmore mayor John Irwin has urged council to reinstate ‘the name-of Canada’s popular working- | class spokesman. The mayor told council, } “There were a lot of hard feelings about - Communism and the like, but the labor movement is a big part of our history and I 4 think we should put the sign back up and | re-designate the road.” | Blairmore’s main street was named Tim ; Buck Boulevard in 1933, two years before the bitterly fought strike in the coalfields at nearby Corbin, B.C. The naming came at a time when an organizing drive by the Mineworkers Union of Canada, under the leadership of Harvey Murphy, a Commu- nist and later to be president of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, was underway among miners in several area B.C. and Alberta communities. (In the 1975 May Day issue of the Trib- une, Murphy reminisced about May Day, 1934, when 1,000 area miners walked off their jobs and, in spite of a heavily-armed contingent of B.C. provincial police, marched to celebrations in a field they dubbed “Karl Marx Park,” near Michel, B.C.) The scant historical information avail- able doesn’t tell us when the name of Tim Buck was removed from the town’s main street. But, according to the Promoter, the sign designating the street is still in one of the municipality’s shops. a We're also not aware of the degree of support the mayor has from council for his proposal. But we welcome the spirit in which it was made, and we wish the mayor success in his worthy endeavor. 40 Hie Ww: the recent $27 million aid pack- age the U.S. Reagan administration is sending to the counter-revolutionaries bent. on toppling the popular, socialist government of Nicaragua, it might seem that the Central American nation that overthrew the U.S.-backed Somoza regime six years ago hasn’t many friends in the world. But the international support for the Sandinista government speaks for itself, and in Vancouver, one photo- grapher-anthropoligist’s statement is a small but significant part of that friend- ship. Nicaragua: After the Triumph is a pho- tographic and textual display that expresses the plea of Canadian Michael Mitchell that Nicaragua be allowed to continue what he sees as its “experiment” with a new social system, free from outside intervention. Consisting of 48 full-color photographs, it goes on display at the Vancouver Art from the B.C. government, provides what VAG publicist Dorothy Metcalfe calls an “illuminating and educational” commen- tary to accompany the photographs. Mit- chell himself calls the display “images of people who have made a revolution and _ want to keep it.” The exhibit is on display until Nov. 11. * * * ecognition of a long and fruitful life for Tribune reader Bert Balogh per- haps relieves some of the sadness of his passing, at Penticton Hospital in June. He was 75. Born in Hungary in 1909, Bert arrived in Canada at age 19. He started out in Saskatchewan, and later moved to Alberta where he worked in the beet fields. During his varied work history Bert was also a shoe repairman, house builder, orchardist and gardener. He is remembered by his widow, Julia, as a “believer of peace and justice for the mass of underprivileged people so wrongly treated by society.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE, AUGUST 14, 1985 e 3