‘GRIEVOUS HARM TO CANADA’

COLUMBIA RIVER TREATY

FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 1974

DENOUNCED BY EXPERTS

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ENGINEERING AND

CONTRACT RECORD

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APRIL 1964

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leadin SAY THEY WERE NOT WARNED. In April, 1964, Canada’s
g!neering magazine put out a special issue (above) which
ttawa and Victoria that the Columbia Treaty was a
ntal blow to Canada’s independence” and a national scan-

By NIGEL MORGAN

Canada can legitimately ask
for renegotiation of the Columbia
River Treaty on the grounds that
itis fallacious and does grievous
harm to this country.

This was the charge made by
one of Canada’s top hydro ex-
perts, Larrett T. Higgins of the
Ontario Power Commission, in a
speech at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity in which he said Canada was
conned when it ratified the trea-
ty.
Another sharp and sweeping
denunciation of the highly-
controversial treaty, came last
week from Professor Ian
McDougal, Dalhousie University
expert on international law.

“Rotten to the core’’ is how
this authority on treaties, hired
to advise the Provincial govern-
ment on how to cope with
problems the ten-year old treaty
between Canada and the United
States has created for British
Columbia, described it a public
lecture at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity last week.

“Columbia River water is
worth $39 per acre-foot and
should yield the province more

than $7 billion a year in revenue.

for the 180 million acre-feet the
Columbia spills each year’’ he
said. Instead, the B.C.
Legislature has been told, the
Columbia dams are going to cost
$440 million more than the total
cash payments received from
the United States.

_ “In addition there are very few
areas of water surplus anywhere

in the country. One of these few
areas is the Columbia basin,”
McDougal stated. “‘And as soon
as the energy crisis is over in the
U.S. the water crisis will take
over.”’

Other losses cited included:
‘‘A great deal of power potential
... . the economic potential that
existed in the flooded Arrow
Lakes Region and in the lower

WILLIAM KASHTAN, Canadian
Communist Party leader is ad-
dressing a series of public
meetings in B.C. this week. On
Saturday he will address the par-
ty’s B.C. convention in Vancouver.

See pg. 3.

segment of the Kootenay Valley
. . Major losses in construction
of the Duncan and High Arrow

dams which were built solely for:

U.S. flood-control and generate
no power . . . legal claim to on-
going flood control savings that
the U.S. gets from the Columbia
Canadian portion (estimated to
amount to $214 million in 1972)
. .. And the power to vary ‘to
any great degree’ the flow of
Columbia River waters’’.
“The faults are so many and so
varied,’’ Professor McDougal
reported, “‘that the first order of
business is to rank them by
priority, and plot a strategy on
how to make them right. We had
heard a hundred and one
different theories about why it’s
a bad deal. And in my view
almost all of them are right.”
B.C. wants to gain three things
he informed the university
audience. First, ‘‘more flexibili-
ty in using the water flow from
the Columbia River;’’ secondly,
“to make it clear we're not
making a commitment for all
time to allow the present flow to
continue;”’ and thirdly, ‘‘that we
might want sometime in the
future to recover some of the
land we lost, or obtain compen-
sation that more closely reflects
the benefits being received as a
result of that land being inun-
dated from the flooding.”’
Major blame for the faults in
the treaty he laid at the door of
former Scored Premier: W.A.C.
Bennett and his obsession for a
See COLUMBIA, pg. 3

Send monopoly conspirators to jail

we’ MAURICE RUSH

i
handed» days after fines were
Companion - the major cement
into fF in B.C, for entering
Second Nopoly arrangement, a
bines ik arge under the Com-
light ja vestigation Act came to
and Alle week when Cominco
Ltd. ay Chemical Company
iN provi € summonsed to appear
eae Court in Vancouver.
Ons aie formerly known as
Smelting ated Mining and
CPR, and 0., an affiliate of the
charged | Allied Chemical were
“ome Bet y on three counts
Tging.a monopoly, and

the other two accusing the com-
panies of conspiracy.

The specific charges said they
were parties to formation of a
monopoly designed to control
sulphuric acid. Also that they un-
lawfully conspired and combined
“to prevent or lessen unduly
competition in manufacturing,
producing, purchasing, supply-
ing, selling or dealing” in sul-
phuric acid. And also, that they
unlawfully conspired with one
another to limit unduly the
facilities for producing,
manufacturing, supplying, or
dealng in the product involved.

The charges, made by officials
of the investigative and research
branches under the Combines
Investigation Act, say that the
alleged offences occurred in
Vancouver, Montreal and other
unstated places in Canada star-
ting Jan. 1, 1961.

Monopoly practises also came
under sharp attack in the B.C.
legislature last week when
charges were made in the House
debate that prices of eye-glasses
being sold in B.C. were almost
completely under monopoly con-
trol by a Toronto-based company
— Imperial Optical Co.

Demands were made that the
provincial government conduct a
full investigation into the firm
which allegedly controls more
than 300 related companies un-
der a variety of names.

The Pacific Tribune was the
first B.C. paper to expose the
Imperial Optical monopoly in its
issue of Feb. 15, 1974. At that
time we charged that this anti-
labor monopoly had an octopus-
like grip on the preparation and
sale of glasses and control over
the whole optical industry.

These three cases: one already
decided by the courts, one still to

be tried, and a third aired in the
legislature, points up the serious
monopoly inroads into the
economy of B.C. and Canada.
These cases only expose the tip
of the iceberg. The spread of
monopoly into all areas such as
the food industry, housing,
newspapers and media, forest in-
dustry, etc., has been an outstan-
ding feature in recent years and
has pushed up consumer prices
and monopoly profits to an all-
time high.

With the cement case still
fresh in the public’s mind there

See MONOPOLY, pg. 2

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