‘CANADA

OPSEU starts round
two on Lavigne case

TORONTO — The Ontario Public Service Employees Union
tered round two of its Ontario Supreme Court battle on the
avigne case, Oct. 8, by taking the National Citizens Coalition to
| the Supreme Court of Canada in a bid to show that the NCC is
| funded by corporate backers who deduct their contributions from
their taxes.
| OPSEU president Jim Clancy told reporters on the eve of the
esumption of Lavigne case hearings that the union was going on
the offensive.
*We’re taking on the real issue in this case: The right-wingers of
the National Citizens Coalition have been using taxpayers’
oney for their own causes, at the same time as they have tried to
y unions the right to participate in public life’’, he said.
Clancy made the announcement on the eve of hearings before
tice John White, who is to consider what remedy will apply in
his earlier judgement in favor of Haileybury community college
her Merv Lavigne’s claim that OPSEU violated his right to
dom of association under the Canadian Charter by using
mn dues to support social causes like the struggle for peace and
vor of reproductive choice.
‘He said that OPSEU would argue before Justice White that the
on shouldn't have to bear Lavigne’s court costs inasmuch as
NCC financed him to the tune of several hundred thousand
‘dollars, and the coalition boasts of having raised more than it
needed from its supporters to back Lavigne.
- OPSEU hopes to force the NCC to Open its books to the
‘scrutiny of the courts. ‘The NCC is a private secretive organ-
zation’ ’, Clancy said. ‘Businesses that contribute to the NCC
can deduct their contribution from their taxable income. It’s
| considered a ‘legitimate business expense’ ”
He decried the legal double standard this presents. ‘‘ Business
s a public subsidy to promote its views, (while) individuals and
|non-business organizations have to pay their own freight ...
| donations from the coffers of corporations give lobby groups like
| the NCC a blank cheque.”

By MERLE TERLESKY
EDMONTON — Alberta pre-
mier Don Getty moved last week
to intervene in the six-month long
Gainers strike.

The premier expressed his
“‘frustrations’’ over this epic bat-
tle between the whole Canadian
labor movement and Tory mil-
lionaire and Gainers owner Peter
Pocklington, as he emerged from
a meeting with United Food and
Commerical Workers officials,
Oct*%

Getty’s frustrations certainly
won't match the pent up anger of
the strikers who’ve had to not
only battle a union-busting boss
like Pocklington, but the prov-
ince’s Tory courts, unfair labor
laws, and police as well, in their
just struggle for decent wages and
an end to concessions.

The premier said he was re-
questing a meeting with Pock-
lington to discuss avenues for a
possible settlement of the strike.
This came just days after Alber-
ta’s federal Tory caucus met with
a labor delegation, which in-
cluded Alberta Federation of
Labor president Dave Werlin, to
discuss the strike and the prov-
ince’s backward labor legislation.

Getty’s initiative was wel-
comed by both the striking

Labor acts to block dru

7
i ae

Ad in Edmonton daily

UFCW local’s president John
Ventura, and the AFL secretary
treasurer Don Aitken. Both held
out hopes the premier would
press Pocklington to return to the
bargaining table.

However the record of the Al-
berta Tories in this fight has
placed it squarely in Pock-
lington’s camp. The premier’s
move at this time is undoubtedly a
response to the growing pressure
being put on his government by
the UFCW and the Alberta labor
movement, and on the federal To-
ries, anxious to spruce up their
image for the next federal ballot.

The Canada-wide boycott and
solidarity movement being as-
sisted and conducted on behalf of
the UFCW by the Canadian
Labor Congress has quickly
spread right across Canada.

In Edmonton the union stepped
up its boycott campaign witha full

page ad, Oct. 8 inthe Edmonton —

Sun explaining why the public
should shun Gainers scabby prod-
ucts and instead support com-
panies who've agreed to pay de-
cent wages.

The AFL has launched its own
enquiry into both Alberta and
federal labor laws as well as inter-

national standards. Unlike the —

boondoggle concocted as a stal-
ling tactic earlier this year by the
Getty government, the labor
movement’s inquiry won't be
, Sending its commissioners on a
world tour to collect its in-
formation.

The question Alberta workers
and the Gainers strikers will be
asking themselves in the weeks to
come is whether the pressure on
Getty has reached the point
where he can set aside the neo-
conservative ideology he shares
with Pocklington long enough to
help bring this struggle to a satis-
factory conclusion for the
workers.

The history of both men so far
doesn’t encourage much optim-
ism in such an outcome, but the
entire Canadian labor movement
is determined that sooner or later
there will be such a settlement.

QORONTO — The fight is on to stop
j federal Tories from forcing Cana-
wns to swallow “‘the bitier pill’’ of
ically increased prescription drug

.

er since June 30, when the Mul-
vernment introduced proposed
es to the Patent Act essentially en-
the transnational pharmaceutical
“mpanies monopoly on the sale of
cription drugs in this country, labor,
mers Organizations, health care re-
groups and the Canadian generic
industry have been active in trying
ke sure the legislation which failed
e to a technicality, isn’t revived.
Now, with the Canadian Auto Work-
5 throwing its resources behind the
Ed ign the issue is being taken up with
, kind of energy that was associated
the successful drive by senior citi-
when they compelled the Tories in
wa to scrap plans to de-index old age
ns.
its Oct. 2 meeting, the Metro To-
nto Labor Council voted to urge its
; to write their MPs and Tory
ministers to demand withdrawal
Patent Act amendments.

n executive board statement, the
leadership asked delegates and
to publicize the campaign
the amendments as part of labor’s
st free trade.

¢e we stopped the de-indexing of
pensions, we must stop the
es to the drug patent act’’, the
statement declared.

away to Transnationals
president Bob White, at the
recent Canadian Council meet-
nched its own drive against the
ments noting how the federal To-
caved in to the pharmaceutical
als and the U.S. Reagan ad-
who placed the issue of wip-
competition from the generic

drug manufacturers as a supposed “‘irrit-
ant” in the free trade talks.

“This is nothing more than a give away
to the mulinationals and will cost the
consumers of Canada millions of
dollars’, he told the council delegates.

The CAW campaign will have its locals
distributing a background media kit on
the implications of the Patent Act
changes to every radio station, television
outlet and local newspaper in their com-
munities, It calls for a petition card cam-
paign in every workplace, marshaling
local labor council support behind the
drive, linking with senior citizens’,
community and church groups and lob-
bying federal and provincial MPs, phar-
macists, and all doctors’, nurses’ and
teachers’ associations.

The plan also calls for union locals to
work with their retired workers chapters
to organize information pickets at shop-
ping centers and downtown malls.

Powerful Lobby

The patent act amendments are the
fruit of a powerful, five year lobbying
effort by the Pharmaceutical Manu-
facturers Association of Canada,
(PMAC), to shelter the mostly U.S.-
Owned transnationals from competition
by the lower-priced generic drugs.

Reacting to public pressure over the
way Canadians were being reamed with
some of the highest prescription drug
Prices in the world, the federal govern-
ment in 1969 amended the Patent Act to
allow companies, for a royalty fee, to
produce and market lower priced
“generic”? copies of patented drugs
manufactured by the transnationals.

Generally the smaller companies who
have gone into the generic drug business
have been Canadian owned and they
have flourished while drug prices for
consumers have been substantially cut.

What Reagan and the U.S.-owned
transnational pharmaceuticals want is
for the patent holders to be given a 10

year monopoly free from generic com-
petition.

Prior to the 1969 amendments three
separate government probes into the
pharmaceutical industry and their legis-
lated 17 year monopoly of the Patent Act
repeatedly called for scrapping the act
altogether or changing it to allow for the
licensing of generic imports.

In 1985, Ottawa commissioned Dr.
Harry Eastman to probe the industry
again and he estimated that the 1969
amendment of the Patent Act saved
Canadian consumers $211-million in
1983.

Massive Tax Evasion

The Canadian Drug Manufactuers As-
sociation, almost exactly one year before
the Tories introduced their latest

g scam

‘amendments, accused the U.S. trans-
nationals of evading Canadian taxes on
profits made in this country, to the tune
of $180-million a year.

The CDMA cited Eastman’s study
which found that the transnationals shift
their profits to tax havens by charging
higher raw material costs to their Cana-
dian affiliates. ~

The scandal was rank enough that Re-
venue Canada audited 20 transnationals

operating in Canada and launched legal

action against Merck Frosst Canada
Inc., to recover $12.4-million in taxes on
unreported income between 1973 and 78,
and Squibb Canada, to collect $6.4-mil-
lion in unreported income for the period
spanning 1975-78.

Revenue Canada found that Squibb’s
operation here paid $1,408,087 for raw
material since 1975 when according to
world prices it should have paid
$372,155; the next year it paid its affiliate
$2.8-million when the world prices were
about $731,000; $2.3-million in 1977 in-
stead of $604,000; and $2.3-million again
in 1978 for materials that only cost
$707,000. :

Eastman in his comprehensive 474
page report refuted most of the trans-
nationals arguments for the government
restoring their monopoly. Contrary to
the lobbying and propaganda, the profits
of the Canadian pharmaceuticals, while

lower than their American parents were ~

still higher than the pharmaceuticals in
France, Japan, Switzerland, Britain and
West Germany.

As for the promises of greater research -
and development flowing from the
restoration of the transnationals’
monopoly, Eastman showed that the five
previously mentioned countries, even
with lower profits than the transnationals
operating in Canada actually spend sub-
stantially more than is spent here on
R&D.

— M.P._

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 15, 1986 ¢ 7