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Daniel Johnson, past president of the Council of Yukon Indians, in

Vancouver this week for a series of meetings, opened his tour with an
address to the Vancouver and District.Labor Council. Tuesday, where he
called for delegates’ support in the demand that the Alcan pipeline be
stopped until Native claims have been settled (see story).

Opponents voice warning

New port plan could
open way to tankers

The announcement this week of a
$150 million coal and grain port at
Ridley Island near Prince Rupert
could be the ‘thin end of the
wedge”’ to build a supertanker oil

- port at Prince Rupert, the co-

ordinator of the Fishery Opposition
to Tankers and Oil Ports, Arnie
Thomlinson, warned this week.

The port development an-
nouncement by federal minister
Otto Lang coincided with the
release of a report from the federal
department of fisheries and en-
vironment identifying the Ridley
Island port site as the ‘‘least risky”’
of 11 potential west coast oil port
locations, Thomlinson pointed out
to the Tribune Wednesday.

The federal environment report
on west coast oil sites, was
prepared for environment minister
Len Marchand, and throws into
question the minister’s decision
earlier this month to shut down the
West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry
headed by commissioner Andrew
Thompson, presumably because
the government saw no need for a
west coastport ‘‘now or in the
forseeable future’’.

VLC wires manpower minister Cullen

‘Cut UIC waiting period’

Delegates to the Vancouver and
District Labor Council called on
Manpower minister Bud Cullen
Tuesday to move immediately to
reduce the qualifying period for
unemployment insurance benefits
in the Lower Mainland and Van-

Couver Island from 12 weeks to 10. _

The motion, which was
Unaninously endorsed by the
Meeting, was in response to a letter
from Local 452 of the Carpenters
Union which had noted that the
Ooficial unemployment rate was
8.7 percent — more than the 8.5
Percent which is supposed to
‘trigger’ a reduction in the
qualifying period.

Under the new Unemployment

Surance regulations, passed last
year by the federal government,
the qualifying period is supposed to

be indexed to the unemployment
rate.

The regulations specify that if
the rate exceeds 8.5 percent, the
qualifying period is to be reduced
to 10 weeks from 12.

“The unemployment rate has
been at 8.7 percent for some time,”
council secretary Paddy Neale told
the meeting, ‘‘yet the qualifying
period has not been reduced.”

Elsewhere in’ the council
meeting, delegates heard Joy
Langden, the B.C. Federation of
Labor’s special officer on unem-
ployment, report that more than
3,000 questionnaires, filled in by
unemployed workers, have been
returned to the Federation’s of-
fices.

“Nearly all of them included
their address and their phone

number,”’ Langden said. ‘‘That’s

an indication of just how serious‘

unemployment is — people are
realizing that they may be
unemployed for some time and
that they need to do something
about it.”

The questionnaires, distributed
during a two-week publicity
campaign at shopping malls
thourghout the province, will be
part of the campaign for the
Citizen’s Lobby for Jobs, set to
gather at the Legislature at 2 p.m.
March 30.

Next week, the labor council will
appear before Vancouver city
council to call on the city to take
action to create jobs. Unionists and
unemployed have been urged to
attend the meeting, set for March
14, 7:30 p.m. at city hall, to back
the call.

The report named Ridley Island
and Port Simpson, neighbouring
communities adjacent to Prince
Rupert, as the best site, followed
by Kitimat and Port Angeles,
Washington as equally feasible and
next in the ‘‘least risky”’ rating.

“There is a great deal of con-
cern’’, Thomlinson said, that the
proposed coal port and the
possibility of an oil port are
related. A coal port is an en-
vironmental hazard in itself, he
said, and can be very dangerous
marine life. :

The danger of U.S. oil companies
picking Prince Rupert as an oil
port site is underlined by the
current border negotiations bet-
ween Canada and the U.S. over
Dixon Strait, just north of Prince
Rupert. The U.S.,is demanding
territorial as well as fishing rights
through a 12-mile corridor in Dixon
Strait which, co-incidently, would
provide a U.S. corridor directly to
the new port site at Port Simpson
and Ridley Island.

The oil companies and the U.S.

see U.S. pg. 3

‘Hold up Alcan line’
Native leader urges

“The government doesn’t care
about the North. To it the North is
just a bank where it can go to bail
itself out of economic crisis.”

Daniel Johnson, the young leader
of the Council of Yukon Indians,
brought a different message from
the North to Vancouver last week
— a message of struggle against
the economic machinations of
corporations and government ‘to
force the building of a $10 billion
pipeline across the Yukon, without
a settlement of CYI’s vital land
claim.

In British Columbia for a week of
activities, Johnson was warmly
received Tuesday evening at the
regular meeting of the Vancouver
and District Labor Council.

Elsewhere that evening, but
travelling with Johnson on the
campaign to win support for
northern Native land claims and to

stop the Alcan pipeline, were Mike’

Beaulieu of the Dene, Tommy
Suluk of the Inuit Tapirisat and
Hugh McCullum of the _inter-
church committee  ‘‘Project
North’.

While the federal government
debated and approved in principle
the pipeline agreement with the
U.S. two weeks ago, and opened the
way for the beginning of con-
struction on the Alcan pipeline,
negotiations with the CYI over the
land claim were at a standstill.

‘Our only hope is to stop or delay

Communists urge ‘Unity for real change’

_ Special to the Tribune
ewvith the parties of the left
®ading the opinion polls with a 54
Percent Majority over the
co ness-oriented centre-right
Calition presently governing
Ashes the parliamentary elec-
bri S Slated to begin March 12

'ng this country to the threshold

ds French prepare for first round voting

of major change.
oters will go to the polls to elect
91 members of the Chamber of
Puties (one seat for Corsica has
€n added since the previous
€ctions), the lower house in the !

PCF LEADER GEORGES
MARCHAIS . .- - mammoth elec-
tion campaign underway.

French National Assembly. When
the final round of voting on is
concluded March 19 president
Valery Giscard d’Estaing will
appoint a premier from the party
or coalition with a majority.

Whether the .left will constitute
that majority is the key to whether
the 1978 elections could mark a real
change which could begin to
transfer political power to the
working class and democratic
forces.

The biggest obstacle to
achieving that positive outcome is

the shift to the right by the Socialist
Party (PS) in backing away from
the common program it drafted in
1972 along with the Communist
Party (PCF) and on the basis of
which it grew from near obscurity
in 1972 to the point where it secured
27 percent of the popular vote.
Reactionary forces, and the
ruling centre-right coalition under
president Valery  Giscard
d’Estaing, whose term of office
expires in 1981, have been
desperately trying to exploit this
see PCF pg. 11

the pipeline until the government is
prepared to negotiate and settle
the land claim,” Johnson bluntly
stated to the VLC delegates.

The land claim settlement is the

means to win “recognition” a8 a

distinct, sovereign people’’,
Johnson said, and without that
recognition and the autonomy it
implies, the building of the pipeline
will have disastrous consequences
for Native culture .in the North.
But more important, Johnson
stressed, the pipeline is a threat to
the land claim itself. If the pipeline
is built, the CYI’s bargaining
position is weakened and “‘if the
see LAND pg. 3

INSIDE

e WOMEN’s DAY: -Recalling

prominent figures in the
struggle _for women’s
equality and examining the
struggles of women, today as
the world marks Interna-
tional Women’s Day, pages
5,6:

e THE RCMP: A glimpse at
the testimony of a police
agent hired by the RCMP to
work alongside the fascist
Western Guard Party, page

8.

e PRICES: Despite much
publicized increases in
Soviet gas and coffee prices,

- the consumer price index in
the USSR remains constant
because of controlled price
adjustment, page 11.

e LABOR: The 1977 report
of the provincial labor
department reveals some
significant changes in the
trade union movement, page
12. ;

Slee