EDITORIAL

The Geneva talks between U.S. Secretary of State
George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko will be watched with extreme care by an
anxious world.

Much is at-stake. The momentous question of
whether the talks will lead toward detente or if the
world will plunge still deeper into a spiralling arms

i the agenda. :
Sean the eve of the talks a brief examination of the
two positions is in order. During his visit to Britain,
Soviet Politbureau member Mikhail Gorbachev out-
lined the USSR’s attitude toward the Geneva meeting:
“to start entirely new talks which would embrace
the question of non-militarization of space and the
question of reducing nuclear arms, both strategic and
jum-range.
eer Guana Gorbachev said, “are to be
considered and resolved in their interconnection. Of

key importance in all this is the prevention of a space-

arms race. Such a race would be dangerous in itself
and would boost the arms race in other areas.

“The Soviet Union is prepared to seek and work
out the most radical measures on all these issues,

_ measures that would help advance toward a complete

prohibition, and eventual elimination of nuclear wea-
pons. It is now up to the United States to make a
move. ..” :

It would be difficult to make a clearer statement of
aims.

Which way at Geneva?

Having agreed to the talks, the Reagan administra-
tion agonized for weeks on its approach to them. Then
days before the Jan. 7 opening, Reagan accepted the
recommendations from a committee to establish U.S.
strategy toward Geneva — he instructed Shultz to
spurn any Soviet proposal to negotiate limits on star
wars. The president has told Shultz to keep the talks
“vague.”

The difference in the two positions could hardly be
starker: The USSR coming out clearly for disarma-
ment, the U.S. standing solidly behind its escalating
arms build up and its plans to militarize space.

And what of Canada’s position? External Affairs
Minister Joe Clark, when questioned by reporters,
said Canada is “studying” the star wars proposal.
Unlike France’s Mitterand and the FRG’s Kohl, who
have opposed space militarization, Mulroney and
Clark have given tacit backing to Reagan’s position,
thereby placing Canada on the side of the warmakers.

This, however, is not the position of the majority of
Canadians who genuinely wish for an end to the arms
race. By. supporting Reagan, this government is
betraying its own people who have clearly on every
occasion opted for nuclear freeze, disarmament and
peace.

If Washington succeeds in torpedoing the Geneva
meeting, the Tory government in Ottawa will bear its
share of the responsibility.

Government by deception

When Finance Minister Michael Wilson told Can-
adian Press that the Tories deliberately hid their plans
to cut social spending and attack universality, his
leader said Wilson’s remarks were misconstrued.

Mulroney’s belated defence of Wilson is yet another
deception in a deep stack of Tory deceptions. John
Crosbie said as much months earlier when he told
reporters the Tories wouldn’t get elected if they

_ revealed what they had in store for the country.

Mulroney pledged to create “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and
November’s Stats-Canada figures show a record
1,355,000 jobless — 50,000 more than when he took
office.

This government has already proposed $2.65-
billion in cuts in programs ranging from student loans
to wildlife protection; they have drawn a bead on the
Unemployment Insurance program and now, despite
Mulroney’s denials, are zeroing in on universality.

All this (and more) is the Tory record in just two
short months. The fact is Canadians were misled and
lied to during the elections.

Braodbent has been asking probing questions in
Parliament — even getting himself thrown out for
saying politely what everyone knows to be true.

But this will not be enough to stop the sell-out of the
country and the dismantling of our social services.

On Nov. 15, during a lobby to Ottawa to protest the
so-called mini-budget, the Communist Party charged
that Tory times will be tough times.

“If Canadians want a policy of jobs and full
employment, we will have to fight for it,” the CPC
said. “If we want to maintain universality, we will have
to fight for it outside Parliament. . the overwhelming
Tory majority inside Parliament needs to be matched
by a people’s majority outside Parliament.

“The Communist Party proposes the establishment
of a People’s Coalition to defend jobs, embracing
pensioners, the unemployed and youth and the trade
union movement to compel the government to with-
draw its mini-budget and instead advance a massive
program of all-Canadian development. This is what

The Bank of Montreal managed to hold its own despite bad
experience with loans. If you haven’t paid up you’re part of $14.1-
million set aside for bad debts. Even so, after-tax profit was

$283,400,000 for the year ended Oct. 31, up from $282,550,000 a
year earlier.

TRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON

Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125
Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year; $8 six months
Foreign — $20 one year;

To his credit, and that of his party, NDP leader Ed

Canadians in their majority voted for.”

Second class mail registration number 1560

Canadian Business magazine. And the
title of the piece, “Still nursing after all
these years,” is perhaps even more
unlikely considering the source. But the
article in the January, 1985 issue on corpo-
rate tax breaks and deferrals is revealing
indeed, particularly since it appears at a
time when the Tories are talking about
nothing else but cuts in social programs.

Among the statistics offered in the story
are these: :

@ Northern Telecom, a multinational
with $3.3 billion in sales in 1983 and $325
million in profit, paid no income taxes;

@ Shell Canada, which had pretax earn-
ings of $302 million, also paid no taxes;

errals racked up by various corporations.
In 1980, the most recent year for which

porate ledger books amounted to $24.2
billion — more, according to Canadian
Business, than the federal deficit at the
time.

But most revealing of all are the com-
ments of executives in the corporate sec-
tor. They demonstrate just how seriously
they take the “review” of the corporate tax
system supposedly ordered by Finance
Minister Michael Wilson.

Jean-Jacques Carrier, a representative
of Consolidated Bathurst, for example,
told the Globe and Mail. during an inter-
view on tax deferrals: “If you ask me when

t comes from an unlikely source —

More revealing are the massive tax def-

figures are available, tax deferrals on cor-—

People and Issues

we expect to pay these (deferred taxes), I'll
tell you: never.”

One Bank of Montreal executive, who
declined identification, had this to say
about Wilson’s review: “It’s the annual
bank-bashing, corporation-hating ther-
apy session. In the end, it doesn’t amount
to a hill of beans.”

The Bank of Montreal, it should be

added, not only avoided income taxes in
1982, but because of a federal government
scheme to provide bank loans to faltering
business, it actually received a tax credit of
$22.4 million.

Obviously the government handout to
the corporations is one “‘sacred trust” you
can be sure the Tories will talk about very
little and do even less to change.

* * *

f he is politically crude at the

podium — he told an election meeting
for the Civic Non-Partisan Association
that COPE candidates were controlled by
Moscow — then professional-Soviet-
basher David Levy certainly makes up for
it by his prolific letter-writing.

We just looked over a copy ofa newslet-
ter sent out by Levy for his newest crea-
tion, the Sakharov Institute of which he is
founding member and executive director.

It’s already eight months old, having come
to us via the political grapevine, but it does
make interesting reading, and it shows
that David Levy does get around, echoing
the U.S. State Department line in some
very high places.

In Toronto, he says, he had an hour
with Sinclair Stevens, (at the Tory MP’s
invitation) seeking to convince him that
the “old head-on anti-Soviet approach”
was no longer useful. “It is not enough
simply to be anti-Soviet...” Levy says,
“one has to have academic validation.”
Never mind that the approach is wrong-
headed and reactionary in the first place;
just make sure you get someone to pro-
duce the material who has credentials in
Slavonic Studies.

As the newsletter notes, he was also
successful in winning as Institute fellow
and editorial board member respectively,
Lt.-Col. Brian MacDonald, the director of
the Toronto-based Institute for Strategic
Studies, and John Gellner, editor of Cana-
dian Defence Quarterly. Both are staunch
members of the military establishment
and advocates of a renewed arms race.

As for financial support, Levy offers
thanks to the Burnaby Chamber of Com-
merce for its “unlimited granting of free
copying and postage facilities.” He also

lists a number of donations, one of which
is from — you guessed it — Michael
Walker, executive director of the Fraser
Institute.

But his claims to sophistication wear a
little thin in one comment in the néwslet-
ter. He admits to some “bewilderment”
about the Washington-based Centre for
Defence Information, presumably because
its directors, including retired U.S. Vice-
Admiral Eugene Carroll, produce impec-

cably documented material refuting the |

military claims of the Reagan administra-
tion. But his bewilderment has been eased,
he says, by the director of the Committee
for the Free World (the title tells you every-
thing) who assures him that the centre is
“one of the several off-shoots of the Insti-
tute for Policy Studies, a nefarious Castro-
ite, World-Peace-Council outfit, known to
the American press as a ‘liberal think-
tank’, but in fact the best friend of Cuban
intelligence.”

Strip away the pretence about “aca-
demic validation” and the newsletter leads
you to the same tired old story. In fact, the
institute has nothing really to do with

Sakharov; it does have everything to do |

with creating an ultra right-wing, anti-
Soviet think-tank which has close ties to
the military in the crusade against the
peace movement. Sakarov is merely the
hook; the line is that peace and coexistence
is possible only if the Soviet. Union —
changes its society.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 9, 1985