Dividing lines
of language

in the USSR
— page 9 —

= ——

-IWA

The International Woodworkers-Caniada
wants worker and community control over
the forest industry, and environmentally
sensitive logging and silviculture practices,
delegates to the IWA-Canada’s third
annual convention decided Oct. 4.

More than 200 representatives of locals
from across the country concurred in prin-
ciple with a proposed amended forest policy
that called for greater corporate and
government funding for reforestation, and
an end to the wasteful harvesting methods
that have seen thousands of woodworkers’
jobs lost.

The document, which marked a new
direction for the country’s largest wood-
worker union towards environmentally
sensitive forest use, was adopted by a
unanimous vote and referred to the [WA’s

plant to Washington. Free trade is the culprit. Story page 3.

hits Sauder plant closure

national executive board for implementa-
tion.
Delegates passed a series of motions

backing up sections of the report, and .

approved a referendum that, if passed in an
upcoming ballot, will levy a charge of $1 per
member per month over 12 months to
establish an environment fund to finance a
public information campaign on the
union’s positions on forestry, jobs and the
environment.

In his opening address, union president
Jack Munro hit the major forest firms for
encouraging the notion that Canada’s
future is in pulp production rather than
lumber, and he charged that the federal
government’s recent Woodbridge report
“encourages that trend.

“Governments seem prepared to aban-

Chorus of opposit
to Tory GST grow

AS
¥

don the solid wood side of the forest indus-
try, rather than pursuing the need for
greatly expanded value-added timber pro-
ducts,” he charged.

Munro also slammed the federal govern-
ment’s Bill C-29, which in setting up a
national forest ministry, “omits ensuring
that the industry provide good livelihoods
for Canadians.”

Debate on the document and the envir-
onment fund reflected delegates’ concerns
that IWA-Canada members be known as
environmentalists who are not responsible
for the wasteful logging practices of their
corporate employers.

“T too consider myself an environmental-
ist. Hell, my job depends on it,” said Fred

see IWA page 12

October 9, 1989
50S

Vol. 52, No.36
eai>

The government’s proposed Goods and
Services Tax will lead to the loss of thou-
sands of jobs across the country — inclu-
ding 100,000 jobs now held by women — it
will drive up the cost of housing and basic
services and it will widen the gulf between
rich and poor in Canada, the parliamentary
committee studying the GST was told this
week.

And if the federal government drives
through its tax proposal despite the over-
whelming public opposition, it could spark
a “tax revolt,” unionists warned Monday.

The House of Commons standing com-
mittee on finance, chaired by Tory MP Don
Blenkarn, held two days of hearings in Van-
couver Monday and Tuesday, part of a series
of public hearings being held across the
country into the government’s contentious
GST proposal. In each city, the committee
is hearing a hand-picked number of groups,
selected on the basis of briefs submitted
prior to the hearings.

Despite the diversity of the submissions
— ranging from the Council of Forest
Industries to the anti-poverty coalition, End
Legislated Poverty — the message was
overwhelming: the GST is an unfair tax and
should be abandoned.

‘HARRY RANKIN, page 2

But interveners parted company sharply
on alternatives, with various business repre-
sentatives advocating cuts in government
programs instead of the GST — an
approach that was condemned by unio-
nists, anti-poverty and women’s groups.

Rather than impose the new nine per cent
sales tax, those groups said, the government
should initiate a complete overhaul of the
tax system to make it genuinely progressive
and fairly-based.

In a hard-hitting brief to the committee,
Marjorie Cohen, representing the National
Action Committee on the Status of
Women, charged that the current tax sys-
tem is “has been made incfeasingly unfair
since 1984” as a result of increased taxes on
consumption, cuts in the proportion of
revenue paid by business, changes in
income tax that favour the wealthy and
introduction of the federal surtax.

But imposition of the GST would make
an unfair tax system even more unfair,
Cohen, an professor of economics currently
teaching at Simon Fraser University, told
the committee.

The GST, she said, would have a devas-
tating effect on the economy and jobs,
including: ;

@ The loss of at least 100,000 women’s
jobs since the increased cost imposed by the
GST would mean a $5.5 billion cut in
income for Canadians which, in turn,
would result in a drop in spending on sales
and services. Since two-thirds of national

see GST page 2