a ee ee

the case of education,

hikes: or severe cutbacks

a

Carrying dead duck on placard, demonstrators on the U.S. Pacific Coast
Protest oil pollution caused by a damaged _ oil tanker. Major disasters
threaten the B.C. coast as supertanker traffic is stepped up this summer,
but B.C. government has not uttered a word of protest yet.

Socred budget helps
rich, hits consumers

cont'd from pg. 1

increases imposed and are being
continued are: Increased sale tax
(40 per cent, amounting to
$200,000,000); Medicare premiums
(up 50 per cent); Car insurance
(trebled); Hospital co-insurance
(up. 300 per cent); Ferry fares
(doubled); Hydro rates (up 12 per
cent); Natural gas (up 17 per
cent).

Little if anything has been ad-
vanced to change last year’s sharp
tax boost and rise in consumer
charges. Universal Pharmacare
has been promised, it’s true, but
Since only $1.4 million has been
committed to ‘the existing $26
million previously guaranteed to
Senior citizens (over 65s who
number some 203,000 out of B.C.’s
population of 2,500,000), it is ob-
vious the Socreds must have in
mind extensive ‘‘deductible’’
Clauses and other limitations.

While 65 per cent of the $3.8
billion budget will be allocated to
health services ($101 million), $93
million for education and $63
million for human resources), and
municipal grants are to be upped
by 11 per cent, most will scarcely
keep up with government-
Controlled wage adjustments. In
local
ratepayers will face the alter-
Native of either substantial tax
in
educational standards.

The main features of the
developing crisis and hardships
Such a budget is imposing on the

Working people of this province

requires a fightback on the part of
the working class and democratic
forces. The democratic alternative
toward an anti-monopoly. — a left-
centre alliance — involving as its
Centre, the trade union movement,
the NDP and the Communist
Party, provides the only alter-
native to the present problems.

Toward such an ‘alliance the

‘Communist Party. advances a

Program of campaign to:

® Halt the increase in hydro and
telephone rates:
® Remove the cutbacks in

Services to people and reduce last

year’s increase in the sale tax as
the first step to its elimination;

e Fight the limitations planned
for Pharmacare;

© End wage controls on
provincial and municipal em-
ployees, and work with other
provincial. governments to end
wage control and restore free
collective bargaining rights;

e Initiate a crash program of
affordable, low-cost, low-rental
housing;

eo A guaranteed income to all,
eliminating B.C. income tax on all
earning less than $10,000 annually ;

e Establish a 30-hour work
week;

@ Measures to encourage
development of secondary in-
dustries and processing of B.C.,
natural resources;

e Emergency legislation to
‘prevent foreclosures and establish
debt moratoriums;

@ Steps to expand the home
market.

B.C. farmers face ruin

When farm leader Ralph
Barichello told B.C. fruit growers
at their annual meeting January 19
in Vernon to stand ready to fight
for their livelihoods, his words
echoed the despair of small far-
mers in B.C. who are now on the
brink of disaster and at the same
time sounded a warning to the
province that the agricultural
industry itself is in grave danger.

The disaster looming before the
farmers is the imminent repeal of
the Farm Income Assurance
Program, enacted by the NDP. If
the program is scrapped — and
Socred agricultural minister Jim
Hewitt, speaking at the fruit
grower’s meeting, hinted that it
would be — it will put most of the
province’s 10,000 farmers on
welfare.

It was in response to this threat
that Barichello, president of the

“B.C. Federation of Agriculture,

made his appeal to the fruit
growers, one of the major com-
ponents of the Federation, to be
prepared to ‘‘demonstrate their
support of their leadership”’ in the
event that the Socreds carry
through on their threat.

The Income Assurance Program
is a form of insurance program.
Farmers pay an annual premium
into afundandcan collect from the
fund if they lose money on their
crop.

The program allows for farmers
to collect only up to 75 percent of
production costs if it is not received
in the marketplace, thereby
minimizing losses and stabilizing
income to some extent. In spite of
the low level of protection B.C.

farmers last year collected $27.

million from the fund, and the
figure,is expected to substantially
rise in 1977. —

In line with their general policy
of cutbacks and fiscal restraint,
the Socreds want out of the
program. But to do so would be
tantamount to placing small
farmers at the mercy of the open
market a market which
presently does not even afford
many growers a living wage even
if they have relatively large sums
of money invested in their farms.

The fact is that the nearly 3,000
fruit growers in B.C. are beset with
a host of economic problems that
could easily put them under if they

lack strong government protec-:

tion. If the Socreds leave them to
flounder in the marketplace, they

Talks under way in U.S.

can expect little mercy from a
monopoly-dominated food in-
dustry, for if left to a matter of
profits alone, the entire industry
would be put out of operation.

There are essentially three sets
of problems that the farmers face.
The first and most important is a
well-known problem to the great
majority of people in western
Canada — Safeway. The Safeway
supermarket chain controls two-
thirds of the retail food market in
western Canada in addition to its
vast holdings in the western United
States. Safeway’s production costs
are substantially lower in the U.S.
to the point where it would be
profitable for the vertically in-
tegrated food monopoly to bypass
the B.C. fruit growers altogether
and stock their shelves with U.S.
produce exclusively. This, at least,
is the club that Safeway holds over
the B.C. Tree Fruits Marketing
Board that sets the price for B.C.
produce. Safeway’s monopoly
power play has resulted in a price
of 20 cents per pound for B.C.
cherries last year whereas they
sold for 30 cents per pound in 1965.
Of course, Safeway, not the con-
sumer, is the beneficiary of the
lower price.

If Westons and Woodwards are
taken into account the three
companies control over 75 percent
of the fruit market. The marketing
board, whose aim is to get a fair
price for the grower, is really
powerless in comparison to the
economic might of the three main
buyers.

The second major problem that
the fruit growers have to contend
with is the massive dumping of
American produce into Canada at
prices substantially below that
charged for B.C. produce. In 1972,
Canada was a net exporter of fruit,
but the invasion of U.S. fruit onto’
the Canadian market has been so
strong that last year imports ex-
ceeded exports by 66 percent.
Altogether 2.5 million pounds of
U.S. fruit came into Canada last
year.

Only the federal government has
the power to move against dum-
ping. But successive Liberal
governments have refused to
protect Canadian agriculture anda
larger and larger portion of the
Canadian market has been cap-
tured by the U.S. The trade deficit
has been made even worse by the
loss of the European fruit market

if income program goes

when the Common Market was
formed.

Hit hardest by dumping is the
canning industry. Whereas tons
and tons of B.C. peaches are ruined
every year and find their way to
garbage piles, Australian canned
peaches have cornered 80 percent
of the Canadian market. And in
flagrant violation of United
Nations Resolutions and _ basic
humanism, the federal govern-
ment has also allowed the large
scale import of South African fruit.
South African apricots land in
Vancouver at a price $4 per case
cheaper than is the production cost
in the Okanagan valley. The result
is that the 15 canneries in B.C. in
1965 have dwindled to five, and of
them, three are reported to be on
the verge of bankruptcy.

The third problem before the
fruit growers is the inflated price
of land. Land costs in B.C.
agricultural areas are so high that
it is impossible to buy into the
industry. Literally thousands of
farms are for sale without a buyer
in sight. Because land costs can be
as much as 600 percent higher for
B.C. land than for similar use land
in the U.S., production costs are
pushed higher and the competitive
edge is sharpened in the
American’s favor.

The problem of land costs is just
another frustration for the farmer,
controlled as it is by the main
financial and real estate interests.
It was monopoly domination of real
estate in B.C. and the steady
erosion of arable land by
developers that prompted the
former NDP government to pass
the Land Act that placed
restrictions on the sale and use of
agricultural lands. However,

without effective action to increase

farm income and to stop the
dumping of U.S. fruit, the Land Act
was just another blow at the far-
mer, removing his last hope for
economic security, the inflated
value of his land.

The Social Credit government
will most likely move slowly and
cautiously in its efforts to remove
the Farm Income Assurance
Program. It is, after all, a moment
of truth for the Socreds who for so
long have masqueraded as the
champions of the independent
entrepreneur and of free en-
‘terprise. If the Farm Income
Assurance Program goes so goes
the Socred facade.

‘Uphold Canada’s salmon rights’

Earlier demands that Canadian
negotiators uphold Canada’s
sovereignty in reciprocal salmon
talks with the United States were
echoed last week by the B.C.
Federation of Labdr which called
onthe federal government to ‘‘take
a- firm and uncompromising
position in protecting Canada’s
fishing resources.”

The Federation statement,
issued during the executive
council’s two-day meeting was in
response to concern voiced by the
United Fishermen and Allied
Workers Union which warned that
unless a firm stand were taken in
negotiations, -a sellout could be
imminent.

Canada-U.S. talks aimed at
negotiating a reciprocal salmon
treaty are currently under way in
Los Angeles. A delegation from the
UFAWU is among the advisors to
the Canadian negotiating team.

.

The proclamation of 200-mile
zones by both countries has posed
new problems for talks and has
made even more urgent the
necessity of Canada’s taking a firm
stand despite unrelenting pressure
from the U.S. for a compromise
that would be in its favor.

UFAWU president. Homer
Stevens told delegates to the

‘Vancouver and District Labor

Council Tuesday that union ad-
visors at the Los Angeles talks had
been advised to “‘advocate a firm
position in Canada’s interests.”

He warned that any compromise
on the salmon resource would
almost inevitably lead to future
compromises in other fisheries.

“We can see the possibility —
unless this country takes a strong
position — of selling out on salmon
this year and selling out our halibut
next year,” he said. —

The UFAWU hd long demanded

that any reciprocal salmon treaty ,
be based on principle agreed to in |

1971, ademand that was reiterated

by the B.C. Federation of Labor in |

its statement.

The 1971 principles called for an
equitable balance to be struck
between interceptions of salmon

bound for the rivers of the other

country. Where imbalances oc-
curred, the balance was to be
reached by reducing interceptions.

Canada has, however,
promised those principles in talks
held since 1971.

Federation secretary Len Guy
characterized the current talks in
Los Angeles as ‘critical to the
future of the Canadian fishing
industry.

“U.S. negotiators can be ex-
pected to take whatever they.can,”’
he said, ‘‘the Canadian delegation

must stand firm and not com-

promise for the sake of achieving
an early end to the negotiations.”

com-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 28, Egil 3