Editorial

Deep-six the subs

Examined from any angle, Canada spending an estimated $12-billion (dou-
ble that in reality) on nuclear-powered attack submarines is an asinine proposal.
Yet this is exactly what Defence Minister Perrin Beatty was urging us to do last
week on country-wide television.

Beatty and his Tories are in deep trouble on this issue. The public isn’t buying
the idea, and for good reason. Today only die-hard military Rambos, salivating
contractors (and Tory ministers) still cling to the nuclear sub idea and other
antiquated, dangerous proposals contained in their white paper on defence.

On its own merit, Canada getting into the nuclear submarine game is
stupid — unless we plan to attack the only navy in the world which refuses to
recognize our Arctic frontiers: the United States navy. But Beatty, of course, is
railing at the Soviets (who do recognize our Arctic borders). This gets him into
choppy seas.

Just where will these subs really operate? Are they to roam, along with the
NATO wolf packs, in the open seas, and along Soviet borders?

Of course this is the plan. Nuclear attack subs have nothing to do with
“Arctic sovereignty”, and everything to do with a NATO-US. war-fighting
strategy against the USSR.

There are other compelling reasons to scuttle the sub deal: a terrible waste of
badly needed funds, the danger of nuclear accidents in our ports and in the
Arctic, a continuous drift into the U.S. military orbit.

Above all — and the rock upon which the sub idea really founders — is the
fact that today’s world is heading in one direction while Tory military policy
heads in the other.

The U.S. and USSR have just ratified the historic INF disarmament treaty.
They are now hammering out an agreement to cut long-range missiles by half.

Confidence-building measures are being put in place all down the line.
Chemical, biological, space and conventional weapons are being placed on the
table. Nuclear weapons-free zones are being examined everywhere. Four
Soviet-American summits have produced a new spirit of co-operation, bringing
hope for averting a catastrophe.

Beatty’s white paper, its cold war thinking and proposals (including nuclear-.
powered attack subs) must be seen in this context. T ory “defence”’ policy is
retrogressive, anti-detente, bellicose and expensive.

As the many ads appearing across the country by peace forces warn:
“Nuclear Subs Mean Deep Trouble”.

Canadian: Nuclear Submarines

Take a deeper look at the facts

~

TRIBUNE

EDITOR.

Sean Griffin

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he friends of the veteran North Van-

couver school trustee should not check
their glasses or eyesight when, in the near
future, they see her name across the front
of a new school in the district’s Indian
River area. It’s just, the school board’s way
of recognizing one who, despite red-
baiting and reactionary politics in the
1950s and later, has managed to come
close to setting a record for longevity as a
trustee and has contributed decades of
service to her community.

The naming of the Dorothy Lynas Ele-
mentary School is both an honour for a
trustee who has served the district for close
to 30 years, and a monument to the tri-
umph and perseverance of progressive
people with progressive policies in an
often hostile world. And it is a vindication
of those policies.

Lynas, whose name has always been
associated with full funding for schools,
took her seat by acclamation on the North
Vancouver (city and district) school board
in 1956, after running for six years. The
victim of a right-wing gang-up, she lost the
seat in 1959.

Dorothy recalls: “‘For some time, I was

the only issue in the school board race.”
She subsequently won the seat again in
1959, and has held it in successive elec-
tions.
During that period she. has been
endorsed by several succeeding progres-
sive alliances, including the former North
Vancouver Voters Association and the
Citizens Association for Responsible Edu-
cation (CARE), a group formed to fight
Socred school cutbacks.

Dorothy says she was “floored” by the
recommendation to name the new school
after her when a motion to do so was
introduced by Rev. Roy Dungey, a fellow

People and Issues

SL

CARE-endorsed trustee.

But the vote — which acknowledged
Dorothy’s numerous other contributions
to the community — crossed all partisan
lines, with trustees unanimously for the
Dorothy Lynas Elementary School.

Kk **

anada Post Corp. may be winning a

few court battles against its unions,
for their efforts to stop the wholesale pri-
vatization of the Crown corporation in
work stoppages last summer. But if the
draconian crew who run the publicly-
owned service as if it were a branch of ITT

- are finding it isn’t all clear sailing for them,

either.

For one thing, there’s this organization
called Rural Dignity making the rounds of
Canadian cities and speaking out against
the closure of rural post offices. Then the
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
passed at their recent convention a resolu-
tion condemning the corporation’s Super-
mailboxes and demanding the reinstitution
of door-to-door delivery. The superboxes
replace that service — which itself is
threatened — in new housing subdivi-
sions,

Several Lower Mainland municipalities
have already told Canada Post that they

‘want no part of the new scheme, which

makes mail pickup difficult for seniors, the
handicapped and others, and ultimately
cuts back on letter carriers’ jobs. Now one
municipal leader, Port Coquitlam Mayor

Len Traboulay, has announced a new coa-
lition to restore full mail delivery.

Called Residents Against Mailboxes, its
a new chapter of a Markham, Ont.-based
group. Traboulay says the chapter “is
going full bore” and “‘we intend to fight.
We will not surrender.” He notes Port
Coquitlam council has voted unanimously
to oppose the superboxes.

The mayor also praises New Democrat
MLA Mark Rose who has introduced two
private member’s bills into the legislature.
One demands the scrapping of the mail-
box program, while the other opposes the
closure of rural offices.

An item in the community paper Coqui-
tlam Now notes that the governments of
Saskatchewan and Ontario have already
opposed the Canada Post plans.

* ok *

hose who heard Saskatchewan farmer

David Orchard warn, eloquently, of
the dangers of the Canada-United States
free trade pact in Vancouver addresses last
week may have caught his references to
farm machinery. While not necessarily a
subject to inspire poets, combines, manure
spreaders and other machines for agricul-
ture at one time put Canada on the world
manufacturing map.

Orchard noted that the last vestige of
Canada’s once-famous farm machinery
industry, Versatile Corp. in Manitoba,
sold out to the Ford Motor Co. recently. It
was the coup-de-grace to a free trade deal

that has existed between Canada and the
U.S. on farm machinery since 1944, he
noted. And that deal, Orchard said, has
not given farmers the cheaper machinery it
initially promised.

When Orchard mentioned this situa-
tion it brought to mind the once world-
renowned Massey-Ferguson Corp., which
was finally forced into receivership last
February. That memory came _ into
sharper focus later when we noted an item
in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Busi-
ness section.

It reported that the Massey name would
surface again — but not, it added hastily,
on the stationery of a Canadian-owned
corporation. -

Instead, Greenland NV, a Dutch firm
with two plants already in Canada will, if
the sale is approved by the Ontario
Supreme Court, take over the combines
branch. Meanwhile, McConnell Manufac-
turing Co., based in North Carolina, will
acquire the firm’s tractor business.

Neither firm is interested in continuing
Massey’s full line of manufacturing.
Greenland wants the rights to the new
axial flow combines, a technology deve-
loped in Canada, and will likely assemble
machinery in Canada from parts made
elsewhere. McConnell, meanwhile, wants
Massey’s parts and inventory, but few of
its ex-employees. ;

We can’t think of a more fitting symbol
for the entire free trade deal than Cana-
dian emblems affixed to manufactured
goods where parts are manufactured in
Ohio and profits are sent to Wall Street.
And where only a fraction of the workers
still draw paycheques.

PetroCanada of Texas, anyone? Or
maybe Canadian National Railways, a
division of Burlington-Northern?

4 Pacific Tribune, June 22, 1988