| Union sees safety problem
In Impending Hydro layoffs

— page 3

Democrats’ Ferraro target
of attack by ultra-right

— page 9

Wednesday, September 26, 1984

eas
Newsstand Price 40° Vol. 47, No. 37
apnea
ERE SE

RiIBUNE

Peace petitions set
for rally in Ottawa

PETITION

End the Arms Race volunteers Helen Hawthorne (I) and Marjorie Kirk look
_ Over the petitions now being counted and sorted in the EAR office in
| Preparation for Sunday’s send-off rally when the first cars will leave Van-
| couver in the Peace Petition Caravan Campaign, set to wind up in Ottawa
| next month. The petitioning has been going on for several months, although :
| it has sometimes been overshadowed by the organizing for the massive
Walk for Peace and the federal election, and numerous groups all over the
province have been involved in gathering signatures. The petitions are to be
resented to Parliament Oct. 22 at which time oragnizers will raise the
ampaign’s four demands with MPs. (Story page 3.) —

epereerene ope >

Jobs, services

COPE priority

for civic vote

Backed by a commitment from organ-
ized labor for material and moral support,
Vancouver’s progressive civic alliance Sun-
day launched new policy initiatives that
stressed jobs and services as top priorities in
an election in which Socred-style cuts versus
employment and social spending will be the
key battleground. :

The annual general meeting of the
Committee of Progressive Electors also
revised its list of candidates for school and
park boards and city council, fulfilling
COPE’s end of an agreement hammered
out with Mayor Mike Harcourt and his four
running mates for city council.

COPE members ratified the unity slate,
backed by the Vancouver and _ District

Labor Council “much more vigorously

than ever before,” said Ald. Bruce Yorke.

Yorke said this year’s campaign is begin-
ning with ‘“‘a strong unity surge” from Har-
court and the city’s NDP electoral machine.

COPE’s candidates for the three offices
will be heading out on the hustings armed
with several major policies, the result of a
conference the preceding weekend in which
the civic organization met with representa-
tives of several school and community
groups.

The policy statements cover nine areas,
each containing several points, “but it isn’t
100 per cent of COPE’s policy — there’s
much more that will come out on a day-to-
day basis,” said Ald. Libby Davies in pres-
enting the policy document.

The areas covered, adopted as a whole
after debate and with a few minor amend-
ments, are jobs and services, economic pol-
icy, taxation, planning, B.C. Place and
Expo 86, housing, civic democracy, peace
and public transit.

Jobs and services, listed as COPE’s top
priority, commits COPE aldermen to a pol-
icy of no layoffs of city staff and maintain-
ing, with as few cuts as possible, city
services. The policy is COPE’s trump card,
as the elected aldermen have already, in two
previous annual budgets, allied with Har-
court and Ald. Bill Yee, an “independent”
who as the mayor’s running mate in 1982,
and have succeeded in maintaining services
and jobs over the objections. of council’s
right wing.

Public support for those actions was
shown to be high in COPE’s telephone can-
vass of voters last spring, and in the current
canvass which continues until election day
Nov 17.

Other policies in the jobs and services
area commit COPE candidates to providing
greater funding for community organiza-
tions (which currently draw on only one per
cent of the city’s budget); to prevent con-
tracting out of city jobs; to establish a fair
wages and benefits poicy governing the
selection of bids in public contracts (current
policy calls for the acceptance of the lowest
bid, and several recent contracts have gone
to new, non-union firms); and to make the

see COPE page 2

Close PM-Reagan tie
at odds with public

By SEAN GRIFFIN
The swiftness with which newly sworn-in
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has moved
to hold a formal meeting with U.S. Presi-

- dent Ronald Reagan has provided yet

another indication that the new Tory
government will be shifting Canadian for-
eign policy into closer step with the Reagan
adminsitration.

Mulroney was to visit Reagan in
Washington Tuesday — his second meet-
ing with the U.S. president since his election
as Tory leader — for a morning session
anda working lunch. Significantly, although
the meetings were expected to be brief, the
agendas were wide-ranging, indicating that
Reagan wants commitments from the Tory
leader that the new government will fall into

Analysis

line with the U.S. position on its approach
to the world — commitments that he is
almost certain to get from Mulroney.

In the election campaign, Mulroney
referred to the U.S. as Canada’s “ally,
neighbor and best friend,” emphasizing that
the Tories would move to re-establish the
close economic and political relationship
that existed in the 1950s and would seek also
to eliminate any mistrust that had emerged
during the Trudeau years as a result of such
independent Canadian policies as the
National Energy Program.

see U.S. page 3