Letters/Commentary

Letters

Thoughts on and deficit

Thé nine per cent federal sales tax is Just

_ ne more ploy that the Conservatives

Would use, not to lower the deficit, but to

lower the Canadian living standard. This to

Satisfy some of the demands of American
1g business as an adjunct to free trade.

Meanwhile, the deficit isa home product.
ather than owing it abroad we owe it to
Ourselves, as it were. On balance, this coun-
tty owes no more today than it ever did. In
fact, the deficit has become a good invest-
ment paying high interest and guaranteed
Y government.

Who wants to get rid of the deficit? Cer-
tainly not the section of society that the
Conservatives in truth represent. For these
People the deficit has become a lovely ploy,
Providing not only a great place to hoard a
€W extra dollars but also providing an
€xcuse for levying ever more taxes on people
With moderate income. It also provides the
©XCuse for easing taxes on both profits and
Profiteers, The ultra rich pile up big bucks,
Ostensibly to pay off the deficit. But that
fannot be done if they don’t pay their taxes.

To mention a few, there are of course the
tax loopholes, tax exemptions, tax write-
offs, deferred taxes and outright gifts. How
SWeet it is to be ultra wealthy and have a

Onservative government at your service!

Free trade pressure dovetails with the
deficit to slash social services. Medicare,
Which Now costs eight per cent of the Gross
National Product cost only seven per cent
ten years ago when real wages were higher.
(As people get poorer their health gets
Poorer.) Eight per cent for medicare in

anada compares with 13 per cent in the

‘S. where the private sector administers
Medicare and where 35 million poor have
NO coverage at all. These people like Cana-
dian Natives die 20 years sooner than their
Wealthy counterparts. Yet we have Conser-
Vatives in Canada and in government that
think the American system is just fine.

Cetmaeng

THE GOODS AND SERVICES TAX...
a cut in Canadian living standards.

It strikes me that the pundits who are
celebrating the demise of Polish socialism
are a little premature in their rejoicing. As
usual, they are ignoring history.

The common assumption is that the
Solidarity-led government will proceed to
privatize industry, abolish subsidies and
establish a typical capitalist market price
system. For Walesa and his friends that will
not be easy.

Have the pundits forgotten that when, in
1970, Gomulka sought to reform the price

We hear of plots to cut grants for post-
secondary education, to cut grants which
offset regional disparities, to cut pensions
and to get rid of the railways except for one
that makes money — and that one would
be sold off to friends from the private sector.

The private sector! Until the neo-
conservatives coined that phrase all of us
were private citizens. Well, not any more.

Now we are mere ciphers, cows to be
milked. Just think of slashing unemploy-
ment insurance in order to raise $1.3 billion
dollars on the backs of the unemployed!

This summary of conservative fiscal pol-
icy may seem simplistic. It may sound a bit
like the Mad Tea Party, but the Mad Tea
Party was satirical fantasy. However, the
questionable neo-conservative fiscal policy
is for real!

The unreality is the idea that impover-
ishment of the people could enhance the
wealth of the nation.

Bob Skelly, the MP for this district, has
circulated a letter soliciting views on these
subjects.

These are some of my views.

Fred Pearson,
Comox

system by abolishing subsidies and setting
prices of food and manufactures that cor-
responded to the cost of production, the
uproar led by the people who now lead
Solidarity was so violent that Gomulka was
forced to resign and that reform was res-
cinded?

Have they forgotten that solidarity had
its origin in the protest and general strike
that followed Giereck’s attempts to reform
the price system in 1980, and that the uproar
on that occasion forced Giereck to resign?

Playing to a
U.S. audience?

I have enjoyed your paper very
much, particularly in the last few
years. Fred Weir is excellent, as is the
article on the Pyongyang youth festi-
val by Chris Fraser. I agree, regarding
Kim II Sung’s personality cult, but
time will tell whether this was the right
thing to do after the destructive 1950s
war.

Regarding Fred Weir’s article on
inter-ethnic disturbance in the Soviet
Union, what I found most disturbing
were the signs in English — “Moscow,
Hands off from Estonia.” This was
also shown on the television. Since
when was English a Native language
in the Baltic states?) To me, this
screams of provocation and a play for
North American, particularly US.,
support. Could our Estonian emigres
have anything to do with this?

Renie McCallum,
Courtenay

Have they forgotten that every attempt
by the Jaruzelski government during the
last nine years to institute reforms was frus-
trated by the oppositionist tactics of Solidar-
ity2 = :
It should be fascinating to observe how,
after 20 years of whipping up to a frenzy
against every attempt at reform, Walesa
and Mazowiecki now go about trying to
persuade the people to accept changes.

Emil Bjarnason,
Vancouver

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem
--+ Our objective is to continue until there is
NOt a single Indian in Canada that has not
been absorbed into the body politic, and
there is no Indian question, and no Indian
department, and that is the whole object of
this Bill.”

— Duncan Campbell Scott
Minister of Indian Affairs, 1920.

Scott’s bill before the Canadian govern-
ment was aimed a speeding up the process
of assimilation. It was ultimately unsuc-
cessful, but the problem he referred to
Temains today. As the minister in charge
of Indian affairs, Scott saw himself as a
Paternal figure to Canada’s aborigional
Population — to him all Native people
belonged to an inferior culture and thus
their customs and separate existence were
an anachronism that had no place in mod-
€tn Canadian society.

Scott failed in his self-appointed task to
¢liminate the “Indian problem” but if the
Current policies and attitudes of the Mul-
Toney government are any indication, his
8host has come back to haunt the House
of Commons.

__ What is happening to the Lubicon Cree
i northern Alberta is a case in point.

For months the federal government,
with the approval of Indian Affairs Minis-
eee

Ghost of Scott haunts Tory Indian Affairs

Paul Ogresko

ter Pierre Cadieux, has been waging a
covert, and now overt, war to undermine
the democratically elected government of
the Lubicon, and to split the first nation
using the oldest tactic in the book —
divide-and-rule.

Georges Erasmus, Grand Chief of the
Assembly of First Nations, has likened the
government-sponsored “Woodland Cree
band” to the U.S.-backed contras in NIca-
ragua. The comparison is apt.

Through its chief propagandist Ken
Colby, the federal government is doing its
utmost to discredit the Lubicon’s leader,
Bernard Ominayak, while at the same
time going through unprecedented lengths
to create a new band.

It has been six months since the
Department of Indian Affairs announced

COMMENTARY

the creation of the “Woodland Cree
band,” and the final papers giving the
band federal recognition were signed last
month. Meanwhile dozens of other Indian
bands have been tied up in the usually
laborious and time-consuming process of
getting federal recognition. :

Of course, to the feds, the ‘Woodland
Cree” are special.

They are the vice to either squeeze the
Lubicon into accepting the fed’s final land
claim offer or, barring that, to squeeze
them out of existence.

As has been pointed out by Lubicon
band advisor Fred Lennarson, the very
name ‘Woodland Cree band” is a mis-
nomer, perfect evidence of a false creation
that has no basis in reality.

There are two distinct parts of the Cree
nation in Western Canada —the Wood-
land Cree and the Plains Cree — each of
which are made up of scores of separate
bands or first nations. The term “Wood-
land Cree” would thus represent hundreds
of bands stretching across northern Sas-
katchewan, Manitoba and Alberta.

That a band would have an indigenous
name, or would call itself ‘Woodland
Cree” is as ridiculous as a band in south-
ern Saskatchewan calling itself the ‘Plains
Cree band.”

As a former journalist and head of his
own Calgary-based PR firm, Colby in his
job as federal spokesperson on the
Lubicon case, can be expected to sing the
praises of the “new band” and the federal
government’s willingness and desire to
make deals with Indians who bargain in
good faith.

We can expect the federal government
to continue to bargain in bad faith with the
Lubicon.

We can hope the mainstream media will
raise a skeptical eyebrow whenever the
“Woodland Cree band” is referred to.

But what we cannot hope for is a just
settlement for the Lubicon Cree — at
least until the ghost of Duncan Campbell
Scott is laid to rest.

Pacific Tribune, September 25, 1989 « 5