Friday, Nov. 13, 1981

30° -

Jes will be the target of several

| demonstration in Ottawa Nov.

Rallies set

Government economic poli-

rallies this month: in Ottawa
Nov. 21; in Nelson, Kamloops
and Nanaimo Nov. 25; and in
Vancouver’s PNE Gardens at 7
p.m., Nov. 29.

Trade unionists and others
Planning to attend the CLC

21, which also is voting day in
B.C. municipalities, are re-
minded that they should vote in
advance polls before they go.
Dates and polling places should
be obtained from the local mu-
nicipal hall.

Vol. 43, No. 41

battle for
civil rights
a page 11 —

KEVIN McCORRY ... civil
rights organizer on tour.

Construction ‘profit first’

be banned from job sites.

The charge levelled by building
trades unions that the Workers’

| Compensation Board is not en-

forcing its own health and safety
regulations and is not penalizing
employers who violate those stan-
dards was corroborated Friday by

| the former director of inspections
| for the WCB.

Rick Knowlan, a professional
engineer who held the WCB post

} Until his resignation ‘‘n frustra-
fon” in April, told the construc-

| tion industry safety inquiry hear-

} ing in Burnaby that there are

| “two standards for industrial

| health and safety — the official

_ | Standard as set by the regulations,
} and the unofficial one, the actual

Standard found on job sites.

“The actual level of enforce-

| Ment of regulations is too low,”
he emphasized.

Knowlan’s testimony came as

| the eight-member commission

wound up three days of hearings
in Burnaby, the last of a series of

hearings conducted” in “various ©

Centres around the province.
penis began in Victoria Oct.

The safety inquiry commis-

|_Sion, chaired by labor ministry of-

Floorlayers Local 141 representative Bil
| construction industry safety inquiry at
responsible for a number of explosions,

ficial Claude Heywood and made
up of labor and industry
representatives, was appointed
on the recommendation of the in-
quest jury which investigated the
deaths in January, of four
carpenters who fell 37 storeys
from the Bentall IV office tower
when the concrete fly form on
which they were working collaps-
ed.

Knowlan’s testimony was of
some significance in that it gave

‘substance to submissions by con-
“struction unions which have con-

tended that the major reason for
accidents such as the Bentall tra-
gedy has been the failure of the
WCB to enforce its own safety
regulations and to impose effec-
tive penalties on companies which
violate those regulations.

The former director of inspec-
tions told the commission of his
‘extreme frustration” at the
“Jack of responsiveness of the
(WCB) organization.”

Each board order issued
against an employer had to go
through a lengthy screening pro-
cedure, he said, and often super-
visors simply dropped further ac-
tion or penalty for fear it might

safety approach slammed

I Kessel holds upa can of adhesive before members of the
hearings in Burnaby Friday. The material has already been
he said, and is one of the many substances which should

not stand up on appeal. And only
rarely were follow-up inspections
carried out, except in the case of

orders involving industrial

hygiene.

Knowlan was critical of the
WCB for its failure to use even so
basic a tool as injury statistics to
target those companies which re-
peatedly violate safety standards.

He also rapped employers for
their failure to institute safety
management programs. ‘‘If they
carried out their financial
management in the same way,
they’d be out of business tomor-
row,” he said. :

He reiterated the call, already |

voiced by several unions and the
B.C. Federation of Labor, for a
royal commission of inquiry into
the operations of the WCB, and
for an immediate increase in the
number of WCBaccident preven-
tion officers and job site inspec-
tions.

(WCB inspectors have been
known as accident prevention
officers but their titles are now be-
ing changed to ‘‘industrial safety
officers’’ and ‘‘industrial hygiene

officers.’’)
See TWO page 12

Patriation of the constitution
without the agreement of Quebec
‘ig the way to disaster for Can-
ada,’’ William Kashtan, leader of
the Communist Party of Canada,
warned this week.

In a telegram sent to prime min-
ister Pierre Trudeau, opposition
leader Joe Clark, NDP leader Ed
Broadbent and Quebec premier
Rene Levesque Nov. 6, Kashtan
pointed out that the ‘‘crisis of Con-
federation arose precisely because
of failure to recognize the Cana-
dian reality of two nations in one
state.

“Yet,”’ he said, ‘‘the agreement
reached by Trudeau and the nine
English speaking premiers fails to
guarantee the right to self-deter-
mination and equality of the
French Canadian nation,”’ accent-
uating the crisis: -

“Premier Levesque may well be
right when he stated that ‘the con-
sequences of the agreement are in-
calculable.’ ”’

Kashtan was scathing in his ref-
erence to weaking of the Charter of
Rights as the outcome of the agree-
ment.

“The agreement takes the heart
out of the Charter of Rights by ig-
noring fundamental freedoms,’’ he

declared.

“‘The agreement denies aborigi-
nal rights. This is not the kind of
constitution that Canada and her
people need.

Parliament, he concluded,
“should reject the resolution be-
fore it. A new start is needed direct-
ed to adoption of a genuine made-
in-Canada constitution.”’

Scorning the proposal under the
new agreement that Native rights
will be determined at a future con-
ference to be held after patriation
of the constitution, Native leaders
have declared their intention to
continue their fight in London to
have aboriginal rights enshrined in
any new constitution, basing their
arguments on treaties preceding
Confederation.

Advocates: of women’s rights
too,.are angered. by Trudeau’s
statement, made in an exchange
with Clark in the Commons this
week, that provinces will be allow-

- ed to override two sections of the

Charter of Rights guaranteeing
equality to both men and women.
Both sections, he said, could be
limited at provincial discretion.
NDP and Conservative spokes-
men said their parties would op-

pose this.

Reaganites intensify
threats against Cuba

As it steps up its aggressive cam-
paign for world domination rang-
ing from threats of economic
retaliation against Canada for its
national oil program to military
maneuvers in Egypt, the Reagan
administration is striving to
establish pretexts for intervention
in the Caribbean and Central
America through the same pattern
of lies that led to U.S. involvement
in Vietnam.

The campaign opened with ad-
ministration claims that Cuba was
actively intervening in El Salvador
with arms and troops. That,
despite Cuban denials, has been the
theme of various statements
emanating from the White House
and the Pentagon in recent weeks,
culminating last week in U.S.
defence secretary Caspar
Weinberger’s assertion that Cuba
is a ‘‘menace’’ to all Latin
America.

| Fed changes facing opposition

—page 12—

He made the allegation at a
Pentagon-sponsored conference of
chiefs of staff of 20 Latin
American nations held in
Washington.

The Cuban government
challenged the Reagan administra-
tion to substantiate its charges in a
statement published in the Com-
munist Party’s newspaper Granma

- on Sept. 3, declaring:

“There has never been, nor is
there at the present time, a single
Cuban military or civilian adviser
with the revolutionary forces who
are fighting in El Salvador .. .

* “Wecall upon (U.S. secretary of
state) Haig and his government
that they give world public opinion
and U.S. public opinion itself the
most minimum proof of their
assertions (about Cubans in El
Salvador). The Cuban revolution
never lies. Let’s see if Haig and the
unscrupulous, lying U.S. govern-
ment can say the same.”’

Haig has been pressing the Pen-
tagon “‘to examine a series of op-
tions for possible military action in
El Salvador and against Cuba and
Nicaragua.”’

See CUBA page 11

p