hood

British Columbia

ye

CP has alternative
to US. integration,
declares Hewison

Early working-class Canadians fought
more than century ago so that confedera-
tion, rather than assimilation, would be the
direction that Canada took, Communist
Party labour secretary George Hewison
told more than 350 people at a Tribune
banquet April 16.

With food banks and the oppression of
women among its ills, Confederation hasn’t
worked all that well in practice. “But Can-
ada, for all of its warts, is still a hell of a lot
better than the kind of dream the transna-
tional corporations have for this country,”
Hewison told the packed hall at Vancouv-
er’s Maritime Labour Centre.

The former secretary-treasurer of the
United Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union, Hewison has
been nominated for
the position of leader
of the Communist
Party of Canada.
The election is to be
held at the CP con-
vention in Toronto
next month when
Bill Kashtan, cur-
rently general secre-
tary and leader, steps HEWISON
down.

Hewison said Communists have laid out
an “alternative path” for Canada’s future.

“Is Canada going to continue to develop
as an independent country north of the 49th
Parallel? Or are we going to walk down the
path of integration?” he asked.

“Are we going to see our resources and
our energy be used to feed the military-
industrial complex and Star Wars? Or are
we going to see a Canada that will make a
contribution to a world at peace?” Hewison
said.

He said the attacks on trade union rights
and living standards, free trade and other
aspects of the ‘“‘neo-conservative agenda”
are no historical accident.

“The only way capital can (continue to)
accumulate is by greater exploitation of the
working people, by redistribution of the
wealth through phoney tax reforms like
Michael Wilson’s, through (a huge) arms
buildup when in fact the world cries out for
peace, by gutting your social programs
— this is the nature of capitalism in crisis,”
he asserted.

He said the corporate agenda for
government includes the dismantling of
Protective agencies such as the Foreign
Investment Review Agency and the Nat-
tonal Energy Program “and making sure
(they) can sell out the rest of Canada as fast
as possible and invest all (their) bucks in the
United States.”

Turning to the peace question, Hewison
said that “new political thinking” on the
part of Communists holds the attainment of
world peace as the priority.

It does not mean the abandonment of the
class struggle, but recognizes that world
socialism is not imminent “and until such
time that the world does reach that point,
that the two great social systems — which
is the great contradiction of ourage — must
coexist.(The contradiction) must be solved
in ways other than that which leads to the
extinction of both,” Hewison said.

The questions of the nuclear arms race,
developing new forms of energy and ecolog-
ical damage are all questions that must be
solved by co-operation between the two
social systems, he said.

Hewison said the party has several alter-
natives to neo-conservatism, such as
increased trade with other countries, includ-
ing socialist nations, increased social servi-

ces enabling people to purchase goods
produced in an expanded home market,
and a Canadian energy program.

He called it a “crime” that shipyard
workers in Vancouver had to demonstrate
at North Vancouver Conservative MP
Chuck Cook’s office “to get a few lousy jobs
in a country that brags about carrying its
goods and services to the rest of the world”
and then does so in foreign vessels.

“Those could be jobs for young Canadi-
ans and could put our shipyards back to
work,” Hewison asserted to applause.

“Imagine what we could do in this coun-
try if we had an east-west power grid.
Imagine the jobs that would be created in
steel and western Canada, just in the pylons
and cables alone,” he said.

Hewison said the party’s call for a mas-
sive housing program would help working
class Canadians while providing thousands
of jobs.

He said Canadian democrats have a job
promoting such a program, and have a hard
task ahead exposing the pitfalls of privatiza-
tion practised by right-wing governments.

Privatization is happening “because this
(federal) government can’t stand the idea
that somehow the people of Canada can
run a business better than private industry.
They’re getting rid of anything that reminds
them that there may be something in public
ownership. So we have a lot of work to do
to popularize the concept.”

Hewison also noted the recent report on
CSIS activities in the trade union move-
ment, calling it “more than a whitewash”
since the agency is claiming that is not inves-
tigating trade unions but the activities of
Communists within trade unions.

To laughter Hewison said the agency and
the government “could save the taxpayers
of Canada a lot of money, because here we
are. We’ve got nothing to hide. We’ve been
in the trade union movement for the last 66
years.

“Tf there is anyone sabotaging Canada at
the moment, I think we’ve got to say its the
Mulroneys and Vander Zalms and the rest
of the neoconservatives,” he said to
applause.

“We're seeing an attack (on labour)
unprecedented in the history of this coun-
try, and we’re not going to stand by idly
when there are attacks on the social services
and social programs — which we’ve helped
to initiate 50 and 60 years ago and which the
Canadian peoples have fought for over
decades — without a fight,” Hewison
declared.

DES KENNEDY ..
parks.

Continued from page 1

Kennedy, Port Alberni NDP MLA
Bob Skelly and Environment Minister
Bruce Strachan addressed the crowd
while flanked by some 25 up-Island resi-
dents arrested during civil disobedience
actions in the park. The first of a series of
trials are slated to begin this Thursday,
April 21.

Skelly backed the demand of Friends
of Strathcona, an environmental coali-
tion formed around the issue, that the
boundaries of Strathcona Park be res-
tored.

Strachan cited a government booklet
to claim that “in the last year the
government created 800,000 hectares of
recreation area and over a million hec-
tares of class A park area.”

Kennedy disputed Strachan’s state-
ment later, pointing out that the

of hectares out of B.C. parks and replac-
ing these with “recreational areas.”

For example, he noted that Manning
Park near Greater Vancouver lost 5,000
hectares recently. These were replaced by
17,000 “recreational” hectares which by
definition allow for logging and mining.

Meanwhile the Socreds cut some
20,000 hectares from Strathcona Park
and designated 10,000 hectares as recrea-
tional, through a cabinet order-in-
council in March last year. The move
allowed Cream Silver to begin explora-
tion which led to residents protesting and
blocking work at the drilling site.

Provincially, Kennedy said, there are
1.2 million hectares of park land subject
to 10-year exploration and development
by mining and logging companies, which
have an option to renew the lease.

“What we wind up with is a com-
pletely changed concept of what a pro-
vincial park is,” he remarked.

Under pressure the government com-

. Strathcona Park mining has implications for all provincial

Park mining opposed

government is in fact taking thousands:

' watersheds when we don’t even know

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

i —

missioned a four-member public hearing
committee chaired by former Wilderness
Advisory Committee head Peter Larkin,
and placed a temporary moratorium on
industrial activities in the park. Kennedy
said the fact that Larkin’s original com-
mittee gave the green light to Strathcona
Park mining and the new committee’s
limited terms of reference make the pro-
cess questionable.

Friends of Strathcona Park still
demands a full public inquiry into park
use, with reference to Native land claims,
acid mine drainage and other health
questions, he said.

A key concern about mining in the
park is pollution of the water systems
serving Port Alberni, Courtenay-Comox,
Campbell River and other communities.

A recent BCTV poll cited by the group
showed 71.2 per cent of respondents
supported a'statement calling for no log-
ging or mining in B.C. parks, while only
29.7 per cent opposed the statement. For
New Democratic Party voters it ran 77.6
per cent for, 22.4 per cent against, while
confirmed Socred voters favoured the
statement 57.4 per cent to 39.2 per cent.

Kennedy told a public meeting later in
the evening that B.C. generates 250 mil-
lion tonnes of acid drainage rock — 80
per cent of the national total. “Mean-
while, there is not yet a solution in this
province to deal with acid mine tailings.

“Why are we thinking of adding seven
mines to drain into three domestic

how to handle the problem,” he asked.

Kennedy said the group will be using
the upcoming months engaging in public
opinion research and training others in
civil disobedience techniques.

“We want to try and get the Strath-
cona Park issue into the context of
what’s happening in all B.C. parks,” he
said.

a tas

B.C. delegates elected to CP meet

Twenty-two delegates from British Col-
umbia will be going down to the Commu-
nist Party’s central convention in Toronto,

- slated for May 20-23 at Ontario’s York

University.

The delegation was elected Sunday at a
special nominating convention in Van-
couver which also continued debate on the
party’s policy statement which will go to the
May 20 convention for final amendments
and adoption.

Held every three years — although a
constitutional amendment proposes that be
reduced to two — the central convention is
the highest policy-making body of the CP.

Convention delegates also elect the central
committee and the party leader.

The 1988 convention has attracted par-
ticular attention because delegates will be
electing a new leader to succeed Bill Kash-
tan who announced last December that he
would be stepping down. He has been gen-
eral secretary and leader of the party since
1965.

George Hewison, former  secretary-
treasurer of the United Fishermen and
Allied Workers’ Union and currently the
central labour secretary for the CP, has been
nominated for the post.

Over the past two months, party clubs
across the country have been involved in
intensive discussion of the policy statement,
entitled Survival and Sovereignty, which
will be finalized at the convention.

The statement highlights the issues of
peace and Canadian foreign policy and the
threat of continental integration with the
U.S. posed by the Canada-U.S. trade deal.
It proposes the concept of a “people’s coali-
tion,” which would bring together the coali-
tions that have sprung up around various
issues into a concerted movement to oppose
the neo-conservative policies of the Tory
government.

Pacific Tribune, April 20, 1988 « 3

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