} Ottawa urged to defend Canadian borders With the rallying call ‘54-40 or fight”, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union convention this week resolved to launch a Cross country campaign to defend Canadian sovereignty on B.C.’s North coast against American intrusion. “We have got to carry the Message from thie convention: 54- 40 is Canada; it’s 54-40 or fight; no More backing down; no more sellout,’> UFAWU secretary- treasurer George Hewison declared to the convention in a spirited report on the boundary negotiations between Canada and the United States. Hewison told the convention that the United States is deman- ding that the northern border at Dixon Entrance near Prince Rupert be shifted shouth by six or 12 miles. Canadian negotiators have backed down before the aggressive American position, he said, and are now prepared to accept binding third-party ar- bitration to establish a new border. “They are prepared to subject our sovereignty to arbitration. What is there to arbitrate? Why should we have to go to arbitration to defend what is ours?’ he said Hewison and other UFAWU —Fred Wilson photo Some 50 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers picketed the Unemployment Insurance and Canada Manpower offices at Hastings and Commercial in Vancouver last Friday as Part of the B.C. Federation of Labor’s campaign against unemployment. Thousands of leaflets outlining the Campaign for a Citizens’ Lobby for. Jobs” in Victoria March 30, and questionnaires detailing the plight Of the unemployed have been distributed throughout the province. Hike to finance Alcan pipeline No gas rate increase —CP The Communist Party has urged the National Energy Board to Teject the application of Westcoast Tansmission Company for a natural gas price increase that is Currently pending before the Board, In a letter to the Board January 26, Maurice Rush, B.C. provincial leader of the CP, called the Proposed rate increases ‘‘un- Justified and unnecessary” and called for its rejection. According to preliminary €stimates the increased rates Would affect about 250,000 users and would entail 25 to 30 percent Increases in residential rates that will net Westcoast Transmission an extra $82 million per year. _ Rush pointed out that the rate crease is to raise money to be Placed against Payments”, even though the ‘Company paid only $45,000 in taxes last year. “If the NEB accepts that request, it will set a precedent for all other Canadian companies,” Ush warned, “‘Where will it stop.” The CP leader suggested that the Teal intent of the rate increase is to amass Capital for the building of € Alcan pipeline. “It wants lower mainland gas users to finance the building of a pipeline which will “future tax | bring no benefit to Lower Mainland users and is being built to supply American needs. Seldom has there been a more blatent and bare- faced rip off.” The NEB will hold a_ public hearing on the rate increase February 14, 9:30a.m. at 1177 West Hastings St. The B.C. government and various business groups have announced that they will oppose the increase, but Rush said in an interview Wednesday ‘‘they are mainly interested with getting as much out ofsit as possible for themselves. Their main concern is not the public. “It’s regretable that when the NDP took over the distribution of natural gas in the Lower Mainland it did ‘not also place Westcoast Transmission under public ownership. The only way that this company can be brought under control is by the provincial government nationalizing it, which it should do in the public interest.” If the increase goes ahead it will worsen the impact of last week’s See HYDRO pg. 8 Cabinet ‘doublecrosses’ West Coast Oil Inquiry Amid charges of ‘‘doublecross”, the federal cabinet Wednesday revoked funding for intervenors in the West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry and ‘restricted the authority of commissioner Andrew Thompson to conduct the Inquiry into the proposed supertanker oil port at Kitimat, B.C. “Contemptuous, and insulting — to the commissioner and in turn to us as participants in the Inquiry,” Jack Nichol, president of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union responded Wednesday evening to the decision. Reneging on previous committments to commissioner Thompson, the cabinet decision will render the UFAWU and other intervenors without resources to combat the high priced arguments of the oil companies. Fishermen declare: ‘54-40 or fight’ advisors to the boundary talks have been frustrated by a ‘“‘don’t rock the boat’’ Canadian negotiating position that has failed to place Canada’s best claim. The 54-40 northern parallel has marked the norther boundary between Canada and the U.S. since 1903 when the Alaska Boundary Tribunal reset the same 54-40 boundary that had been negotiated between Britain and Russia in 1825. The ironic twist of history is that “54-40 or fight’? was in the 19th century the slogan of the United States “manifest destiny” policy aimed at annexing Canadian territory, until U.S. expansionism was halted at the 49th parallel, the southern Canada-U.S. border. Unknown to the public, the B.C. provincial government has taken issue with the federal govern- See BORDER pg. 8 GDR ‘manifesto’ fraud discredited While many in the western media continued to maintain the fiction, the contrived ‘‘manifesto”’, published last month by the West German magazine Der Spiegel and supposedly issued by ‘‘middle and higher functionaries’’ of the Socialist Unity Party of the Ger- man Democratic Republic, has now been discredited even by a leading official of the West Ger- man government. Herbert Wehner, one of the three majors leaders of the Social Democratic Party and the head of the party’s group in the Bonn. Bundestag (Parliament) called the Manifesto an “invention” which “mixed together all kinds of provocations.” Wehner, who outlined his views in interviews televised in West Germany, said that the document was a deliberate attempt to un- dermine further normalization of relations between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany and was designed ‘‘to lead to an ex- plosion between the FRG and the GDR.” | The ‘‘manifesto” covered 30 pages in the widely circulated Der ‘Spiegel and opened with a vicious attack on the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party and the GDR itself. It referred to the “barbaric” Soviet system which, it said, had been “Gmposed”’ on the German people, and. even added its own chauvinism, noting that ‘‘the worst features have been reinforced by German thoroughness.” Der Spiegel claimed that the document had been issued by a group calling itself the League of Democratic _ Communists of Germany and said that it had been turned over to the magazine by “middle and higher functionaries of the Socialist Unity Party” in the GDR. The western media immediately picked up the story, giving it major coverage. It was also publicized in this province. The government in the GDR immediately denounced the document as a fraud contrived by West German intelligence, aimed at “‘poisoning”’ relations between the two states. It also published the nameseof several editors and writers working for intelligence services in the FRG, and removed the credentials of the East Berlin bureau of Der Spiegel. The tone of the document voiced by Herbert Wehner suggested con- firmation of the GDR’s charge that it was “fabricated by intelligence sources” since Wehner is known to be close to federal intelligence in the FRG and because of his high position, has access to top level state information. : The ‘‘manifesto”’ has also heen dismissed in other quarters in- cluding former: intelligence of- ficers and the Bonn correspondent for the Washington Post. Gunther Nollau, a former chief of West German intelligence, told a television interviewer, ‘‘Socialist Unity Party officials do not speak the language of the manifesto.”” He admitted that a similar forgery was carried out in 1959. Michael Getler, the Washington Post’s. correspondent in Bonn, capital of the FRG, noted that the denunciation of the Soviet Union in the manifesto was “‘so strong that it seems to weaken the credibility of the report.” The Post story did not prevent many news commentators from clinging to the fiction, however, with Time magazine, in an article published January 30, stating: “There is agreement that the manifesto was composed by a small group of dissidents and low- level party members in the East.” Despite the provocation, the GDR has stated clearly that it would “‘continue to work for a further normalization of relations between the FRG and GDR.” INSIDE ‘e CHILE: The Tribune interviews Chilean anti-fascist singer and composer Angel Parra, page 6. e LABOR: Commentator Jack Phillips looks at the terms of Justice Hutcheon’s report on the B.C. Tel dispute, page 8.