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to steer anti-GST
fight, forum told

There is the potential to build a massive
movement of Canadians against the pro-
Posed federal Goods and Services Tax, a
forum on the GST was told Wednesday.

But to do that effectively, efforts have to
made to get the top leadership of the labour
movement moving, Vancouver Ald. Harry
Rankin told an audience at the Centre for
Socialist Education.

Rankin, who joined economist Emil
Bjarnason in assailing the tax, noted that
even right-wing business representatives are
hitting the GST because it will fuel inflation
and reduce sales.

The alderman with the labour-backed
Committee of Progressive Electors called
for public demonstrations, loud protests
Wherever hearings on the GST are held, and
a massive national campaign.

“We do have the opportunity here of a
rather vast group of people who are
Opposed to it,” Rankin said.

Bjarnason, founder of the Trade Union
Research Bureau, said the GST comes on
top of a host of taxes which hurt individual
taxpayers, including sales and property
taxes, and a “skewed” income tax system.

“The Mulroney government wants us to
believe that the huge increase is necessary
because the budget deficit. That is pure and
simple nonsense,” he charged.

Bjarnason used figures to show that since
1974, the last time the federal government
achieved a surplus of revenue over expendi-

Tax hearings
undemocratic’

The Commons committee on finance will
hold hearings into the federal government’s
Proposed Goods and Services Tax in Van-
Couver Oct. 2-3 — but it will take presenta-
tions only from those it wishes to hear.

That makes the character of the hearings
profoundly undemocratic, says the spokes-
Person for a committee established to
Oppose the GST.

In a recent letter to Conservative MP
Don Blenkarn, who chairs the standing
committee on finance, Vancouver resident
Bruce Yorke objected to the screening pro-
cess whereby the committee will pre-screen
applicants who wish to address the hear-
ings, slated for Vancouver Oct. 2-3.

“To screen out anyone that wants to
speak directly to the elected committee is
unacceptable,” wrote Yorke, in requesting
time to speak on behalf of the Vancouver
Consumers Committee Opposed to the 9
Per Cent Tax.

In newspaper advertisements last month
the finance committee stated it would
accept written briefs accompanied by syn-
Opses until Sept. 15, and would then makea
decision as to who could appear before the
hearings.

In a reply dated Sept. 6, the Tory MP
from Mississauga, Ont., said the reason for
the screening is to avoid hearing repetitive
Messages.

“Tt is important that we have public input
and it is important that we not spin our
wheels in listening to that public input by
listening to the same thing over and over
again and consequently it is necessary for us
to ration our time appropriately,” Blenkarn
wrote. :

He stated that the selection is up to the
committee’s executive.

The letter did not answer Yorke’s request
for a time and place to make his presenta-
tion.

EMIL BJARNASON
tures, personal income tax charges rose 338
per cent by 1987, while the corporate share
increased by less than one half: 148 per cent.

Added to that tax burden are sales taxes
which hit poor and working people the
hardest. Sales taxes paid by consumers
increased by 189 per cent between 1974 and
1987, Bjarnason noted.

Meanwhile, defence spending rose from
$2 billion in 1974 to $10 billion in 1987, he
pointed out.

“The $300-billion government debt that
exists at the present time has been (mainly
accumulated) since 1974, and mainly by
those defence expenditures plus the accum-
ulating interest on the growing debt.”

The causes of the deficit are high interest
rates and unnecessary expenditures, Bjar-
nason said, noting that the former create
unemployment.

The government claims that workers will
not demand wage catch-ups to deal with the
increased cost of living from the sales tax,
and floats the myth that manufacturers will
reduce their prices accordingly once the
13.5-per-cent Manufacturers Sales Tax is
eliminated. Bjarnason asked if anyone
believed that to be the case.

“We'll be lucky if it doesn’t push us back
into the old inflationary days,” he
remarked.

Both Rankin and economist Bruce
Yorke, who chaired the meeting, criticized a
Canadian Labour Congress document that
essentially supports a goods and services
tax, quibbling only with the nine-per-cent
objective.

“While I hate to say it, it seems like the
trade union movement at the leadership
level has caved in. And it’s our job to put
some god damn steel up their backbone and
make them cave out, and start fighting,”
Rankin said.

“Today we are faced with a whole
number of situations in which leadership
has been co-opted by government, and we
simply have to give them a shot in the arm
to brace them up a bit, and start to get them
to understand that the class struggle is not
obsolete.”

There’s a mass revolt brewing against the
GST — but care has to be taken that it is
led in the right direction, and does not
become a forum to promote cuts in social
spending, Rankin cautioned.

“It’s our job to advance that struggle as
hard as we can, to get that. section of the
labour movement off their ass and acting,”
he said.

“There are attacks on the working class
right across the board, on every aspects of
our lives. We’ve got to attack back,” Ran-
kin asserted.

PETITION BLITZ ... issued by Council of Senior Citizens Organizations (top)

and federal New Democrats (bottom).

Seniors vow fight on GST
despite gov't ‘hard sell’

Federal Finance Minister Michael
Wilson is clearly worried about the
opposition of seniors to the govern-
ment’s contentious Goods and Services
Tax (GST).

And he should be worried — because
senior citizens organizations are gearing
up to fight to have the tax scrapped, B.C.
Old Age Pensioners Organization presi-
dent Jo Arland said this week.

Arland said she took part Wednesday
ina cross-country telephone conference
call set up by the finance department
which included department officials as
well as leaders of national and provincial
senior citizens’ organizations. Those tak-
ing part included representatives from
B.C., Prince Edward Island, Alberta and
Ontario.

The conference call was set up after
various organizations had said they were
unable to travel to Ottawa for a
requested meeting with finance depart-
ment representatives.

During the call, “they were clearly try-
ing to sell us a bill of goods on the GST,”
said Arland. “They tried to assure us that
we would benefit and that in many cases,
the GST would save us money.

“But we all hooted at the suggestion
that business would pass on the savings
from reductions in its own costs, includ-
ing elimination of the Manufacturers
Sales Tax, to consumers,” she said.

The officials later offered to set up a

committee which would monitor busi-
nesses to see that they pass on tax sav-
ings, but the pledge brought little
enthusiasm from the seniors’ representa-
tives.

Arland suggested that the Wilson was
“very concerned about what seniors
think about the GST because of what
happened to the government over the
de-indexing of pensions in 1984. The
outcry from seniors and others forced
the government to retreat on its propos-
als.

“But that campaign. was nothing
compared to what we intend to do about
the GST,” she asserted.

She said she told the officials to “go
back to your minister and tell him we’re
going to fight it.”

Arland said the Council of Senior
Citizens Organizations, the umbrella
group of seniors’ organizations in B.C.,
has just launched a petition campaign
calling on the government to abandon
plans to implement the nine per cent tax,
scheduled to go into effect in 1991. That
campaign will be buttress petitions and
other actions planned by groups else-
where in the province and the country.

“As this thing gets rolling, there will
probably be a lot of petitions — but
that’s all right as long as the demand is
the same,” she said.

“And as far as I’m concerned, the
issue is: scrap the tax.”

Pacific Tribune, September 18, 1989 e 3