T

eh ee all
ENR gE gt

‘FOLLOW THE BIRDS
TO VICTORIA’

Lots of birds
and jobless too

=. By VICTORIA OBSERVER

Unemployment?
Been down to your local Manpower Centre lately? Have you
Noticed how, since the name change from plain old Unemployment

_ Bureau, that our unemployment problem has magically disap-

peared?

Well, in staid but picturesque Victoria, a rose by any other name
is unemployment just the same. : :

And, if we are going to focus our conversation on Victoria,
especially these days, you are going to have to talk about unem-
ployment. It’s like breathing in and breathing out.

Start from 5,764 for example. This is our offical unemployment
figure to the end of February. For the real figure, simply speculate
upwards.

But, even taking the estimate of the friendly IBM’s at, ‘“Good
Morning, Manpower,” as gospel truth, 5,764 surplus citizenry is the
highest figure in Victoria for a good many years.

There are an estimated 60,000 workers (52,852: 1961 Census)
employed in Victoria’s various economic departments; service, trade,
industry, construction, and agriculture. At this estimate, our
unemployed rate about 9% of the total work force. A figure’
Considerably above the national average of 6.5%

Satistics however, are just the dry bones of real life unless related,
at least in small measure, to a character study of the community itself.

The reasons for this exceptionally high unemployment figure for
Victoria, are to be found partly in circumstances peculiar to Victoria,
but mainly in the distorted picture of Canadian economic development
generally. Briefly put, it comes out, ‘‘Pursuit of the Yankee dollar’;
inflated, deflated, valued or devalued—just so long as it’s Yankee.
Only, here in Victoria it is pursued with some flair, that is even
bizzare, in an ‘‘old country”’ kind of way.

Pulling out all stops, in the best anti-establishment tradition, one
can say that economic life in Victoria is disproportionally
weighted — on the side of governmental bureauocracy and rank
commercial parasitism. In fact, it is being frequently said that these
two phenomena, bureauocracy and commercial parasitism, are the
hallmarks of this seat of the provincial government and gently
voracious tourist trap for the spend happy, gullible Yank.

The Regional Index of B.C., published by the Provincial Industrial
Development, Trade and Commerce Department, shows that over 61%
of the labor force in Victoria, is employed in so-called “service
industries’. (Public administration, community business and personel
service, finance, insurance, real estate, transportation,
communications, and other utilities.) These service industries are
described as the ‘‘main source of income’”’ and the largest payrolls are
those of the federal and provincial governments. :

Closely associated with the above described ‘‘service industries”
is “‘trade’’ with the wholesale-retail business taking second place as
most important source of employment.

On the rump-end, stifled, even dying is the development of a sound
industrial base, predicated upon the fullest utilisation of the rich
resources of Vancouver Island. And we are not talking here about
another Robert’s Bank; using Victoria’ to facilitate the voluminous
shipment of our raw natural wealth to the U.S. and/or Japan. Rather,
in place .of this. self-annihilist policy of spewing forth cheap raw
material for the industrial furnaces of such foreign nations, while
importing the expensive finished product, we are speaking of. the
processing of such material here—and the development of appropriate
manufacture. .

Only the rounding out of Victoria’s economic base, in this kind of a
direction, can solve existing unemployment, prevent further

displacemient, and open up greater opportunities for meaningful
employment and, material and cultural security for our geometrically
expanding population, with a mushrooming ratio of youth who already
constitute the largest percentage of those unemployed.

An end needs to be put to the kind of a thing expressed in the
classified section of Victoria’s daily press, under Miscellaneous for
Sale.

This was the the way the 107 year old Victoria Machinery Depot
shipyard ended its participation in the once-active Victoria
shipbuilding scene.

‘Miscellaneous shipyard equipment and stores,’’. the ad says
modestly, and proceeds to talk of trucks and cranes, a tug boat and
barges, and other things.

During its century of shipbuilding, VMD workers amassed an
impressive number of achievements, climaxed in 1967 when Sedco 135-
F, and $11,000,000 floating oil drilling rig, challenged the talents of the
yards finest artisans.

Today, it is sacrificed in the name of government austerity. An-
other niche in Victoria’s eroding economic base.

Anybody want a shipyard? Anybody want 600 workers, finest in
their field?

U.S. unionist to speak
on peace at city rally

American labor leader Leonard Levy will speak on “Peace and
Politics in 1968” at a rally in the Vancouver Labor Temple, 307 W.
Broadway on Wednesday, April 17 at 8 p.m. The meeting is under the
sponsorship of the Co-ordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Levy is International vice-president of the Amalgamated Clothing .
Workers of America, AFL-CIO and vice-president of the Los Angeles
Federation of Labor. He is also chairman of the Labor Peace Assembly.
Chairman of the rally will be Vancouver Labor Council secretary Paddy

- Neale.

Police action challenged

‘geeeett
et -ShR2:

ay ee
PTOI FT.

Photo shows some of the many hundreds of people in Van
fountain Saturday, March 30, to challenge the “no loitering

people had been charged. Most of t
taking part in the protest “loiter-in.”

‘Trudeau doesn’t worry big business’

‘New direction needed —
— for Canada’ - Kashtan 1

“There is no indication that either the old or new
leadership of the Liberal Party was ready to come to
grips with new policies,” said William Kashtan, national
leader of the Communist Party of Canada, to a capacity

couver who turned out at Vancouver's Court House
"” edict of the city police under which many young |
he gathering was made up of youth with many lawyers and professional people

audience at Vancouver’s Stry Hall last Sunday.

He said Canada needs a new
direction towards independent
policies which would make
Canadians ‘‘masters in their own
house,’” but that newly-elected
Liberal Leader Pierre Trudeau has

given no suggestion that he stands ©

for-a more independent and left
course for Canada. “‘Big business

in Canada is not worried about the -

election of Trudeau.”

Kashtan said the Communist
Party stands for a truly
independent policy which would
insulate Canada from the harmful
policies of the U.S. Pointing to the
need to create a genuine
alternative to the Liberals and
Tories, he said the Communists are
anxious to arrive at common
agreement with labor, democratic,
and student forces to create an
alternative for Canadians which
would weaken monopoly
domination and exert democratic
control on Canadian policies.

Kashtan said such a common
program would not be a program
for socialism but one which would
be aimed at strengthening
democracy and bringing together
all movements for a genuine
democratic alternative.

He said the Communists see the
fight for such a democratic
alternative as part of the struggle
to weaken monopoly and advance
our country along the path to
socialism.

-** *

“The criminal who assassinated
Dr. Martin Luther King in
Memphis is racism which is built
into every aspect of U.S. society,”
said Kashtan.

The audience stood in silence at
the opening of the meeting as the
song which has come to be the
battle cry of the civil rights
movement, ‘‘We Shall Overcome,”
filled the hall.

Kashtan said President
Johnson’s policy in Vietnam had
elevated violence to a science and
that the funds now being used to
destroy Vietnam could have been
used to destroy the slums in the
US.

The Communist Party leader
‘said that the U.S. was at a turning
point. It’s clear, he said, that its
policy of world domination has
failed and that we are now
witnessing the collapse of its Asian
policy in Vietnam. In Europe, U.S.

en ee ad

LOITER LAW
UNDER TEST

A civil rights issue which is
bound to attract national attention
was the jailing Monday of
University of B.C. student leader
Stan Persky after he refused to
enter into a bond following his
conviction in the courthouse
“loitering” case. (See picture

above. )

Persky was one of 17 persons
arrested near the court house
fountain last March on blank
warrants and charged with
loitering under a section of the
Public Works Act under which
anyone can be arrested.

In passing sentence Magistrate
Lawrence Eckhardt suspended
sentence but ordered Persky to
enter into recognizance to keep the
peace for six months. Persky
refused and his imprisonment

followed.

In passing sentence the
magistrate criticised the
regulation and said it ‘trenches

upon the right of the citizen todo _

what he will so long as his course of

conduct is not inimical to himself
2 But
he had to convict because there was,
no saving Clause in the regulation.

Seg
APRIL 13, 1968—PACIE

or to the general public . .

eae =

ee eer —

= === SEnennannnnnnaseneneeneeneeneenesncmremeasccrssunasnseteshensenessnntsterensneentecnns

—G. Legebokoff photo

economic domination is also being
challenged by other capitalist : ||
states as the drop in confidence in 1]
the U.S. dollar shows. ; t

Kashtan said the present proposals |
put forward by Johnson are not a Wt
basis for settling the Vietnam war. if
“The U.S. must stop the bombing a
or there cannot be meaningful fe
negotiations. Now is the time to
step up the pressure for an end to
the bombing and the withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Vietnam.”

Replying to the question whether
Johnson’s recent proposal
represented a real shift in position
or a maneouvre, Kashtan said the
fact that Johnson was forced to
make his latest move shows the
deep crisis in American strategy.
“The fact he was forced to
maneouvre shows he can be forced
to go further towards ending the
U.S. aggression in Vietnam.”

Turning to the currency crisis,
Kashtan said the crisis shows the
basic sickness in the capitalist
system. He said that Vietnam war
was a big contributing factor to
bringing on the crisis, which
“reflects the changed world
relationships today.”

Kashtan said that Canada was
directly involved in the course the
U.S. has been following because of
our lack of an independent policy.
Charging that Finance Minister
Sharp’s recent trip to the U.S. was -
to barter Canada to the U.S, in
order to keep the Canadian dollar
at par, Kashtan said the pressures ]
on the Canadian dollar, on housing q
policy, interest rates and economic
policies come from our
‘involvement’? with present U.S.

policy. \

i Sin ania

SEND YOUR

DONATION

TO THE PT
TODAY