Arts/Review -

Tories’ Sellout examined

SELLING OUT. Four Years of the Mulro-
ney Government. By Robert Chodos, Rae
Murphy and Eric Hamovitch. James Lori-
mer & Company, Toronto. $12.95. Availa-
ble at People’s Co-op Bookstore.

Selling Out is a fast-paced, cleverly writ-
ten account of the present policies of the
Mulroney government. Much of this will
not be news to Tribune readers, but the
authors’ use of humour and not a little
cynicism enlivens this book which tackles
the structure of the Canadian government
and its perspective on free trade, national
fesources, the Meech Lake Accord, tax
structures, immigration policy and Cana-
dian culture.

The common thread connecting every
facet of government policy and actions, the
authors write, is “big business. (It underlies)
the government's approach to all issues,

_ from the sublime to the ridiculous. Business

is its basic ideology.”

They note that the free trade deal was not
something Brian Mulroney and company
thought up this year, and they examine the
development of foreign takeover (mostly
American) of Canadian industry and
resources. A highlight was the defeat, ironi-
cally by a Canadian business lobby which
objected to government interference in the
economy, of former finance minister Walter
Gordon’s 1963 bill slapping a 30-per-cent
sales tax on the takeover of Canadian com-
panies by non-residents.

Canadian proponents of free trade
favoured the deal because it would make
this intervention impossible in the future,
the authors state.

In the authors’ opinion, the free trade
agreement reverses the long-standing insist-
ence, throughout the whole era of continen-
tal integration, on Canadian control. The
abdication of Canadian control over
resources, they say, is at the core of the free
trade agreement.

In the chapter entitled, “Resources,
Redesigning God's Plan,” they deal with
our last remaining vital resource, nominally

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controlled by Canada: water. Canada sits
on about one quarter of the world’s known
volume of fresh water, and some geo-
graphers predict that the growing demand
in Canada alone will outstrip supply.

But the United States is also thirsty for
Canada’s water. And the authors note
that — despite claims to the contrary from
free trade backers — that the pact involves
water resources. They quote a Republican
representative from Iowa, John Grandy:
“One of the reasons the United States wants
to negotiate a free trade agreement with
Canada is because Canada has the water
resources that America is going to eventu-
ally need.”

Selling Out cites several schemes to divert
Canadian water. One, the North American
Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA)
would provide a half dozen dams across the
country 1,500 to 1,700 feet high, and a
reservoir in the Rocky Mountain trench in
British Columbia 500 miles long with a
shipping canal across the prairies. Another,
the Great Recycling and Northern Devel-
opment Canal (GRAND), is a $100 billion
scheme to turn about 80,000 square kilome-
tres of James Bay into a fresh water lake
and deliver this through hundreds of
kilometres of canals into Lake Huron and
then to the United States.

Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa, a
prominent free trade supporter, has been
obsessed with water export and large scale
hydroelectric development. Selling Out
observes that, “He doesn’t want the
National Energy Board, or any other ves-
tige of the pre-free trade era getting in its

way with any pesky public hearings or
demands from other provinces to get first
crack at excess power.”

The Meech Lake accord which was
agreed upon and signed in secret by the
provincial ministers — “the gang of eleven,”
these authors call them — has shut a lot of
people out such as women, Natives, the

potential provinces in northern Canada, —

and “everyone who believes that a constitu-
tion is not something to be decided by
eleven men in a closed room at midnight.”

On taxation, the authors write: “The
massive deductions allowed for investment-
linked interest expenses under the grandiose
title of scientific research tax credits, and
many others are quite legal. Corporations
still get to deduct 80 per cent of their meal
and entertainment expenses and nobody
has explained adequately why executives
should have the government subsidize lav-

_ish lunches at swank restaurants while Joe

Lunch-Bucket gets nothing of the sort.”

And the government views Canadian cul-
ture as “‘a branch of business to be bought,
sold and traded like any other commodity.-
. this government does not see culture as an
integral part of the Canadian fabric.”

This book was written while Ronald
Reagan was still president of the U.S. and
before the Canadian federal elections. But
the scenario is still the same and these
authors portray quite clearly how far Can-
ada has strayed from the federalism of Tru-
deau to the ethic of corporate monopoly
under Mulroney.

— Jonnie Rankin

Music benefit for women’s clinic

The B.C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics
is sponsoring a benefit for the Every-
woman’s Health Centre at the Commodore
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phone 280-4444.

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The Vancouver East Cinema presents an
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* * *

The Tube: Knowledge Network presents
Partition, a drama set in a mental institution
during the months following the division of
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Pacific Tribune, June 26, 1989 « 7