Editorial The cost of sellout The recent sale of the former Expo 86 site and the upcoming divestment of B.C. Hydro’s profitable gas division shows just how much British Columbians are being had by privatization. It also heralds a new, although hardly unforeseen development in the process: it’s now moved into the big leagues. E Until recently, privatization on the provincial scene has been, relatively speaking, small potatoes. There have been a few services either contracted out or privatized, such as the Highway Department’s sign-making division, or Pacific Coach Lines. Now the Socred government has advanced to a much larger stage in giving away the people’s property. The Expo lands, part of the soon-to-be-defunct B.C. Enterprises (Crown) Corp., is a massive tract of land right in the heart of the province’s largest city. The development slated for it by new owner Li-Ka Shing is to be worth some $3 billion. The land itself has a book value of some $300 million. That’s land that should have been publicly owned, to be developed in accordance with the aims of the people of Vancouver. Instead, the government scrapped the first such project slated for the site — the late, lamented North Park project next to Chinatown — and placed the whole site on the sale block. In doing so, the Socreds threw away years of planning — which, subsequent developments suggest, they never intended to see through — and wasted millions of taxpayers’ dollars. But then, saving money has never been the aim of privatization. We need look no further than the sale price the Hong Kong developer paid for the False Creek lands. It was only $145 million. Not the $320-million figure that had been touted. That figure is the final cost for the developer because it includes the interest to be paid over the next 15 years. Elsewhere in this issue the divestment of B.C. Hydro’s lucrative gas divisions is discussed. That too is a valuable public asset earning profits that have helped keep electricity rates down. Once it’s gone, most likely fora fire sale price, we can expect rates to rise and service to decline, dramatically. What is truly criminal about these actions — aside from the fact that neither the Socreds nor the federal Tories were elected ona privatization platform — is that the companies acquiring the public assets spent absolutely nothing to build them up. Nor will they pay the debts accrued by the services, unless it’s to acquire these as a tax write-off, This is only the beginning. The aim of the privatization drive is to sell off virtually every public service — services which helped build the country and are hence a part of Canada’s history and tradition. Unchecked, privatization will soon move en masse into the: arenas of health, education and social services. We’ve already seen examples of such. Is there any other direction for labour and progressives in general than to expand the fight against privatization — and its companions such as deregulation and free trade? GTRIBONE EDITOR Sean Griffin ASSISTANT EDITOR Dan Keeton BUSINESS & CIRCULATION MANAGER Mike Proniuk GRAPHICS Angela Kenyon Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5 Phone (604) 251-1186 Subscription rate: . Canada: @ $20 one year @ $35 two years @ Foreign $32 one year Second class mail registration number 1560 om ——— Psthaps you’ve seen the ad in your local newspaper one or two times. Init, nine handsome young people in military uni- form look out-of the page bearing the proclamation: “Only the heroism and ded- ication of the Soldiers of Israel’s Defence Forces make it possible for us to celebrate the 40th Year of Independence of the State of Israel.” ‘ Patriotic words, and handsome faces. But neither make for the truth. In a circular accompanying a copy of the ad, the Toronto-based Association for the Soldiers of Israel claims the Middle- East state’s military has been “con- demned, maligned, vilified.” The assoc- iation fingers as culprits the television media, for showing acts of brutality by Israeli forces in the’occupied West Bank and Gaza. The letter claims that TV reporters “fail to show the rain of stones (that can kill), and burning bottles... They do not show that only 15 or 20 soldiers confront hundreds of rioters who thirst for Jewish blood.” We'd have to say that what is not men- tioned in the circular is the simple fact that the Israeli forces are on occupied land. Most of the Palestinians in those territories thirst not for “Jewish blood” but for sim- ple justice — an end to the occupation and the creation of their own state — one that acknowledges the millennia Palestini- ans have been in that part of the world. The letter claims that “‘Israel’s soldiers do not need lessons and lectures on moral- ity and humaneness from the rest of the world.” Perhaps not, since the blame for all actions — including the atrocities of Israel’s military, like occupation forces anywhere in the history of the world — come from a leadership which has shown contempt and racism towards the _ land’s historical occupants. People and Issues - At one time the entire present-day state of Israel was known as Palestine. Now the demand of the Palestine Liberation Organization — also not acknowledged in the association’s ad or letter — is fora state on the two small occupied territories. The fulfilment of that demand would goa long way towards ending violence in the Middle East. * ek trocities of an even more intense sort go on — as they have for years des- pite right-wing claims of a process of liberalization — in El Salvador. But surely one of the most outrageous acts we’ve heard of — outside of the daily kil- lings by fascist death squads — is the bombing by the Salvadoran Armed For- ces of the offices of the National Union of Salvadoran Workers (UNTS). One person was critically injured and damages in excess of $200,000 were caused by the bomb, which exploded at 2:40 a.m. on April 30. A message we received from the Vancouver-based Teachers’ Commit- tee on El Salvador says the Treasury Police then “arrived with the intention of captur- _. ing the remaining people.” The committee is urging supporters of ' human and trade union rights in El Salva- dor to send telegrams denouncing the bombing to President Napoleon Duarte, Casa Presidencial, San Salvador, El Salva- dor, and Vidas Cassanova, High Command of the Armed Forces, San Salvador, El Sal- vador. The committee would appreciate receiving copies at P.O. Box 65392, Sta- tion F, Vancouver, B.C., V5N 5P3. They'll inform the UNTS of all the telegrams that have been sent. SR 5 his is for trade unionists and others who keep clippings for their “Facts to Fight Privatization” files. It comes to us from reader Mabel Richards, who clipped the item from a recent issue of the Victoria Times-Colonist. The story notes that drivers and mechanics at the formerly publicly-owned Pacific Coach Lines will, having signed a collective agreement, finally take home the same wages they earned before the com- pany was sold off — four years ago. But the PCL workers — said Brad Smith of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway and Transport Workers — still have not re- gained the pension and health plans they had as public servants. Those plans were trashed when the workers were forced to take a 12-per-cent wage cut in 1984. Smith also noted that ticket prices are higher and service is, the same, or slipping, since the company went to the private sector. We can only echo New Democrat pri- vatization critic Dale Lovick who warned that this presented a case scenario of the Socreds’ $3-billion privatization scheme. * * * hen citizens in Vancouver’s east side ‘rallied against Safeway food store’s new location at the corner of First Avenue and Renfrew Street, they were angry because the food chain used premises built by the notorious anti-union contrac- tor — whose name comes up frequently whenever scandalous cost overruns, shod- dy workmanship and gross underpayment of wages are mentioned — Kerkhoff Construction. The company refused to reconsider its decision and has moved to the new location, closing its store on neighbouring Nanaimo Street. In Victoria as well, the food conglomer- ate has been closing stores while claiming its employees’ wages are a cause. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. What caused a massive shakeup within Safeway’s corporate keep was the most unproductive — in fact, devastating — feature of capitalism: the corporate takeover. That fact, noted by researcher Donald Gutstein at a meeting sponsored by the concerned east end residents last year, was mentioned again in an article in the Times- Colonist, reprinted from the Los Angeles Times. It noted the company went some $5 billion into debt to prevent a corporate takeover of its parent company in the U.S. The article stated that the company must, in the next 18 months, pay off $1.5 billion in principle and interest on the $5-billion loan used to ward off the takeover. Selling stores — and, we note, “going cheap” with stores built by the likes of — Kerkhoff — is part of that debt-paying ‘Strategy. A letter to the Times-Colonist from reader Don Berringer puts it succinctly: the takeover.is a totally negative phenomenon that adds nothing to the productive capac- ity of the country. And, “employees become pawns in the game and are often blamed for the disruptions caused by a few money-hungry financial manipulators.” 4 Pacific Tribune, May 11, 1988