Editorial GST — long term pain The details of the nine per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST) that were spelled out by Finance Minister Michael Wilson this week should send a sharp signal to Canadians to step up their fight against this government’s worst of all budget measures. It’s not that the details have changed the character of this regressive and onerous new tax. But now Canadians can see clearly the outlines of what is facing them in 17 months. Wilson calls it “short term pain for long term gain.” This is the same Wilson that told us that there would be no job losses from free trade — and then looked the other way as the plants closed up and went south. Make no mistake, there will be long term pain for all working Canadians, pensioners and low-income families. But worst of all, it will force ordinary people to bear the chronic pain of a tax that affects nearly all their purchases while giving pain-killers and comfort to the corporate sector in the form of continued tax breaks and tax deferments. And to make the corporate free trade strategy complete, it will shift the tax cost that is currently being paid by manufacturers who export their products on to Canadian consumers. Wilson’s new tax is the companion piece to the corporate-restructuring of the economy — it is an effort to re-structure the tax system to make ordinary working Canadians bear the cost of government services while corporate taxes are reduced and streamlined in the name of “international competitiveness.” The GST, which was initially touted as being “revenue-neutral” — bringing in no more money than existing manufacturers’ taxes — is now revealed to be anything but. It is intended to raise $24 billion in the first year — $7 billion more than the existing tax currently raises — and Wilson now admits that it will “contribute to the deficit-reduction effort.” Once again, ordinary Canadians are being asked to carry another burden, another regressive tax, while the corporate sector faces only a minuscule increase in its tax rate — the same corporate sector that owes more than $30 billion in deferred taxes that it has no intention of paying. But the new Tory tax can be defeated. If the voices now raised in opposition — from small business, from pensioners’ groups, from consu- mers’ organizations and the trade union movement — can be brought together, it could generate a movement like that which campaigned against the Canada-U.S. trade deal. There are 17 months until the tax is to be implemented. But those 17 months, if union locals, consumers, pensioners and hundreds of other groups across this country begin now, could change the course of this country. teins TRIBONE EDITOR Sean Griffin ASSOCIATE 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 Fax: (604) 251-4232 Subscription rate: Canada: ®@ $20 one year @ $35 two years @ Foreign $32 one year Second class mail registration number 1560 3 — emember the promises in the govern- brochure from 1979 announcing the Socreds’ giveaway of five free shares in B.C. Resources Investment Corporation? “This government feels ‘strongly that ownership of our resource industries should be in the hands of individual Brit- ish Columbians ...” it said. “No individ- ual or corporation may own more than one per cent of the voting shares of BCRIC™ “At a time when the control of indus- tries is falling into fewer hands, this would truly be a positive step,” then Premier Bill Bennett wrote in his letter announcing the share scheme. Well, all that Socred posturing lasted until last year when the Socred govern- ment pushed through the Resource Investment Corporation Act in the final days of the legislative session in June, 1988. That legislation opened the doors of BCRIC — thereafter called the Westar Group — to foreign investors and lifted the restrictions on the percentage of shares that any corporation could own. It’s only a year since that legislation was passed and the saloon door at the border has swung wide open. Last week, a New York investment firm, Whitman Heffernan Rhein and Company bought a 30 per cent stake in the Westar Group for $96.5 mil- lion, giving it effective control over the company: And investment analysts acknow- ledge that the U.S. owner got the shares for a bargain, considering the substantial “under value” of Westar. = Ifit all seems somewhat inevitable now, it’s worth noting what the Socreds have done in the 10 years since B.C. Business magazine touted the share scheme as the “most successful social experiment in B.C.’s business history.” In effect, the Bennett government took publicly-owned asset companies, shuffled them off to the private sector as BCRIC and then gave British Columbians non- voting shares in what they had previously owned. Over the years, the shares have become all but worthless — they’re cur- rently trading at a little less than $1 per share — and the Westar assets are now under effective U.S. control. So too is the $487 million that was raised from British Columbians who exercised their option to buy shares, following Bennett’s urging to “ensure that control of these industries remains in B.C.” If nothing else, it’s a lesson in “people’s capitalism” — and Socred policies. * * * : [ has been pushed from the headlines after last November’s election but the issue of water is still seeping out from the leaks in the free trade deal. And many are still working hard to see that the trickle People and Issues doesn’t become a flood — to the U.S. Last month, the influential Agricultural Institute of Canada, which represents agri- cultural associations from across the country, joined the campaign, calling on the federal and provincial governments to take specific action immediately to clarify the status of water under the Free Trade Agreement. The Institute held its annual meeting in Montreal in mid-July. Ever since the trade deal was first initi- alled, various experts have warned that the language of the agreement with regard to water is unclear and that the U.S. could interpret the FTA to support their demand for Canadian water, including large-scale diversion of water systems. In addition, once bulk water is exported to the U.S. — as several private companies in B.C. propose doing — Canada cannot simply turn off the tap at a future date even if its own supply becomes limited. Because of that, the Institute called on the federal government to resolve the uncertainty by signing a separate diplo- matic agreement with the U.S. stipulating that, whatever the wording in the FTA, nothing in the agreement applies to Cana- dian water, except in bottled form. The Institute also called on provincial governments to place a moratorium on bulk exports of water to the U.S. until the issue is clarified ina separate Canada-US. agreement. B.C. Institute of Agrologists president Wendy Holm, who has spearheaded the campaign in this province and whose insti- tute submitted the resolutions to the national meeting, emphasized that “‘abso- lute sovereignty over our domestic water is fundamental. “All we are asking is that the federal government, fully consistent with what they said during the last election cam- paign, take the steps which are now required to resolve this problem,” she said. “If, as was claimed, negotiators on both sides only meant this trade deal to apply to bottled water, then it is entirely reasonable to expect that an agreement to this effect ... can be easily and swiftly concluded.” * * * ancouver jeweller and Trib mailer Karl Zuker didn’t want his own name in lights when he donated a few ounces of silver and his jeweller’s skill to produce a carved silver key to the city of Vancouver | as a gift for folk singer Pete Seeger. And so when the presentation was made at the Orpheum July 13 it was simply “from a local Vancouver jeweller.” - But Karl admits that he was tickled pink when, a few days later, he got a per- sonal note from Seeger, thanking him for the key and offering his congratulations to the Vancouver peace movement for “‘lead- ing the way” on the continent. _ . 4 Pacific Tribune, August 14, 1989