British Columbia

‘Get budget on track’ trek launched

Canadians were invited to “get on

board” and “get the budget on track” last
Sunday as representatives from various
women’s, labour and community organiza-
tions boarded a VIA Rail train in Van-
couver bound for Ottawa.
_ Michael Wilson’s first free trade budget
1s the work of a government that has gone
completely off the rails, and as Canadians,
we must protest. We have to get this budget
back on track,” Lynn Kaye, president of the
National Action Committee on the Status
of Women and lead-
er of the delegation
‘told participants at
a rally held outside
Vancouver’s VIA
Rail train station |
prior to departure.

The Vancouver
event was part of a
national campaign
initiated by NAC,
along with the Pro-
Canada Network,

KAYE

Transportation 2000 and the Canadian
Brotherhood of Railway Transport and

General Workers Union which will
see delegations departing from points west
and east and arriving in Ottawa June 12.
Along the routes, riders will stop at major
centres to join protest rallies against the
budget.

“Our parents and our grandparents
before us fought for a social contract with
the government, a contract that would gua-
rantee the kind of society that they wanted
for themselves and for their children, but
this budget is a breach of that contract,”
said Kaye.

“We hope that this campaign will focus
attention on the content of the budget and
Move-people to take action to stop. this
assault. The cuts affect the people who can
afford them least. Ultimately, that means
women and children. We desperately need
more social housing. Now they’re going to
cut funding back?” she said.

Bob Storness-Bliss of the Canadian
Brotherhood of Railway Workers called the
budget a “disgrace. “Sure we’re worried
about our members losing their jobs
because of the cuts to VIA Rail but we’re
also worried about Canada losing one of
the most viable and safe forms of passenger
transport,” he said. a

For delegation member Bobby Jackson,
this trip is not the first time he has ridden the
rails to Ottawa. Jackson was part of the
On-To-Ottawa trek in the 1930s.

Ina short speech at the rally he called the
budget the first free trade budget and the

Meeting

By SAM SNOBELEN

The federal and provincial governments
should muster the courage to declare
import boycotts against countries engaged
in the ruinous driftnet fishing on the high
seas, a public meeting sponsored by the
United Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union resolved.

Some 400 people at the Maritime Labour

Centre in Vancouver on June 4 called for
action after hearing reports on how the
fishery devastates marine life in the Pacific
Ocean.

New Democratic MP Dave Stupich told
the meeting that cutbacks inherent in the
recently passed Tory budget means that
“the federal government is not going to
provide adequate policing of the driftnet
problem.”

Stupich, the party’s west coast fisheries —

critic, called for international laws to curb
the environmental abuse caused by drift-
nets.

Driftnet fishing — whereby huge nylon
monofilament nets scoop up and kill all
forms of marine life, including dolphins,
whales and sea birds — has been blamed

worst in his memory for its “challenge to the
UI system. When they talk about a level
playing field,” he said “what they mean by
level is no social benefits.”

“It’s important that working people start
feeling good about themselves, start realiz-
ing that they are worthwhile. And that if.
they don’t want this kind of society, then it’s
about time they changed it,” he said to
applause. 5

A joint statement “Breaking the Social
Contract,” issued by the organizers of the
campaign takes issue with the government’s
list of cuts to unemployment insurance,
child care, health care, post secondary edu-
cation, public broadcasting, transportation,
the post office, foreign aid, farm and
regional development programs and advo-
cacy groups.

It calls the federal deficit, which the
government has used as justification for cut-
ting social programs, “a smokescreen for
carrying out the Mulroney government's
free trade agenda.” :

Continuing unemployment and social
inequities, not the deficit, “are the number
one problems facing Canada today,” the
statement says. The deficit, it maintains, can
be attributed to high interest rates and
“multi-billion dollar hand-outs to large

-corporations that produce comparatively
few jobs in return.”

“Only by putting people back to work,
re-organizing our economic priorities and
developing a fair and progressive tax system
can we be effective in reducing the deficit,” it
stresses.

“The time has come to stop undercutting
our social contract,” it reads. ‘“The time has
come to start negotiating a new social con-
tract that guarantees Canadians real jobs,
income security, quality social services and
a fair and progressive tax system. The time
has come to stand together for the sake of
future generations.”

Despite the short preparation time for
the campaign, organizers are reporting a
good response. Endorsements have come in
from 32 national organizations, including
the National Farmers Union, the Assembly
of First Nations, the National Anti-Poverty
Organization, the Canadian Auto Workers
and the Inter-Church Coalition on Eco-
nomic Justice.

Members of Rural Dignity, the organiza-
tion fighting to maintain postal services in
rural Canada, have chartered a train from
the Gaspe along one of the lines which will
be abandoned because of VIA Rail cuts,
and intend to link up with demonstrations
in Montreal before proceeding to Ottawa.

The Canadian Labour Congress, ina let-

a

nn

Childcare advocates display the 1,800
Sunday.

The Vancouver delegation of the “Get
the Budget on Track!” campaign is tak-
ing thousands of cookies with them to
Ottawa.

Women’s groups and childcare advo-
cates baked the cookies as part of their
protest against the budget which cut
back nationally funded child care pro-
grams.

Speaking at the Vancouver rally June
4 held to kick off the campaign, Penny
Coates of the Canadian. Daycare Advo-
cacy Association, said that British

cookies at rally

Cookies for the deficit

outside VIA rail station

Columbians were sick and tired ot wait-
ing for adequate daycare.

“And we’re sick and tired of holding
bake sales to keep our centres going,” she
said.

“So, Mr. Wilson you can hold the
bake sales from now on. We’ve even
baked the cookies for you — 1,800 of
them. What we want you to do is to sell
each one of these cookies to your friends
in Ottawa. You can sell them for $10,000
each and then you can send us the money
so that we.can have enough day care in -
this province,” she said to applause.

ter from president Shirley Carr, called on
labour councils and affiliates to participate
in events. Endorsements have been flowing
in from across the country according to the
NAC office.

The “Get the Budget on Track” is catch-
ing a responsive audience in the rural areas
which have been particularly decimated by
its provisions. The cutting of rail lines, the
end of Air Canada service to many rural
communities and the reduction of farm and
regional development programs, coupled
with the cuts to the Post Office and CBC
spell the abandonment of an east-west
transportation and communications sys-
tem. The death of these systems also means
the death of rural Canada.

demands action over

for declining salmon stocks in Canada and
the United States.

Seacops, an international organization
made up of commercial, sport and Native
fishermen as well as numerous concerned
citizens, estimates that driftnet fishing in
1988 destroyed 750,000 sea birds, 14,000
Dahl’s porpoise and hundreds of whales,
seals and dolphins.

Literature from Seacops available at the
meeting also stated that in 1988 driftnet
fishing operations from Japan, Taiwan,
South Korea and Hong Kong illegally
made off with 50,000 metric tonnes of
North American salmon.

These fishing operations abandon some
600 miles of nets each year. Abandoned, or
“ghost” nets continue for years to catch and
to destroy any marine animals with which
they come into contact.

Driftnets, made of very fine nylon, are
not biodegradable and therefore the mere
presence of ghost driftnets in the ocean is a
grave ecological hazard, even if one disre-
gards the huge numbers of salmon and
other sea life which the ghost nets catch and
destroy.

Gordon Hallsey from the provincial
fisheries department told the meeting that
driftnet debris is a major international prob-
lem, “largely because there is no interna-
tional policing agency to monitor the
driftnet situation,” and that “the problem of
discarded nets is larger than originally antic-
ipated.”

NDP MLA and environment critic John
Cashore said that the number of animals
killed by the Exxon oil spill in Alaska is
small compared to the amount killed by
driftnets.

The meeting adopted a resolution which
noted the driftnet fishery “operates in a
totally unregulated fashion, and ... over
1,000 vessels each day individually fish with
20- to 60-mile long monofilament nets, and
... the annual harvest of Canadian and
Alaskan salmon is as high as 20,000 tons or
roughly one third the average annual B.C.
catch,”

The driftnet fishery “threatens to turn the
Pacific into a lifeless marine desert,” the
resolution stated.

“Therefore we call upon the Minister of

Fisheries to immediately crack down on this

Organizers report some innovative ideas
coming out of regions. In New Brunswick
participants will be wearing “Mulroney
Chins.” In the tradition of the fabled Pinoc-
chio, the chins grow in proportion to the lies
government tells.

A “train quilt” has been launched with
participants quilting images depicting how
the budget will affect their region. The quilt
will then go on a cross country tour for
display in post offices, and other public pla-
ces.

The other members of the delegation
leaving from Vancouver included Angela
Krotowski, who will be preparing the quilt
blocks during the journey, as well as Eric
Waugh, Nola Miller and Keith Popp.

driftnets

unregulated and illegal interception of our
marine resources and salmon runs, and be it
further resolved that we call for an expan-
sion of the International North Pacific
Fisheries Commission to include all salmon
producing nations in a comprehensive
management and conservation regime,” it
stated.

The meeting also demanded that the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans to
introduce a comprehensive research and
monitoring program on the driftnet fishery.

And those in attendance called upon “the
federal and provincial governments to mus-
ter the courage to impose harsh trade sanc-
tions on any nation which continues to
ignore our concerns and continues to harv-
est our salmon on the high seas.”

Representatives of the U.S. and Cana-
dian governments, the states of Washing-
ton, Oregon and Alaska, and the province
of B.C. will meet to discuss the driftnet
problem at a conference scheduled for July
10-12.

A similar conference for southern hemis-
phere countries affected by the driftnet issue
will take place in Fiji.

Pacific Tribune, June 12, 1989 « 3