Friday, May 13, 1983

‘ Newsstand 8
price
40c Vol. 46, No. 19

Anti-Socred
resentment
not enough
to oust gov't

_ For working people all across the pro-
Vince, the prevailing sentiments were
lsappointment and anger last Thursday
Night as the profile of another, and larger
ed majority began to take shape on

the television screen.

Thousands of people had worked day
and night, knocking on doors, handing
Out material and spending hours on the
Phone in a major effort to defeat the

al Credit government.

There was a deep resentment over the
effects of the government’s restraint
Policies — the drastic reductions in
hospital beds and other health care
acilities; the cuts in education, the
layoffs all across the province. Together
they brought a momentum of opposition
'0 Social Credit into the election cam-
Paign,

But if there is any clear indicator in he

83 vote, it is that resentment over
80vernment policies, however deeply felt,
'sn’t itself enough to defeat that govern-
Ment — especially in a time of economic

ANALYSIS

Tecession. Repudiation of the Socreds’
and the presentation of clear alternative
Policies were crucial to a NDP victory —
and too often NDP candidates simply
didn’t provide them. :

Significantly, although the NDP lost
four seats to the Socreds’. the shift in
Popular vote May 5 was miniscule: the

Creds’ popular vote went up 1.47
Points to 49.7 per cent. The NDP vote
Went down 1.09 points to 44.9 per cent. It
Was B.C. polarization which, in the
Course of three elections, has become the
dominant feature .

The biggest change came with the
Liberals and Conservatives and the shift
both cases enhanced the majority.

e Conservatives’ share of the

Per cent in 1979 to only one per cent. The

Popular vote dropped from roughly five

Ay

Link to rental agency haunts

Job Mart as hearing set
Pe es = page 8

‘Cruise’ letter shows
PM bows to Reagan

Sign of the times advertises availability of jobless carpenter's apprentice
John Phillips. Phillips decided to try the unique approach Wednesday,
establishing himself and sign at 6 a.m. on the meridian of ist Avenue at
Nanaimo in Vancouver. By 1 p.m. he had succeeded in getting a few months
‘worth of odd jobs from sympathetic passers-by. Phillips, who blames the
Socred government for policies that have left him and some 300,000 other
workers idle, attends sessions on the causes of unemployment by the

Carpenters’ Union.

\___ See NDP page3

In his open letter on the cruise missile
testing issue, prime minister Trudeau has
demonstrated clearly that he has neither
listened to a growing majority of Canadians,
including members of his own caucus, nor
has he bothered to acquaint himself with the
objective scientific analysis of the issues he
raises.

It must be disturbing to thousands of
Canadians that Trudeau’s views appear not
to have changed at all — even though well
over 100,000 Canadians marched in
demonstrations for disarmament last
month, demonstrations that were un-
precedented in the history of Canada.

Unfortunately, the prime minister ap-
pears to be taking the course of. prime

minister Margaret Thatcher. Rather than

EDITORIAL

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETON

consider the views of the opponents of cruise
missile testing and fulfil his democratic
obligation to represent them, he seeks to
discredit and belittle those views, accusing
their proponents of “‘hypocrisy.””

The language in the letter is not that of a
reasoned Canadian politician who gained
world acclaim for his speech on suffocation
of the arms race at the UN in 1978. It is the
rhetoric of a man who is increasingly echo-
ing only the opinions of the Reagan ad-
ministration on disarmament policy.

Trudeau speaks of the possible agreement
to test the cruise in the context of Canada’s
acceptance of NATO’s two-track strategy
on disarmament. Yet the two issues are not
connected.

Thecruise that the U.S. proposes to test in
Canada is the air-launched cruise missile
(ALCM) which is not part of the NATO
arsenal. It is part of the independent U.S.
strategic arsenal and our decision to test or
not to test it is a bilateral agreement with the
U.S. alone.

In any event, our commitment and
obligation to NATO is not etched in stone. It
is whatever wemake it — and wecan choose,
like Greece, to alter our commitment or to
end it.

Trudeau, like Thatcher or Reagan, ties
virtually all issues of disarmament to the
Soviet SS-20 as if it were the destabilizing
weapon in the European theatre and the
reason for the proposed U.S. deployment.

In making that statement, he betrays a
vast ignorance of the available scientific data
on the weapon, material presented by scores
of competent scientists — including those
within NATO itself.

Is the SS-20 a new, technological innova-
tion that demands a qualitative response
from the U.S. and NATO? Emphatically, it

is not. ne
See GOVT page 11