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‘DOW SHALT NOT KILL’ reads one of the placards carried by demonstrators at Dow Chemical plant in Delta last
Saturday. Pickets from the Lower Mainland joined to protest production of napalm by the U.S. company. See story

below.

—G. Legebokoff photo

MARTIN, HELLYER TOLD:

‘Stop arms sales to U.S.—
End Vietnam involvement’

On Saturday, Feb. 3 the Commit-
tee Against Production for U.S. War
decided to take advantage of the visit
of Hon. Paul Hellyer to Vancouver to
ask him to account for the statement
he made recently that sales of war
materials are paying for students
university education and on the sale
of arms to the U.S.

A group of thirty young people,
through their spokesman John
Boylan, asked at a public meeting
called by the Liberals for Hellyer,
for two minutes to make a statement
on Canadian involvement in the
Vietnam war. This was denied them.

Chanting ‘‘Hellyer, Martin, LBJ,
how many kids did you kill today?”
the youthful group displayed a
banner at the back of the hall which
read: ‘‘No arms for Vietnam,
Canadians do not want blood
money.” A leaflet calling on Hellyer
to stop Canadian involvement in the
U.S. war was distributéd to those
attending the meeting.

A spokesman for the Committee
said that by his statements Hellyer

war.”

emerges as one of the most
reactionary war hawks in the Liberal
cabinet. ‘‘Should Hellyer become
Prime Minister of our country it is
very possible that Canada will
become even more deeply involved
in this dirty war, and could even lead
to Canadian trooops being sent to
Vietnam.”

On Friday night the Committee
Against Production for U.S. War
confronted Hon. Paul Martin when
he arrived at the airport with
pickets, leaflets, banner and
placards protesting the sale of arms
to the U.S. The impact of the
demonstration was such that Martin
found it necessary to release a
statement denying Canadian
shipment of arms to the U.S. for use
in Vietnam.

_A member of the Committee
refuted Martin’s statement and
pointed to the recent issue of
McLean’s Magazine which states
that we involved a great deal more
than was previously known, to the
extent that it is referred to ‘‘our

Despite pouring rain, about 75 to
100 demonstrators paraded before
the Dow Chemical plant in Delta last
Saturday afternoon to protest the
production of napalm for use in the
Vietnam war. Sponsored by the
Delta Committee Against Canadian
Production for U.S. War, the
demonstrators handed out leaflets
urging support for their protest.

The protest against Dow Chemical
is spreading to the interior of B.C.
The campaign, which has included
picketing, leafleting and shop-ins,
has compelled five Safeway Stores to
take Dow products off their shelves.

A Committee spokesman said this
week the idea of striking at this
monopoly at the consumer level
must be further widened and
extended across the country.
Further actions and demonstrations
are planned to take place on a weekly
basis until ‘‘monopoly is forced to

. produce only for human welfare not

warfare,” he said.

Tribune

VOL. 29 NO. 6

=>"

A REAL PEOPLE’
- BUDGET FOR B.C.

ae,

Big monopolies must
be made to pay more

By BRUCE YORKE
Premier and Finance Minister W. A. C. Bennett brings
down the B.C. budget this week. As in the past, the man with
the tooth paste smile claims that it is a people’s budget. The
daily press is full statistics and graphs showing record sums

for this item and that item.

But when all the Madison Avenue floss is scraped away,
the real facts will show that the budget is not a people’s one,
but one designed to serve the needs of the big monopolies at

home and abroad.

B.C.’s economy is still increasing
though there were important signs at
the end of 1967 that the rate had
slowed and even halted. Population
was up 3.6% over the previous year,

- retail trade 6%, personal income 8%

and the value of mineral production
16%. Capital investment continued at
a high rate — $2.5 billions, but at
year’s end there were strong
indications that this major factor
would be smaller in the year ahead.

B.C. Hydro announced big cut-
backs and the steel fabricating and
pulp industries were beginning to be
plagued with overproduction
problems. Provincial unemployment
which averaged 5.2% during 1967 was
on the rise and was over 6% at the
end of the year.

This is the background to the
budget figures to be brought down.
Because of the population growth
and the increase in production it is
natural that the figures for 1968 show
increases. These increases are
illusory however.

It should be remembered that the
budget is for operating expenditures
only, and does not include long range
capital expenditures, especially
those undertaken by B.C. Hydro. It is
these expenditures that are drying
up all investment funds with the
resulting starving of social services.
In particular the Columbia River
Treaty dams are now estimated to
cost B.C. taxpayers some $20
millions per year for the 9 year
construction period ending in 1973.

In early 1967 Hydro increased its
domestic electricity rates and have
stated that they intend to do so again
this year, despite operating profits in
1966-67 of some $9 millions. The
Columbia River dams produce no
new power in B.C. only cheap
downstream power in Washington
State, where large new aluminum
and metal processing industries have
resulted.

The provincial budget is very
much affected by federal fiscal and
taxation policies. But this does not
let Premier Bennett off the hook. In
fact he is one of the stoutest
defenders of the archaic BNA Act
which broadly defines taxation
powers in Canada. He opposes the
demands of the people of Quebec for
national self-determination including
their own state. Such a demand,
when realized, will have important
consequences with regard to a new
taxation deal in this country.

At the present time for instance,
the provinces are pretty well limited
to consumption taxes (see table
below), those which bear most
heavily on people with small
incomes. In B.C. -there is the
inequitous 5% sales tax, the 13¢ per
gallon gasoline tax, the liquor tax
and motor vehicle licenses. Taken
together they account for half of all
B.C. revenues in 1967. —

No matter whether you earn $6,000
a year of $50,000, you pay the same
for your liquor, your gas and all
items of tangibie personal property
covered by the sales tax. This fact
alone makes a mockery of Bennett's
claim of a people's budget.

xe

The two major federal sources of
revenue which are not consumption
taxes are the individual income and
corporation tax. The percentage
figures quoted below include not only
the direct portion received by the
province (28% of the federal income
tax and 10% on the net income of
corporations) but also the federal
government direct grant to B.C. has
been pro-rated according to the
share these two taxes have to total
federal revenue.

It is with these two taxes that the
real possibilities of a people's budget
exist! According to the Carter

See BUDGET, pg. 12