BRITISH COLUMBIA

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Volunteer of End the Arms Race “community alert’ pins anti-
Cruise button on passer-by Saturday.

The End the Arms Race com-
mittee drew an immediate
response Saturday to its call —
sent 24 hours earlier — for
volunteers to leaflet as part of a
nation-wide protest against the
cruise missile and an umbrella
weapons testing agreement signed
by the Canadian and United
States governments the day
before.

“There is evidently a grass-
roots feeling against theactions of
this government,” said Helen
Spiegelman at EAR headquarters
in Vancouver. She said an
estimated 130 supporters jammed
the small office and carried away
all of the 5,000 ‘‘Refuse the
cruise”? leaflets at 11 a.m.

The volunteers hit busy street
corners and shopping areas in
points around the Greater Van-
couver region informing passers-
by of the dangerous escalation in
the arms race resulting from the
testing and planned deployment
of the attack missile.

Demonstrations also took
place in several other Canadian
cities in a mass protest against the
signing in Washington Friday of
an umbrella weapons testing
agreement, which, according to
reports, ‘paves the way”’ for a
separate agreement covering

cruise missile tests at the Primrose
Lake air weapons range near
Cold Lake in northern Alberta.

In Toronto, a crowd estimated
by Metro Toronto police at 5,000
people began a demonstration
outside Liberal Party head-
quarters, marching from there to
the American consulate and final-
ly to city hall. Organizer Angela
Browning called the cruise an
“‘agoressive, first-strike weapon
(that will) bring the possibility of
nuclear war much closer.”

In Victoria a group of peace ac-
tivists have staged a week-long
vigil and fast at the legislature to
protest the arms race and cruise
testings.

In a recent poll Canadians
voted 52 percent against the plan-
ned cruise tests, which have been
the focal point of demonstrations
and peace meetings since word of
the deal first came to light almost
one year ago.

Several leading speakers for the
peace movement say that the
public awareness and opposition
to the project may eventually
force the Trudeau government to
back out at some future date.
They point to recent statements
by the prime minister and external
affairs minister Allan
MacEachen emphasizing that the

Anti-cruise protests greet weapons pact

cruise tests must be covered by a
specific agreement, as yet unsign-
ed.

That speculation has been
given some credence by
Trudeau’s recent denial of former
external affairs minister Mark
MacGuigan’s statements to the
House last April that the cabinet

* had already agreed in principle to

allow the U.S. military to test the
cruise in Canada.

The government line now is
that only the general agreement
allowing the testing of a variety of
weapons had been discussed.

At the Vancouver and District
Labor Council meeting Tuesday,
VDLC president Frank Kennedy,
who is also co-chair of End the
Arms Race and president of the
new union peace committee,
called for the whole issue of
weapons testing to be debated in
the House and put ‘‘before the
Canadian people’”’ in a referen-
dum. :

A “Cruise Disagreement Day’’
has been set for Sunday, Feb. 19
at 12 noon in Vancouver’s Rob-
son Square. People are urged to
participate in the signing of a
peace agreement against cruise
testing. Children are welcome
and invited to ‘‘bring crayons.”

Citizens
demand
voice on
port plan

Hazardous chemicals should
be removed completely from the
Vancouver harbor, said a new
Coalition founded to press for
a citizens’ voice on the expansion
and upgrading plans for the Port
of Vancouver.

The question of hazardous
Materials storage and shipment
Was one of several concerns aris-
ing out of the federal govern-
Ment’s little-known 30-year
upgrading plan for the harbor ata
Meeting called by the Vancouver
Waterfront Coalition at the
Hastings Community Centre
Monday night.

The coalition — consisting so
far of the Downtown Eastside
Residents’ Association, the Bur-
Tard Wall Street Residents’
Association, the Hastings-
Sunrise Citizens’ Planning Com-
mittee and the Hastings Com-
Munity Association — also warn-
€d of plans for a four-lane, con-
Unuous roadway that threatens
Neighborhoods, parks and

Public access”’ to the waterfront
along Burrard Inlet.

The approximately 50 people
attending heard marine planner
Joseph Marston, whose masters
thesis on the lack of safety involv-
ed in liquid petroleum gas
shipments in the harbor made
headlines last month, outline pre-
Sent dangers from inadequately
constructed chemical facilities.

He called for an independent
federal inquiry into safety regula-

tions and a “‘federal-provincial

JOE MARSTON (i), JIM RUSHTON . . . port plan fails to address

chemical dangers.

task force’’ to set a timetable for
the removal of ‘unsuitable ac-
tivities’’ within the port.

The two-year effort to draft the
‘Master Port Plan, a low-key af-
fair conducted with little publici-
ty, was set for completion in
January. But pressure from con-
cerned citizens groups have suc-
ceeded in postponing the final
plan for at least a couple of mon-
ths, said VWC acting chairman
Jim Rushton.

Rushton said the coalition
recognized the “primacy” of
Vancouver’s role as a port, but
sought the involvement of civic
activists and trade unionists to
“minimize the negative aspects”
of the plan.

NDP MP for Vancouver East
Margaret Mitchell said she had
been pressing social development
minister Jack Austin for more
time and more public input on
the port plan, and called for the

SERPT OT

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN KEETO!

involvement of port unions in the
process.

Dave Forsythe of the Pacific
Coast Maritime Council of port
unions termed ‘‘ludicrous”’ a plan
to remove hazardous shipments
from the CPR’s B.C. Coastal
Ferries slip downtown to the
Burlington Northern slip west of
Clark Drive. Like others at the
meeting, he urged that a definite
timetable be set for the removal of
all hazardous chemicals from the
heavily populated port area.

Forsythe also gave the port
unions’ support for the efforts of
citizens’ groups seeking to
enhance or create new waterfront
park facilities, long-time efforts
which are threatened by the pro-
posed four-lane highway.

Motions from the meeting
reflected those concerns and
backed Marston’s call for an in-
dependent inquiry into port
facilities and safety.

“People have a right to be mad
— to be damn mad — about the
unemployment crisis in this coun-
try,’ Communist Party general
secretary William Kashtan told
several hundred people who turned
out to the CP’s ‘‘hard times din-
ners” in five B.C. centres last week.

Kashtan said money would be
available for a national jobs pro-
gram, if arms spending were cut
back and if curbs were put on the
export of capital.

But the CP leader added that
jobs for all and the capitalist system
have become incompatible.
“Capitalism can not provide full
employment; unemployment and
inflation are part of the system.
That is how capitalism works. Fun-
damental change is necessary, star-
ting with nationalization of key sec-
tors of the economy,”’ said
Kashtan.

The “‘hard times dinners’’ were
organized to bring to the
unemployed the CP’s analysis of
the economic crisis and program
for jobs and protection for the
unemployed, and to inspire the
party’s efforts to assist in the
organization of the unemployed in-
to a mass political movement.

Attendance at the CP dinners
ranged from 60 in Kelowna to 80in
Nanaimo, and each event drew
both employed and unemployed.
A $2.50 admission price bought
modest, but decent fare including
baked beans, spaghetti and, in
hard-hit Port Alberni, moose stew.

Speaking with Kashtan in
Kelowna and Victoria Tuesday and
Wednesday was B.C. leader
Maurice Rush. Thursday in Port
Alberni he was joined by CP
organizational director Fred
Wilson and Friday and Saturday in

Campbell River and Nanaimo by

PACIFIC

CP targets crisis
at cross-province
hard time dinners

CP provincial candidate and
Alberni school trustee Gary
Swann.

In Victoria, Rush noted the an-
niversary this month of the Socred
restraint program and declared the
program an abysmal failure which
had forced tens of thousands into
the province’s growing army of
unemployed.

In Alberni, Wilson told the CP
audience that the unemployed area
pivotal force in an effort by big
business and the Socred govern-
ment to upset the balance of forces
in B.C. ‘‘The stakes are high,”’ he
stated. ‘‘Will the unemployed be
used as a tool to force wage
rollbacks and concessions, or to
make changes in the labor code —
or will they be a force for social
change and workers’ rights?”’

Masses of unemployed workers
in B.C. are production workers
who belong to unions already,
Wilson added. ‘‘In a sense they are
already organized, but they need to
be mobilized. What a powerful
force they would be if the labor
movement seriously undertook to
do this.””

The CP’s hard times dinners
wind up in Vancouver with a din-
ner at the Ukrainian Hall on
February 17. Kashtan and Rush are
scheduled to speak.

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TRIBUNE— FEBRUARY 18, 1983—Page 3

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