L : k ; Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the y Tory government are still publicly “keeping 1 their options open” on U.S. Defence Secretary # Caspar Weinberger’s 60-day invitation for ‘

Canada to participate in President Reagan’s rf $26-billion Strategic Defence Initiative — the |

_ Star Wars program. k Privately, the Mulroney cabinet has DY undoubtedly made its choice, to throw its i

complete support behind Reagan’s dangerous | new program despite some possible divisions 1 over participation from some Tory members. 1 But the government has offered little comment €& on the issue over the last two weeks, hoping e that the outcry that greeted the announcement

of Canadian participation will dissipate as the deadline comes up. But if anything, the opposition to Canadian participation in Star Warsislikelytogrowin 5 intensity as the peace movement across the r country takes to the streets in disarmament " rallies Apr. 27. } Certainly there have been few issues on a which it is more vital to mount a massive 1 campaign of opposition than against theStar Wars program which, if it is carried out, would i, put the arms race into the most dangerous and { destabilizing phase since Hiroshima. , a

That stark danger has so far been realized far more in Europe — where the Danish ‘ Parliament repudiated its defence minister’s stand in support of Star Wars at the NATO ' meeting — than it hasin this country. r

That may be partly because both Mulroney * and External Affairs Minister Joe Clark 4 continue to insist that the program is only | “research” and that Canadian participation t would only be at the research phase.

But as John Lamb, the director of the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and | Disarmament — which has generally

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Five months ago as officials from the U.S. and Canadian Departments of Defence held “defence contract procurement” seminars across the country, the then federal Defence Minister Robert Coates told Canadians that the “possibilities are just unbelievable” for & businesses to obtain defence contract work from the U.S. Department of Defence.

Four months later, the new Defence Minister Erik Neilson was more restrained but no less misleading when he told reporters that there could be “significant economic spinoff benefits” from participation in the U.S. Star Wars program.

“T suppose if somebody came forward and said, would we be interested in bidding for a part of a contract which would create, say, 10,000 jobs in Winnipeg-Fort Garry, I think we would have to take a look at it,” added Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, suggesting the possibility of job creation. —

The message is clear: Canadians are to be sold participation in the U.S. program on the promise of jobs.

And it is a phoney promise.

Massive military spending in the U.S. has already forced interest rates to high levels, choking off expansion in key areas of the U.S. economy, including housing construction on which thousands of Canadian jobs depend. Adding the $26 billion projected cost of the Star Wars program would only aggravate that problem.

The pressure inside this country for Canadian participation in Star Wars is clearly coming from the Department of Defence and from the military contractors, one of whom argued in the Financial Post Apr. 6 that the “vast majority of technical innovations in recent history” have come from the military or the space program. Defence Minister Erik Neilson has also claimed that Star Wars research would have spinoffs in data processing and communications technology.

But those claims just don’t stand up, according to a recent study by Robert

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