Canada

Business newspapers, like the Financial Post, always tell it like it is. Last week in an article entitled “Canadian Labour needs to shift focus,’ Fred Blaser went into great depth in telling trade unions to smarten up.

The message was conveyed in a condes- cending manner. I suppose the author’s position as an international trade lawyer accounts for part of this.

Blaser starts his article: “My favorite Martian is Leo Gerard, who helps run the Canadian steelworkers union, likes hockey and takes his coffee regular, but he is not fooling anyone. When he talks about how he would manage Canadian trade policy, it is obvious he is from another planet.

“One idea he would consider is a special tariff on goods imported from developing countries, run by governments which oppress their workers. The amount off the duty would be the difference between a fair Canadian wage in the industry that makes the particular imported product, and in the exporting country.”

: He contends that Gerard’s argument _ would be that these funds could then be used to modernize Canadian facilities to make them more competitive, and to partly fund useful development projects in developing countries. These projects would try to be somewhat independent of the transnational corporations.

The corporate vision — and labour’s

| John

MacLennan

Although not convinced, Blaser says that “from a labour perspective, it is the existing system that is grossly unfair. In most of the Third World, the argument runs, police spies and military repression are the means by which producers get their labour-cost advantage.”

He goes up in smoke over labour’s demands that there should be controls to prevent producers in developed countries from freely shifting capital to low labour- cost countries.

He states “deciding which developing economies should be subject to an oppres- sion tax would be ultracontentious. As for curtailing foreign investment by Canadi- ans, this has the same effects as restricting trade, it wipes out the benefits countries get from comparative advantage.”

In a truly blatant and unabashed way Blaser rationalizes “‘It is true that imports

LABOUR IN ACTION

take jobs from domestic workers. The mis- take is to value those jobs at their nominal rate of return.

“If Canadian employees are paid more than foreign workers for performing the same operation, Canada is not richer simply because we maintain full employ- ment in existing jobs. On the contrary, uncompetitive workers do not create real income, they just get transfers from all other Canadians.”

Then Blaser gets to his advice for the movement.

“If unions are to provide a better deal for Canadian workers, they must lead events, by switching their primary focus from being negotiators to becoming information managers. The first step in the process is to recognize that international competition is not inherently unfair.

“Developing country workers perform tasks for one dollar an hour, not for the

most part because they are economic slaves, but because the jobs pay better than an an alternative.

“When Canadian capitalists set up operations in low wage countries, they are not for the most part exploiters: they are sensibly trying for the most part to maxim- ize resources on the broadest possible base.”

If I told you that Mr Blaser was a great advocate of the free trade agreement, his views would probably come as no sur- prise.

His main argument is a familiar one; the labour movement has to adapt to com- pete. But as many in the labour movement have asked, where does the quest for com- petitiveness stop?

There will always be some country that will be able to work for lower wages. It would be a tread mill for Canadian workers, with only the employers who’d benefit. Workers would be pitted against each other in the same town, province, country, and so on.

What is needed is a comprehensive eco- nomic alternative popularized and won by and for working people. This has to start first with Canada’s union movement.

And it should be embodied in the action plan that will come to the floor of the Canadian Labour Congress when it con- venes next month in Montreal.

Agreement signed on Temagami forest

By PAUL OGRESKO On April 23, the Teme-Augama Anish=

nabai took a first step towards achieving control over a land they have called their home for more than 6,000 years.

It was not an easy step to take. For 113

years that right to their land had been denied by government bureaucracy and by court legalities. Now, with the formation of a joint stewardship council with the Ontario government, they have at least gained a semblance of authority Menan — their homeland.

over n’Daki

In the past 113 years a lot has changed.

The days when Temagami was merely a spot on the map are long gone. It has become a “major issue’”” — a word as much as any other, at least in Ontario, synonym- ous with concern for the environment in Canada.

Ten, even five years ago, few knew or cared that a group of Indians were fighting in) the courts to have their entitlement to land recognized. Few outside of campers and wilderness buffs were aware that the

area was home to one of the last, most

precious, old growth forests in the province. Logging practices were not the focus of media attention or under public scrutiny. Then the environment became the issue of the day and along with that new phrases to add to the public consciousness — global warming, ozone layer, acid rain, Chernobyl, toxic waste, recycling ... the list goes on. Green has become, at least in the deve- loped world, the colour of the decade and while many, quite rightly, question this or that aspect of the environmental movement — the hypocrisy of government and the buy-out of causes by corporations, the neg-

‘lect, subjugation and continued impover-

ishment of a third of the world — few would deny that the world, and humanity with it, is in danger.

_ On Earth Day 1990 thousands of trees were stenciled on the sidewalks of Toronto

‘and nearly every image had one thing in

common — the word Temagami written beside it. ;

Joint council called ‘a first step’

Many, perhaps most, were thinking only of the trees when they wrote that word and not of the people it is derived from — the Teme-Augama Anishnabai. But even if the primary concern of Earth Day 1990 was not aboriginal rights, the actions of April 22 in Toronto could not be lost on a provincial government quite adept at counting votes and assessing public opinion.

So we come to the announcement one day after Earth Day of the formation of a joint provincial-Native stewardship council over 40,000-hectare tract of the Temagami forest. It is, as Chief Gary Potts described it, a “first step” for the Teme-Augama Anish- nabai. The first nation gains an equal representation with the province in matters dealing with an area that includes the dis- puted old growth forest in the Red Squirrel Road area that was slated for logging. Potts has said that forest is now safe — the abo- riginal people have no intention of destroy- ing what is the integral, spiritual heart of their nation.

Outside the stewardship council area the province has issued timber licenses for nine lumber mills in the district but this decision is unlikely to comfort, those 70 workers at the William Milne and Sons mill who have now, almost definitely, lost their jobs.

And this is where Temagami will still present some difficult and dicey questions for many progressives.

On one side, as the Teme-Augama Anishnabai begin to assert their aboriginal title to land, jobs of unionized workers in the area may be lost. That is not a frivolous thing.

On the other side is the potential for antagonism between the first nation and

those in the environmental movement who take a “no cut” position regardless of abo- riginal rights.

The Teme-Augama Anishnabai have argued, and surely reality backs them up on this, that they have an intrinsic relationship with the land — unlike even three genera- tion loggers in the area. The Native culture and spirituality is centred with the earth, the

animals — the cycle of life, death and life —

that is part of an old growth forest.

The death of that natural cycle will be the death of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai culture. é

The first nation has said they are willing to share the land with those around them: whether it’s workers in the area or campers

‘from Toronto. But any logging that may

“take place in the future will have to be sustainable and only after environmental studies on long term impact have taken place.

And the old growth is excluded.

The Teme-Augama Anishnabai have a vision and it is not one based upon imme- diate exploitation and greed. They know how to live with the land... __

Meanwhile, in the short term, there will be hardship for those who have made their living by logging in the area.

But, in the long run, there exists the potential for a sustainable future where the forest, the workers, environmentalists, and the aboriginal people can co-exist.

And that future, if it comes to pass, will provide employment and sustenance for all the people of the north far longer than the 10 years or so of logging that was left for everyone if the Teme-Augama Anishnabai had not taken that first step.

Pacific Tribune, May 7, 1990 « 7