Friday, Nov. 13, 1981

30° -

Jes will be the target of several

| demonstration in Ottawa Nov.

Rallies set

Government economic poli-

rallies this month: in Ottawa Nov. 21; in Nelson, Kamloops and Nanaimo Nov. 25; and in Vancouver’s PNE Gardens at 7 p.m., Nov. 29.

Trade unionists and others Planning to attend the CLC

21, which also is voting day in B.C. municipalities, are re- minded that they should vote in advance polls before they go. Dates and polling places should be obtained from the local mu- nicipal hall.

Vol. 43, No. 41

battle for civil rights a page 11 —

KEVIN McCORRY ... civil rights organizer on tour.

Construction ‘profit first’

be banned from job sites.

The charge levelled by building trades unions that the Workers’

| Compensation Board is not en-

forcing its own health and safety regulations and is not penalizing employers who violate those stan- dards was corroborated Friday by

| the former director of inspections | for the WCB.

Rick Knowlan, a professional engineer who held the WCB post

} Until his resignation ‘‘n frustra- fon” in April, told the construc-

| tion industry safety inquiry hear-

} ing in Burnaby that there are

| “two standards for industrial

| health and safety — the official

_ | Standard as set by the regulations, } and the unofficial one, the actual

Standard found on job sites.

“The actual level of enforce-

| Ment of regulations is too low,” he emphasized.

Knowlan’s testimony came as

| the eight-member commission

wound up three days of hearings in Burnaby, the last of a series of

hearings conducted” in “various ©

Centres around the province. penis began in Victoria Oct.

The safety inquiry commis-

|_Sion, chaired by labor ministry of-

Floorlayers Local 141 representative Bil | construction industry safety inquiry at responsible for a number of explosions,

ficial Claude Heywood and made up of labor and industry representatives, was appointed on the recommendation of the in- quest jury which investigated the deaths in January, of four carpenters who fell 37 storeys from the Bentall IV office tower when the concrete fly form on which they were working collaps- ed.

Knowlan’s testimony was of some significance in that it gave

‘substance to submissions by con- “struction unions which have con-

tended that the major reason for accidents such as the Bentall tra- gedy has been the failure of the WCB to enforce its own safety regulations and to impose effec- tive penalties on companies which violate those regulations.

The former director of inspec- tions told the commission of his ‘extreme frustration” at the “Jack of responsiveness of the (WCB) organization.”

Each board order issued against an employer had to go through a lengthy screening pro- cedure, he said, and often super- visors simply dropped further ac- tion or penalty for fear it might

safety approach slammed

I Kessel holds upa can of adhesive before members of the hearings in Burnaby Friday. The material has already been he said, and is one of the many substances which should

not stand up on appeal. And only rarely were follow-up inspections carried out, except in the case of

orders involving industrial

hygiene.

Knowlan was critical of the WCB for its failure to use even so basic a tool as injury statistics to target those companies which re- peatedly violate safety standards.

He also rapped employers for their failure to institute safety management programs. ‘‘If they carried out their financial management in the same way, they’d be out of business tomor- row,” he said. :

He reiterated the call, already |

voiced by several unions and the B.C. Federation of Labor, for a royal commission of inquiry into the operations of the WCB, and for an immediate increase in the number of WCBaccident preven- tion officers and job site inspec- tions.

(WCB inspectors have been known as accident prevention officers but their titles are now be- ing changed to ‘‘industrial safety officers’’ and ‘‘industrial hygiene

officers.’’) See TWO page 12

Patriation of the constitution without the agreement of Quebec ‘ig the way to disaster for Can- ada,’’ William Kashtan, leader of the Communist Party of Canada, warned this week.

In a telegram sent to prime min- ister Pierre Trudeau, opposition leader Joe Clark, NDP leader Ed Broadbent and Quebec premier Rene Levesque Nov. 6, Kashtan pointed out that the ‘‘crisis of Con- federation arose precisely because of failure to recognize the Cana- dian reality of two nations in one state.

“Yet,”’ he said, ‘‘the agreement reached by Trudeau and the nine English speaking premiers fails to guarantee the right to self-deter- mination and equality of the French Canadian nation,”’ accent- uating the crisis: -

“Premier Levesque may well be right when he stated that ‘the con- sequences of the agreement are in- calculable.’ ”’

Kashtan was scathing in his ref- erence to weaking of the Charter of Rights as the outcome of the agree- ment.

“The agreement takes the heart out of the Charter of Rights by ig- noring fundamental freedoms,’’ he

declared.

“‘The agreement denies aborigi- nal rights. This is not the kind of constitution that Canada and her people need.

Parliament, he concluded, “should reject the resolution be- fore it. A new start is needed direct- ed to adoption of a genuine made- in-Canada constitution.”’

Scorning the proposal under the new agreement that Native rights will be determined at a future con- ference to be held after patriation of the constitution, Native leaders have declared their intention to continue their fight in London to have aboriginal rights enshrined in any new constitution, basing their arguments on treaties preceding Confederation.

Advocates: of women’s rights too,.are angered. by Trudeau’s statement, made in an exchange with Clark in the Commons this week, that provinces will be allow-

- ed to override two sections of the

Charter of Rights guaranteeing equality to both men and women. Both sections, he said, could be limited at provincial discretion. NDP and Conservative spokes- men said their parties would op-

pose this.

Reaganites intensify threats against Cuba

As it steps up its aggressive cam- paign for world domination rang- ing from threats of economic retaliation against Canada for its national oil program to military maneuvers in Egypt, the Reagan administration is striving to establish pretexts for intervention in the Caribbean and Central America through the same pattern of lies that led to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The campaign opened with ad- ministration claims that Cuba was actively intervening in El Salvador with arms and troops. That, despite Cuban denials, has been the theme of various statements emanating from the White House and the Pentagon in recent weeks, culminating last week in U.S. defence secretary Caspar Weinberger’s assertion that Cuba is a ‘‘menace’’ to all Latin America.

| Fed changes facing opposition

—page 12—

He made the allegation at a Pentagon-sponsored conference of chiefs of staff of 20 Latin American nations held in Washington.

The Cuban government challenged the Reagan administra- tion to substantiate its charges in a statement published in the Com- munist Party’s newspaper Granma

- on Sept. 3, declaring:

“There has never been, nor is there at the present time, a single Cuban military or civilian adviser with the revolutionary forces who are fighting in El Salvador .. .

* “Wecall upon (U.S. secretary of state) Haig and his government that they give world public opinion and U.S. public opinion itself the most minimum proof of their assertions (about Cubans in El Salvador). The Cuban revolution never lies. Let’s see if Haig and the unscrupulous, lying U.S. govern- ment can say the same.”’

Haig has been pressing the Pen- tagon “‘to examine a series of op- tions for possible military action in El Salvador and against Cuba and Nicaragua.”’

See CUBA page 11

p