FROM PAGE ONE

“STRIKERS”

and rumours are circulating
that scabs will be brought in
unless there is a quick settle-
ment.

Johnson warned the Board
that a victory for the Company
would be disastrous for both
_American and Canadian IWA
members. A victory would give
all the companies a green light
for much greater expansion in
the South with the result that
there would be fewer and fewer
jobs for members in the North
West U.S. and Canada.

Following Johnson’s report
the Executive Board adopted a
five-point program of action
and appointed Regional 3rd
Vice-President Bob Blanchard
to act as co-ordinator.

The five points adopted are
as follows:

e An immediate donation

from the Regional Council of a
$1,000 for special projects.

e Invitations to the strikers
to come to Region No. 1, and
address Local Union meetings.

e Calling a conference of all
Plant and Camp Committees to
consider:

(a) Adopting one or more of
the more needy families for the
strike’s duration.

(b) Other financial method
of support.

(ce) Any other assistance
possible.

© Locals to provide speak-
ers, if requested, to go to
Region 5.

© Urge that all Locals con-
tribute substantial donations to
the strikers when an appeal is
made.

CLARKSON GORDON:

REPORT TYPICAL
SOCRED “SNOW” JOB

A study of the much vaunted
Clarkson Gordon Report —
commissioned by the Social
Credit government supposedly
to show the true state of the
province’s finances — only
shows that Premier Bill Ben-
nett has attempted to give the
public a typical Socred ‘‘snow
job.”

The front page of this
document tells the whole story
— it does not say “‘The Clark-
son Gordon Report”’ — it says
‘“‘An Address by the Honour-
able W. R. Bennett’. And
that’s exactly what it is, a
simple “‘political’’ report in the
finest tradition of the Social
Credit Party.

There is nothing by Clarkson
Gordon until the 11th page.
Then we find Clarkson Gordon
telling us themselves it is not
really their report. On Page 1
of their section they say all
they did was:

‘Co-ordinate the production
of certain unaudited informa-
tion for the year ending March
31, 1975 which you, (Minister of
Finance) had requested from
the Deputy Minister of
Finance, the Comptroller
General, and the Management
of all Crown Corporations,
Boards and. Agencies.”’

So obviously the government
produced the figures, gave
them to Clarkson Gordon, and
they came back arranged in a
manner to show a $500 million
deficit.

On page 12 of the Clarkson
Gordon section they say that
after they received the
_ figures—

“in some cases we have re-
arranged or summarized the
material and used different

terminology.”
On the same page Clarkson

Grodon say:
“We were not requested to

perform an audit of the finan-
cial information and we did not

do so.” eo
So this was not an independ-

ent “‘audit’”’ and was merely a
waste of the taxpayers’ money.
There was no need to pay a
company like Clarkson Gordon
to “‘re-arrange or summarize”’
figures researched and .pro-
duced by the government

themselves.

On page 9 of the Clarkson
Gordon section they point out
they only counted the grants to
I.C.B.C., the Transit Bureau,
B.C. Hydro and the B.C. Rail-
way as coming from General
Revenue this year because the
governmenbt instructed them
to do so. They put it this way:

‘‘We have been advised these
amounts will be paid prior. to
March 3ist.’’ Who ‘‘advised’”’
them? The government, of
corse.

Why use Clarkson Gordon
when the Socreds could have
done their own “‘re-arranging”’
of the figures?

Because they wanted to
‘“use’”’ Clarkson Gordon to lend
an air of credibility to their
“political’’ report.

At first when it was revealed
that the Clarkson Gordon
partner, M. R. Adam who was
doing what was at that time de-
scribed as an “‘Audit’’, was a
well-known Social Credit bag-

-man, it was assumed Clarkson

Gordon were being used to
front this political report with
their full consent.

However, after pulling Mr.
Adam off the job, they not
make it quite clear that they
were not prepared to have
their company “‘used.’’ There-
fore, they stress they did not
“audit” but merely followed
instructions from the govern-
ment with figures supplied by
the government. There is no-
thing wrong with that, that’s
what they were being paid for.
What is wrong is that the gov-
ernment should be using tax-
payers money to pay a bill that
should come out of the Social
Credit Party Funds for a
‘Political’? report. -

The new federal minimum
wage of $2.90 per hour will go
into effect on April 1, 1976,
Labour Minister John Munro
announced here January 9. The
new level means a pay in-
crease for about 20,300 work-

ers.

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

By ALDERMAN
HARRY RANKIN

Human Resources Minister
Vander Zalm charged the
other day that up to $80 million
a year is taken fraudulently in
welfare. He admitted that he
had “‘nothing to back up” this
statement, but that didn’t stop
him from making it.

He further stated that 20 to 39
percent of the people on
welfare in Surrey, Burnaby
and Vancouver are receiving
welfare fraudulently, again
admitting that he didn’t know
‘if these figures are right’.

We are conditioned to Social
Credit cabinet ministers
making exaggerated state-
ments for political purposes.
But these statements of
Vander Zalm’s are so far from
the facts that they can’t even
be dignified with the term
”exaggeration’’. They are just
plain false. And when you
consider that they are directed
against the poorest segment of
our community, they are
downright scurrilous.

Single persons receive $160 a
month or just under $2000 a
year on welfare. If Vander
Zalm’s statement were true,
40,000 of -them could be
receiving welfare fraudu-
lently. That’s more than the
total of single people on
welfare!

A single mother with three
children gets $370 a month, or
just under $4500 a year. If
Vander Zalm’s statement were
true, 18,000 of them could be

‘fraudulently drawing welfare.

That’s more than the total of
single mothers with children
on welfare!

That some people are fraud-
ulently drawing welfare is un-
doubtedly true. It could be as
high as five percent. I- don’t

imagine that’s any higher than
fraud in the business commun-
ity, or among cabinet min-
isters for that matter.

What Vander Zalm is doing,
however, is casting a slur on all
people on welfare, making
them all suspect. And he’s got
his own squad of snoopers
(‘my people in the investiga-
tion field’, he calls them) to
pry into the personal lives of
everyone unfortunate enough
to be on welfare.

As chairman of the Van-
couver Resource Board, which
administers $80 million a year
in various kinds of social
services, including welfare,
my position has always been
that anyone fraudulently
receiving welfare must be
dealt with as the law requires.
But I have never allowed a
witch-hunt to be carried out
praying into the personal lives
of people who are already in
enough misery without having
snoopers breathing down their
necks.

Vander Zalm’s statement
about the $80 million is on a par
with one he made in Nanaimo
on February 11 to the effect
that 10,000 ‘‘dead’’ people were
making use of pharmacare. He
didn’t present any facts to back
up that preposterous statement
either. It constituted a slur on
all people using pharmacare.

And now Vander Zalm has
also announced that new
means tests will be devised for
people applying for welfare or
mincome. You can, of course,
define a handicapped person
legally in such a way that
about 75 percent of those now
receiving grants could be cut
off. Refusing mincome to
couples that may have assets
of $2500 is being mean, petty
and shoddy. Cutting people off

FED. GOVERNMENT
SPENDING $38.4 BILLION

The budgetary expenditures
of the federal government will
rise to $38.4 billion this year, an
increase of 19 per cent over
what was spent in the 12-month
period ending March 31.

Two-thirds of the increase
will be used to meet projected
increases in payments already
dictated by law, such as unem-
ployment insurance, medicare
and education expenditures.
These ‘‘statutory’’ expendi-
tures will account for 56 per
cent of the total spending.

The remaining one-third of
the increase will go to cover
‘rising costs of salaries, capital
expenditures, and goods and
services for government
departments and agencies.

Looked at another way, the
$6.2 billion increase breaks
down as follows:

@ 51.1 per cent will cover
increased transfer payments
and grants to individuals,
industry, and other levels of
government;

© 18.6 per cent will pay for
increased personnel costs, with
total ‘‘“man-years”’ projected to
increase by only 1.3 per cent,
and salaries expected to stay
within the AIB guidelines;

© 17.3 per cent is the pro-
jected cost increase of the
Public Debt;

© 8.8 per cent will pay for

the increased cost of goods and
services, while the remainder
will cover increased payments
to Crown Corporations, and
capital expenditures.

By Ministry, the Department
of Health and Welfare will
spend 22 per cent of the in-
crease, mostly on transfer
payments to people, while the
Department of Finance will
take about an equal amount of
the increase in federal-provin-
cial transfers and payments on
the Public Debt.

The other major increase is
in the Department of Man-
power and Immigration. It will
take 14.7 of the total increase,
largely to meet the rising cost
of Canada’s high unemploy-
ment.

The Department administers
the government contribution to
unemployment insurance,
which will go up by $810 million
next year to $1.7 billion, the
highest ever, to meet the cost
of benefits already paid out in
1975.

It will also see its allotted
‘“‘man-years” increase by 851,
22 per cent of the total 1.3 per
cent public service increase, to
add staff to Canada Manpower
Centres and the Unemploy-
ment Insurance Commission
“to serve a greatly increased
client population”, the official
announcement states.

welfare who live away from
populated centres just
cause them to move into Van-
couver and will solve nothing.

Why all these wild and irre-
sponsible statements by
Vander Zalm? How is it that
plants in his huge gardening
business receive better care
than poor people in his depart-
ment?

There’s no doubt in my mind
that Vander Zalm is doing
what big business interests
want him to do, and which he is
personally inclined to do as a
wealthy businessman himself.
That is to perpetuate the myth
that frauds by poor people are
responsible for high taxes and
heavy government spending.
It’s part of the same propa-
ganda that claims, equally
falsely, that wage increases
are the cause of inflation. It’s a
very convenient type of propa-
ganda for big corporations who
daily breed inflation by |
engaging in profiteering and
price fixing. It takes all the
heat off them.

The provincial government
is planning to lower or com-
pletely remove royalties and
taxes on the big domestic and —
foreign corporations that are
looting our natural resources.
This will mean a loss of
revenue for the government.
To adjust expenditures to this
lowered revenue, cuts are
being made in education,
municipal grants, hospital
grants and many other ser-
vices to people.

SOAK THE PEOPLE, HELP
THE RICH is the name of the

game as far as this govern-
ment is concerned.

There is one field in which in-
vestigations should be made,
and that is the field of corpor-
-ate welfare. I, and I’m sure

-many other people in this

province, would like to know:

How much did the mining
companies spend in the last
provincial election to elect
Social Credit? What promises
were made to them?

How much money did the in-
surance companies spend?
What promises were made to
them?

We don’t know how much
money was spent by these and
other corporate groups, but we
do know they are already
getting what they want.

Car insurance rates have
been boosted to the highest in
Canada in preparation for
legislation that will allow the
private insurance companies
back into B.C.

The mining corporations
have already been assured that
royalties will be cut or
abolished.

And we'll find out still more
when we see what legislation
will be brought forward by
Social Credit in the session of
the legislature that opens on
March 17th.

This government is no “free
enterprise’’ government.
Social Credit’s heart and soul
(if it has one) belongs to the big
corporations that dominate our
province. We have a “mon-
opoly enterprise” government,
in the hands of a millionaire
cabinet, with Archie Bunker
types for backbenchers (with
apologies to Archie Bunker
who shows some huma!
qualities now and again)