April 13, 1988
SO

Vol. 51, No. 14

F €$46E SECS CO88

WILLIAM ARKIN ... at public meeting in Vancouver April 11.

In January, 1985 when U.S. defence
policy analyst William Arkin released the
startling information that there were secret
agreements allowing the U.S. to deploy
nuclear depth charges in Canada in the
event of a crisis, he stated that Canada
“probably doesn’t have a choice” about
accepting the nuclear weapons.

This time, however, he believes Canada
does have a choice. And he is firmly con-
vinced that the federal government should act
quickly to reject the proposed purchase of
10 nuclear submarines before it is too late.

Arkin, a defence policy analyst with the
Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Pol-
icy Studies, was in Vancouver April 11 to
address a public meeting sponsored by
End the Arms Race, Science for Peace and
Greenpeace as part of the run-up to the
annual Walk for Peace.

The federal government’s white paper
on defence released last June and its deci-
sion to proceed with bids on the 10 to 12
nuclear submarines proposed in the white
paper has provoked a wave of opposition,
not only to the submarine purchase but
also to the policies outlined in the white

paper, which reverberated with cold war
rhetoric. But Defence Minister Perrin
Beatty stated last month that the govern-
ment is proceeding and wants to complete
the bids on the submarine construction
before the end of the year.

“Canada is about to do something very
stupid,” Arkin told the audience in the
Vancouver Planetarium. “But it is not a
decision based on careful study or
analysis — it’s a political decision.”

The white paper and the submarine
program are, in fact, echoes of the defence
department’s own agenda, he emphasized,
citing the comments of General Manson,
chief of the general defence council, who
told Ottawa hearings last June: “I can’t
think of a single recommendation of the
department that has not been brought into
the white paper.”

“So much for Perrin -Beatty’s brilliant
career,” Arkin remarked. “Evidently he
took all the recommendations of the
department of national defence, spliced
them together and threw in a lot of cold
war rhetoric and voila — a Canadian
defence policy.”

But it is a policy which is out of step
with the rest of world and will commit
Canada to an enormously costly and dan-
gerous submarine program for which
there is “‘no rationale”. he said.

The government has argued that it
needs the submarines to enhance Arctic
sovereignty, to keep vital sea lanes in the
Atlantic and the Pacific open and to coun-
ter the “growing Soviet maritime threat.”
But none of those arguments hold up, he
said.

Beatty initially played up the issue of
Arctic sovereignty in an effort to sell the
program, but even the federal government
itself is giving little credence to the Arctic
issue, he said, quoting a letter from Joe
Clark. In the letter, which appeared in
newspapers April 6, the external affairs
minister said of the submarines: “They are
intended primarily for use in the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans and their role is purely
defensive.”

-“Even the federal government is now
saying that the Arctic is a peripheral mis-
sion,” Arkin added.

But if subs are to be used in the Arctic,

see OTTAWA page 2

Tribune
letters
spark

Moscow

debate

— page 8 —

B.C. NDP
follows
Que. wing
on Meech
Accord

It is not an election year, and the
leader of the New Democratic Party is
in no political trouble. So the 1988
British Columbia NDP convention
last weekend was not a media
attention-getter.

But a resolution on the federal-
provincial accord that takes its name
from a once-obscure body of water in
Quebec did reveal something about
provincial leader Mike Harcourt.

Or perhaps it confirmed something
about the person who celebrated the
first anniversary of heading B.C.’s
New Democrats at the convention.
Harcourt, it appears, is willing to fol-
low his own agenda even if his party
votes en masse against it.

The 600-odd delegates on Saturday
overwhelmingly rejected the Meech
Lake accord, for the same reasons
that the accord is in trouble in Q. bec
and elsewhere in Canada.

That resolution, backed by unani-
mous approval of the party’s provin-
cial council, contained the objections
of thousands of Canadians to the
accord. It has been attacked for effec-
tively undermining the Constitution
by ignoring Native land claims and
title rights, labour rights and women’s
rights, and for allowing provincial
governments unprecedented powers
over national education, health and
social service programs. Its provision
on Quebec has been dismissed as
meaningless. It denies the right of the

' territories to seek provincehood with-

out the approval of the provinces.
The composite resolution con-

demned the Meech lake negotiating

process as “closed and undemo-

cratic.”
see NDP page 12