How to make money
selling your country

EDITORIAL

How to make lots of money and become rich by buying shares in the sellout of
your country’s natural resources — that’s the job being undertaken by stocks, bonds,
and security businesses in Canada today. It illustrates how little big business thinks of
patriotism when profits are involved.

An example of this is the
current campaign launched by
Pemberton Securities Limited
in Vancouver to encourage the
buying of shares in major
companies — most of them U.S.
owned — who are engaged in
buying up our natural resource
industries. _

Pemberton Securities has
taken to the air to advertise its
campaign and has issued
attractive brochures telling
prospective buyers the rosy
future that faces them if they
join in the orgy of profiteering
in the seHout of our resources.

In two attractive brochures,
one called “‘Newsletter’’ and the
other ‘‘Investment Review,’

Pemberton explains that the
U.S. is particularly interested
in our energy resources —
mainly oil and natural gas. It
points out that ‘‘Canadian
natural gas export to the United
States is projected to increase
about 230% from its present
level of 1,830 million cubic feet
per day between 1969 and 1979.”
Gleefully — and you can
almost see them rubbing their
hands in anticipation — Pember-
ton Securities points out that:
“The projections presented for
the various Canadian natural
resources industries leaves
little doubt that the future looks

most encouraging from an

investment point of view.”’

Jobs program needed

Cont’d. from pg. 1

in society, and that the trade
union movement as a whole
must assume a more active role
on behalf of our unemployed,
there was little stress laid on the
fact that unemployment is
indeed the key issue facing
workers today.

If the settlement of the
construction dispute did so little
to create the bright and busy
economy that was predicted,
what guarantee is there that a
settlement of the pulp dispute
will bring full employment and
a bright future for all the
workers in wood?

What is needed is a full recogni
tion that we can no longer
depend on the United States for
our markets; that socialist
countries which today make up
more than a third of the
population of the world want and
need our products and could
create a steady market for our
goods.

The newly developing
countries of Asia and Africa are
other potential outlets.

The present export of coal, .

iron ore, copper, wood, pulp, oil
and natural gas from this
province, if made use of in
secondary industries, would
alone create 126,000 new jobs for
B.C. workers.

Consequent revenues to the
government would in its turn
create the financial where-
withal to build thousands of new
homes, new schools to the value
of $50 million, more hospitals,
increased pensions, and the
reduction of taxes on homes,
sales tax, and other benefits.

NEW POLICIES

The B.C. Communist Party in
its fighting campaign for 100,000
new jobs for B.C.’s people points
out that B.C. is being kept as a
raw material hinterland for

foreign manufacturing indus
tries.
“They want our raw

materials, not manufactured
products to compete with their
plants abroad. They want us for
a captive market.”

In addition to new trade
policies, there must be research
into new uses for our natural
resources.

B.C.’s vast forest resources
provide a powerful base for a
large-scale wood manufacturing-
paper-chemical industry. The
uses are growing as wonders of
science expand.

There are literally thousands
of uses for wood, ranging from
the heaviest structural timbers
to sheer rayon, and including
linoleums, explosives, insulating
materials, synthetic rubbers,
artificial glass, ethyl alcohol,
acids, resins, hand soaps,
Sugars, tars, cattle feed,
lacquers, artificial silk, yeast,
conversion to oil, gasoline, etc.

In this field alone we could
lead the world!

As long ago as 1945, ‘‘Forest
Resources of British Columbia”’
prepared by Commissioner G.
Sloan, stated that ‘‘It is
axiomatic that any process that
converts raw materials into
manufactured form requires
labor services in direct ratio to
the degree of manufacture. In
other words, the higher the
degree of manufacture, the
greater number of people need
be employed to produce the end
product.’

“. -. In short, sawmilling
process doubles the value of the
primary logging product. The
pulp and paper process
quadruples the value of the
primary product. Greater
employment and monetary
return from our forest industries
is obtained by processing our
saw-milling and pulp and paper
products stillfurther. . .”’

The insanity of having on hand
thousands of people without
homes, students crammed into
shift classes, people dying for
the want of hospital beds, men
walking the streets without a
dime, youth wandering the
country looking for jobs, is
creating a slow burn in the minds
of thousands of our people.

Further, due to the successful
defiance of arbitrary and
reactionary strictures laid down
by governments and employers
this summer, organized labor
knows it has within its grasp the
power to change the situation,
and they will not wait three long
years to do it.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1970—=PAGE 12

The brochure says that:
““Because. of Canada’s
relationship with the U.S.
(Canada) appears to be heading
for a decade of unparalleled
growth ... Canada’s gas
reserves at this point are
perhaps even more important
than oil although both com-
modities are crucial to U.S.
development.”’

In case any of the potential
buyers of shares have any moral
doubt about the practise of
investing in the sellout of their
country, the Pemberton
Securities ‘‘Newsletter’’

hastens to reassure them with |

these words:

“A common complaint is that
raw materials exported return to
Canada as finished products.
This is true, but as Canada grows
as a result of development of its
resources it will be in a better
position to support the estab-
lishment of domestic processing

plants to satisfy the demand for -

finished products.”

Where has this happened over
the last two decades during
which U.S. monopolies have
taken over the major resource
industries of Canada? Nor will it

happen because these foreign -

industries are only interested in
our resources.

Realizing that this argument
may not by itself be assuring
enough, the brochure hastens to
add: “In addition, as pollution
is a major political is; ue it may

be better that Canada does not _

have processing plants until the
advancement of technology to
overcome these problems.”’

So, if you want to fight
pollution, send our raw
materials to other countries to
be processed — and let them
have the pollution — and the
profits.

When Canada has such friends,
who needs enemies?

B.C. forestry —

national disgrace

President of the IWA, Ron
Roley, speaking at the Western
Regional convention of the
union in the Georgia Hotel last
week, said the lagging refor-
estation program in B.C. is a
national disgrace.

For every acre of trees
planted, seven are cut down,
according to a story in the Sun
last week.

Roley said it was about time
the public’s attention was
focussed on the scandal in
forest management in the
province.

“The forests are not just our
livelihood; they are the most
important natural resource we
have on the west coast,” he
said.

(Next week we will carry a
special article reviewing the
recent IWA convention. Watch

for it.)

AUTO WORKERS PICKET LINE. The giant auto corporations have forced
their workers out on strike in the U.S. and Canada. UAW president
leonard Woodcock said the strike was precipitated by the wholesale
attack on production standards and grievance procedures by the auto
giants. The auto workers unions are in the forefront of the struggle

today for security and labor's rights.

Pollution board has
lost public's trust

Cont'd from pg. 1

The first hearing of the Pollu-
tion Control Board on the Utah
permit was to be held in Victoria
on November 30 of last year. At
that time the Board received
over 100 protests and petitions
objecting to the application. An
Island-wide protest was
organized by SPEC with pickets
appearing before the Legisla-
ture condemning the plan to
dump waste from the mine in the
Inlet.

A brief expressing concern

that the Bennett government -

would, as it always has in the
past, accede to the demands of
the giant U.S. corporation and
its customers in Japan, called on
the government to reject the
permit. The cabinet refused to
hear the SPEC brief by
conveniently having all cabinet

members ‘‘out of town’’ when

the delegation appeared.

The SPEC brief charged that
the provincial government
would be guilty of ‘‘a crime
against humanity”’ if it allowed
the U.S. mining company to pour
its waste into coastal waters.

At that time — eleven months
ago — the Pollution Control
Board called off its hearing in
face of the public protest and an-
nounced a new hearing would be
held within two months. It
refused to give assurances that a
full public hearing would be held
for all interested parties.

Since the first hearing the
record of the B.C. Pollution
Control Board has left much to
be desired. There have been so
many cases of the Board failing
to carry out its public responsi-

bility, and covering up for big
business, that it has lost all
public confidence.

To recall only some of its more
publicized cases: For months a
chemical plant at Squamish was
allowed to pour mercury into
Howe Sound without even being
investigated, although the
company had operated a long

time without a permit from the.

Board. Then there was the case
‘of the Board giving a company in
Richmond a clean bill of health,
yet all the time that company
was poisoning the surrounding
area with lead, which was
escaping from the plant.

The Utah application has
become a test of strength
between the anti-pollution
forces in B.C. and big industry
and its government backers.
This case points up the fact that
the main fight to save our
environment is to curb big
business from putting profits
before the common good, and to
bring these corporations and the
pollution they cause under rigid
and strict public control.

The public can no longer rely
on the B.C. Pollution Control
Board to do the job. It is a
creature set up by the Socred
government to approve
pollution— not stop it.

The first need is to demand
from the government that a full
public inquiry into the Utah
application be allowed before a
proper tribunal — and that
tribunal cannot be the present
Board whose members should be
fired.

ii