on Friday.

More than 2,000 Native In-
dians from across Canada, nearly
1,000 aboard the ‘‘constitution
e€xpress’’, are pouring into Ot-
tawa this week in a demonstrative
effort to block the federal govern-
ment’s unilateral patriation of the
British North America Act
without protection for Nativ
Rights.

More than 300 Natives board-
ed two VIA rail trains in Van-
couver Tuesday and according to
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs
communications officer Pauline
Douglas the more than 700 seats

The huge vaulted ceilings of the old Via Rail station on Ter
Indian drums Monday night as several hundr
Constitution Express bound for Ottawa where t
shrined in the constitution. The express, whic
was to pick up passengers at major centres along the route an

booked were almost all occupied
by Wednesday morning as the
trains headed towards Winnipeg.

The ‘“‘constitution express”’,
dubbed as an ironic twist on
Trudeau’s attempt to railroad
through his constitutional pro-
posals, will be joined by two plane
loads of Native elders leaving
Vancouver Thursday and by hun-
dreds more in busloads from On-
tario and Quebec.

The mass lobby on Ottawa will
converge on the special
parliamentary committee study-
ing the Trudeau constitutional

TORONTO — declaring that
the demand of Indian peoples in
Canada for self determination is
Just, the Communist Party cen-
tral executive committee this
week expressed full support for
the Canada-wide ‘constitution
express’’ carrying native
demands to Ottawa.

The express ‘‘militantly ex-
Presses the will and determination
of the Indian people to defend

CP supports express

that all previous treaties and
agreements signed between the
Indian nations and Great Britain
will be honored by the govern-
ment of Canada, and that the
rights and freedoms of the Native
peoples in Canada will be entren-
ched in a new, made in Canada
constitution.

“Further we call upon the
government of Canada to seat the
representatives of the Indian,

their aboriginal rights and their Metis and Inuit peoples full par-
future as a people,” the CP said. ticipants in all future talks per-

“Wecallonthe government to taining to the Canadian constitu-
adopt a declaration guaranteeing _ tion.”

TORONTO — Communist
Party national leader William
Kashtan has declared the current
debates in and outside the British
Parliament on patriation of the
British North America Act to bea

‘shameful interference in the in-
ternal affairs of Canada.”’

The British action in
establishing a parliamentary
committee to study the problem
of patriation, federal minister of
external affairs

-MacGuigan’s visit to London
“cap in hand” to plead for patria-
tion and the full page adver-
isements in British newspapers
inserted by the right wing Nation-
al Citizens Coalition opposing
patriation, are all ‘‘humiliating
€xercises’’, said Kashtan.

The humiliating actions in Bri-
tain arise from the very proposal

_to patriate the BNA Act, said

Mark

Stop ‘humiliating’ act

Kashtan. ‘‘Why should it be
patriated? It is not a Canadian
Act. Ithas no relevance to the pre-
sent day needs and aspirations of
the Canadian people.

“It ignores the national rights
of the French Canadian people,
the rights of the Native peoples,
the rights of women, the genuine
democratic rights of the people.”’

Kashtan appealed for the
“humiliating exercise in Britain to
be stopped.

“Rather that arguing whether
the BNA Act should be patriated
unilaterally or by agreement with
the provinces, it should be scrap-
ped and steps taken to adopt a
new, made in Canada constitu-
tion,”’ he said.

The CP leader called for a con-
stituent assembly with power to
formulate a new constitution and
a charter of rights and freedoms.

minal Avenue echoed to the pounding of
ed people gathered for a rally before boarding the
hey will press the demand for Native rights to be en-
h was organized by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs,
d was expected to arrive at the capital

‘Constitution express’ to
draw over 2,000 to Ottawa

package Friday. About 70 Indian
bands from B.C. alone have
telexed the committee with a re-
quest to speak.

The Native community is
alarmed over the proposed
patriation of the BMA Act
without protection of aboriginal
rights enshrined in the constitu-
tion and without simultaneous
patriation of all proclamations,
agreements, treaties and con-
tracts between Native peoples and
the British crown entered into
over the last century.

Once back in Canada, all
Native rights and freedoms could
be legislated out of existence in
three years, argues the Union of
B.C. Indian Chiefs, which has in-
itiated legal action against the
federal government on behalf of
Native organizations across the
country.

Section 15 of the proposed
charter of rights guarantees equal
rights for every individual in
Canada without reference to the
special rights of any group. A
non-Indian could go to court
arguing that reserves were
“special rights” for Natives and
could conceivably win a ruling
that reserve lands are dis-
criminatory and illegal, the UB-
CIC warns.

The patriation of the BNA Act
would overrule the Indian Act
and grant jurisdiction over Indian
reserve lands to the provinces.
That would destroy the possibility.
of self-government for Native
peoples on their own territory.

Native organizations across the
country, united in the National
Indian Brotherhood, have mapp-
ed out acomprehensive campaign
to force Native issues on to the
constitutional table. The UBCIC
has taken on responsibility for
legal challenges and for the con-
stitution express, the Saskat-
chewan Federation of Indians is
drafting new constitutional pro-
posals and the National

Brotherhood has focused its at- °

tention on London.

Native representatives on the
constitution express will begin re-
turning home in the first week of
December, but a group will con-
tinue on to New York Dec. 8-9 to
continue lobbying at the United
Nations and with other interna-
tional organizations.

Kinnaird warns
of ‘resurgence
of right wing’

B.C. Federation of Labor presi-
dent Jim Kinnaird denounced the
Social Credit government as a gov-
ernment which is ‘‘vehemently
anti-labor’’ and ‘‘racked with scan-
dal,’’ and blasted provincial and
federal governments for their
‘narrow and selfish arguments’’
over the constitution — and also
offered a vindication of his ad-
ministration’s leadership — as the
Federation’s convention opened at
the Pacific National Exhibition in
Vancouver Monday.

This year’s convention, the larg-
est ever in the Federation’s history
with close to 1,000 delegates reg-
istered by Tuesday’s session, mark-
ed the 25th anniversary of the Fed-
eration, brought about in 1955 with

the national merger of the old _

Trades and Labor Congress and
the Canadian Congress of Labor.

But it also opened at a time of in-
creased speculation about a provin-
cial election and it was at the Soc-
reds that Kinnaird directed many
of his opening comments.

‘We have a government racked
with scandal . . . whose leader ap-
parently condones the forging of
letters to discredit his political op-
ponents,’ he said.

‘“‘We have a government that
gives the human resources port-
folio to Bill Vander Zalm and his
shovels and then to the long-finger-
ed Grace McCarthy.

“Lastly, we have a government
that is vehemently anti-labor . . .
riddled with known right-to-work
proponents that seek at every op-
portunity to turn the screws even
tighter on the labor movement in
this province.”

Kinnaird told delegates that they
‘‘must have a government that is
going to look out for people first.”’

That government should be the
NDP, he said, although he added:
“T am not going to make the claim
that the NDP is perfect that it will
always advance the interests of the
B.C. Federation of Labor above all
else.”’

The Federation president also
commented on the constitution de-
bate, criticizing the federal govern-
ment for its unilateral action in
seeking patriation and condemning
Bennett and Lougheed for ‘‘foster-
ing a form of western separation.”

He said that the Federation
would put forward the
convention’s view of the constitu-
tion to the parliamentary commit-
tee. Debate on several resolutions
on the issue was expected to be a
key part of the convention pro-

Kinnaird offered a vindication
of his administration’s leadership,
which was dubbed the ‘‘moderate’’
slate in the closely-contested elec-
tion in 1978.

He recalled that delegates had
warned that the militant policies of
the Federation would be watered
down if the Kinnaird slate was
elected.

“But not one of those predic-
tions of doom has been fulfilled,”’
he claimed, citing the picketing pol-
icy as an example.

' Kinnaird also warned of the “‘re- -

surgence on a global scale of a cold,
hard, callous right wing philosophy
. . . that has reared its head in this
province in the form of right-to-
work and by creating a climate in
which fascist, racist groups like the
Ku Klux Klan can exist.

“T have grave fears too about
having (Ronald Reagan) in charge
of the largest nuclear arsenal in the
world . . . who believes that an es-
calation of the arms race will some-
how or other create a climate which
disarmament can be bargained,”’
he added.

That same warning of the ‘‘re-
surgence of the right wing”’ was al-
so voiced in the report of the execu-
tive council presented to the con-
vention in the opening session
Monday.

The report, one of the most
lengthy in recent years, outlined a
detailed account of numerous dis-
putes in which the Federation had
become involved and the activities
of the Federation’s various depart-
ments.

But despite its length and detail it
offered little in the way of direction
or concrete action for unionists to
combat the ‘“‘full scale attack’’
which the report conceded ‘‘now
faces working people.’

In opening debate, George Hew-
ison, delegate from the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers’
Union told the convention that the
report was ‘‘a flat report’? which
“gives us a good chronology of the

events over the past year but not -

much more.
“Executive council reports in

past years have mapped out a pro-

gram,” he said, ‘‘and we certainly
need one now when you look at the
struggles now taking place.”

He cited the dispute at B.C. Tel,
“that big multinational monument
up on the hill,”’ the ‘‘Socred con-
spiracy to bring back private insur-
ance’’ and the resurgence of the Ku
Klux Klan “‘which is climbing out
of the garbage can of history.”

The economy is in deep trouble,
he said, and if there is not the same
recession in this province as in On-
tario and the U.S., it’s because our
resources are being ripped out at a
faster rate than ever before.

“There are serious times ahead
— and the trade union movement
needs a program to address them,”’
he said.

International Woodworkers
delegate Nick Chernoff told dele-
gates that the report ‘‘doesn’t do
justice to the TWU dispute and
urged the convention to consider a
mass demonstration and other ac-
tions to back the embattled union.
(Delegates later rallied outside the
B.C. Tel building.)

Longshoremen’s Union delegate
Rod Doran pointed to the anniver-

sary of the Federation, noting that -

unionists ‘‘have come a long way
since 1955.”

“But we’re still facing serious
problems,’’ he said, citing the thou-
sands of unemployed and the un-
organized plants where workers
have to accept whatever wages the
employer is prepared to give them.
“And we still need a program to
address those problems.”’

Healso emphasized the constitu-
tional issue and urged the Federa-
tion to call for a labor bill of rights
— ‘‘to guarantee the right to a job,
to a decent living for all working
people.”’

The convention continues until
Friday when elections for the Fed-
eration’s new executive — expected
to be enlarged this year — will be
completed.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 28, 1980—Page 3

t