@ TAXES: Vancouver city council's finance commit- tee won't be taking any action on the contentious proposal that would cut in- dustry taxes — and COPE can take much of the credit for blocking the scheme, page 2. (SSB SBSBBBBBASLeESeaey § CHILE: Isabel Letelier, widow of murdered } Popular Unity minister § Orlando Letelier, marked | the second anniversary of her husband’s death with } j | Toronto, page 7. }@ SOLIDARITY: Some 300 | delegates from 110 coun- | tries were in Addis Ababa } last month at the Inter- national Conference of Solidarity with the Strug- gle of the African and dian professor Louis ' | Feldhammer was among them, page 9. }® LABOR: A report issued by the CUPE local in Kamloops points to pro- blems facing the public employees’ union — pro- blems that the national ex- ecutive cannot afford to Re anor: page 12. a moving address in amare i ment wrees necro Arab People — and Cana- | ‘Gov't not bargaining’ The Canadian Union of Public |} Employees was conducting strike | votes across the country this week } in an effort to force the federal } government, which has_ hardly bargained in the 18 months since the contract expired, to sit down and negotiate a contract. And if a strike does result, the president of the Vancouver local warned, the responsibility will rest squarely on the federal govern- which has aggravated the dispute by publishing a series of ads distor- ting union demands and by - threatening to impose strike- | breaking legislation. | Meetings to conduct the vote for | a strike mandate and to study the highlights of the conciliators’ | reports have already begun in the east and the last of the meetings, including that for Vancouver CUPW members, are scheduled for Sunday. Results of the national vote are expected Monday, Oc- tober 16. Postal workers are being asked: to give the national CUPW executive the authority to call a strike, if necessary, to achieve a collective agreement. When the outcome of the national vote is known October 16, it is | expected that there will be an overwhelming mandate for a strike — the inevitable result of a year and a half of frustrated bargaining during which time the federal government has done little more than insist on major rollbacks in the agreement. “There never has been any really serious bargaining on the | part of the government,” Van- couver CUPW local president see BACK-TO-WORK pg. 12 further ~ Lette BT aoe Poe |e Dt neg g vote on stri Some 200 people, in a demonstration organized by the Toronto Committee for a Democratic Chile, mar- ched outside the Sheraton Inn in Toronto last week to protest the reception inside for two Chilean cabinet ministers. The two, Alvaro Marquez de la Plata, agricultural minister, and Sergio de Castro, minister of finance, were here at the invitation of the Canadian Association for Latin America, representing top business interests, and were seeking loans and investments for Chile. —Tom Morris photos CCW leads Ottawa protest About 250 chanting demon- strators marched in front of Parliament’s doors for four hours Tuesday demanding that the federal government withdraw its _ cuts in family allowance payments as a first order of business. The demonstration included men, women and children from Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal, led by the Toronto based Congress of Canadian Women, (CCW), La Ligue des Femmes from Montreal and the Coalition to Stop the Cuts in Family Allowances from Hamilton. The demonstration was the latest action in a countrywide campaign Threat of tanker ports The report of the National Energy Board on oil supply and demand is a setback for the pro- ponents of the Kitimat oil port - and pipeline project, but left the door open for a supertanker oil port on B.C.’s coast, United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union energy expert Arnie Thomlinson said this week. Thomlinson, who represented the union before Andrew Thomp- son’s West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry and the later NEB hearings, noted that although the NEB report acknowledged that an oil port is not required to meet Canadian needs, it did not discount the possibility of an oil port and pipeline to move oil through to the U.S. As predicted by observers at the’ NEB hearings, the energy board completely reversed its position of two years ago that Canada faced an energy shortage. Basing itself in information supplied by the | major multinational oil cor- porations, the board now reports a surplus of oil and has given the oil companies a guarantee of con- tinued large exports and possible increased exports to the U.S. The Kitimat project was caught _| remains in NEB report in the squeeze by the demands of the major oil interests for in- creased exports, and could not carry its contention that the port was required for Canadian needs. Kitimat Pipeline Company had see OIL pg. 3 sparked by the CCW to reverse the federal order to cut family allowance payments from $28 to $20 for each child in the country. ~ “Tt was an overwhelming suc- cess,” CCW ‘activist. and Com- munist Party women’s secretary Nancy McDonald told the Tribune Wednesday, ‘“‘We made our message strong and clear.” While demonstrators continued to march outside, a delegation of leaders from each of the cities went inside Parliament to present federal minister of health and welfare Monique Begin with a brief protesting the cuts and demanding that family allowance rates be doubled. The response from Begin ‘‘was very antagonistic, and it turned into a real confrontation,’ Mc- Donald said. ‘‘She had the nerve to tell our representatives: “You don’t look poor by the clothes your wearing.’ That’s the reception that we got.” Begin admitted to the delegation that ‘‘powerful forces are trying to dismantle Canada’s social security system,” McDonald said, but the minister accused the demon- strators of coming too late and not supporting her fight in the Liberal party for better policies. ‘“We told - her that it is she and her party that writes the government’s policy; we only suffer by it,”” McDonald said. The campaign against the family allowance cuts has taken off across the country, she stressed, with over 30,000 post cards to prime minister Trudeau against the cuts now distributed throughout. the country. McDonald said that the cam- paign will be stepped up to have the cuts withdrawn in the federal budget expected in early November. Last week, CUPE national president Grace Hartman told a meeting Sponsored by the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the Cuts in Family Allowances that the cuts ‘are coming at the worst time of the year for working people.” Clothing prices will rise by 31 percent this fal) and food prices will also be rising steeply, she said. “As parents and concerned citizens we must get angry, and become involved politically at every level,’’ Hartman said. Burnaby -Richmond vote October 16 Communist Party candidate . Homer Stevens was winding up his byelection campaign in Burnaby- Richmond-Delta this week as his campaign committee prepared for the October 16 vote. The campaign in the huge, sprawling riding, the only B.C. riding among the 15 in which byelections are scheduled, has been seen as the prelude to the federal general election which Trudeau must call next year and the issues have reflected that fact. “Ten years of Trudeau govern- ment have resulted in unem- ployment, inflation, a stagnant economy, a sinking dollar and a growing sense of insecurity,” Stevens declared in his election brochure, 15,000 copies of which were distributed throughout the riding. ; “The voters have the opportunity to send a strong message to Ottawa that they reject Liberal and Tory policies and they demand a new direction for Canadian affairs,”’ he said; in urging people to vote Communist. Stevens has addressed several all-candidates meetings called during the campaign and has appeared on both television and radio. Communist candidates are also running in four ridings in Ontario, three of them in Toronto and one in Hamilton. 48 @ HOMER STEVENS ... “vote for a new direction in Canadian af- fairs.” TO