EDITORIAL ae

Once more on job creation

During the election campaign Brian Mulroney was
speaking of jobs, jobs, jobs, if the Tories succeeded in
capturing federal power in the country. (The Liberals
departed with 11.2 per cent of the work force unem-
ployed.)

Now Mulroney is prime minister and the magic wand
seems to have lost its power. The capitalist sy stem has
delivered 11.8 per cent into the morass of unemploy-
ment. It could be argued that this is the residue of
Liberal policy, not the first flickering of neo-
conservatism. What is perfectly clear is that capitalism,
whoever its helmsman, guarantees misery for the work-
ing people.

The Tories are still talking about the need to create
jobs, and Finance Minister Wilson is rummaging
through old Liberal department files to see where he can
find a few dollars to launch the program. But mostly, it
seems, the money will come from cutbacks.

The Canadian public has had some opportunity to
read between the lines and see that Tory cutbacks are in
the areas of social security; increased expenditures are in
the area of the military.

Michael Wilson goes blissfully on declaring that in
his economic statement to parliament, coming Nov. 8,
he will announce new government spending for job
creation.

The least that can be advised is to watch it carefully.
The money, if it materializes at all, is not going to come
out of the corporations or endanger the handouts to
which they’ve become so readily accustomed. It-is not

going to come out of the military budget which the
Tories have pledged to increase. -

It can be predicted fairly reliably that the Tory
method of “creating jobs”, which in truth is “creating
myths” will once again be the time-worn strategem of
generous contributions to the monopolies, cloaked in
the pretence that they will use the money to spread
happiness and prosperity by hiring armies of workers.

It hasn’t happened before. There’s no reason to
believe it will this time.

One clue as to where money will be found for the
Tory job-creation facade is in the remarks of Revenue
Minister Perrin Beatty and Minister of State for
Finance, Barbara McDougall, on Oct. 23. McDougall,
by refusing to rule it out, admitted the probability of
cuts in universal social programs such as the family
allowance and old age pensions on which millions
depend to make ends meet. No — not even to make
ends meet, simply to exist.

There is a significant body of opinion in Canada
which does not believe Tory promises that they can or
will create any notable number of jobs. They didn’t
believe the Tories when they were dodging questions in
the election campaign, and they don’t believe them
now.

What does that leave? It leaves what has always been
the genuine requirement, for workers and their allies
fight for new policies which compel the creation of jobs.

Workers on picket lines are showing that gains can be
made. The thing is to extend that fight to make the
government live up to its promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.

PM should stop kowtowing

The need for a made-in-Canada foreign policy could
not bea higher priority than it is right now. With Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney’s indecent courting of Presi-
dent Reagan and his policy of the U.S. over all, the
advice of former Prime Minister Trudeau seems most
timely.

“I told him he should stop kowtowing to Mr. Reagan
if he wants Canadians to respect him,” Trudeau told a
Montreal gathering (which included Mulroney) on Oct.
25:

Mulroney’s injudicious fawning on Reagan and
Reaganism is more than an embarrassment drawing the
barbs of cartoonists and columnists, it is a downright

danger to Canada. Trudeau’s insight into the affair,
from his unique vantage point, offers further evidence
that the sellout of Canadian sovereignty is continuing.

It is unfortunate that at this juncture the federal New
Democrats are striving to “adjust” rather than demand-
ing in a sharply critical way, a constructive way, that
Mulroney get his mind back onto the interests of the
Canadian people.

Demands for a made-in-Canada foreign policy
should meet the PM wherever he turns. The solution to
Canada’s domestic problems will not be found while we
are bound to destructive U.S. economic, political and
military drives against socialism, against the developing
countries — and not least, against its allies.

3 y: rae Ne
my Le Be LIT SE:

HE MONETARISTS, BRIT MINERS ¢

THE WALTZ OF ce

*) Profiteer of the week

Gasoline price wars may come and go, but the oil monopolié
profits go on forever. Texaco Canada Inc., Toronto, had an aft
tax profit for the nine months ended Sept. 30, of $313,000,000.
nice jump from $258,000,000 in the same nine months of 1983

TRIBUNE

3

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN e
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street a
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5
Phone (604) 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada — $14 one year; $8 six months
Foreign — $20 one year;

Second class mail registration number 1560

—_—

ose in the habit of scanning the
business pages of the daily newspapers
may have noticed the expensive full page
ads run by Pennyfarthing Development
Corporation, promoting the “last of the

People and Issues

the association, Dusty was a leader in the
fight to expand New Brighton Park, oné of
the few areas in the east end where the
public has access to the waterfront, from
its initial seven to the current 15 acres.

MURBs” — the Harbor Cove luxury
condominiums on Vancouver’s False
Creek.

Readers will remember Pennyfarthing
well — that was the developer which, hav-
ing completed Phase I of the project, then
turned over the construction contract for
Phase II to a non-union contractor —
J.C. Kerkhoff and Sons Construction.

What was particularly disturbing about
Pennyfarthing’s action was that the units
were pre-sold on the basis of a union con-
tractor’s price. When the contract was
turned over to Kerkhoff, who pays wages
35 per cent below union scale, Penny-
farthing pocketed the difference as profit.

But as the ads reveal, the developer will
be able to take advantage of a federal
program as well, even though the program
was nominally cancelled three years ago.

MURBs (Multiple Unit Residential
Building) were intended to give developers
tax incentives to build apartment housing
and that’s where the first distortion
appeared. A lot of developers used the
program to create luxury housing for the
upper rich — including Pennyfarthing
whose Harbor Cove condos start at
$172,000. The program was cancelled by
Finance Minister Marc Lalonde in 1981
but for projects already underway and
continuing — Harbor Cove, for example
— some aspects of the tax shelter program
are still in effect.

The deal gives Pennyfarthing all the
advantages. Because of the rare tax break
available, the company gets an added edge

in a generally depressed real estate market.
The market price stays high, but at the
same time, Pennyfarthing gets cut-rate
construction.

For the rest of us, it means just this:
federal tax dollars are being used to create
super-profits for a private developer who
is forcing down the wages for construction
workers, and thus reducing the benefits in
increased taxes and consumer spending
that go with higher wages. Pennyfarthing
flaunts that fact in full page ads.

But then, that’s what the ‘“‘New Reality”
is all about.

RS esi

eaders of the Tribune don’t need to be

told just how far out of step with
Humanity Vancouver’s Civic Non-Partisan
Association (NPA) really is. But it is inter-
esting to note — considering how the
NPA ridiculed city council’s decision last
year to declare Vancouver nuclear-
weapons free and to put signs up to that
effect — that there are dozens of cities
across the U.S. that have made similar
declarations. In fact, the list is outlined ina
story which appears on page 10.

But the NPA has also made dark mut-
terings in the media about city’s council’s
sister city relationship with Odessa —
unaware, presumably, that there are civic
leaders in such Socred strongholds as the
Cariboo who also advocate relations
between cities in British Columbia and the
USSR. ;

We note that Quesnel Mayor Michael
Pearce, in a letter to New Westminster

council Oct. 4, told aldermen that he
wanted to create a people’s movement for
peace by having B.C. cities twin with cities
in the Soviet Union.

“Perhaps we can start a large ‘people’
movement through better understanding
in both countires to pressure political
leaders to move to peace,” he wrote. “It is
only with an understanding that there is
your own personal equal in every city in
Russia who wants world peace that peace
will be achieved.”

eee eee

years, he’s fought and won victories
on behalf of his mainly working class
neighbors. And for those years, the efforts
of community activist Don “Dusty”
Greenwell, whose leadership and partici-
pation in struggles for more park space
and other improvements often brought
him up against the developer interests in
Vancouver’s East End, went unnoticed
outside of his immediate nieghborhood.

Now Dusty, a lifetime member of the
Hastings Community Association which he
has served for 32 years since 1953, has
become the second community volunteer
to receive the Vancouver Board of Parks
and Recreation award for service to the
community. It’s a small token —a
framed declaration on paper — but an
important recognition of years of unpaid
service to the community, during which he
would often find himself in opposition to
the policies of the parks board.

The award itself acknowledges Dusty’s
several achievements. Twice president of

Dusty also serves on the Stanley Par®
Citizens Advisory Committee, which,
ironically, is at odds with the parks board
because of its hasty approval of the con-
troversial expansion of the private aqua”
rium in the popular park. :

Despite a heart operation last year that
temporarily slowed him down, Dusty h j
no intention of retiring from active I@
and still appears before city council speak-
ing on various initiatives. So perhaps the
award sums up his years of service bes
when it notes “he still fights tirelessly fO%
the improvement of conditions in
Vancouver.”

; KOK Oe

f the image in the business community ©
former Canadian Labor Congress pre
ident Joe Morris was polished by 4
industrial inquiry commissioner’s rep?
on the Metro Transit dispute — a report
given a 90 per cent rebuff by transit
workers — it must be positively gleaming
now if his recent corporate appointment bs
any indication. 2a
According to an advertisement placed
in the Oct. 13 Financial Post, Morris ba
been appointed to the board of directol
of the Bank of Canada where he will jo!
the lineup of financial corporation exc
tives who advise bank governor Get
Bouey on the country’s monetary poli
If you’re wondering about the chances
of Morris’ championing the causes ©
lower interest rates at Bank board
meetings — you would probably g¢t
good answer from the transit drivers.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 7, 1984