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HARRY RANKIN
Dramatic increase in home seizures
ACCORDING to figures from the B.C. Supreme Court, 1,749 foreclosure actions were started against B.C. homeowners in the first six months of this year. In June alone, there were 446.
In all of last year only 432 such actions were launched. This year the number could be ten times greater. Over 4,000 people in B.C. may lose their homes.
Some of them will be small business people who went broke. Most of them will be working people who lost their jobs. In both cases they have little to look forward to. Business is going to get worse, not better, and unemployment will increase still more. We're in for a long, difficult period, similar to that of the Hungry Thirties.
One important feature will be significantly different from the Hungry Thirties, however. In the Thirties, prices went down — way down. This time, they continue to go up. The difference is that in the 1930s we still had a measure of "free enterprise" in the economy; we still had competition as its main feature.
Today that has all changed. Today every segment of the economy is controlled by a handful of corporations and, in many cases, just by one or two. They compete for customers, but they engage in price-fixing among themselves to keep up prices and to profiteer at the expense of the consumer. So prices now are being kept artificially and deliberately high, due to this price fixing by the big corporations.
Is there a way out for homeowners who face the loss of their homes? I think there is, but it requires govern ment action.
The first step needed is a ban on all foreclosures. We had it in the 1930s on homes and farms. Why can't we have it now?
The second is to pass' legislation lowering all interest rates on mortgages on homes to six percent this year and five percent the following year. If Ottawa can legislate to limit wage increases of federal' public employees to six percent this year and five percent next year, it can also legislate to limit the interest rates on home mortgages to the same levels.
Governments, both provincial and federal, got us into the mess we're in today. Their policies — wage controls, higher income taxes, cuts in old age pensions on the one hand, and a $2 billion gift from the federal treasury to the oil corporations on the other — will only make things worse for working people and the economy as a whole.
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'We're gonna bury It!'
Fish and Ships
AT a time when many industry pioneers and union builders are slipping away, it is good to hear from a veteran who not only retains his strong union loyalties, but also remains anxious to keep his fishing skills sharp — at age 80. Jim Henderson, of Campbell River, is such a fisherman. He wrote in a fine, clear hand to George Hewison last month to send along some dues money and to enclose a form indicating his interest in the Bill Rigby Home.
"I'm still creeping around," Henderson writes, "and was telling my grandson skippers that I would go for a trip with them on my birthday in August and make a set. That would be a record for them to remember — on August 17 I will be 80.
"Hoping you are keeping well and still singing our old song, 'Down by the Riverside'." The letter is signed, "James L. Henderson, union book 4788, joined in July, 1946, 46 years."
More than a dozen deadheads and snags were removed from Canoe Pass and Ladner Reach last week and, although the tug and barge that did the job were retained by the Fraser River Debris Control Committee, UFAWU fisherman Edgar Birch firmly believes "it was our union at work."
"A lot of people squawk about the union never doing anything for them," says Birch, "but this was just one of the many little things that go unnoticed. It was because of the campaign that we put on to save the Samson 5, the bumper stickers that we put on our cars, the meetings we attended, that we got this co-operation and a very good job has been done.
"Now we can get snags pulled anywhere there is fishing and everyone benefits, the sport fishing people included."
Pinpointing the snags July 15 were union fishermen Ed Vidulich and Har-ley Berney, who went aboard the tug to assist in the work.
Fraser River district organizer Dennis Brown says that any fisherman can participate in the program to eliminate snags in his fishing areas on the river. To contact the committee, simply call Brown at the union hall, 684-3254.
Union intervention has paid off in another quarter and this time the result will be money in fishermen's pockets — for a while at least. On several occasions, including during a spring lobby to Ottawa, union president Jack Nichol pressed the government to abolish a new tax provision that would see income tax held from fishermen's earnings.
Last week, Revenue Minister William Rompkey advised Nichol that this proposal was "modified" in the June 28 budget, "which provides for income tax source withholding from remuneration paid to fishermen only when the fisherman 'elects' to have such withholding made."
The problem has not been entirely eliminated. If a fisherman does not elect to have taxes withheld, he or she must still pay two-thirds of the tax before Dec. 31 and the remainder upon filing a return. We hope to have more details on this change next week.
When an emergency picket line was needed at Ocean Fisheries July 15 to
protest the processing of Alaskan sockeye in violation of union policy, the efforts of several union staff on the scene were bolstered by Canfisco worker Hilda Bird, who responded to a hurried plea for help. The action produced a commitment from Ocean not to handle any more Alaska fish until shore and price contracts are settled.
Shoreworkers negotiating committee member Burma Lockett was sporting a black eye and had her arm in a sling last
week after a close call on treacherous Highway 16. Lockett was returning from a weekend in Prince Rupert when a bee flew into the car. As she tried to brush the insect away, the car went over the embankment. The car was wrecked, but Burma emerged with a twisted shoulder and some bruises. Police said they have no idea how she was able to walk away.
Overfishing and environmental destruction led to the complete closure of herring fishing in the USSRseveral years ago, but a recent report indicates limited fishing has resumed on that country's Pacific coast. As is often the case, the Soviet report is remarkably thin on detail, but we gather that Soviet scientists have undertaken herring enhancement.
The seven-paragraph release we received earlier this month reports that "artificial spawning grounds have been set up in the Sea of Okhotsk, with nets simulating weeds to prevent the eggs being washed ashore during gales."
Political coffers filled by Weston donations
RECENT disclosures of corporate political donations to Canada's federal parties suggest that George Weston Ltd. has been biting the hand that feeds it, dishing out big contributions to the Progressive Conservatives while reaping the benefits of major financial assistance from the Liberal Party.
Statements for 1980 filed with the chief electoral officer were released in Ottawa earlier this month. They show that Weston handed the Tories more than $30,000 in political donations in 1980, compared to a mere $13,000 consolation prize for the Grits.
That's big spending by any standard. The banks, the country's biggest political spenders, offer between $25,000 and $30,000 to each of the parties. Donations usually are kept strictly equal.
But in the same year that Joe Clark's Tories were trounced out of office in a federal election, Weston ordered its subsidiaries to jump on the Conservative bandwagon. It was also the year that negotiations began between the federal government and the company for the purchase of B.C. Packers' rental fleet on behalf of three tribal councils, a deal closed this summer for $11.7 million.
Total Weston contributions to the Liberals were $13,000, including $10,000 from the parent firm and $3,000 from the company's east coast arm, Connor Bros. Ltd.
But when it came to the Tories, headquarters shelled out $27,520. B.C. Packers added $2,500 for the Tories, nothing for
the Liberals. Connor Bros, kicked in $3,000 for a total donation of $33,020.
Naturally, there was nothing for the NDP, which declines corporate donations in any case.
Canadian Fishing Co. also betrayed a Tory bias. Nineteen-eighty was the year Canfisco's New England Fish parent went broke. Nonetheless, CFC dug deep and found $1,000 for the Conservatives and boycotted the Liberals.
J. S. McMillan picked the winners, donating $125 to the Liberals. That was the smallest fishing industry donation recorded, making McMillan the political cheapskate.
H. B. Nickerson, however, is a strong contender for the skinflint award. That large and closely-held Maritime monopoly donated $200 to the Liberals and $300 to the Tories, small change next to the Weston largesse.
Donations were given during the calendar year 1980, which included the Liberal victory in the federal election held Feb. 18.
National Sea, which now shares a marketing arrangement with Nickerson and dominates the east coast, also proved Conservative. National Sea gave a grudging $1,000 to the Liberals, but forked over $11,008.70 when the Tory bagman came calling.
How can Weston finance one party and reap favors from another? Basically, there really isn't too much difference between the two. What Weston wants, Weston gets.
4/THE FISHERMAN — JULY 21, 1982