ITS A FACT.
Canadians finance foreign domination
• Prepared by the Trade Union Research Bureau.
IN its 1978 annual report the Economic Council of Canada estimated that foreign controlled firms account for over 55 percent of the assets and equity in Canadian manufacturing industry, over 55 percent in mining, and over 70 percent in mineral fuels.
One of the perennial arguments of business and government leaders is that Canada does not have sufficient domestic capital to finance the development of its own industry and that therefore higher rates of profit and interest, lower living standards, and wage restraint is required to attract foreign investment to aid in the development and growth of our economy.
One of the results of extensive foreign ownership of Canadian industry and heavy reliance on foreign borrowing is that in 1978 Canada paid $5.4 billion in interest and dividends to foreign individuals and corporations — the equivalent of $540 for each employed Canadian.
The 1978 figure was 15 percent higher than the interest and dividend payments to foreigners in 1977.
The point about these figures is that Canadians produce enough excess capital year after year to repatriate foreign ownership. In 1978 alone the excess capita] produced in the form of interest and dividend payments to foreigners was enough to purchase all of the assets of nine of the largest industrial companies in Canada that are 90 to 100 percent owned by U.S. parent companies.
Those U.S. controlled companies and their 1977/78 assets are: Assets 1977/78 General Motors
(Canada) $1,471,492,000 Chrysler
(Canada) 805,108,000 Canadian General
Electric 668,108,000 IBM Canada 555,334,000 International
Harvester 612,431,000 Swift Canadian 119,533,000 General Foods 221,961,000 Dow Chemical of Canada 676,826,000
Kraft Ltd. _303,271,000
Total $5,434,914,000 The value of the combined assets of these nine Uncontrolled companies equals the transfer of interest and dividends to foreign owners of Canadian capital as produced by Canadians in just one year.
Editor, The Fisherman:
The proposed regulations circulated by the fisheries department for the 1979 salmon season amount to an admission of mismanagement and blatant irresponsibility. They discriminate against small boat fishermen and therefore will not solve the problems of the fishing industry.
It seems insane to eliminate combination boats while boats active year-round in other fisheries are allowed to fish salmon at peak periods.
I have been fishing for 12 years and now, through regulations, will be phased out while new boats enter the industry. Meanwhile, the fishing fleets of other countries are expanding because of the availability of B.C. fish stocks.
A good example of fisheries
mismanagement was the fall chum fishery of 1978.
Most gulf and Fraser system streams had very low escapement but there was well over one million chum salmon taken in Areas 12 and 13.
Regulations against combination boats would not change that kind of situation.
The fact of the matter is that most combination boats catch the bulk of their fish in one fishery, leaving the alternate fishery for times of extreme need. Boats taking advantage of both the fisheries they are equipped for are a very small percentage of the combination fleet.
Regulations, if they must be imposed, should govern all gears.
DAVE McINTOSH North Vancouver
• The Fisherman welcomes letters to the editor, asking only that they carry the signature and address of the writer. Opinions expressed are those of the writers; they do not necessarily reflect and may in
fact be opposed to the views of The Fisherman and the UFAWU. The Fisherman reserves the right to edit letters to meet space requirements. Letters should be typed if possible.
When it comes to sharing our resources Pierre and Joe really mean business
HAMBURG5
BARRETTBTOB BENNETTBMSg
"Tell 'em it's for a party."
big business
WITH a disregard for fact that only they are capable of, the Social Credit Party ad men have cast their client as the foremost guardian of human rights in British Columbia, a claim that is completely refuted by an April 4 report on a meeting of the B.C. Human Rights Commission published in The Victoria Colonist.
The commission — designed to foster awareness of human rights in the province — was tainted from the day of its appointment las fall by labor minister Alan Williams.
To head the commission, Williams picked Margaret Strongi-tharm, whose son Doug was executive assistant to attorney general Garde Gardom and a Williams appointee to the Workers' Compensation Board.
To leave no doubt about his disregard for appearance, Williams added Jock Smith, a former Surrey school trustee, to the 12-person commission.
Only weeks before, Smith and the board on which he was a trustee had been found in violation of the human rights code in a dispute over teachers' maternity leave.
Since their appointment, the commissioners have disgraced themselves by their contempt for human rights. Smith, said the Colonist, described as "nonsense" a sex discrimination case now before a board of inquiry.
Commissioner Ted Pearce.a Vancouver lawyer, proposed the commission tackle discrimination against homosexuals with a "take a gay to lunch day," an attempt at humor that went over well with fellow commissioners.
Pearce also opined that men should "have the right to throw women reporters the hell out" of locker rooms after sporting events.
The only motion passed called on Williams to make the human rights branch, under director Kathleen Ruff, answerable to the commission.
The Socreds claim the Bill of Rights promised in their abortive throne speech "will for the first time define by law the inalienable rights of the individual British Columbian."
Will it protect the individual from the Socreds and their com-missions?
* * * A couple of issues ago we reported that UFAWU honorary member and longtime halibut fisherman Barney Jensen was getting ready for a trip to his birthplace in the Veseralen area of northern Norway. This week we learned from another retired longliner, Einar Jensen, that he, too, is planning a trip back to Vesteralen in May or June.
Both men share the same
name and birthplace (and UFAWU membership) but they're not related. Perhaps best remembered as owner of the halibut boat Good Partner, which he sold eight or nine years ago, Einar also has a union record dating back to the late twenties when he first longlined out of Prince Rupert.
When he wasn't running his own boat, he was skippering company vessels. In fact, at a youthful 75 years of age, he had been slated to take out the Judy Lee in the recent herring roe fishery until hospitalization for leg surgery forced cancellation of his plans. He's now well on the way to recovery, looking forward to his trip to Norway and, when we saw him the other day, was attending a meeting of the UFAWU Senior's Club in Fishermen's Hall.
Talking of the Seniors' Club, Steve Stavenes, its president, asks us to point out that the club's monthly social meetings are held in the auditorium of Fishermen's Hall, not in the lounge, as we said in the last issue. The socials are held on the first Wednesday in each month.
North Shore Electronics has been appointed sales and service agent in Prince Rupert for Decca Marine. Brian Williams of North Shore previously spent 15 years as Decca's representative at the port of Sept lies, Quebec. * * *
We have received a note from Dorothy Rogers of Maple Ridge, widow of Albion Local president Jack Rogers, whose death March 23 deprived the UFAWU of one of its staunchest veterans.
Thanking the UFAWU and the United Fishermen's Welfare Fund for "their financial help and kind messages of sympathy," she writes: "Jack had great respect and admiration for the union's endeavors on behalf of all its members and for my part I want to thank them for the help given to me in recent weeks."
week of the death in hospital at Seilkirk, Manitoba, on Feb. 14 of Larus Jonasson, a former UFAWU member who was a well known northern area gill-netter for many years.
Born and raised in Manitoba, he began fishing on Lake Winnipeg as a boy and moved to the Pacific coast in the late forties. Over the next 22 years, until a heart attack forced him to retire in 1970, he gillnetted the Skeena for A.B.C. Packing's North Pacific cannery and J. H. Todd's Inverness cannery, also working during winter months as a watchman at both plants.
The longtime member of the UFAWU's Prince Rupert Fishermen's Local is survived by his wife, Asta and daughter Lorraine.
* * *
After decades of taking potshots at the federal fisheries department from his bunker in the pages of the Vancouver Sun, outdoors columnist and sport-fishing advocate Lee Straight has taken a job as "sport-fishing ombudsman" under fisheries Pacific regional director Ron MacLeod.
The appointment will chagrin many commercial fishermen, who have found Straight's narrow partisanship of sport-fishing always irritating and frequently enraging, but to B.C.'s Indian fishermen — commercial and subsistence — it is a direct slap in the face.
Straight's ill-informed musings during last fall's hatchery surplus controversy led the Native Brotherhood to condemn him as a racist. A Brotherhood demonstration supported by the UFAWU pinpointed Straight as a key figure in the campaign to inflame public opinion against Indian food fishing.
Delbert Guerin, president of the Brotherhood's Vancouver local and chief of the Musqueam band, said he was incredulous that fisheries would appoint someone "so adamantly anti-Indian" to any post and wondered if "Straight will be as outspoken about poaching by sport fishermen as he is about the Indian food fishery."
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4/THE FISHERMAN — APRIL 12, 1979
We received word only last u .;■ ■■■■■■
138 East Cordova Street, Vancouver, B.C. V6A 1K9 Phone 683-9H55
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Published by the Fisherman Publishing Society every other Friday Deadline: Wednesday prior to publication.
