JUST ROSY.
HOWS IT LOOK?
Political con game
A Sa political con man, adept at bribing the voters with their own money to repose their trust in him, Premier W. A. C. Bennett has no peer.
His pitch in presenting his $1.45 billion budget to the legislature on February 4 was unchanged. As all his budgets have been, this too, was a "people's budget." The formula was one he has perfected over the years. Raise the grant to home owners, with an additional $50 now to those over 65, but deny increased aid to the municipalities so that taxes continue to soar. Allocate funds to create jobs, but fail to adopt a tax structure that would penalize corporations exporting our natural resources and encourage the processing of those resources at home to produce lasting employment. Set aside funds for beautifying the province, but permit mining corporations to devastate entire areas.
And the inevitable concluding argument to persuade the voters to "invest" in Social Credit — British Columbia remains debt-free, although contingent liabilities, partially financed out of government controlled pension schemes that are among the worst in the country, have climbed to $2.6 billion.
When he was asked if this were an election budget, Bennett replied, "All my budgets are election budgets." And, it should be added, particularly this one.
In a confidential letter sent last week to all Social Credit constituency executive members, "not to be read at a constituency meeting or in the presence of the news media," Social Credit provincial president George Driediger reported "there is every reason to believe we will be seeking a new mandate as early as May of this year." Presumably the slogan will be: "Social Credit cares — for millionaires."
All Bennett needs now is an issue through which he can exploit the divisions he and his ministers have promoted assiduously in their efforts to set government employees and teachers against taxpayers generally over wage increases; doctors against patients over
TfieTiJfherman
138 East Cordova Street. Vancouver 4   B C Phone 683-9655
25 CENTS A COPY $7 A YEAR $8 FOREIGN HAL GRIFFIN   Editor   MIKE JAMES, Assistant Editor
Second class mail registration number 1576 Published by the Fisherman Publishing Society every second Friday Deadline: Wednesday prior to publication
fees; home owners against tenants over grants; workers against welfare recipients, denounced by rehabilitation minister Phil Gaglardi as "deadbeats"; organized workers against pensioners, other unorganized workers and even against themselves over wages and living costs.
The real issues are unemployment, the need for manufacturing and processing, the restoration of democratic rights steadily being whittled away by repressive legislation. And, providing the backdrop to all these, is Bennett's advocacy of a common market with the U.S. which would seal the destiny of this province as a supplier of raw materials to U.S. industry and deny young Canadians their birthright.
In the meantime, foreign corporations, land speculators, real estate promoters, are having a heyday. Not since the pre-First World War days of the McBride Conservative government have so many fortunes been made by individuals closely linked to the government.
Not the popularity of the Bennett government, but its ability to exploit the divisions among the working people and their organizations, who can produce the only real alternative, enables it to remain in office. The grass roots Social Credit movement that sprang briefly to life from the parched soil left by the old Conservative-Liberal Coalition has long since been replaced by a political machine manipulated by big business.
As Bennett prepares to seek still another mandate to strip the trade unions and other organizations of their remaining rights, to impose new restraints on all except big business, it should be apparent that only the united efforts of all working people opposed to his policies can bring about his defeat at the polls.
Morning star, London
"But I assure you, Sir Alec, political life in
THE FISHERMAN Rhodesia IS going on as normal."
ONE of the reasons the Social Credit government has imposed a 6.5 percent ceiling on salary increases to school teachers and government employees is Premier W. A. C. Bennett's personal obsession with piling up surpluses. It's a perverse point of pride with him always to take in more than he spends as minister of finance and, like any other employer, he makes his fiscal "profit" at the expense of his employees and by gouging his unfortunate "customers", the taxpayers.
Teachers, whose basic salaries are paid by the government through the school boards under the government's complicated education finance formula, incurred the government's wrath by their opposition to its cutbacks in education, culminating in their apple publicity campaign to carry their case to the public. And the wrath grew when teachers staged their one day strike last fall to inform the public of the poverty level pensions being paid to older teachers who retired years ago.
Teachers pay six percent of their salaries into a government controlled pension fund, which totals some $300 million. If they quit before they have taught 20 years, all they get back is the amount they themselves have paid in, plus four percent interest. The greater part of the pension fund is sunk in B.C. Hydro and the PGE, and again, the government is required to guarantee only four percent interest to the fund. That's how Bennett finances his staggering $2.6 billion contingent liability debt. Where else can he get money at that interest rate? ★   ★ ★
Every so often Bennett spins off part of his accumulated surplus to establish such funds as the $25 million Cultural Fund, the $25 million First Citizens Fund and, in this last budget, another $25 million for a Green Belt Protection Fund and $10 million each for park development, reforestation and power line beautification funds.
The principal goes to finance contingent liabilities and only the interest is paid out in grants. Whether they do it through direct taxation or indirectly by foregoing oft-promised B.C. Hydro bill reductions, the taxpayers pay.
Municipalities along the Fraser River need tertiary treatment sewage plants to reduce pollution. The Greater Vancouver area will be strangled by its own traffic within a few years unless a rapid transit system is built. People are living longer, but the infirmities of old age are compounded by lack of chronic hospitals.
But Bennett, you will be pleased to know, sits on an accumulated surplus which is expected to be close to $250 million by the end of this fiscal year.
★   * *
In the mail this week we have a note from John Daly at Garden Bay informing us that 91-year old fisherman-author Bertrand W. (Bill) Sinclair, known far and wide along the coast as the former owner of the troller Hoo Hoo, is now in the extended care unit at Sechelt Hospital, more by reason of advanced age, we gather, than ill health.
At the height of his writing career, Bill Sinclair's novels, the best of which perhaps is Poor Man's Rock, were widely read in this country and the U.S. and though they have long been out of print, you can still pick up the occasional copy in second hand bookstores.
We also have a note from another old timer, George deVries at Penticton, for whom The Fisherman is his principal link with the fishing industry.
He writes that it has been a hard winter in the Okanagan and, with 63 inches of snow so far, it's hard for him to get around. He's hoping for an early spring — and who isn't?
Dr. Peter Larkin, whose name is familiar to many fishermen,
• This picture of gillnetter Harry Diamond was taken when he visited The Fisherman offices following his recent election as president of Steveston Fishermen's Local.
has been appointed head of the zoology department at University of British Columbia.
Since he received his first appointment as an assistant professor at UBC and simultaneously became the B.C. Game Commissioner's first full time fisheries biologist in 1948, he has been variously director of the Institute of Fisheries at UBC and director of the Fisheries Research Board's Biological Station at Nanaimo.
In 1969, when the Institute of Fisheries broadened its scope to become the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, he resigned as director but retained the appointment as professor of zoology he had held since 1966.
★ * ★
A CBC color television program of particular interest to fishermen will be screened at 9:30 p.m. on February 29. Entitled "Who Owns the Sea?", it will deal with such controversial questions as offshore fishing and mineral rights.
The West coast part was taken aboard the deepsea tug Gibralter Straits, the East coast part aboard the supertanker T. G. Shaughnessy, and the Arctic part aboard the icebreaker St. Laurent during a record far north penetration.
★ ★ *
We have been remiss in not reporting earlier the death at Kamloops last October 2 of longtime halibut fisherman Andrew Bushman. The industry veteran, born in Norway in 1888, came to this country in 1915 and farmed for many years in Saskatchewan before moving to the Pacific coast and entering the fishing industry in the late thirties.
His career in the industry began when he fished with his brother, Walter, on the latter's Selma H. In later years, before his retirement in 1956, he fished on a number of well known units of the longline fleet, among them the Mother 2 and the Teeny Milly.
Surviving members of his family include his brother Walter who retired from the industry in 1962 after a long career and now lives in Haney.
*   ★ ★
As if to show its contempt for public opinion, Atlantic Richfield Oil Company has put into service the Arco Prudhoe Bay, first of five 70,000-ton tankers it intends running between Prince William Sound and Washington state ports.
The vessel is reported to have loaded a cargo of crude oil at Cook Inlet recently for delivery at Long Beach. But she was specifically built for the Valdez-Cherry Point run, on which the oil company no doubt intends placing her just as soon as it gets the objections of fault—finding environmentalists and commercial fishermen out of its hair.