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June 29, 2012 - No. 99 British Columbia Jobs Plan In Contempt of Nation-Building  British
Columbia
Jobs
Plan British Columbia Jobs Plan In Contempt of Nation-BuildingThe BC Jobs Plan with its emphasis on exporting raw material corresponds with other plans across Canada such as Plan Nord in Quebec, the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario and the exporting of raw bitumen from Alberta's oil sands some of which is proposed to flow through a mostly BC pipeline to the west coast.
They view Canada's resources and people not as a solid base on which to build a nation with a vibrant self-reliant diverse economy but as a colonial outpost of resources and ready labour to extract resources as quickly and cheaply as possible to benefit distant owners of capital. Having exhausted the resources and despoiled the land, the monopolies desert to other regions of the world without having built anything lasting and secure.
"Canada Starts Here" -- Six Month Anti-Social, Anti-Worker, Nation-Wrecking Progress ReportIn September 2011, BC Premier Christy Clark announced her government's "plan to create long-term jobs and investment in our province." Entitled Canada Starts Here with the subtitle The BC Jobs Plan, the document was released amidst a great deal of marketing fanfare and photo-ops with mining, forestry and other workers, particularly in Northern BC.
In contrast to the bombast, a rational approach to addressing problems in the development of the economy to better meet the material, cultural and social needs of the workers, fishers, farmers, small business owners, youth, seniors and every other section of the working people would be to engage everyone in discussion about the way forward for the province and the obstacles to progress. The discussion would identify the problems the people face in securing their rights and place here at home not in the "Asia Pacific." No such discussion has taken place because the aim of the Premier and the Liberal Party in power has nothing to do with addressing problems facing the people and developing the economy to meet the needs of British Columbians. The aim has everything to do with eliminating obstacles for the rich to realize greater and greater profit through the exploitation of the resources of the province and the labour of the workers. It is very cynical to call this a BC Jobs Plan for at best the jobs to be created are insecure and relatively short-term until the resources are exhausted or not needed by those abroad. The plan is to increase the exploitation of immigrant workers and, along with the new EI and temporary foreign worker measures contained in Bill C-38, the omnibus budget bill, recently bullied through Parliament by the Harper government, a plan to drive down wages and working conditions for all. The Harper government's omnibus Bill C-38 also permits the devastation of the natural environment by foreign monopolies for which regulations are being abandoned so that at the end of their plunder they will have filled their pockets and left, while the damage to the environment will remain for us to repair. The Canada Starts Here plan has "three pillars" directed towards what are called eight sectors of the economy. The three pillars are 1) Working with employers and communities to enable job creation across the province; 2) Strengthening our infrastructure to get our goods to market; and 3) Expanding markets for BC products and services, particularly in Asia. The eight "sectors" are Forestry, Mining, Natural Gas, Agrifoods, Tourism, Transportation, International Education and Technology. The "Six Month Progress Report" refers to the Premier's first of two trade missions to "lead our country across the ocean." The first was the "BC Jobs and Trade Mission to China and India" last November which is said to have been the largest international delegation in BC history, with government officials joined by "250 delegates representing 150 BC companies, organizations and community groups." Sixty business deals and partnership agreements were signed in six sectors -- transportation, seafood, liquefied natural gas, mining, post-secondary education and forestry. The second expedition to Japan, Korea and the Philippines in the spring is not included in the report. The Six Month Progress Report highlights measures taken to attract more foreign investment, including tax incentives, "clearing unnecessary and bureaucratic red tape," which the Premier says has resulted in the approval of permits for four mines to extend operations and efforts to reduce the backlog of mining permits by 80 per cent by August 31, 2012. In October 2011, the first federal license ever granted for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports was approved for Kitimat where Royal Dutch Shell, Korea Gas Corp, Mitsubishi and China National Petroleum Corp have purchased a marine terminal as a possible site for an LNG export terminal. The stated goal of the Canada Starts Here plan is to have three LNG facilities by 2020. A Major Investments Office has been established to work with investors proposing large projects and measures are being taken to develop education programs to meet the needs of these investors for trained workers, as well as to target immigration and temporary foreign workers. To supply labour to the resource monopolies the Liberal government under Gordon Campbell created the Industry Training Authority Act in 2003 as an employer controlled apprenticeship training program. This replaced the former apprenticeship program established by the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission Act. Private monopolies control the Industry Training Authority (ITA) but the public treasury supplies the funds. In the last year alone, the BC government handed over more than $100 million to the ITA, along with $31 million as an "apprenticeship training tax credit program" for employers. The Plan also promises to facilitate the monopolies' removal of raw resources from BC with government financed infrastructure upgrades and expansions to seaports and airports.
The Clark government contends jobs are collateral compensation bestowed on workers by "investors." This reveals how far removed the actual producers are from controlling their economy and its direction, and how incoherent the existing institutions and arrangements have become. The real power lies with the monopolies and the politicization of their private interests. Clark says, "Prudent fiscal management has made BC a safe harbour for investors and business, and, when combined with other economic and educational advantages, a secure one." The working class and First Nations cannot allow themselves and the public interest to be dismissed so easily from the considerations of the future of the province. BC has to become a "safe harbour" for those who reside here and call this place home. This requires a new direction for the economy decided by the people and under their control.
Who the Jobs Plan and Its Privatization of
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All of these plans are in
contempt of nation-building. They are based on the rapid extraction and
export of
Canada's rich storehouse of natural resources to Asia, the United
States and elsewhere for the benefit of a privileged minority. The
similarity in substance amongst these plans makes for a
conclusion that the North American monopolies, the ruling oligarchs,
through their "think tanks" and other planning mechanisms, have
dictated their projects through governments, which far from defending
public interest represent an executive committee of the richest most
powerful international finance capitalists.
Their aim is to rob Canadian
resources at maximum speed
and profit while wrecking manufacturing and destroying Canadian social
programs and public services and without due consideration of the
natural environment. These self-serving billionaires who control the
North American monopolies want to maximize
their profits and eliminate any notion of Canadian sovereignty or
democratic empowerment of the actual producers who transform the bounty
of Mother Earth into useable products and services. They see Canada as
10 million square kilometres of land mass full of resources and with
labour at their beck and call. They
do not see a country and people aspiring to guarantee the rights of all
within a nation-building project of their own making. Such a
nation-building project aims for the empowerment of the people,
livelihoods for all, maximum education, health care, old age security
and other social programs and public services financed
through a self-reliant diverse economy based on manufacturing and
agriculture dedicated to providing individual and collective security
and a bright future.
The Premier, in a quote
that prefaces the Plan on the
government website, calls on British Columbians to join her in "telling
the world, Canada Starts Here." The first paragraph of the Plan says
that British Columbians have "both the opportunity and obligation to
lead our country across the ocean and secure our
place in the emerging economies of the Asia Pacific."
Every measure outlined in
the Six Month Progress Report
is aimed at satisfying the demands of the monopolies for unfettered
access to the natural resources of the province -- tax incentives,
infrastructure improvements providing roads, ports and rail lines, the
training of workers and importation of temporary
foreign workers without rights, government subsidies for projects,
faster and easier approval of mine expansions, new mines and other
projects etc.
The
authors
cite
examples.
The
developers
of
the
Montney
shale
gas
region, a large area covering northeastern BC and
northwestern Alberta, will be charged less than half the price of
production
of the electricity BC Hydro will provide them, a subsidy of about $150
million per year during peak production,
a loss that will be made up by raising electricity rates for BC
households and commercial users. Click to enlarge. |
The authors point out that providing subsidized electricity rates and infrastructure to these monopolies, BC Hydro undermines any motivation for them to conserve electricity. In the end, it will be BC households and small and medium-sized businesses that pay the bill.
A second major feature of the huge price increases to be passed on to BC households and small and medium-sized business electricity users in coming years is the outrageously high prices BC Hydro has been compelled to pay by the former Campbell Liberal government for Independent Power Producers' (IPP) privately-owned electricity production.
"In 2006, BC Hydro paid $87.50 per MWh for new supply. By 2009, the average price had risen to $124 per MWh," the report states. "According to the 2011 BC Hydro Review, private power projects supplied 16% of BC's total domestic electricity requirements, but accounted for 49% of overall domestic energy costs."
All told BC Hydro has been forced by government dictated policy to agree to a "total of $40 billion in long term contracts to purchase private power at unreasonably high prices."
From paying $290 million for private power contracts, the projected bill for 2014 will reach $1.1 billion.
The Clark Liberal government repeats the mantra that all the new investment in BC to extract and export natural resources is "about jobs." The truth is just the opposite. The resource extraction industries as they are now constituted provide very few jobs, and do not enhance communities. They are based on extraction at the lowest cost and highest profit and then desertion. They are not based on nation-building.
The loss of dozens of saw mills and pulp mills due in part to the increased export of raw logs especially from coastal communities forms part of this same mania to export raw material as quickly as possible without considering the long-term consequences of such destructive practices. The layoffs of those mill workers have exceeded any employment gained from gas extraction, mining and LNG.
The report notes: "The BC government justifies its resource export strategy by pointing to the very large investments that resource projects pump into BC's economy. For example, in its September 2011 'Jobs Plan' the government points to the large investments in new mines and other resource projects as key components of its overall economic development strategy. However, the Jobs Plan ignores the fact that these sectors are extremely capital intensive, and employ few British Columbians. In 2008, mining and oil and gas combined employed 28,100 workers, about 1.2% of total provincial employment."
The "Jobs Plan" reality contrasts sharply with the fact that in 2011 there were 183,400 officially unemployed in BC or 7.5 per cent of the workforce. Even if employment had doubled from 2008 to 2011 in the mining, oil and gas industries, there would have still been 155,300 unemployed workers in the province.
The Calvert/Lee analysis of what is taking place with BC Hydro is revealing for the working class. The "Jobs Plan" is really a plan to lead the province into impoverishment and ruin. By charging resource extraction monopolies a fraction of what BC Hydro has to pay for electricity from private producers, and considering BC Hydro's own price of production and costs of new infrastructure, the public enterprise is assuming an ever greater debt imposed on it by the politicization of the private interests of the resource monopolies and private power companies. This public debt becomes part of the excuse for cutbacks to social programs and public services and increased individual taxation and user fees.
The Calvert/Lee research paper makes clear that the Liberal government, as the direct tool of finance capital investors in resource extraction ventures and private power, is an instrument to politicize the private interests of the monopolies. This points to the necessity for a new direction for political and economic affairs of the province.
Note
1. Quoted from http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publ ications/BC%20Office/2012/06/CCPA-BC-Clean-Electricity.pdf
Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!
Flavelle Sawmill Closure in Port Moody, BC
Flavelle Sawmill in Port Moody, which produced lumber and cedar products such as siding and panelling, has been shut down. The company's parent company, Mill and Timber Products claims that, "Soaring insurance premiums in the wake of two fatal sawmill explosions in the BC interior caused the closure." The company says its annual insurance premium has jumped from $300,000 to just over one million dollars.
In the wake of the April 23 explosion at Lakeland Mills sawmill in Prince George that killed two workers and injured 22, WorkSafe BC ordered all mills in the province to inspect their premises for dust build-up. The mass media jumped to the conclusion that dust from dry pine beetle infected trees was the cause of the explosions and that all mills in the province were in danger and insurance rates would soar. Little consideration was given to a process where governments would hold companies to account to improve mill safety standards and no mills would be held ransom by insurance companies. Even less consideration was given to the fact that the working class is quite capable of building and enforcing a safe working environment if given the control. Why would workers want to work in an unsafe site, given a chance for control over conditions?
 Aerial view of the Flavelle Sawmill. |
However, other forces behind this wrecking of manufacturing may be at play at the Flavelle Mill and elsewhere. Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay, while lamenting the fact that the closure will severely affect the city's tax base, revealed that parent-owner Mill and Timber Products' long-term plan does not include a prosperous value-producing mill but to "develop" the waterfront property with a hotel, condominiums and marina. Mr. Clay also revealed that discussions on the future of the mill site have been going on for many years.
Port Moody is part of Greater Vancouver and appears to be caught in the stranglehold of big real estate development capital, which has little by little destroyed the city's manufacturing base and much of its agriculture. Port Moody became the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific railway in 1886. The first sawmill was established there in 1905. Over the next few decades, a string of mills, factories, oil refineries and port facilities such as Pacific Coast Terminals, the largest sulfur port in the world, were located along the eastern shores of Burrard Inlet in areas that were not directly in the rich agricultural regions of the nearby Fraser Valley.
In the last twenty years, Port Moody has been largely de-industrialized while real estate and road construction has spread even into the Fraser Valley agricultural regions. The IOCO (ESSO) refinery closed in 1995. Andre's winery closed in 2005. The Burrard Thermal (natural gas) Generating Station is now used by BC Hydro only as an emergency backup.
Successive Canadian governments have overseen the destruction of manufacturing including in BC. In contrast to the wrecking of manufacturing, real estate development and speculation in the Lower Mainland has exploded, even taking over prime agricultural land. Combined with this has been the ever increasing production and exporting of raw mineral and forestry commodities such as raw logs.
BC workers are discussing this problem in the context of developing their own agenda for nation-building. The current wrecking of manufacturing and food security is not sustainable and an alternative must be worked out and fought for with practical politics. A modern economy cannot sustain its requirements for social programs, full employment, infrastructure and public services without a nation-building project that has manufacturing as its basic creator of value and food security as an essential aspect. This means self-reliance in manufacturing and food security is key, with other elements of the economy such as exports, imports, tourism and real estate as supporting instruments not qualities to be relied on as a foundation.
In BC, several popular
slogans have developed that
reflect the desire for self-reliance and nation-building in a
sustainable way such as, "Refine it where you mine it," and "Saw it
where you log it." This sentiment can be developed into a mass movement
to bring the economy under the control of the actual producers
in harmony with the hereditary rights of First Nations and sensitive to
the needs of Mother Earth.
One thing is certain; this wrecking of manufacturing and food security and putting all our eggs in the basket of raw resource exports, tourism and real estate development is a dead end that does not bode well. Let's discuss and organize for an alternative!
Aveos Workers Fight for their Livelihoods and Against Dismantling of Aircraft Maintenance Sector
Aveos workers and their supporters protest the company's mass layoffs, Vancouver, March 19, 2012.
For more than three months now the Aveos workers
have been fighting non-stop in defence of their livelihoods and against
the dismantling of the aircraft maintenance sector in Canada in which
Aveos was a major player. Without warning, on March 18, Aveos closed
its facilities
across Canada, permanently laying off its 2,600 workers. On March 19,
it filed for and was
granted
bankruptcy protection under the Companies'
Creditors
Arrangement
Act (CCAA). On
March 20, the court overseeing the bankruptcy protection granted the
order to begin the sale of all Aveos assets.
The Aveos workers held many actions against such
wrecking. The targets of their protests were Air Canada, Aveos
and the Harper government for their refusal to take responsibility for
what is happening.
Air Canada and Aveos blame each other for the shutdown of Aveos. Air Canada washed its hands of Aveos, claiming it is an independent company and a mere subcontractor doing some of its maintenance work. It blames the closure on bad management by Aveos executives. It persists in claiming that Aveos is an independent company even though it was part of Air Canada until it was sold in 2007 and even though the Aveos workers were considered Air Canada workers until late in 2011 -- their pension fund was part of the Air Canada Pension Funds until July 2011 and is still held in trust by Air Canada. As well, the maintenance and overhaul centres where airframes were repaired are still owned by Air Canada. There are many other examples that show that the link between Air Canada and Aveos was never broken. In fact, right up until the shutdown, it is estimated that 85 per cent of Air Canada's heavy maintenance was being done by Aveos. For its part, Aveos blames Air Canada for its alleged financial troubles because the carrier was sending more and more of its maintenance work elsewhere.
 Airline workers participate in Ontario Day of Action Against Cuts, April 21, 2012. |
But workers' anger is primarily directed at the
arrogance and aloofness the Harper government has shown towards their
livelihoods, rights and the fate of this industrial sector
in Canada. A comment made by federal
Minister of Transport Denis Lebel on June
14 in the House of Commons typifies this arrogant detachment from the
real world. Answering an Opposition MP's question on
what the government intends to do to defend the workers and the sector,
Minister Lebel answered:
"As we have been saying since the beginning, this is an issue between private companies. Air Canada has 2,500 maintenance workers, it owns its whole maintenance team, of course they have their contracts with other companies to do the maintenance that is somehow more heavy duty. We are going to keep on making sure that the law is upheld, that our workers continue to have jobs. This is a matter between private companies and we are hearing that there are buyers coming forward for the former employees of Aveos."
Minister Lebel deliberately twists the truth. Besides the fraud that it is merely a private matter when livelihoods and an industrial sector are at stake, he gives false the impression that everything is fine and legal because maintenance activities carry on. But these are not the same workers he is talking about and they are not doing the same work. The 2,500 maintenance workers Minister Lebel refers to are the workers who are doing the on-site maintenance work of Air Canada -- the routine maintenance that is done between flights. The 2,600 workers who did the maintenance at Aveos are gone, terminated. Aveos was responsible for Air Canada's heavy maintenance -- different from the on-site maintenance -- which means airframes, engines and components like landing gears. This work was done in maintenance and overhaul centres that have now been closed. The fact that Air Canada has this maintenance work done by a different workforce does not replace what has been lost in terms of those workers' experience and their livelihoods.
As for as the law to which Minister Lebel refers, this is the Air Canada Public Participation Act adopted by the Mulroney government in 1998 after Air Canada was privatized. Again Minister Lebel is twisting the truth when he says that his government is going to make sure the law is upheld. The workers claim that Air Canada is violating the law and even the Quebec government has taken Air Canada to Court to demand a ruling that Air Canada is violating the law in closing the overhaul centre in Montreal.
The law says that as part
of its obligations, the
privatized Air Canada must "maintain operational and overhaul centres
in
the City of Winnipeg, the Montreal Urban Community and the City of
Mississauga." Is this the same as maintaining the on-site maintenance
activities to which Minister Lebel refers?
Minister Lebel seems oblivious to the fact that the workers are challenging Air Canada and his government on this matter and so are the Quebec government, while many experts have been quoted in the press saying that "operational and overhaul centres" cited in the law are precisely the Aveos facilities that have been shut down.
Minister Lebel also twists the truth in his comments that he has heard that there are buyers for the Aveos facilities who would potentially give Aveos workers their jobs back. In June, within the deadline set by the bankruptcy court, no buyer came forward for the airframes maintenance part of the company which was by far the largest segment of the operation and the one with the highest number of workers. The divestiture process for the components and engine maintenance parts of the operations is not yet completed and nothing has been said by the court about any results.
Workers report that for a couple of months now the officials of the Harper government have simply refused to talk to them and do not even acknowledge receipt of the faxes and emails they have sent to them.
Meanwhile the bankruptcy protection proceedings carry on and the workers are deprived of what belongs to them. At the beginning of April, the court overseeing the CCAA proceedings ordered Aveos to pay about $6 million in unpaid pre-filing wages to the Aveos workers plus about $450,000 in payroll contributions. This payment was made at a time when workers had been without income since the closure, from either wages or Employment Insurance. The payment was made under the hoax of providing immediate relief to the workers who were already facing personal bankruptcies and other hardships but the ruling says that this amount is a payment against the $2,000 of unpaid wages that are considered to be secured under CCAA. These unpaid secured wages are for vacation and overtime pay. So the workers were paid their regular unpaid pre-filing payroll cheques under the condition that if they accept this, they forego their other unpaid wages as secured payments which means that these monies are now in limbo. According to a union leader in Montreal of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents the Aveos workers, roughly 500 Montreal workers have found new jobs since the closure and more than 1,000 are still unemployed.
The issue of pensions is
also a major concern. The union
was recently notified that the Aveos pension plan was being wound up.
The union reports that a major question that cannot be answered at this
time is the solvency funding ratio at the date of windup because no
actuarial valuation of the plan was
done prior to Aveos' insolvency filing. This, the union says, is
related
to the intricacy of the pension plans because until July 2011, the
pension plan of the Aveos workers was still part of the Air Canada
pension plans and the money is still with Air Canada because the
transition of the plan to Aveos has yet to be
approved by the Office of the Ministry of Finance that supervises all
federally regulated pension plans. That final approval and transfer of
money was expected to be done sometime in 2013.
The Aveos workers continue to hold actions, talk to the media, demand justice for themselves and oppose the dismantling of the aircraft maintenance sector of the airlines industry in Canada.
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