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February 20, 2013 - No. 21 Speech from the Throne to British Columbia Legislature Pay the Rich Politics Poses Grave Danger to BC Polity  Speech from the Throne to British Columbia
Legislature Speech from the Throne to British Columbia Legislature Pay the Rich Politics Poses Grave Danger to BC PolityOn February 12, BC's Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon read the 5,000 word Speech from the Throne of Christy Clark's Liberal government to the BC Legislature. The speech represents the interests of the largest monopolies engaged in resource extraction, especially natural gas, but also forest and other monopolies, as they prepare to take the British Columbia economy on a dangerous path that will further impoverish the population and deepen their economic insecurity. In the name of "paying down the debt," the Liberal government claims it wants to hand over $50 billion to mainly London and New York moneylenders who presently rob the province of $2.5 billion a year in interest payments.
A global natural gas bonanza is unfolding to maximize profits for some of the richest monopolies in the world and those that consume it. Bechtel, the world's largest construction company, is presently building three LNG plants in Queensland, Australia to process and export to Asia some 38 million tons of gas from 40,000 coal seam wells in the Darling Downs area. Premier Clark is speculating that BC gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can be extracted, transported, liquefied and shipped at prices competitive with Australia and without creating a surplus, which will drive down the price. Fracking extracts natural gas by pumping water, sand and toxic chemicals deep into underground shale formations. In BC, this is occurring in the Horne River Basin (north of Fort Nelson) and Monteney Shale Basin (around Hudson Hope, Fort St. John and Dawson Creek areas). Both extraction and compression of the gas requires massive amounts of electricity. To accommodate this need, the Site C dam on the Peace River will be built at a huge public expense while wiping out vast areas of agricultural land, farmers' livelihoods and First Nations' territory. The Throne Speech is full of urgency to "seize the opportunity," which according to Clark will give rise to an Alberta-style Prosperity Fund, raise some $130 to $260 billion over the next 30 years with a new natural gas tax, pay off the $50 billion provincial debt and generally pave the streets with gold. Believe it at your peril. The monopolies Shell, Chevron, various Asian monopolies, Bechtel and others will soon dictate who is to benefit and pay, as happened when the Japanese steel mills pricked the northeast "coal bubble" in the 1980s. Today, a natural gas scheme is underway touted no less as a "green" alternative, and the BC government similar to the Queensland government are the handmaidens for politicizing the private interests of the most rapacious and socially irresponsible corporations on the planet. In addition to valid environmental concerns, the workers need also be concerned about how they will fare in this boondoggle. In Queensland's gas fields, construction is already based on "fly in, fly out" with construction workers imported from Ireland and elsewhere for a quick dollar and a dangerous, vulgarized lifestyle. No plan to build communities and a cultured stable life is envisioned. The Throne Speech spins a tale that five LNG plants will create 75,000 permanent jobs. LNG plant capacities are measured in million metric tons per annum (mmtpa). Once construction is completed and the allotment of workers required for a short period is dispersed, the permanent work force at LNG plants at present productivity average 40 workers per mmtpa. According to the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas LNG website, the Apache-Chevron LNG plant proposed for Kitimat will have 450 permanent workers. A second plant, LNG Canada (Shell Canada Ltd., PetroChina Company Limited, Korea Gas Corp, Mitsubishi Corporation (KOGAS)) will have 12 mmtpa or about 480 permanent jobs. Five such plants equal about 2,250 jobs, a tad short of 75,000! Today, BC has 165,000 unemployed workers. The entire Throne Speech is an attack on thinking. Not a single rational idea is presented about how to develop a direction for the economy to meet the needs of the people. While the speech mentions First Nations, it does not acknowledge their rights as nations to say yes or no to the plans of the monopolies to lay waste to their territories in frantic fracking for gas and its transportation.
The working class needs to have its independent voice in the Legislature fighting for an alternative pro-social direction for the economy and the affirmation of rights. The polity faces an election on May 14. The program of the workers' opposition is to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programs. Democratic renewal is required to empower the polity. The Legislature should not be a haven for private interests. It must represent public interests and the rights of all. The working class, youth and seniors have the social responsibility to prepare and organize to put their voice in the Legislature. How this is to be done must be on the minds and in the discussions of all including importantly amongst those in the trade unions and other organized social forces. No to the throne speech and the Liberal pay-the-rich regime of private interests in the Legislature! Let us together organize and prepare to put the voice of the people in the Legislature on May 14! Who Decides? We Decide! Whose Economy? Our Economy! Who Decides? We Decide! The Fight against HD Mining Company Is a Just Struggle for the Rights of All
Mark Olsen, spokesperson for the CSWU and Brian Cochrane, business agent for the IUOE immediately rejected this proposal saying the judicial review of Ottawa's decision to permit the Chinese temporary workers admission, now set for hearings in April, must proceed. The unions' applications at the review cite recently released Canadian workers' resumes applying for work at HD Mining, which show many of the applicants were qualified miners and machine operators. The unionists say this case is more than just the matter of HD Mining hiding the truth about "no Canadians qualified or wanting the jobs," a distortion also once propagated by Liberal Jobs Minister Pat Bell. Olsen is quoted as saying the judicial review will raise important questions about the entire Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP). The number of workers brought to Canada under this program has risen from 200,000 in 2007 to over 300,000 by the end of 2011. According to the BC Federation of Labour, some 70,000 temporary foreign workers are working in BC.
The Steelworkers' background paper concludes: "We do not believe this is the kind of Canada that most Canadians want: a country where highly exploited and dependent foreign workers with little opportunity to invoke their rights do the arduous work digging our coal while a few foreign shareholders and a foreign government and some Canadians enjoy the benefits, and unemployed Canadians sit idle at home [suffering] high unemployment rates." The paper criticizes the TFWP saying further: "It is unacceptable for corporations and governments to create low wage enclaves with highly exploited workers from abroad, especially when we still have severely high unemployment among British Columbians and Canadians. Historically working people have repeatedly fought against slavery, indentured servitude and other forms of dependent labour service." It concludes: "We will therefore continue to oppose fervently programs and developments such as the Murray River coal mine and similar projects which are designed for no other reason than to generate maximum profit and which aim to pit vulnerable and exploited foreign workers against job hungry domestic workers."
Another question posed by the HD Mining venture is who decides how BC natural resources are to be developed and for whose benefit. Nobody has consulted the First Nations peoples on how the development of coal on their hereditary territories will affect or benefit them and Mother Earth. The workers and polity of BC have had no official discussion about how coal mining in BC should be developed, let alone have they been given the power to decide on these matters that affect their livelihoods, communities, economy and future security. The polity has not even been allowed to sum up the experience of Tumbler Ridge from coal mining boom in 1981 to bust in the 1990s. The question of who decides is paramount in setting out an economic direction that will provide employment, prosperity and security for Canadian workers and their communities and towns on a long-term basis and defend their rights. The present arrangements including the TFWP are to pay the rich, serve monopoly right and deprive workers, First Nations and others of their rights. This must not and will not pass. (With files from CBC, Globe & Mail, United Steel Workers Background Paper) The Tumbler Ridge Boondoggle of the 1980s and Today's Situation The Tumbler Ridge municipality in northeastern BC. The HD Mining Company's desire to use 201 Chinese "temporary foreign workers" to long-wall mine coal at Tumbler Ridge, BC is another chapter in a pay the rich scheme with a thirty-seven year history. In 1976, the Bill Bennett Social Credit government answered the call of various financial speculators who had staked out potential metallurgical coal mines on the Murray and Wolverine Rivers east of the Rockies. The price of coal was relatively high then and profits could be made shipping it to Japan. The government used public funds to finance a megaproject, building a town and expanding BC Rail through the Rocky Mountains to transport the coal through west coast ports. The North East Coal Development plan became an expensive boondoggle for the BC polity costing the public treasury between $2.5 and $4 billion. The BC Rail 132 km electrified branch line including 15 km of tunnels opened in 1983 to the Quintette and Bullmoose mines, but it massively indebted the then publicly owned railroad. The fate of the "plan" was sealed by the world economic crisis of the 1980s and '90s, which saw the price of coal plummet. The original deal in 1981 was between a consortium of Japanese steel mills agreeing to purchase 100 million tons of coal over 15 years for US $7.5 billion from two mining companies, Denison Mines Inc. and the Teck Corporation, which operated the Quintette mine and Bullmoose mine respectively. When the world price for coal fell, the Japanese steel monopolies demanded to pay a lower price, and when the mining companies balked, the Japanese steel monopolies won a Supreme Court decision to lower the price and reimburse the consortium $4.6 million. The "boom" crashed by 1983. Tumbler Ridge, which was to have 10,000 people, peaked in 1991 at about 4,800, and then dropped to 1,900 in 2001. When world coal prices rose again, renewed interest in mining raised the population to 2,454 in 2006 with about 765 families. About ten percent of the population is from the Sekani Carrier and Cree nations. The Tumbler Ridge pay the rich scheme was outdone 20 years later when Premier Gordon Campbell "privatized" BC Rail, including the branch line. The U.S. owned Canadian National Railway seized BC Rail for about $1 billion, a fraction of the value put into it by the people of BC. This scandalous deal was helped along by Jim Sheppard, a former CEO of Finnings and Canfor, the largest BC wood monopoly, who was appointed to the Board of Directors of BC Rail by Campbell in 2001, and staying on through the sellout in 2003. Sheppard, an ally of Premier Christy Clark, is presently a player in the $1 million media campaign to discredit NDP leader Adrian Dix. The May provincial election agenda is being spun in this manner to divert attention away from the government's pay the rich politics. Part of that agenda is a new effort to export Tumbler Ridge coal to benefit and strengthen the financial oligarchs. Christy Clark and Jobs Minister Pat Bell, who recently announced his intent not to run in the election, went to China in 2011 when, among other "BC Jobs" schemes, they came up with the HD Mining Tumbler Ridge plot to feed Chinese steel mills with coal dug by "temporary foreign workers" from China. Meanwhile the giant Teck mining monopoly with six metallurgical coal mines in southwestern BC is considering reopening its northeast Quintette holdings should profit margins be high enough. The Canadian working class built Tumbler Ridge, the mines, the branch line with its 15 km of tunnels, then mined and transported the coal. Workers did this despite the negative machinations of the financial oligarchs and their destructive pay the rich schemes organised using corrupt politicians to rob the public treasury and the enormous value workers create transforming the natural bounty of Mother Earth. If the workers who did all the mental and physical work of building BC were the political decision makers, BC would be a very different place. For example, why would coal miners and their families not want to stabilize the industry and their communities and arrange to supply metallurgical coal to a Canadian steel industry? They could also trade coal internationally based on mutual benefit reflecting the actual price of production. An alternative direction would include a public inquiry to hold those to account who sold out BC rail, and demand its return from CNR for no more than the paltry price the public enterprise received. The skilled, educated modern producers mining and transporting BC coal have every potential to apply their skills and abilities to political affairs and together with the rest of the polity set a new direction for the BC economy. At present, the owners of capital, the rich, the oligarchs who own Teck and other mining monopolies negate the right of workers to decide and control their future and security. The Tumbler Ridge history including the present struggle against HD Mining to super-exploit "temporary foreign workers" from China and destroy the possibility of strengthening the local community, its social infrastructure and economy calls for the BC working class to negate those who are negating their right to set the economic and political agenda. History demands that the workers of British Columbia negate their negators and create a human-centred economy to ensure the rights of all to a secure life from birth through old age. Who Decides? That is part of the real agenda for discussion in the upcoming May election.
Stop Paying the Rich -- Increase Funding for Social Programs! Defend the Rights of BC Seniors
According to press reports, the family became alarmed when they had not heard from him for several days and subsequently found him extremely ill in his suite. He died several days later in hospital. Although fellow residents had asked in the dining room about his whereabouts, no attempt was made to check on him and the owner of the residence asserted, quite correctly, that it is not in the contract to check up on residents who do not show up for meals. Therein lies the problem. The business of the private operator is not to provide care according to the needs of the residents, even at the basic level of taking note that they are not where they are expected to be. The business of the private operator is to realize a profit based on fulfilling a contract. This capital-centred arrangement depends precisely on trumping a socially conscious, human-centred outlook of caring for individuals in a way that keeps them safe and secure. Cutbacks in staff and services to pocket more money for the ownership group can even trump the self-interest of the operator to keep residents alive and paying monthly fees.
A joint CBC-Business in Vancouver investigation into the "state of seniors' care in BC" conducted in early 2012 found that "According to the latest Canada Revenue Agency income data, the average annual income of BC seniors over the age of 75 totaled $33,024 in 2009. Even if they used all of that money to pay for retirement living, they could only afford to pay $2,752 a month." The investigation quoted various private operators lamenting low occupancy and luxury residences being sold when the anticipated profit was not forthcoming. The trend now is away from wholly private "independent living" residences towards private-public partnerships (P3s), particularly since 2006. P3s provide the "campuses of care" where seniors "age in place" with the majority of the complex care beds subsidized with public funds and all the revenue going to the private operator. The BC government is so determined to implement P3 pay-the-rich schemes that it keeps awarding contracts in spite of documented abuse and neglect of seniors. In 2006, the Vancouver Island Health Authority rejected the bid of the not-for-profit society that already operates a 125 bed complex care facility in the Comox Valley and awarded the contract for new complex care beds in the valley to Retirement Concepts. This occurred at a time when the Health Authority had been forced due to serious issues of abuse and neglect of residents to appoint an administrator to run Beacon Hill Villa, another Retirement Concepts' residence in Victoria. The Ministry of Health Services and the Interior Health Authority officials are promising to investigate and find out why the 91 year old resident "slipped through the cracks" and suffered a humiliating if not criminal death. Health care in all its aspects from prevention and home support, to hospitals and seniors' homes is a social responsibility and right. A health care system not based on upholding its social responsibility and guaranteeing the rights of all to health care is unacceptable. A health care system that views the sick, injured and elderly as clients and contracts to make guaranteed profits is irresponsible and anti-social. In such a system, responsibility lies with the shareholders and not with meeting the needs of the people and guaranteeing their right to health care. In communities throughout BC, a growing organized movement of seniors and their families, health care workers and communities are demanding a new direction for the economy to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programs such as a modern, humane, public health care system to protect and guarantee the health, well-being and dignity of all residents including its most vulnerable. Translink's "Catching Fare Evaders": Pretext to Hand Public Funds to Private Interests Skytrain in Lower Mainland provides landowners profitable condo development around skytrain stations." Translink is the BC Government's transit authority overseeing public transit operations (buses, trains and passenger ferries) in Greater Vancouver. Using the pretext of "catching fare evaders," Translink is spending over $170 million in public funds to install fare gates with scanner/card readers at train stations and ferry terminals and card readers on all buses. The present paper tickets and fare cards are being replaced by new tickets and fare cards that can be preloaded with monetary value. The card readers will automatically deduct fares from stored value on the cards. Compass, a huge British multi-national corporation will produce all tickets and fare cards, and own the vending machines at stations and terminals. Tickets and fare cards will still be available for purchase at drug and grocery store chains but Compass will receive a cut of the price no matter where tickets are bought. The new fare cards and gates are being introduced at a time when bus service is being cut and packed full buses are leaving riders behind. In January of this year, Translink imposed an across the board fare (user fee) increase of 10 per cent. Bus maintenance has been reduced and mechanics laid-off. Bus riders using the new pre-loaded cards will have to swipe their cards when entering and again when exiting buses or they will be charged for traveling in three zones even if they only travel in one or two zones. Bus drivers report that Translink considered putting the scanner/readers on the outside of buses so that doors would only open after cards are swiped thereby forcing all passengers to use pre-paid fares. Translink backed off when they realized that impossibly long lineups would occur and the region's many tourists would be inconvenienced. More security and armed police are being hired to patrol the system. Currently Translink spends $27 million annually on its police force of 167 officers. Apparently, new officers are being recruited in Britain. Passengers with no tickets or insufficient fares for a two or three zone ride face fines of $173. A big media campaign is currently underway against "cheaters" and "free loaders" to justify the expenditure of $170 million on equipment and the Compass claim on ticket sales to catch fare evaders. In economics, these types of security expenditures are known as faux frais (false costs). They add nothing to the value of what is being produced; the amount spent on faux frais must be deducted directly from added-value. Translink's 6,100 workers produced 230 million paid passenger rides in 2011. The value of those rides exceeds $1.3 billion. Translink budget's recorded transferred-value consumed in production includes (fuel and power -- $64,438,000) (amortization or depreciation of equipment and other assets -- $161,178,000) etc. However, the accounts record only a portion of added-value including claims of workers and salaried employees -- $518,296,000, and the claims of the moneylenders for interest -- $171,614,000. Added-value in the form of profit other than interest is not recorded. (The private interests that claim the hidden profit such as real estate developers, and an estimate of the amount will be discussed in subsequent articles. An approximate value for every ride can be found for which those corporate interests that benefit should be held responsible.) At present, the realization of the value of the 230 million paid passenger rides worth over $1.3 billion is a convoluted affair that includes individual taxation on property and gas consumption, government transfers and user fees as fares and bridge tolls. Partial realisation of total transit value (more than $1.3 billion) through user fees as fares amounted to $444,743,000 in 2011. Figures reported in Translink's own publication, The Buzzer, reveal that only 8,898 "infractions" or fare-evaders were found out of 586,129 fare checks conducted in 2012, amounting to 1.5 per cent. Using the 1.5 percent average fare evasion, the total amount lost in fares would have been approximately $6,671,145 in 2011 (1.5 per cent of fares paid equalling $444,743,000). Using this fare evasion of $6,671,145 as a pretext, Translink is spending $170 million on new equipment, handing over a portion of paid fares to the UK company Compass to manage the equipment, and hiring additional transit police to catch those who still evade paying fares. Most experts estimate that only a small fraction of the current fare evaders will pay fares because of the new equipment. No detailed study has been made of those who do not pay but transit police report that many of them are marginalised youth who most likely will continue to refuse paying or simply will not take transit. The entire incoherent scheme is to hand yet more money over to the monopolies that manufacture equipment for urban transit, contract out additional transit business to private interests and focus attention on user fees (fares and tolls) and individual taxation (property and gas taxes) as the way to realise transit value. This is to avoid discussing and instituting an alternate system to realise transit value, one that recognises the collective value of a mass transit system to the economy and society. The public transit system should be produced as much as possible without private profit extracted from monopoly manufacturers and providers of material or through contracting out to private companies. (Translink contracted services in 2011 amounted to $204,631,000 about one sixth of its budget.) Transit should be delivered universally as a public service for all by gradually eliminating user fees and individual taxation altogether. Rather than realising transit value from user fees and individual taxation, the transit authority would require payment of the price of production from those private interests that profit from mass transit with the rest coming from general provincial and federal revenue. Read The Marxist-Leninist
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The Throne
Speech spins a fantasy about how BC will become
rich by private monopolies extracting natural gas
from the northeast of the province and piping it
to Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) plants on the west
coast for export to Asia.
The speech
also launches another attack against BC teachers,
reiterating Clark's attempt to impose a "ten-year
class peace" by stripping teachers of their right
to bargain salaries and classroom size and
composition. It ignores that K-12 and
post-secondary education are financially starved,
depriving youth of quality education while opening
the sector to profiteering by private schools.
On February
7, HD Mining Chair, Penggui Yan, wrote a letter to
the Construction and Specialized Workers' Union
(CSWU) and the International Union of Operating
Engineers (IUOE). Yan asked them to call off the
Judicial Review of the Temporary Foreign Worker
Applications that allowed HD Mining to bring in
201 Chinese miners for a long-wall mining
operation at Murray River near Tumbler Ridge, BC.
He says he wants to use the Chinese miners for two
years to see if the mine is operable, and
henceforth will consult with the unions and train
Canadian workers in long-wall mining techniques if
the operation goes ahead.
The Liberal
government of Christy Clark back in 2011 touted
the HD Mining project as part of her Jobs BC
program promising employment and government
revenue. In a November 2012, background paper
researched by the United Steel Workers Union
District Six entitled "Who Owns Huiyon Holdings
and Other Questions on Planned Chinese Owned Coal
Mines in BC" the union raises a number of
important questions including -- Why did Premier
Christy Clark and Jobs Minister Pat Bell in
November 2011 make an agreement for HD Mining to
exploit the Tumbler Ridge coal deposits knowing,
but not telling the public, that temporary foreign
workers from China were to be employed? At that
time, a great fanfare was made about how they were
creating jobs in BC and encouraging the mining
industry in the province. They hid from the public
that "temporary foreign workers" were to be used
in the long-wall operation designed to export coal
to China. Today Pat Bell is back-peddling saying
the project is good, but "problems" exist with the
TFWP.
The ongoing
clash between HD Mining and the trade unions poses
significant challenges for the BC working class
and polity. One is how to put an end to Harper's
Temporary Foreign Workers Program. The TFWP is an
instrument to divide workers and weaken their
organized resistance to attacks on their rights.
The Canadian working class is one class whether
considered temporary or permanent by owners of
capital. Temporary foreign workers are subjected
to complete denial of rights yet they represent a
significant section of over 300,000 members of the
working class. The Canadian working class cannot
and will not accept the denial of rights to any
section of the class no matter what legal category
the ruling elite give to particular workers. An
injury to one is an injury to all and an attack on
the dignity of all workers and their rights. The
TFWP uses phony categories to divide workers and
broaden competition for available work, such as
who is trained and considered "skilled" or not, to
drive down the wages, benefits, pensions and
working conditions of all members of the working
class and to steal the extracted natural resources
without returning a similar value back to the
land, communities, economy and Canadian society.
The ones who profit from this division of the
working class and its denial of rights and theft
of natural resources are monopoly capitalists at
home and abroad. The TFWP must be abolished
because it directly deprives workers of their
rights and serves monopoly right. All temporary
foreign workers working in Canada today must
immediately be given permanent residence status if
they so desire along with the option of
citizenship and bringing their families to Canada.
Once again a
BC senior has met a tragic death while resident of
a private-for-profit "independent living"
facility. The 91-year-old man was a resident of a
facility operated by Retirement Concepts, one of
17 seniors' residences that it owns in the
province. He lived alone in an "independent
living" residence in Summerland. In independent
living, there is minimal "a la carte" medical care
assistance and services for a fee such as $7 to
put a bandage on a cut, $5 for a walk to the
dining room, etc. These fees are on top of a basic
payment from $3,000 to $8,000 per month for room
and board, depending on the community and
residence.
What is known
as the seniors' care business is a lucrative area,
a large section of which has been handed over by
government to a number of private capitalist
enterprises, some of them multinational real
estate trusts. Many have complicated
investor/operator arrangements that have an
investor side making profits while the operator
side "loses money" and qualifies for government
sanctioned slashing of workers' wages and
standards of care for residents. The most
successful of the private operators are those such
as Retirement Concepts that have secured
government contracts to provide "campuses of
care," which include all the levels from
"independent living" to "complex care" so that
most of their beds are publicly funded by the
government, while a portion are private for which
seniors and their families directly pay the
operator.