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¢ Eco-Logic ¢

THE FURIOUS debate within the provincial NDP between
Cliff St. ansby’s ‘‘green caucus’? and Jack Munro’s IWA
highlights the struggle that will quite possibly destroy the
political Left in this country during the "90s, if it hasn't al-

ready done so.

The flashpoint is, of course, the
fate of the Carmanah Valley,
which has become the current
cause celebre in the wider
ecology-versus-jobs war. The
Carmanah has become a national
issue, in the same way that South
Moresby, Meares Island and the
Stein Valley have.

Years ago, when he was premier,
Dave Barrett told me that the NDP
wasn’t the party for the eco-freaks,
despite his own green sympathies,
for the obvious reason that ina
crunch the party would listen to its

I; you look at the
national parties
today, it is evident
that the Liberals are
once again going to
co-opt the issue of
the day, which is
environmentalism,
just as they did the
Sree trade debate.’’

traditional supporters, the unions.

Unions cannot exist without jobs
to provide dues to support a union
hierarchy. The raison d’etre of a
union is jobs.

Ergo, when push came to shove
in the environmental battles, the
unions would inevitably take the
short-term view, favoring im-
mediate exploitation of resources
in order to preserve jobs, even at
the expense of the long-term needs
of the eco-system.

And the NDP, sooner or later,
would bow to the will of the union
bosses, its true masters. Everybody
serves somebody. As surely as the
Tories serve the business elite, the
NDP must serve the working stiffs.

I watched Barrett’s run at the
national leadership with fascina-
tion. There he was, nearly two de-
cades after being the September
Pope of the Left, making a heroic
effort to resolve the major con-
tradiction facing his party as it
lurches into the last decade of the
20th century.

I think in some ways Barrett was
seeking atonement, not just power.
There’s that Jesuit thinking in his
background.

In any event, that contradiction
— now, as 20 years ago — is be-
tween the Left’s position on jobs
and its position on environment.
Can the NDP have its cake and eat
it?

Barrett, it must be remembered,
did good things for the environ-
ment during his brief tenure as
premier.

He banned the capture of live
whales, slapped a moratorium on
the sale of farmland, halted of f-
shore oil drilling and stopped ura-
nium mining development in its
tracks, wisely noting that any

resource Jeft in the ground could
only appreciate in value.

When Barrett's ecology-
conscious bid for the NDP’s na-
tional leadership was thwarted by
the feminists several months ago,
the green revolution within the so-
cialist party stalled. They now have
a leader who is in favor of leghold
trapping, for God’s sake!

If you look at the national par-
ties today, it is evident that the
Liberals are once again going to
co-opt the issue of the day, which
is environmentalism, just as they
did the free trade debate. And
come the next federal election, the
NDP will be lying in ruins, having
failed to catch the wave.

This is particularly so in On-
tario, where David Peterson’s Lib-
eral Party is positioning itself to
run on a green ticket, probably
next fall,

It faces philosophicaily-confused
parties on the Left and the Right,
both wanting to be green but both
at odds with their natural consti-
tuencies, businessmen being just as
wary of strong environmental leg-
islation as shop stewards.

Incidentally, this is why Jean
Chretien isn’t going to be the next
prime minister. He has already
com:itted his greatest gaffe,
which was to come out — utterly
unnecessarily — in favor of start-
ing up the seal hunt again.

Talk about ‘‘Yesterday’s Man!"’

Subliminally, this will register on
a huge bloc of voters, who will
give a thumbs-down to the return
of the hakapiks.

At provincial political levels
throughout the country, the eco-
factor is equally strong.

In Ontario, the NDP leader,
Bob Rae, took a beating from the
unions when he lent his support to
protesters irying to head off clear-
cut logging in the Temagami
wilderness, nearly the last stand of
old-growth trees in the entire pro-
vince.

Rae's bitter experience fore-
shadowed the crisis Mike Harcourt
faces now, especially since B.C.'s
NDP government-in-waiting has
seen its massive lead slip inex-
plicably away.

For all his talk about being a
social democrat, as opposed toa
socialist, and for all his efforts to
be the great consensus-builder, my
own sad feeling has always been
that Harcourt is riding two tigers,
and sooner or later they will maul
each other to the point of crippling
themselves, and him.

The Stainsby-versus-Munro bat-
tle over the Carmanah, even
though adroitly papered-over at
last weekend’s policy convention,
will continue to haunt the NDP as
it goes into the coming election.

Mike Harcourt has taken a
smart step, positioning himself on
the side of the tree-huggers. But if
he can’t in the long run break free
of the grasp of the mighty IWA,
he will be handing the green block
of voters over by default to that
suspect deathbed environmental
convert, Bill Vander Zalm,

Keep thinking big tree, Mike,
not big stumps!

Man jailed for theft

A 29-YEAR-OLD Vancouver man
was sentenced March 7 in West
Vancouver provincial court to [4
days in jail for theft under $1,000.

Hossein Almasy pleaded guilty

to the charge laid in connection
with a Dec. 8, 1989 incident in
which perfume and a pack of play-
ing cards were stolen from Canada
Safeway in West Vancouver.

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