Inco strike misguided

The Inco strike is a bad strike — bad for the workers, bad for the company, bad for the community and ultimately bad for the country.

It’s hard to fathom why 72% of the 10,000 members of Local 6500 of the United Steelworkers of America at Inco’s Sudbury operations should have rejected the company’s latest offer. It would have given them wage increases of 10% in the first year, another 13.5% by the end of the second year, and 11.5% at the end of the final year.

Considering Inco is now suffering through what could be the worst year in its history, the company’s wage offer was undoubtedly the best it could do.

More than a million Canadians right now would be glad to have any kind of job at all. For a good many of them, what Inco’s employees have thrown out would seem a reasonable settlement, and a princely overall wage. In fact, it’s a princely wage judged even by the standards of many of those Canadians who do still have jobs.

Giving back what was taken

When he disclosed the federal government’s “stimulative” measures for the ailing domestic petroleum industry, Energy Minister Marc Lalonde should also have abandoned the pretense that Ottawa’s ludicrous National Energy Program (NEP) is still a viable policy. In not doing so, Lalonde once again failed to level with the Canadian public.

Our own enthusiam for the $2-billion temporary relief package is restrained by the realization that it has taken the near-collapse of the industry — this country’s most buoyant sector a mere two years ago — to force the government into remedial action.

No matter how Ottawa dresses up this grab-bag of temporary relief measures, it can’t be regarded as anything more than a band-aid approach to the terminal illness that the federal government inflicted on the petroleum industry 20 months ago.

Ottawa is not “giving away” $2 billion worth of pricing, tax, and credit breaks to the industry over the next four years. It will, however, be returning to a hard-pressed petroleum industry an estimated $2 billion that would have been skimmed off in a NEP tax-related grab that has no parallel within the domestic economy.

Gold falls fast

Deflationary forces continue to play havoc in metal markets, especially gold and copper.

Resuming its long-term downtrend, which had been briefly interrupted by hostilities in the Falkland Islands and Lebanon, gold has smashed through the critical psychological support level of US$300 per oz.

The next support level is around US$280 per oz. However, at mid-week the metal was trading around US$306.

Dropping US$32 in one week, gold established a low of US$293 in Zurich. The yellow metal sold in London at US$296.75, its lowest level since August 1979.

Trudeau should shoulder blame

The Canadian economy is in its worst shape since the 1930s.

While the entire industrialized world is experiencing a downturn, many of our problems have been of our own making. Chief among these are massive spending and giveaways, especially on the part of an Ottawa administration that is hell-bent on keeping itself in power.

Fact is, we have all been living over our heads, thinking we were getting something for nothing. Now, what we have is a massive debt, which is really the crux of the problem. The federal deficit is mushrooming out of hand at $130 billion, and Canadian taxpayers are paying $40.8 million each day just to service the interest charges.

The Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau has incurred crushing deficits and plummeting exports, which have driven out foreign investment. The results are ever-longer unemployment lines and the weakest dollar in this country’s history. We believe Trudeau showed a lot of gall when, at the recent Versailles economic summit of world leaders, he stood up and pointed the finger at U.S President Ronald Reagan, blaming his country for our self-inflicted woes.