‘Sharp’s rob-the-poor mini-budget. EDITORIAL A ‘Sharp’ Christmas. Boe marches on and again we are at that season of goodwill when it is customary to wish our fellowmen ‘‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’’. It will be a New Year for sure, the first of Canada’s Second Century. As for being “‘happy’’, that’s a different story. The measure of that happiness — and for whom, can already be foretold in Mitchell Sharp’s mini-budget — on the lines and between the lines. If you’re a fat bondholder in corporate stocks, happiness is assured, especially when “happiness” is measured in dollars, profits, tax concessions and dividends. To all such ‘‘Santa Claus’ Sharp has been more than generous. But if you’re a mere wage or salary earner, a survivor on a low fixed income, a pensioner dependent of any kind of a pension to sustain life, or any kind of a Canadian handicapped with the Christian idea of “‘live-and-let-live’’, your “‘Happy New Year’’ goose is already cooked. The lean and hungry-looking Santa Claus of Big Business has seen to - that. “ Mitchell Sharp’s mini-budget cuts deep into every wage earner’s family budget, with its onerous rise in taxes and its resultant rise in prices. Even the Bennett government through its LCB was quick to cash-in on the ‘spirit’ of Christmas and the Yuletide season as interpreted by Santa Sharp. Hence countless thousands of tax-ridden, jobless and destitute Canadian families will find little to be merry about this Christmas. Yet while we continue to express the age-old custom of wishing all our readers, supporters and friends ‘‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’’, together with an imperishable hope for ‘‘Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Men’’, we must do so with stronger Yuletide resolution than ever before. With a clarion call to Canadians everywhere to unite in their millions to compel Ottawa to dissociate Canada from all complicity in 'U.S. aggression and bloody savagery in Vietnam; to prohibit our - “Christian’’ monopolists from garnering blood-stained profits from the bodies of murdered Vietnamese; to plug a bottomless arms drain which robs Canadians of $1%2-billion annually, and to begin the enactment of social laws designed to make the Yuletide season really merry and happy — instead of an economic and social nightmare clothed in a collosal hypocricy, aimed at obscuring the growing miseries and poverty of the poor — and the pyramiding riches of the “merry” rich — greatly enhanced by Vietnamese blood-money and By all means let’s strive for ‘‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’’, coupled with the determination to win peace in Vietnam as the lodestone of that greater ‘‘Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men”’ which remains the dream and the hope of all decent mankind. Let’s begin Canada’s Second Century by making the rich heritage of its people truly their own; to share as they would with the world’s less fortunate. Then indeed would Canada achieve its full stature and destiny as a builder of Peace on Earth, rather than a shameful satellite and apologist for an arrogant and ruthless Yankee imperialism. So to our readers, with these thoughts predominant, a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year in terms of peace in Vietnam, and the scuttling of Sharp’s mini-budget. t was undoubtedly a big night in New York. All the na- tion’s elite were there. The din- her was sumptuous. America’s top labor leader and _ represen-' tative was there too, i.e. if you can call’ a — $75,000-per-year- plus-expenses a labor represen- tative. In fact he was the honored guest of the evening — AFL-CIO President George Meany. U.S. President Lyndon 8B. Johnson topped the speakers’ list. The occasion was sponsored by the Jewish Labor Committee’s National Trade Union Council on Human Rights, to confer on George Meany its first ‘‘Labor Human Rights Award.” LBJ was lyrically fullsome in his praises of Meany as ‘‘a great American... a great labor leader . . . a great champion of civil rights . . .”” etc., and so forth. This while some of New York’s police precinct ‘‘tanks’’ were crowded to capacity with other opposition to their governmen’s war of genocide in Vietnam, while LBJ was heaping presidential adulations on Meany with all the finesse of a *plasterer’s hod-carrier. “George Meany has realized along with most trade unionists that we stand at the outer frontier of disorder in Southeast Asia; we stand also at the inner frontier of disorder in our cities. And this is not merely a question of fighting in Vietnam or policing our cities . .. our problems are great... but our resources are greater — and they include the great human and moral resources of the American labor movement. We’ve come here this evening to honor a champion of those Tagnts 2: In his presidential panegyric of praises for Meany, LBJ made out a good case, if albeit unintended, not only for Canada to dissociate itself from U.S. aggression and barbarism in Vietnam with all possible speed, but for Canadian labor to cut itself + Americans for demonstrating, their 4 4Joosefrgm the Meany specie of labor DECEMBER 15, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 2 Trail amalgamation vote scores victory over CMS monopoly By NIGEL MORGAN “The basic contradiction is that a small min- ority appropriate the profits of expanding pro- duction which brings with it increasing urbani- zation, while costs of necessary social ser- vices to keep society growing and reproduc- ing, falls on the many least able to pay .. . Monopoly interests, which make millions from speculation and the give-away of our natural resources and the productive labor of the population, must be brought within the reach of taxing powers of local governments” . . . from a resolution on municipal policy adopted by the B.C. Provincial Committee, Com- munist Party of Canada, September 30, 1967. City and municipal governments are in a crisis. Expanding demands for services, mounting municipal debts, and sharply rising interest charges have placed a staggering load on local ratepayers. Now many municipalities in B.C. are facing bankruptcy, or are unable to provide essential services. In contrast to earlier days, a few ‘big monopolies dominate the economy. Super profits: go to a relatively few people, and more often than not to foreign coupon clippers. Most of the big industrial complexes of this province, have cunningly evaded their rightful share of taxation by locating outside city and municipal boundaries which provide the labor and services for their operation. Trail is a typical example. The city exists solely to supply the big, highly profitable CPR-owned Consolidated Mining and Smelting plant located in adjoining Tadanac. Trail, which provides the civic services (streets, sidewalks, water, sewers, health and welfare, libraries and recreation, fire and police protection, etc.) for the men who work on the hill has a mill rate of 43.50 (second highest in B.C.). Tadanac (which houses the big smelter and less than a hundred key company officials) has a mill rate of 23 (almost half that of Trail, and lowest in B.C.). If Trail and Tadanac were amalgamated into one city, there leaders who stand as a living disgrace to everything labor was, is, and aspires to be. In his ‘‘response’’ to LBJ’s paean of praise to ‘‘a great American’’ and the *‘Labor Human Rights Award’’ conferred upon him, Meany clambered aboard his favorite hobby- horse and galloped forth to do battle with the 50th Anniversary of the Soviet Union — single handed: to convince those who needed no convincing that such a ‘‘servant is (always) worthy of his hire’. Like all coldwar warriors in the service of U.S. imperialism, Meany sneered at the achievements marked by the 50th Anniversary of the first ‘Socialist State: sneered ‘‘at this thing they call the All-Union Central . Council of Soviet Trade Unions”: sneered at the wages, jobs, poor housing, and other “‘dictatorial” - hardships imposed upon Soviet workers by the *‘Communist Party of the Soviet Union. . . which takes care of everything”. What really got Meany’s enlarged gall-bladder inflamed however was the fact that’. . . within the last few months, our West European trade union friends. who call themselves democratic socialists and who are associated with us in the international trade union movement (ICFTU Ed.) have gone to Moscow to celebrate this 50th Anniversary . . . to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the death of 4 would be (on the basis of Trail’s millrate last year), a net gain in general revenue of over $200,000 after deducting what the Municipality of Tadanac pays for all its local services and contributes for schools, parks, library, cemetery, etc. It must also be noted that in School Board, Hospital Board, and Parks Board — three important quasi-municipal boards to which Tadanac contributes. Tadanac witha population of 347 is represented by 3 members, while Trail with a population of 11,600 is represented by 3 members only. This issue has been raised in the constituency by provincial candidates of the Communist Party and has been fought for over many years. On Marchl3, 1967 the issue came to a head in the B.C. Legislature, when an amendment to the Municipalities Enabling Act was passed unanimously to provide for amalgamation. As avresult, a vote on amalgamation of Trail and Tadanac was submitted to the electors Satundays Diec 2.9. -ln -an overwhelming vote, the people vote 5 to 1 in favor of amalgamation thus ending the many years of injustice which favored the company. A large number of other B.C. cities and municipalities are confronted with precisely the same problem. They should lose no time in following Trail’s example. The Children of Vietnam this Xmas Send a donation: Canadian Aid Vietnam Civilians, P.O. Box 2543, Vancouver, B.C. social democracy and the free trade union movement in Russia’’. “And what does our movement stand for? I don’t have to tell you about that; anyone who has a memory at all can tell you about the progress we have made . . . during the last 50-years . . . better conditions for the people who work for a living . . . the dignity of the individual as a human being .. .” ete. and etc. (PT readers endowed with a stout stomach can read the fuller texts of the Johnson-Meany speeches in the Nov. 15 edition of ‘Justice’, official organ of the International Ladies Garment ‘Workers. This double-barrelled escalation of Meanyism upon U.S. and Canadian labor is entitled, “Vietnam Commitment No Block To Continued Progress in U.S.” American labor will settle that IC ity’s wage policy hit By ALD. H. RANKIN Four major unions representing 4000 of the city’s employees (outside and inside workers, firemen and policement)asked City Council to sit in on negotiations for new contracts next year. Council turned them down last week by a narrow majority. In my opinion Council did the wrong thing. The unions made their request in a sincere attempt to improve relations. Council should have taken them up on it. Through aldermen sitting in on negotiations we would have had a direct pipeline to the bargaining table. Our representatives would have been able to mediate at crucial periods during talks. Now that opportunity is lost. To make matters worse Mayor Tom Campbell announced to the ee press, even before negotiations got _ started or the unions presented their requests, that he will not agree to any wage increase over five percent. Not only that, on his own he told the unions concerned to go ahead and strike if they wished, that shutting — down services would save the city money. These completely irresponsible and provocative remarks by our mayor will only embitter relations, make negotiations more difficult and harden lines even before bargaining talks begin. ” You can’t blame civic employees if they fail to believe our mayor when he says that his concern in opposing wage increases is to stop inflation and keep down the mill rate. After all, he didn’t show the same concern ~ just a short time ago when he pushed % through the Block 42-52 deal with Eaton’s, Cemp and the Toronto Dominion Bank which will cost our taxpayers many millions in subsidies before we are through with it. Since our mayor doesn’t favor Council participation in negotiations, surely the least he could do would be to keep out of them until our appointed city officials bring in a report to Council. Even silence can be a blessing and a virtue sometimes, although publicity- — hungry Talkative Tom may not understand this. phoney contention in their own way and time. In Canada however, organized labor and the people, in ever increasing numbers, are of the opinion that U.S. aggression in Vietnam is not only a serious block to progress in Canada, but because of the complicity ‘of the Pearson government with U.S. genocide in Vietnam, this ‘‘block to progress” is already only too well confirmed by Mitchell Sharp’s mini-budget which. robs the poor to further enrich the warmakers — and in the process finds the Meany role highly meritorius. In preparation for the forth- coming AFL-CIO convention suggestions are in order for other suitable ‘‘awards’ which might be conferred upon AFL-CIO president George Meany. The ‘Order of the Boot’ could be one well-merited decoration. Editor—TOM McEWEN Pacific Tribu ‘West Coast edition, Canadian Tribune Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH Ke Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288. : Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $2.75 for six months. 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