For a great
coalition

STATEMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

]F THE Canadian Confederation is to live on, the constitution
on which it is based must go.

The crux of the problem lies in the failure of the British
North America Act of 1867 to recognize that there are two
nations in this country—English and French Canadian—each
possessing the unqualified democratic right to self-determination.
This crucial fact of Canadian history and politics, which is so
well understood in French Canada, is still hardly understood at
all in English Canada. Therein lies the crisis of Confederation.

Once the right of self-determination is recognized, there
will be the possibility of working out a new relationship between
the two nations in a new constitution—a new confederal pact
based on full equality and mutual agreement. Without the recog:
nition of that right Canada will be broken up and the hope will
be lost for the forging of the unity of French and English Cana-
dians in the building of an independent Canada.

This unity was never more urgent than in this stormy sum-
mer when all the world is threatened by the rulers of the United
States as they recklessly escalate their savage war against the
Vietnamese people toward a nuclear holocaust. There must be
an end to the Canadian government's cowardly policy of “quiet
diplomacy.” Canada must speak out to demand a stop to the
bombing of Vietnam. It must refuse to help arm the aggressor.
Canada must work for a political settlement in the Middle East
based on full and equal rights to all peoples in that region.

Such action would put our country back on the course of
independence implicit in the vision of the Fathers of Confe-
deration. It would lead us to new foreign policies of neutrality
combined with an active pursuit of world peace; to new domestic
policies of independent development of our resources and indus-
tries, free from U.S. domination.

There is a widening chasm between the vast majority of
Canadians, with their patriotic and democratic aspirations, an
the small group of big monopolists who, with their agents in
the old parties, dominate the economic and political life of our
country, who serve as junior partners of the U.S. trusts, and
who find it profitable to deny the demand for a new constitution,
and keep things as they are.

The Canadian majority can and must assert itself. The
conditions are here for a great coalition of conscience, with the
working class at its centre and supported by all other patriotic
and democratic forces. to meet the challenge of 1967 and win
new policies of peace, independence and equality.

It is the conviction of the Communist Party that the Cana-
dian people. as they unite and carry through this great democratic
movement. will in their majority come to the conclusion that
the rule of the monopolists should be finally ended through the
establishment of a socialist society. Then all the riches of our
land will belong to the people, opening the way to new heights
of well-being and a widening of freedom such as we have never

known.
Let us begin now
to make Canada truly “a

cess i erro coerernenger erncge rors avin Sa aviaaes

in this centennial year to shape our future
land of hope for all who toil.”

fe ee a oe