law totally oPPoced to the Viet Nam wav. Iwas in
Nam in 1966 for a time and Cow things rll never furSet.
appalled 1 cee Canadian aircraft carruin& troops and.
dian-PYoduced War- materiale being used.”
Rev. Bruce MeLead , Moderator of the

es

United Church & Camada a :

By TOM MORRIS

tom Would think there was a
Yoney es the barrel of public
nic, L&E stolen by big com-
thor maybe a limit to how
Woug,, Itudeau government
, Wtker In bilking the average
{Profits 7a increase corporate
ls, ~~ ** Seems endless—and it

Ni
a aeder David Lewis has
Bfiguee'& UP some fascinat-
0 pres Showing how easy it
the public purse if you
§ Corporation in bed with
a Alberta Gas Trunk Line
93 rnd $7,350 taxes on
Jfhstriar 0 profits; Canadian In-
Ast Ove Gas & Oil Ltd. paying
{than $04 $2 million tax on more
ie 86.90, Million net earnings;
B com © Of the 268 metal min-
| Panies here who pay no
tax at all—how sweet

for. being a tycoon.
© Canadian Regional
“aah Incentives Act
j nono} ually pays struggling
Ng a to set up here. One
ae “Se Ecstall Mining
Hacc hag 3 Sidiary of Texas Gulf
0,669 5° this week pocketed
|) a zing {2 Public cash to set
jap, ° Plant in the Timmins
| Xt ed ll get more over the

D

tts # has completed agree-
N0ck oe ©XPlore a 925,000-acre
ewe Of |

PO

Ndland for gas and oil.

‘ate |
vipingy test, but by no means

dey ec fraud comes

Une 8Y Alastair Gillespie
Soy ene ast week that the
ee shift its em-
Its $635 million bud-

West C

| he public gets it-again

and in south-western’

get) for research and develop-
ment to private industry. He
called it a “watershed” and a
“fundamental shift in govern-
ment policy.”

Gillespie’s logic is that this
give-away will create incentives
among private business which
will in turn: create jobs. He also
promised no firings and layoffs
in the. governmental depart-
ments and agencies which prev-
iously had $358-million of the
$635-million research budget in
their hands. How the government
can cut off the funds and keep
the government jobs at the same
time is one question, but not the
main one. ©

Private monopoly’s new-found
bonanza will result in higher
profits for them and not more
jobs for workers. A rise in cor-
porate profits of 39.8% in the
first. quarter and 24% in the
second quarter has not resulted
in any massive job creation pro-
grams. Higher profits gained
through tax concessions, govern-
ment grants and give-aways will
not either. Research and Devel-
opment, which could be thought
of as long-term planning for
Canada-building is not the aim
of monopoly—especially foreign
owned monopoly which will
really make hay out of this latest
government scheme.

Gillespie promised its lion’s
share to foreign companies when
he dryly announced that “re-
search contracts would be let
without discrimination (sic) be-
tween Canadian-owned and for-
eign-owned subsidiary compan-
ies.” And to show everyone that
the government means business,
a week later four top executives
of giant corporations are ap-
pointed advisers to the govern-
ment. They will advise the
energy minister on research
policies and programs.

Pacific Tribune

dition, Canadian Tribune

’ blishe a, Editor — MAURICE RUSH .
‘ eekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,

Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.
oni" tiptig Circulation Manager, ERNIE CRIST
Qng Ssh Canada, $5.00 one year; $2.75 for six months.
: America and Commonwealth countries, $6.00 one year.
All other countries, $7.00 one year

Second class mail registration number 1560.

Edttorial Comment...

Honoring Dr. Bethune

When the Canadian government last
week declared Dr. Norman Bethune “a
Canadian of national historic signifi-
cance” it was a recognition long over-
due. The circumstances under which
this gesture takes place and its limited
character prove, however, that this re-
cognition is both late and too little.

It is good that Dr. Bethune is honor-
ed in People’s China. It is good that
Sino-Canadian relations are improving
in the realm of trade and other ex-
changes. But for the Canadian govern-
ment to officially recognize the great-
ness of Bethune as a ploy (“the chance
of cracking the huge Chinese trade
market of 800,000,000 people,” as Peter
Whelan wrote in the Toronto Globe and
Mail) cheapens the gesture. That is no
way to honor a great Canadian.

Norman Bethune is now described on
the pages of our newspapers as humani-
tarian and an internationalist, mention
also being made that he was a Com-
munist. The story of his contribution
in treating the wounded, establishing
hospitals and training medical person-
nel for the Chinese forces of liberation,
and his death at his post in 1939, is
told, with mention of his previous ac-
tivity in Canada and in establishing
the mobile blood transfusion unit for
the Loyalist forces in Spain.

In honoring Dr. Bethune, however,
we can’t separate him into compart-
ments, no more than we can separate
him from those who worked with him,
from the movement of which he was
part, or from his party.

Dr. Bethune ministered to the un-
aera in Montreal before he went
to Spain and then to China. He did this
not just as a mission of mercy but as
part of the endeavors to do away with
the system that bred unemployment
and poverty. He was the first Canadian
doctor, on the basis of his study of
health protection in the Soviet Union,
to project medicare..His was socialist
humanism — humanism with the pur-
pose of doing away with the inhuman
capitalist system. .

r. Bethune helped the Loyalist
forces in Spain and his contribution
there was one with the more than 1,200
Canadians who fought — and over 600
of whom died — in the International
Brigade to stop fascism, to prevent
World War II. His internationalism
was not cosmopolitanism, it was one
with his Canadian patriotism. It was
his contribution to the world-wide fight
against war and fascism, for socialism.
It was proletarian internationalism.

Dr. Bethune worked and died at
work for the liberation of the Chinese
people, the great forerunner of the
national-liberation revolutions (actually
started with the Soviet liberation of
oppressed peoples of Russia in 1917)
that have swept Asia, Africa, Latin
America ... Bethune expressed and his
work and death in China immortalized
the firm unity of the Canadian working
class and the peoples fighting imperial-
ism everywhere on the earth.

Norman Bethune’s membership in
the Communist Party of Canada was
not an accident, not something separ-
ate from his work in Canada, Spain
and China. He was a Communist —
that’s the thread that runs through his

. that everybody is fed and healthy.

political, medical, social biography. It
was as a Communist that he did what
he had to do — and thereby gained
greatness, the full recognition of which
is yet to come. (J.W.)

A Chinese puzzle?

One of the heartening recent develop-
ments in Southeast Asia is the agree-
ment between India and Pakistan, and
Pakistani President Bhutto’s statement
that the independence of Bangladesh be
recognized. The establishment of the
Indian subcontinent as a zone of peace
is highly important not only for that
area of the globe itself, but for world
peace. The recognition of the 75-million
strong Bangadesh state, which has al-
ready been accorded by 86 countries, is
an indispensable element in this regard.

Friends of peace and the national in-
dependence of peoples are understand-
ably dismayed by the action of the rep-
resentatives of People’s China in oppos-
ing the admission of Bangladesh to the
United Nations under various pretexts
that are fully as spurious as those which
were advanced by the United States for
so long to keep China out of the UN.

Where is Peking’s vaunted concern
for “third world” countries? Where is
her adherence to the principle of uni-
versality in the United Nations? Where
the recently discovered support of
peaceful coexistence?

What reason can there be for this evi-
dent desire to continue to maintain ten-
sions on China’s borders—against India
and Bangladesh to the south as well as
against the Soviet Union to the north?

The madness behind the method
emerges when you collate it with the
avowed claims to the Soviet Far East,
the aggressive stance and attempts to
split the other socialist countries and
the international revolutionary move-
ment —and the plaudits of the capital-
ist press and politicians,

It is harmful and dangerous collusion
with the forces of the “old world” to
serve a super-power game of the Chin-
ese leaders.

Prices in the USSR

The Canadian Magazine last issue
carried a study of food prices in various
countries and, after “devaluating” the
rouble to one-third, still found that
food is cheapest in the Soviet Union.

The Toronto Star couldn’t let that:

ass. In a nasty editorial, which be
' stating that the “average daily Saoie
in Canada is nearly $30” (how much
do. you get, good reader?), it began to
twist figures this way and that to prove
that as to the low cost of living in the
USSR “it just ain’t so,” comparing
wanes and s a c=.
igures don’t lie, it’s the Star :
out of line. If it had said that ah
items in the USSR were hard to get and
prices of some articles of clothing were
yet high, well and good. But if it wants
to compare wages, it must include the
social consumption fund (out of the
earnings of the economy) that provides
free or for a pittance many things we

must pay for through the nose or do

without here.

The low food prices are genuine, The
first concern of the socialist state is

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 1972—PAGE 3

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