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No provision for public access to information

Government investigates oil monopolies

By DAVID EDWARDS

CALGARY — Oil company
_ €xecutives have been working
Overtime recently to answer a
‘Sweeping federal government
demand for inside information
that could lay bare the monopoly
Nature of Canada’s foreign-
Controlled oil industry.

The research and investigation
bureau of Ottawa’s Combines In-
vestigation Act department has

It every sizable company in the
business with a lengthy question-
faire, a searching 35-page de-
mand for details of every corpo-
Tate dealing since World War
Two.

The investigation marks the
first time the Canadian govern-
ment has compiled the details of
the profitability of the oil com-
Panies, many of which are. pri-
_ Vately owned by American parent
_ iltms and never even issue an an-
_ hual report.

The questionnaire also de-

mands the names of any share-
holders ‘‘holding 5% or more of
the total issued shares of any
class,’’ information that would
settle once and for all who con-
trols Canada’s major-resource in-
dustry.

A copy .of the questionnaire
leaked to Calgary newspapers re-
vealed that the investigators de-
mand:

e details of the ‘‘profitability

SAIGON SURRENDER ENDS 35 YEARS OF WAR

Ending 35 years of war, Vietnam stands liberated,
&s the discredited g in Saigon d
UNconditionally to Provisional Revolytionary Forces
early in the morning of April 30.

‘The end for the puppet government came as acting

ters correspondents from Saigon report cheering
ining the, streets to greet the people’s armed
pe city remained calm, he reports.

matic events followed within hours after .

ites. had completed evacuation of its
collaborators.

ED!
i;

ye

Amost one year ago, the Tribune's front page announced the
final liberation of South Vietnam from American imperialism
and from reactionaries inside Vietnam. It was the morning of °
April 29, 1975 when the liberation army of the Provisional Revo-
lutionary Government marched into Saigon and _ its tanks
tumbled up to the presidential palace. The crumbling govern-
ment surrendered and acting president Minh broadcast to all
his troops calling on them to lay down their arms.

Today in both Vietnams the people enjoy peace and Inde- .
Pendence. Both countries are working at reconstruction of their
War-torn land and working toward reunification. Elections were
held April 25 for a common National Assembly to begin the
Process of reunification. The two countries are now treated as

zones.

of operations of your company
(return on capital employed and
cash flow return) by region and by
division,”’

e lists of ‘‘net proved remain-
ing reserves of crude oil held .. .
in Canada,”’

e ‘‘a statement of annual exp-
loration expenditures for each
calendar year from 1959 to 1974
inclusive,”’

_e lists of land holdings by reg-
ion,

e copies of virtually all trans-
actions between companies in-
volving every aspect of the indus-
try.

The questionnaire marks the
latest phase of a Combines Act
Investigation of the industry
launched in 1973 at the insistence
of the Consumers’ Association of
Canada.

An investigator comparing two
completed questionnaires would,
for the first time, be able to de-
termine once and for all how
much profit the oil industry has
made in Canada and how much of

Prime Minister Trudeau has
dragged another skeleton out of
‘‘Pandora’s box.’ The first time,
you'll remember, was in 1970,
when his government panicked
before the FLQ and invoked the
War Measures Act against the
whole French-speaking national
community in Quebec. The
second time was on Thanksgiving
Day in October of last year when
the Prime Minister declared that
the free market system was in
trouble. But instead of curbing the
capitalist monopolies respon-
sible, he declared economic war
against the working class and all
working people and then labelled
his plan an ‘‘Attack on Inflation.”

The latest skeleton is ‘‘The
British North America Act,” a
collection of papers which passes
for a Canadian Constitution and
which Trudeau now wants to
patriate to Canada from the dusty
archives of Westminster in Lon-
don, England.

‘*Patriation,’’ Mr. Trudeau told
Parliament in Ottawa, “‘will mean
that the British Parliament ...
would no longer make laws for
Canada. This is the essence of
what we are trying to obtain.”’

But Mr. Trudeau is trying to do
a snow job on the issue. As the
Communist Party said in a press
release on April 9, ‘‘The British
Parliament does not make laws
for Canada. These laws, for bet-
ter or worse, are made in Can-
ada.”

National Oppression

To bring the BNA Act back to
Canada is a political manoeuvre
to perpetuate the elements of na-

. tional oppression, of inequality

and economic discrimination
against Quebec, the national
home of the French-speaking
community in Canada.

The British North America Act
is a relic of colonial days. It ought

-

that profit has actually been rein-
vested here.

The full extent of foreign own-
ership and inter-company coop-
eration would also be crystal
clear.

So it’s not surprising that this
information, so critical to the
Canadian people’s understanding
of this country’s energy industry,
is carefully being kept secret.

The Combines branch may de-
cide the oil companies aren’t do-
ing anything very interesting, end
the investigation and throw away
the research.

Ifa few companies have broken
laws, they may be charged and
some information to support the
charges would be entered in
court.

Or the branch can turn its work
over to the government’s Restric-
tive Trade Practices Committee,
which may issue a report. In the
meantime, the investigators are
prohibited by law from discussing
any aspect of their work.

Ironically, the United States,

see IN RI LLL,

land of the cover-up, has federal
legislation enabling public groups
to gain access to information col-
lected by their government.
Canadians have no such right.
The results of this investigation
will be released if and when Ot-
tawa bureaucrats are ready.

Trudeau’s BNA Act move

a political manoeuvre

to be left in the old and musty files
of the British Parliament. These
vestiges of colonialism stem from
the compromise of Confederation
in 1867, which still continues to
undermine and to block unity be-
tween the working class and the
people in the French- and
English-speaking national com-
munities in Canada.

The plain fact is that Canada is
inhabited by two nations: the
French-speaking nation whose
homeland is Quebec, and the
English-speaking nation occupy-
ing the rest of Canada. Each of
these two historically evolved na-
tional communities possesses its
own national identity and con-
sciousness, the formation of
which, particularly in English-
speaking Canada, has been’ in-
fluenced by the cultural traditions
of the ethnic groups of non-
French, non-English origin which

_ have migrated to this country,

and which are gradually merging
with the two nations.

Three Forms
The stubborn refusal of
monopoly and its state to recog-

nize the right of the French-:

speaking national community in
Canada. to self-determination,
that is, to choose the form of
sovereignty for Quebec which
they, in their majority, desire, is
the root cause of the federal-
provincial crisis of relationships
in Canada.

The sovereignty of a national
state may be expressed in the free
national choice of one of three
forms: autonomy. a separate
State; or a confederation of equal
nations or states.

Autonomy (‘‘special status’’) is
the preferred form of French-
Canadian capitalists and cor-
porate elite. It will continue the
non-recognition of the French-

speaking nation within Canadian
Confederation.

The separatist solution, pre-
ferred by a section of the French-
speaking middle class, would en-
tail severe additional economic
hardships for the working people
of both nations and would weaken
their political unity against their
common foes — monopoly
capital, Canadian and U.S. im-
perialism — and for fundamental
social change.

Two Vital Steps

The crisis of confederation will
continue and deepen unless and
until two vital steps are taken to
remove the source of the
problem.

a) All economic inequality be-
tween Quebec and the rest of
Canada in economic develop-
ment, employment and income
has to be abolished.

b) There has to be a new
Canadian Constitution which
recognizes that Quebec is the
home of the French-Canadian
people, their national community.

The Communist Party calls for
the scrapping of the BNA Act and
for adoption of a totally new
made-in-Canada Constitution,
based on an equal voluntary
partnership of the two nations in
Canada, united in a bi-national,
sovereign and democratic con-
federal state, guaranteeing the
right to self-determination and full
equality of both nations.

The Communist Party, the
party of the working class, sees
this democratic demand as the
key to the unity of the labor and
democratic movement of English-
and French-speaking Canadians
in their struggle against U.S.
domination and state monopoly
capitalist rule in Canada, opening
the. way for the real democratic
alternative and advance to a
socialist Canada of tomorrow.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 30, 1976—Page 5