Sea of Canadian mon-
opoly and their political yes-

men are waging a fierce fight to ~

block Canadian trade with Cuba.
Big business flunkies like Senator
David Croll blabber about trade
with Cuba as “letting down our
American friends for a fast buck.”’.

Croll should be an authority on
“fast bucks” since he has starred
among Canada’s top Liberal and
Tory hucksters for a good many
coldwar years in the business of
selling out. Canada’s independence,
economy and-peace to “our Amer-
ican friends” for that self-same

“fast buck”; the prime reason why

our economy is steadily choking to
death and nearly one million of our
working force jobless.

Trade with Cuba will provide
jobs for Canadian workers, profit-
able contracts for stagnant Cana-
dian. industries, and a bridge -to
new international friendships and
respect, which Canada, too long in
the role of “Man Friday” to U.S.
imperialism, badly stands in ‘need.

The larger question on the issue -

of Canadian-Cuban trade is not the
volume or the variety, or whether
Cuba “has the cash” for such
trade. Nor is it the “danger” which
Croll’s. coldwar Liberal pontiff,
Lester “Mike” Pearson sees in
“strengthening the forces of Com-
munist imperialism” in Cuba. The
prime question for Canadians is,
are we going to begin to be “mas-
ters in our own house’”’, or continue
to permit Yankee imperialism to
tell us with whom, and with what
Wwe may trade?

Even the Toronto Globe and
Mail, never noted for progressive
viewpoint, gave a fitting reply to
the Croll-Pearson-Pentagon yodel-
lers. “What we do know,” said the
G&M, “is that Canada has nothing
to gain by slamming the door
against any other nation, Commu-
nist or whatever it may be. Can-
ada stands for peace and trade
with all nations; and the stand
must be Canada’s own:” - *- =~.

Trade .with. Cuba, that: is- real”

trade, expanded to the limit of its
vast possibilities, and not just asa

P e e e
acific Tribune
Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH
‘Business Mgr.:— OXANA BIGELOW
Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
-. Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone MUtual 5-5288
Subscripiion Rates:
"One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25

Canadian and Commonwealth
. countries. (except Australia): $4.00-
one year. Australia, United States and
all other countries: $5.00 one year.

Authorized as second class mail,
Post Office Dept., Ottawa.

Cuba trade means

iob
“token” gesture in order to permit
some political demagogue to nois-
ily declare, “Oh, but we do trade”, -
would go a long way right at this
moment to provide jobs for thous-
ands of Canada’s destitute wage
earners. ;

Expanded trade with Cuba
would also mark another historic
turning point for Canada; a start
on “the road back” to running our
own domestic and foreign affairs,
instead of having them run for us
by the monopoly cartels of Wail

‘Street and their handful of Cana-

dian bellhops. ;

A wide Canadian public opinion
is almost unanimous in its support
of trade with Cuba. More so, since
U.S. imperialism, long accustomed
to imposing its coldwar policies on
Canada, took it for granted that
Canada would “come to heel” on
the U.S. Cuban “embargo” as in
all else. ,

Now we're beginning to wake
up, and in the awakening Cuba
will benefit some, but Canadians a
lot more; more trade, more jobs,

-a strengthened consciousness of

independence, and a new road to
peace via commerce — instead of °
a flunkey for conspiracy.

‘EDITORIAL PAGE.

Chant report blanks

yee Chant Commission report
on the British Columbia edu-
cational system is now a public
document, all 854 pages of it.

There is much in this massive
document which merits approval,
and a lot that will require consid-
erable: study and revision before it
is made an integral part of a pro-
vincial education system.

Among the one hundred or more

s recommendations in the Chant re-

port on a “new look” at curricula,
student grading, and vocational
versus academic tuition, one major
factor bearing down upon every
municipality in the province is
studiously omitted, viz., education-
al financing.

Aside from urging “every assist-
ance’ to meet the rising educa-
tional costs of the decade ahead,
the report stays strictly within its
stipulated “terms of reference”
and avoids the knotty problem. of
Overall educational financing,
which lies at the very-root of any
worthwhile overhaul of our educa-
tional system. 5

The recommendations for free
text books for elementary school

_ pupils, and preference -for Cana-

dian and British text books. rather

than American, is all to the good.
However, “the increasing com-
plexity of the world” as the ques-
tion is sometimes posed, demands
that authentic text books from
countries other than Britain be in-
cluded, in order that the elemen-
tary and secondary Canadian stu-
dent will be able to study world and
national development as it is,

The “philosopny” running
through much-of the Chant report
sees “education” as something
“handed down’ by an educated
elite to the academically fit, with
“vocational training” bestowed
upon the academically unfitted
mass. In short, a class concept of
education.
> The legislature’s first act’should
be to establish a royal-commission
to closely examine ~ educational
financing in this. alleged. “debt
free” province. To find new. sources
_ of revenue, and begin to insist that
the billions now spent for arms
be spent for free universal ~edu-
cation for B.C.’s students from
grade one to university.

Without this financial problem
being resolved, the Chant report is
worth little more than the paper
needed to contain it: a ae

Tom
McEwen |

ahead.

Christmas is over and 1961 lies

Probably the most~ important
feature of our Christmas, for the

shop-keepers and money changers,

is not the symbolic birth of a
Christ, but how the cash receipts
tally up?

The sublime in mankind, and the
sordid; one symbolic of brother-

hood and peace, the other by the:

profits derived from a  1000-
megaton H-bomb: explosion. But in
both we do parade our Virtuosity.
Just one illustration. The CBC
staged-some very finé programs on
the Nativity during the Christmas
week, and wound up with‘the cold-
war “news” ‘that Pravda says in an
article—“there is no Christ.”
No such article ever appeared
in Pravda, ‘this or any other Chrisi-
mas. Thus we clothe our virtuosity
with falsehood and transform ‘Holy

Night’ into an argument for bigger

' and better. H-bombs, ‘meantime
rubbing our hands with glee that
Xmas: ‘prosperity,’ spurred on by

‘credit buying’ is at an all-time ©
_ ~high."Now we can say to Pravda,

‘put that in your pipe and smoke
it.’

And as a clincher, if Finance
Minister Fleming had nothing in
his ‘baby budget’ for half-a-million
of our jobless workers, they were
all (or nearly all) given a sump-_
tious ‘free’ feed on Christmas day.
What they may get to eat the other
364 days of the year, is strictly
their own lookout.

* * *

Two men, representing two
classes, are about to die; one in the
electric chair, the other in a can-
opied bed surrounded by his heirs
and beneficiaries,

Just before American ‘justice’
burned out his life Niccolo Sacco
wrote his little son: “My s°n, do
not cry. Be strong and comfort
your mother. Take her for walks
in the  quitt couniry, gathering
wild flowers, eating beneath shady
trees, and visiting the streams and
gentle tranquility of Mother Na-
ture. Do not seek happiness for
' yourself. Step down to help the
. weak: ones who cry for help. Help
-the persecuted because they are.
_ your better friends, They. are your

comrades who fight and fall, as
your father and Barte (Barthol-
omew Vanzetti) fought and fell, to
win joy and. freedom for all the
poor workers,”

And in the other room far re-
moved, Judge -Gary of Indiana,
‘head of the U.S. steel trust, the
rattle of death already in his
throat, gave his last message: :

“T earnestly request my wife and
children and descendents, that they
steadfastly decline to sign any

bonds or obligations of any kind
as surety for other persons; that
they refuse to make any loans ex-
cept on the basis of first-class well-
known securities, and that they in-
variably decline to invest in any
untried or doubiful securities or
property, business or enterprise.”

The one, a call from the electric
chair for universal peace and
brotherhood; the other for gilt-
edged “securities” extracted from
the blood and sweat of exploited
humanity. A comparison in class
(and human values), ommitted in
our Christmas bacchanalia, but es-
sential to choose in the struggle
for peace and victory in 1961.

With an ever increasing unity of
the common people on the broad-
est possible basis, Peace can be
won in 1961.

Towards this sacred objective
many factors are already taking
shape. The chains of colonialism
are breaking, the hands of those
who deal:in nuclear “securities”
for destruction are being held, the
United Nations is moving towards
its historic mission as a tribune
for justice, equality and peace
(accelerated in 1961 by the admis-
sion of People’s China), and tri- |
umphant. Socialism in nearly one
half of the world provides the
unbreakable guarantee of ‘Peace
on Earth’ in 1961.

Nothing of course comes of it-
self, but only through: increased
unity and struggle of the common -
people. Given that unity, “joy and
freedom for all the poor workers”
will be assured in 1961.

January 6,

1961—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4

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