THE budget tabled in the
4 legislature last week by Premier
Bennet: in his capacity as min
Ser of finance was more note-
‘|Northy for what it omitted
‘\than for what it contained.

Tt was. essentially a ’“No”’
budget, The largest single bud-
8 in provincial _ history
($274,793,320), it - contained
‘fhe least for the people.

_ There was not an extra dime

Mall the proposed expenditures
| 10 senior citizens condemned
| "0 exist on a miserable “‘pen-
‘ion.’ And, for all that the
Dudget anticipated 25 per cent
‘}tigher revenues, appropriations
social welfare and health re-
Main “‘frozen’’.

Similarly, our economically
IStressed farmers were given
Nothing to help them bridge the
|88p between high production,
Ving. and taxation costs, and
Mpidly dwindling incomes.

_ Debt-harassed municipalities
found no provision to ease their
ftowing financial burdens,
®hools, hospitals, and other
Piralling costs in Premier Ben-
Nett’s ‘‘No’’ budget. Although
| the Socred government’s 5 per
tnt Sales Tax extracted ap-
Proximately $86 million from
the people’s pockets, (and an-
ticipated, doing likewise or bet:

t in 1957-58) no additional
enefits will go to the munici-
alities,

The mock funeral staged by
undreds of UBC students at
| Which they buried the ‘‘Spirit
| Higher Education’ was an
| fective comment on Bennett's
e| €enerosity’’ to the university
an amount barely over one-
{| Warter of UBC needs!
Bennett's budgetary pro’

ee

e e 5
‘Pacific Tribune
f |S Published weekly at
e Room 6 — 426 Main Street
A Vancouver 4, B.C. ~
4 Phone: MArine 5288
a Editor — TOM McEWEN.
1
)
|

‘Associate Editor — HAL GRIFFIN
Usiness Manager — RITA WHYTE
Subscription Rates: .

One Year: $4.00

Six months: $2.25

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

To hell with you, Jack—-
: I'm all right’

posals for increased taxation of
logging and mining corporations
are causing no great perturba-
tion in big business circles, since
this method of satisfying the
government's revenues means
that the money will come out of
the pockets of the ultimate con-
sumer, rather than from  cor-
porate profits. For big business
the latest Socred budget, like its
forerunners, is good Socred
“painless dentistry’.

Thus the muchvheralded tax
rebate handout of $28 to home-
owners will rapidly disappear
through rising assessments, in-
creased living costs and higher
municipal taxation.

However, “‘cautious’’ Premier
Benntt may be in his budgetary
skimping of the people’s needs,
it cannot be said that he and his
government are pikers when it
comes to budgeting for them-
selves. Premier Bennett gave
himself an increase of $7,400,
increasing his yearly salary to
$20,000. How much would he
want for running the country?

Nor did his cabinet members

The new PGE extension announced in the legislature last week will
run through rugged country like this along the Peace River Canyon.

fare badly with a hoist of
$6,400 each, bringing their res-
pective annual salary up to
$17,000. Pay envelopes of
other legislative personnel were
also boosted by $1,900 to
$2,900 per year.

Had such a spirit of largesse
permeated Premier Bennett's
1957 budget, the benefits to
the common people of _ this

province would have been felt
all around. As the budget now
stands however, it proposes to
raise six times the amount re-
quired 10 years ago, but with
scarcely twice the total benefit
radius in its ‘‘cautious’’ distribu-
tion.

It is a ‘‘tight.money’’ budget
on which a tight rein is kept on
everything — except politicians’
salaries and promises.

Griffin

‘“m=iTE courts have found me

guilty of murder. I know I
am innocent .. .” In a_last
desperate bid to escape death on
the gallows, James Carey has
told his story to the world —
the story that his counsel gave
him no opportunity to tell to the
court. The story has been
splashed over two pages of the
Vancouver Sun and its impact
is already evident in the sym-
pathy it has evoked.

Nothing grips our imagination
quite as much as the despairing
cry of the man convicted of
murder: whose whole being has
become obsessed with that day
when he must hang. His cry

’ to live, even though life may

be no more than a grey exis-
tence within prison walls, rings
in our consciences, for ultimately
we too are his judges z
Deep down within most of us
is a revulsion against this act of
social vengeance, this survival
from the barbaric past, which de-

grades the society that imposes
it, capitalist or socialist.

No one will deny that society
must be protected against those
warped individuals who murder,
whether out of passion or by
premeditation, out of avarice or
from hatred. But the only
society that has the right to exact
the supreme price of life is the
society that can restore the life
it takes . . . and that is still in
the future.

Our histories are stained with
miscarriages of justice and our
laws are not so just nor our
police methods so exact that we
have eliminated the possibility
of executing the innocent. And
in such instances neither posthu-
mous pardon nor posthumous re-
habilitation can be any more
than a mockery of justice.

8h Xie

But there is another aspect to
Carey’s .story, the aspect of the
stoolpigeon by whose testimony
the innocent may be convicted.
~ Tronically, it is because he was
a stoolpigeon that Carey now sits
in prison; convicted with Joe
Gordon of the murder of Van-
couver Police Constable Gordon
Sinclair, counting the days, and
hours, and presently the intol-
erable minutes until he must die.

For Gordon, convicted of the
actual murder, his appeal unani-
mously. rejected by the courts,
there is no hope of reprieve.
For Carey, convicted as an acces-

sory but equally guilty in the
eyes of the law, there is the hope
generated by the dissent of
judges in two courts against the
final denial of a new trial.

If his story-is to be believed,
Carey is under sentence of death
today because the RCMP used
him*as a _ stoolpigeon, because
they sent him back into the un-
derworld to obtain information
about another murder, the un-
solved slaying of Danny Brent.

No stronger indictment of the
stoolpigeon system can be made
than that contained in Carey’s
own statement.

‘“Several times I was deter-
mined to break all connections
with crooks,” he writes. “I was
sick of them...

ss . I got a decent job and
we moved into an apartment.

“But all the time I was work-
ing the police came around and
told me what was going on in
the narcotics world. They en-
couraged me to go-back and work
for: them=-o-.” i

And in his last convulsive pro-
tes. against the closing of the
net of deceit and hypocrisy that
enmeshes every s‘oolpigeon,
whether in the ynderworld or
the labor movement, Carey ac-
cuses his accusers:

“If the Mounties had not in-
structed me to stay close to Joe
Gordon I would not have been
with him that night... .”

MARCH 1, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 7

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