“Canada hitched

to falling star

By LESLIE MORRIS a
The Canadian economic wagon is hitched to the falling
American star.
President Kennedy has recommended to Congress that a
15 percent tax be levied on U.S. investments in other countries.
At once the Canadian stock market was plunged into crisis.
Walter Gordon, Minister of Finance, still licking wounds
suffered in the humiliating retreat from his proposal to tax
American investors in Canada, told Parliament he is certainly
going to tell the President about it. Z
External Affairs Minister Martin even saw the U.S. am-
bassador. :
“They can’t do that to us, their closest friends!” the Lib-
erals cry.
* * *

The supposedly permanently bright star to which the Lib-
erals hitched the Canadian economy in
1947 (“U.S.-Canadian economic integration”
they called it) is setting in the Western sky.
And the Canadian economy with it.

tycoons. The lean years are coming.
Western Europe, and first of all West
Germany, which U.S. dollars built up for
the anti-Soviet Armageddon, now chal-
lenges the American dollar.
The colonial world is in revolt.

The economic strength of the socialist world system is
growing rapidly and it will not be too long before the Soviet
Union alone will surpass the U.S. in volume and per capita
production. : :

Kennedy’s response is to cut U.S. investments abroad. But,
let it be noted, the shrewd Yankee wants his 15 percent tax
to apply only to stocks and bonds bought by the speculators
and the investors in government bond issues, not to the direct
investment which gives the U.S. control of Canadian industriey

It is the direct investment of U.S. dollars which gave the
Americans control of our main industries, not the municipal,
provincial and federal bonds bought by Americans.

In effect, Kennedy is saying to Canada: We shall keep our

first mortgage on your property, but charge you more for the
second. :

* * *

And what a howl goes up from the super-patriots who long
ago surrendered Canadian sovereignty in economic matters!

“We can’t get along without Uncle Sam’s dollars,” some
of them shout.

Others, like the Globe and Mail, say we have “been liv-
ing beyond our “means” and the time has come to tighten our
belts and get to work. (Does that apply to the unemployed
including the 3,000 new jobless who have appeared since
Lester B. Pearson took office?) ;

ae * *

It is not true that Canada could not have developed with-
out handing over the ownership and contro! of our main indus”
tries to the United States.

The best study so far made of Canada’s economy, ‘“‘Anat-
omy of Big Business” by L.-C. and F. W. Park, a book which
was ignored by the slick financial editors and is required
reading now for anyone who wants to understand the current
shenanigans in Washington and Ottawa, gives the lie to the
propaganda of national economic helplessness.

* * *

Here is one paragraph from the book’s second chapter,
called, “We Are Being Robbed”:

“Thus, in that period (1951-58) Canadian spending on arms
was more than four times greater than the capital inflow from
the United States for direct investment in Canada, and arms
spending plus capital exports was greater by $6 billion (in a
seven year period) than the total inflow for direct investment
from the United States since such investment began.”

As the Parks say: “Governments determined to maintain
Canadian sovereignty and develop Canadian industry and re-
sources in the interests of the Canadian people could have
done so, and can in fact still do so.

“What has always been involved is policy.”
* * *

What has been, and still is, the policy? :

Here is the answer, again from the Parks, and given too
from a hundred platforms and in a thousand articles by the
Communists:

“The reality is that U.S. policy has imposed on its ally
Canada a U.S.-oriented military program, worthless in terms
of Canadian defense, for which Canada has to pay. And at the
same time, U.S. monopoly capital unselfishly takes over con-
trol of the Canadian economy.” :

* * : *
Canada is being enfiladed by a pincer movement: one

See: LESLIE MORRIS, Pg. 7

pe See

The fat years are gone for the U.S.

AN EXAMINATION

Municipal loan fund
and French Canada

By SAM WALSH

Prime Minister Lester B. Pear-
son is discovering anew at every
turn that you cannot ignore “‘le
fait francais’, the fact that there
is a French-Canadian nation,
even if the governments both at
Ottawa and Quebec are Liberal.

A case in point is the $400
million federal government muni-
cipal loan fund which he intend-
ed to establish immediately.

There is no question of the
need of municipalities to be able
to borrow for capital expendi-
ture at low interest rates which
such a fund appears to provide.
A very big proportion of munici-
pal taxation is now earmarked
to pay interest on municipal
debts—very often to U.S. money.
lenders.

The establishment of a federal
government or federal-provincial
municipal loan fund should make
it possible for municipalities to
go ahead with major develop-
ment projects free from U.S. veto
and without increasing the per-
centage of the municipal budgets
that go for paying off high debt
charges.

* * *

That is why most progressive
people interested in the welfare
of the municipalities have favor-
ed the establishment of a muni-
cipal loan fund. The Communists
have in fact Campaigned for such
a fund, and quite correctly, for
many years.

Well, then why did Quebec, by
a unanimous vote of the legisla-
lature, apply such pressure on the
federal government as to cause
Pearson to postpone adoption of
the measure he introduced in the
House of Commons to propose
a meeting with the provincial
premiers on July 26-27 to discuss
municipal loans and a national
contributory pensions plan?

Was it a question of ‘‘provin-
cial rights’? Yes, partly. Under
the British North America Act
the municipalities are creatures
of the provinces. The BNA Act
and its legal interpretations have
granted to the provinces full con-
trol over matters which lie under
their jurisdiction (with certain
important reservations, such as
the right of the federal govern-
ment to disallow provincial legis-
lation within one year of passage).
The development of the munici-
palities is, therefore, primarily
the concern of the provincial gov-
ernments.

* * ae

But one of the advantages of

A strong and urgent appeal
for Canada to get out of the
nuclear club was made by
New Democratic Party Leader
T. C. Douglas in a speech to
the recent Saskatchewan con-
vention of the CCF_-NDP.

“Tf I never do anything else
in my active political life,”’
declared Douglas, “I will
never cease striving and pro-
testing until we take Canada
out of the nuclear Club to
become a peaceful force in the
world.”’ ;

All the. people of the world
could be destroyed many
times over by the stockpile
| of nuclear bombs in the United

States and Russia, Douglas

told convention delegates. The
-people have to gain control

ot the nuclear monster or it
will destroy everyone.
“The Western world must

a federal government (as oppos-

ed to the narrow concepts of the
Quebec separatists) is that it is
possible to mobilize the resour-
ces of the entire country to pro.
vide, for itstance, low-interest
loans to municipalities that need
it for development.

Most of the provinces are not
in a position to establish a muni-
cipal loan fund based on their
present resources, first because
of the limitedness of the resour-
ces natural to the provinces, but
secondly because of the present
division of the tax dollar between
the federal and provincial gov-
ernments.

Hence there was no_ outcry
from most of the provinces when
the federal government moved to
relieve them of the responsibility
of providing low-interest loans to
‘municipalities.

But from Quebec! Ah, that’s
,a question of a different order.

Quebec is not a province like
the other nine provinces. Because
Quebec is also, and more funda-
mentally, the state-territorial ex-
pression of the fact of the exist.
ence of the French Canadian
nation. And the French Canadian
nation is struggling now not to
assert the equality of Quebec
with the nine other provinces —
but the right to self-determina-
tion without interference or
domination by the state repre-
sentatives of the English Cana-
dian nation, federal or provincial.

Sometimes this deep and ra.
pidly growing, natural demand
is taken advantage of by reac-.
tionary, monopoly-corrupted na-
tionalists like the departed Mau-
rice Duplessis to block necessary
social reforms.

The fact that all the members
of the Union Nationale, the party
Duplessis founded, voted with
the Quebec Liberal government
in protest against the federal
legislation to establish the muni.
cipal loan fund, could, perhaps,
be ascribed in part tc this ten-
dency. But it cannot and should
not be the main motive ascribed
to the majority of the Quebec
Liberal movement.

What is involved here is an
effort to utilize the issue of
“provincial rights’ to enhance
the status of the government of
VYEtat du Quebec vis-a-vis the
federal gcvernment in determin-
ing the economic and political
development of French Canada.

Not that there aren’t more
immediate political considera.

Douglas OKs non-aggression pact] |

abandon its ridiculous — pos-
tures,’’ he continued. The

Soviet offer for a test-ban
agreement if the West will
sign a non-aggression pact is

TOMMY DOUGLAS

_ of the nuclear club and-use

August 2, 1953—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pag

tions of the pork - barrel variety.
Marcel Thivierge writes in Le
Devoir of July 16:

‘It is evident that Ottawa
could reply to the complaints of
Quebec: ‘Here, at Ottawa, we
took upon ourselves the oppro-
brium of a new tax (softened —
from 11 percent on construction
supplies) to constitute a part
of the funds for loans, and now,
you of Quebec would like to
come and raid the federal trea-
sury in order to garner the
kudos of having established the
fund, leaving us all the head-

>”

aches’.
* * *

But, says Thivierge, and he
would appear to be right, there
does not seem to be the inten.
tion on the part of Quebec’s
Premier Lesage, to scuttle the
municipal loan fund. He is aim-
ing at some sort of compromise
which will ensure that the loans
will be forthcoming, but, as he
says: ‘“‘there is absolutely nothing
in the plan which assures an
equitable division of this money
across the country. Nothing. The
criteria are so indefinite that the
assistance depends exclusively on
the good will of the particular
federal office. Hence the amend-
ments to be proposed by Quebec —
will bear on specific points.”

The municipal Joan fund is one
of those examples of the advant-—
ages of close asociation of the
two. nations in one- confederal
state; even in a minor, though
significant, fashion lessening the
dependence of Canadian munici-
palities on New York and Chica- —
go financiers.

* * *

At the same time, the way
Pearson introduced the question
(without prior consultation) il
lustrates the problems that arise
out of the continued underesti-
mation of the depth and justice
of the demand of French Canada
for constitutional guarantees of
the right to self-determination.

It so illustrates how the con-
fusing of the distinct problems
of provincial autonomous rights
with the sovereign rights of the
two nations in Canada, as is
done under the present consti-
tution, beclouds the issue and
makes it more difficult to solve
the problem of friendly and co-
operative coexistence of the two
nations of Canada in their com- |
mon struggle for peace, independ-
ence from U.S. domination and
economic and social progress. — :

a major development and
should be seriously considered.
Douglas added that he was
disturbed by an unofficial an-
nouncement in Washington
that the Soviet offer would be’
rejected because it would be
tantamount to giving recogni-—
tion to East Germany. “‘I deem
it scandalous to risk the sur-
vival of the human race to
keep up the pretense that East
Germany does not exist.”
He emphasized that the peo-
ple must insist that govern-:
ments quit playing fast and
loose with the future of man-
kind. Canada should get out

its resources for the benefit of
mankind.

Many of the resolutions be-
fore the convention dealt with
peace. Press reports said 14
o* them favored disarmament. |