“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. |