=
ccc Sg at py ty ae

Federal-provincial

conference scoreboard:

NO HITS, NO RUNS |

By NELSON CLARKE

Those who read my article be-
fore the Constitutional Confer-
ence will remember that I put
down a sort of check list or
score card by which the results
of the conference could be judg-
a...”
Now the inning is over, and it

was no hits, no runs — and if-

one is to believe the Prime Min-
isters — no errors.

@ We are no nearer to agree-
ment than before on the terms
of a new constitution.

e No one, except as usual

Quebec, showed any sign of re--

cognizing the existence in Cana-
da of two nations.

© There was talk about redi-
vision of powers, but always as
between ten provinces, and not
between two nations.

e Guarantees of language
rights to the minorities is fur-
ther away than ever.

@ The idea of entrenching a
Bill of Rights in the constitu-
tion is bogged down in disagree-
ment.

, @ The jungle of federal-pro-
vincial financial relations in Eng-
lish Canada is as thick as ever.

Everything has gone back to
committees of civil servants to
oe buried from public view while
all the time the crisis of confe-
deration deepens.

The first blow was struck be-
‘ore the conference opened when
the prairie provinces threatened
‘o challenge in the courts even
the right of the federal govern-
nent to speak in French to
French minorities in the west.

But then it quickly became
evident that the Union Nationale

Propose
tax reform

The Metro Toronto Tax Re-
form Council in an open letter
to Minister of Finance E. J. Ben-
son, said it “is concerned with
the rapidly advancing cost of
living, the increased unemploy-
ment and the larger tax levies
imposed by your government. It
is the opinion of the Metro Tor-
onto Tax Reform Council that
this reduction in the living stan-
dard of the Canadian people is
unnecessary in view of the in-
creased gross national product
and rising productivity in Can-
ada.”

At a later date, they add, the
Metro Toronto Tax Reform
Council intends to place before
the Minister in some detail its
dosition regarding tax reforms,
»specially its supporting views
of the Carter Report.

Briefly, the organization advo-
cates:

e@ Taxation based upon the
ability to pay.

e@ That corporations pay their
fair share to the treasury.

e Increase the revenue with a
capital gains tax.

e@ Reduce the level of military
spending.

OACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 21, 1969*—Page 8

iS VnAUAGI4—-IAUAT Dae

¥SQ9 1 —-VOV,

government of Quebec is almost
equally uninterested in the ques-
tion of language rights for the
French minorities outside. This
is not surprising when we re-
member that at least some mem:
bers of that government are
more than willing to cut down
the language rights of the Eng-
lish minority in Quebec.

The truth is, of course, that
while the guaranteeing to the
French minorities outside Que-
bec of the same rights to the use
of their language as that enjoyed
by the English minority within
Quebec would be an important
democratic reform, it is not the
fundamental issue.

Jean Jacques Bertrand put
matters with some clarity, and
certainly spoke for the people of
Quebec when he said:

“The important thing for
French Canadians from Quebec
is not be allowed, as individuals,
to speak their mother tongue
even in areas of the country
where it has little chance of
being understood; what they

want is the opportunity to live ’

together in French, to work in
French, to build a society in their
image and to be able to organize
their community life so that it
will reflect their culture.”

It is this that Pierre Elliot Tru-
deau denies with all the con-
tempt and arrogance of that up-
per crust Montreal elite into
which he was born, and which
has always felt “at home” in
English Canada. The French
Canadian people know his like
very well. They have a word for
him. It is “vendu’’ — one who
has sold out.

It is this that will one day
bring Trudeau down and all his
charisma, his kisses, his cute
little shrugs, and his:smooth talk
will never,save him.

Even this time it was easy for
the provincial premiers — all
ten of them — to move in to
sweep the language issue aside
in the demand for more money
out of Ottawa.

Of course, the provinces need
more money — as do the muni-
cipalities even more so.

But this crew of premiers are
not motivated by concern for the
needs of the people. That came
through clear with John Robarts
in his brutally reactionary attack
on medicare.

The point that continually gets
buried in this side of the con-
troversy is that Quebec as the
home land of a nation has the
right to the full control over its
own revenues, its own economy.

But to give that same right
to each of the nine English Can-
adian provinces would only make
it harder to properly tax the
great corporations of English Ca-
nada in a centralized way, so
that money could be diverted
from profits to education, health
and social services.

Actually the net result of in-
creasing political power becom-
ing concentrated in the hands
of the provinces will be to make
it easier for the great monopo-
lies to divide and rule over the
Canadian people.

But this trend will never be

L494 SION

reversed, as long as the sover-
eign rights of the French Cana-
dian nation in Quebec are de-
nied.

Thus the politicians maneu-
vre to keep their bosses’ profits
safe, while the Canadian dream
of two nations living freely in
equality in one country fades
away. There is nothing that can
halt this drift but the firm de-
termination of the labor and pro-
gressive movement to take the
future of Canada into its own
hands.

Quebec:

Violence highlights
underlying problems

By MEL DOIG

The democratic forces of Que-
bec, the great masses of the
working people, and with them
the students and intellectuals,
are to-day endangered by hard-
ening attacks of the establish-
ment. Certain actions, charac-
terised by political irresponsibil-
ity and sometimes by anarchy
and terrorism are _ regretably
providing the Establishment with
an excuse for this.

The ultra-reactionary, clerico-
nationalist Christian Nationalist
Party (the Parti nationaliste
chrétien), whose claim last year
of a membership of 150,000 no-
one has publicly disputed, early
this month demanded that every
Quebecker be required to carry
a civil identity card. Coming
from this fascist-like, anti-semi-
tic and racist party, successor
to the fascist Adrien Arcand’s
party, this demand evoked no
surprise. Since then, the events
at Sir George Williams Univer-
sity and the Montreal Stock
Exchange have occurred.

The highly-touted “liberalism”
of the directors of Sir George
Williams’ University might have
led them to denounce such a
demand when it was made. In-
stead, they themselves have now
instituted the following rule:
“The University has the right to
demand presentation of ID cards
on entry to its buildings and at
any time within the building,
and it may require anyone un-
able to identify himself as a
member of the university to
leave the buildings.” So much
for Sir George Williams Univer-
sity as an example of the ‘“uni-
versité libre.”

The bombing of the sacrosanct
temple of Canadian finance, the

_Montreal and Canadian Stock

Exchange, an act of terrorism
that in no way served the inter-
ests of Quebec’s workers and
other democratic forces, has re-
sulted in increasing dangers in
Quebec of a police state. Police
have now been given the right to

“stop and search” without war-
rant anyone and everyone carry-
ing a parcel that looks suspic-
ious to them.

.

On the Federal scale, such
confirmed reactionaries as Gil-
bert Rondeau, Créditiste member
from Shefford, Robert Thomp-
son, former Socred leader and
Conservative member for Red
Deer, and that arch anti-com-
munist John Diefenbaker, are
demanding review of the devel-
oping Canadian policy of recog-
nition of the People’s Republic
of China on the grounds that
Maoists were among those who
sacked the computer center of
Sir George Williams University.

Through all this, monopoly
mercilessly continues to grind
the working people in the mills
of unemployment. Quebec, with
28 percent of Canada’s working
force, now accounts for 40 per-
cent of all Canada’s unemployed.
One out of 12 Quebec workers is
now out of work.

Among the students resorting
to violence at Sir George Wil-
liams University were those who
reacted in desperation to the
directors’ manipulations and de-
lays which deliberately avoided
democratic settlement of the
student charges of racism. Cer-
tain other students took advan-
tage of this desperation to at-
tempt to destroy the university
as a step towards the destruction
of the present system as a
whete. This anarchism has had
the immediate effect of separat-
ing large numbers of students
from the just, democratic strug-
gle against racism at Sir George.

Related to this is the previous-
ly announced intention of the
“6litist” leadership of the Gen-
eral Association of Students of
the Université de Montréal to
recommend the dissolution of
that student union. They have
attempted to justify this propo-
sition, for decision at a confer-
ence later this month, on the
grounds of their estimate that
only 10 percent of the students
are interested in actions to

Jang

-~ ~~

Exchange after bombing.

Floor of the Montreal Stock

change society. Opposition to

his defeatist line is now develop-

ing by students determined to

preserve their union so that the
University of Montreal students

can participate in the struggle

for a democratic
identifying themselves with the
trade union movement and other

university

democratic movements of the

people of Quebec.

To-day’s trade-union move- .
ment of Quebec is itself, how-

ever,

hamstrung through the

lack of a mass labor political

party. This lack tends to throw

the workers in the political arms ©
either of the parties of the right ©

or of groups of political desper-

ation.

It is from within the Quebec
organised labor movement, from
its leadership, that forces have
long been working to block, to
frustrate efforts to advance to
the establishment of such a poli-
tical party which alone can pro-
vide the democratic alternative
to the forces of reaction and to
elements of political irresponsi-
bility.

Instead, opposition to such 4
party has taken the forms of

the “non-partisan political ac:
tion” line of Henri Gagnon of —

the Montreal Labor Council and

the Quebec Federation of Labor;

and of the outright opposition to
support of any political party by
the Confederation of National
Trade Unions. This last finds its

anarcho-syndicalist expression in

the position of Michel Chartrand,
president of the Montreal Cen-
tral Council of the CNTU, for
whom politics is created only
“in the streets,” and a political
party of the workers, in his
phrase, “is nothing but crap.”
But pressure from the rank-
and-file for a mass labor polit
cal party in Quebec persists.
This month, the Montreal Labor
Council (QFL) ‘and the Montreal
Central Council of the CNTU
are to “engage in discussions
about future political action.
Continued, unremitting pressuré
from the members may persuade

the present leaders of Quebec's ©

organised labor movement of the
urgent necessity to unite with
progressive, democratic forces

the left to create a party that
will provide the democratic am
swer to the combined dangers

from the forces of the right and 4
from adventurism and anal

chism.