THE NATION : urea ; A hae government’s proposal that the House of Com- > ieee mons ask the British parliament to -amend_ the British North America Act so as to. transfer to the Canadian parliament the power to amend certain parts of that law, is being “‘blown up” by the Liberal press —and by some CCF leaders—to make it appear as though Prime Minister St, Laurent is proposing some- | thing akin to a Canadian declaration of independence. -, St. Laurent’s proposal is nothing of the sort and the constitutional crisis besetting Canada can only be worsen- ed by such irresponsible attempts to make political kudos _ gut of what is in fact an attempt to by-pass .a basic - problem. ; ; The present problem of the Dominion government *. is that the BNA Act be amended to grant to the parliament of Canada the power to amend those articles. of the act which deals with matters that are specifically within the jurisdiction of the federal authority. The government’s proposal includes, in the form of, réserva- tions, an assurance to the province of Quebec that such an amendment shall in no way expose the guarantees of the status Ri the French language and of provincial control of education to any danger of interference by the federal parliament. ee E I In spite of those necessary and important limita- tions thus placed upon the scope of the proposal of the. Dominion government, Premier Maurice Duplessis is opposing the proposal. He is trying very hard to de- velop the argument between himself and St. Laurent into a ‘“‘cause” for a provincial general election. Whether or not Duplessis succeeds ‘in that, there is little doubt but that the government’s proposal will touch off a new national discussion of the constitutional problem because it concerns every man and sooner or, later it will have to be grappled a thorough-going way. e X \ with in The Labor-Progressive party has always maintained that we, the people of Canada, should have the right to amend our own constitution. In fact, ours. is the only organized movement in Canada which has continuously and consistently advocated that for nearly 25 years— since we advanced the demand in 1925. It must be emphasized, however, that contrary to the attitude now revealp] by St. Laurent, we have never made a fetish of the general and basic changes of attitude towards our national constitution that has ‘now been rendered necessary by the far-reaching economic and political - changes of the past 82 years. | : tions,. that the constitution should be an instrument in the service of the people—not vicé versa as at present; ‘that the people of Canada should have ‘the power to » amend the constitution under which they live—or to Te- our national life and in the relationships and processes that the constitution is designed to regulate. protected against the possibility of the party in. office ‘amending the constitution at will fo the advantage of oy eae eary Pecan > : ‘Was victory’ improper too! — AST July, 3ritish_Con- servative leader, donated $100 to a defense — ‘fund raised in‘ Britain for former Nazi Field | Marshall Fritz Erich von Mannstein. Last month, | defending von Mannstein on war crimes charges, - | including the massacre of Russian civilians, before — -a_court ‘| many, R. T. Paget, British Labor MP, offered | _ this amazing plea: “Russians have no understand- ing of the proper conduct of war. They have the SoARatiC aystenitt oo Pe ie alte But they won the Battle of Stalingrad and Our position has been, as stated 1] years ago to | ‘the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Rela-. write it ‘or to scrap it. and adopt another if they find it necessary——to meet the changes in. the conditions of Winston Churchill, British Con- — ‘at Hamburg in the British zone of Ger- > . saved ‘your hide, Mr. Paget. A ‘ . ’ * ‘ and woman in Canada — of the mere form. We have advocated it as onesfeature — At the same time it is essential that the people be} through which the people of the country can exercise - their sovereign democratic authority whenever an amend- cS By TIM BUCK St. Laurent’s proposals leave constitutional issues untouched oo “Move over. I’ve applied for a Marshall plan loan.” powerful interests by a simple parliamentary majority. Therefore there should be established, as an integral part of the constitution, a clearly defined democratic process ment to the constitution becomes necessary—or is pro- posed. eens The proposal now put forward by the St. Laurent government does not meet any one of these conditions. As° for the two fundamental contradictions which are at the basis of our constitutional crisis, the government's proposal doesn’t even touch upon them. Is the speech with which he introduced his proposal the Prime: Min- ister skirted those problems while the Tory and CCF speakers avoided them altogether. Even on the question of the relationship between the yower to amend our own constitution and national sovereignty, St. Laurent’s ex- planation that inability to amend our constitution is interpreted in some quarters as lack of sovereignty, sug- gests very strongly that he is more concerned about sat-_ isfying doubts expressed in the United States than he is about solving Canada’s constitutional crisis. 6 a Two fundamental contradictions that have develop- ed between the BNA Act, written 82 years ago, and the present-day needs of our people are being sedulously ignored by the government in the present debate. Those two contradictions are: \ © | | The contradiction between the direct’ and in- tegral control exercised by Toronto or Montreal head _ offices of great monopolies over their operations all over Canada versus the division of Dominion and _ provincial jurisdiction and authority laid down in the BNA Act. This contradiction is the source of the over-simplified but expressive “explanation” that, “the governments that have the authority haven’t got the means and the gov- ernment which has the means hasn't got the authority.” Actually it is more complicated than that but it does express one very important result of the contradiction, — namely, the inability of the poorer provinces with half the country’s population to finance the standard of edu- cation, social services, etc., for which they are made responsible by the BNA Act, out of the revenues allotted to them. When they BNA Act was written the cost of those features of government was negligible and the present concentration of the national income of the - country was not even suspected. 3 @ i ; ri ; ¥ The fact that the BNA Act provides certain very limited cultural guarantees to Quebec without , granting constitutional recognition of the nationhood of French a Canada is utilized increasingly by political tricksters to _ + prevent democratic progress in Quebec and, thereby, through the BNA Act; to extend that obstruction: to _ Canada as a whole. — Sai Se ears | Ag noted above, neither of these contradictions ‘is even touched upon, by the present government proposal, ‘Labor-Progressive party for their solution, © == the national — yet solution of both of them is absolutely essential. Next‘ -Week I shall describe the proposals advanced.-by ‘ @ This is the first of two articles by; leader of the Labor-Progressive. party. _ 148,000. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 4, 1949 — ALBERTA LETTER By BEN SWANKEY Socred threats rep. by pop. —EDMONTON HE 1949 spring session of the Alberta legislature appointed a committee to consider a redistribution of the provincial constituencies. This step was long overdue because of the increase in Alberta’s population (it is now 871,000 and the largest of the three prairie provinces) and also because of the great shift in population as between city and country that has taken place during the past 10 years.’ The population of Edmonton, for example, has increased by 50 per- cent since 1939. The legislative committee, having held several pub- lic hearing and advanced a number of proposals, has now come out with some “final” reconimendations. Their distinguishing feature is that they make no attempt whatsoever to correct present injustices. : The committee recommends that the number of MLAs be increased from 57 to 61 and that the four New members be distributed as follows: two more from Edmonton, one more from Calgary, and one from a new constituency—Bonnyville. | = : It «would appear on the surface that “Edmonton will be better off than Calgary. But this is not so. Two new areas, West Jasper Place and Beverly, have been added to the Edmonton constituency. The added population of 11,000 cancels out the extra seat pro- posed for Edmonton as compared with Calgary and means that to all intents and purposes the city of Edmonton proper will have the same number of seats as Calgary, even though Edmonton has at least 30,000 “more people. : Edmonton’s 1949 population (official civic census) is 137,000, with West Jasper Place and Beverly added, If the committee recommendation is adopted Edmonton will have one MLA for every 21,000 people. And Edmonton’s population is growing at the rate of 10,000 a year. The Alberta LPP presented a brief to the com- mittee on redistribution in which it proposed that Edmonton and Calgary should be given genuine rep- _ resentation by population, that the town of Pincher ‘Creek should be taken out of the Pincher Creek-Crow’s Nest constituency leaving it composed in the main of coal miners, and that the Nordegg coal mining area be added to Edson constituency. These proposals were ignored by the committee. The redistribution committee, which incl the CCF and Liberal provincial ae iF pe ae, to be using the 1948 Alberta population of 846,000 and 61 members as a basis, which would make the unit of representation 13,900. If “rep. by pop.” were being aah ag applied, Edmonton would be getting 11 seats, not 7! ‘ 6 The question naturally arises: Why does the Social Credit government discriminate in this manner against — the cities? It has two reasons, ae } ; The first is the fact that the main opposition to _ the Social Credit government comes from both labor — and the old line parties in the cities. The less rep-— resentation, the less opposition is the reasoning which- seems to dominate the government’s mind. It might -be added that this sort of discrimination against rep- resentation from the cities in the West is quite a common thing—Winnipeg is a classical example. The second factor is that the Social Credit gov- ernment has consistently discriminated against indus- trial, working class areas. Edmonton and Calgary ‘aren’t the only examples. ‘ ; x In the south-west corner of the province, the ‘Crow’s _ Nest-Pincher Creek constituency used to include the mining town of Canmore to the north. Canmore was taken out and the neighboring town of Pincher Creek was added. The latter is an area of big ranchers who ‘vote Social Credit or for the old-line parties. This “was deliberately done to counteract the radical votes of the coal miners and keep the seat safe for Social Credit. : i y ae oe It becomes apparent that the prime concern of the Social Credit government is not to give the» people genuine representation by population, but to “make representation safe for itself. ‘ a « i es ad The real Soviet ‘threat’. | SOCIAL insurance in the USSR is financed | entirely by: the state and administered by the | unions. Since workers do not pay any share of the cost, insurance is really a supplement to wages. Pensions vary for different. types of workers. | Miners who reach the age of 50 after 20 years | — in the mines: gets a pension equal to 50 percent — of their wages when the pension starts, regardless | of whether they retire. or continue on the job. | School teachers get a pension of 40 percent of — their highest pay after 25 years work. Medical service is ‘free and payments during illness or in- _capacity are 60 percent of the full wage for work- ers who have been on the job for less than a ~-year and 100 percent thereafter. Nae Social insurance makes up 4 ‘percent of the -} total. Soviet. budget this year.» Unemployment — | insurance does not exist in the USSR because | there is no unemployment, every citizen” being | guaranteed the right to work under the constitution. oa TREEBAT Es. Hi PAGE.