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Vancouver, British Columbia, Friday, February 4, 1949

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Threat to world peace

KEEP CANADA OUT OF
ANK SUICID

U.S. could command Canadian bases

—OTTAWA

George Drew’s first action as
leader of the Tory opposition
in the House of Commons has
been, not surprisingly, to con-
tribute to the present atmos-
phere of war incitement.

As foreshadowed in the tru-
culent anti-Soviet speeches he
made during his recent visit to
the Pacific Coast, Drew seized
on a statement made by Wal-
ter Harris, MP for Grey Bruce
and parliamentary assistant to
Prime Minister Louis St. Lau-
rent, that war with the Soviet
Union might come _ three
months after the signing of
the Atlantic pact, to offer a
motion that the House adjourn
to discuss this statement “as
a matter of urgency.”

The motion was. defeated.
135-55, but it had served its
purpose in helping to create
the atmosphere for discussion
of the many war preparations,
foremost among them Canada’s
already pledged adherence to
the Atlantic pact, which will
cost hard - pressed taxpayers
many millions of dollars that

might otherwise go to provid-.

ing greater social security.

But Canada’s economy is in-
creasingly being geared to mili-
tary needs and production, and
to the extent that the people
permit this process to go un-

checked, the perspectives of

peace become a danger to the
industrialists and bankers. For,
if the perspectives are those of
peace, what then happens to

Drew beats drums of war

the country’s war-geared econ-
omy and the huge profits be-
ing made from military produc-
tion?

Here, Liberals, Conserva-
tives and the right wing of the
CCF, by their support of a
“preparedness” program based
on the perspective of war, re-
gardless of difference in ap-
proach, all betray the people’s
interests.

To what extent those inter-
ests, the national sovereignty,
has already been betrayed to
the U.S. was evidenced this
week when Defense Minister
Brooke Claxton, replying to a
question in the House, admit-
ted that Americans could be
placed in command of Cana-
dian depots,

.

St. Lawrence seaway becomes

wor project

rence to the head of the Great Lakes, is regarded as a

By TIM BUCK

The St. Laurent government is preparing the betrayal of Canada’s
sovereignty and the cause of world peace. To give the appearance
of democratic procedure to something which already has been cooked
up in months of secret meetings, Canada’s 1949 parliament will be
asked by the government to approve the, North Atlantic Security
Pact. It should be called the North Atlantic Suicide Pact. There
are few Canadians who can tell you the real reasons for such a pact,
yet Canadian citizens may be dying a few years from now because
of it.

The plan is to have the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands and Luxembourg join in a military alliance which
will provide that each will go to war if any is threatened by a non-
Atlantic power. Under its provisions the U.S. will be given the
power to decide what constitutes “‘aggression,”’ whereupon the trigger-
happy U.S. miltarists will have the authority to plunge us into war.

This is the military extension of the Marshall Plan which, as
the LPP and the Pacific Tribune have said for the past 18 months,
is U.S. imperialism’s method of putting the western world into the
clutches of Wall Street. The new pact is to follow up the dollar
with guns. ;

It is a military alliance not of a defensive, but of an offensive
nature—offensive against the people of Western Europe, against the
Soviet Union and the New Democracies, and against the colonial
peoples who are winning freedom in Asia and Africa, and whom
Truman and St. Laurent hate and fear.

Under cover of high-flown rubbish about “defending our security,”
‘superiority in arms,” and the “‘uselessness of the UN,” Canadians
are being asked to surrender their sovereignty over the security of our

country, as they have been asked
to surrender control over their
economic affairs, to the U.S. mili-
tary and its high-finance masters,

the Wall St. barons.
The North Atlantic Suicide Pact

has two objectives:

(1) to build up the military
establishments of Western Europe,
on the basis of the U.S.-controlled
Ruhr, with standardized U.S.
equipment, controlled by U.S.
military missions.

(2) to provide legal camouflage
for establishing U.S. military, air
and naval bases throughout the
Western hemisphere and in West-
ern Europe.

_ The consequences of Canada’s
signature on this pact will be that
all the defense establishments of
Canada must in future bear the
stamp: “‘Approved by the U.S.”
We can expect an increase in
number of US. military already
on our territory; the moving into
the department of national defense
of the U.S. chiefs of staff; the
further domination of Canadian
industry as a source of U.S.-
designated armaments.

E PACT

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This is what the Suicide Pact

(Continued on back page)
See SUICIDE PACT

The long-projected St. Lawrance seaway will provide a major
question for debate at this session of parliament—but as part of
Uanadian-American joint war preparations. The development,
whereby a 27-foot canal would be constructed from the St. Law-

vital military artery, a source of power for ammunition plants
and a shipping route over which Hollinger-Hanna iron ores can
be carried to inland steel smelters in the U.S. and Canada.

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