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NUCLEAR ARMS IN CANADA

of Aivunly-rmiblion dollar!

Com, = SEAN GRIFFIN

at the the road ends abruptly

aid the Ylow-and-black barrier
Beyond 8uard of military police.
Nstalleq py buildings loom. But
ire en, deep within the barbed
Ca Clo

nadian, euke of the sprawling

SR A ag a Ba

rear Des Oe FB ce

DWiwandiis 2eriek Was caer aed ee

Th

TWeleap is orces Base are the
arheads, invisible and

Sins
ter F
be testimony to a country’s

traya),
Mi

Wire ge carson — the man who
While . ask of peacemaker
Mangyip ctSing nuclear brink-
*teement ;,. 8 dead. But the
More gat be made with the U.S.
Nelea, an ten years ago to store
“Ontin qn abons in this country.
in ;, And the warheads
QUeb a a Comox, in Bagotville,
Scotia nd in Chatham, Nova

AS if
tis ~ flaunt his contempt for
arson ety S independence,
Bremen: disclosure that an
Dace"! Was to be signed to
Came ;UClear arms in Canada
13, St before Canada Day,
Weemer Coupled with the an-
be. e Nt that the arms were to
Milita UY Guarded by U.S.
"dep the «sonnel and were to be

of the Pp Ole control and custody ~

With. Ntagon.

Columbia oS the people of British
Nore th Tesponded. On July 1,
leading it 50 cars lined the road
‘ in the Comox base and
C, Pea People organized by the
Po siti Ce Council voiced their
Policy, to Pearson’s disastrous

e

a © pelt was echoed all over
i Omen ¢ y. And when the Voice of
ina : Pposed nuclear arms on
omer} Soil, Pearson’s wife,
Orgs pete leading member of the
Oder to got broke with it — in
bra and by her husband as he

“d' the Pentagon.

t
Chaj Comox :
de itman C Peace Council

Mo Od Gardner told
O thege eator S that “‘the presence
Mill out Gey Weapons on our soil
Nelea, “t2Aada’s ties with the non-
ether nations, which, acting
ings ea formidable bulwark

“Nuclear B cutbreak of ther-

. mm 4
Rede, eet Party provincial
fargo, 8! Morgan called the

: pttemntge. €ement “‘a direct and

Ihe Gar °US Violation of the will of
the a, 20 people as expressed
Apr p

8 election” in which the

Je Pp :
ative "a national pages did not
aie, Week due to the airport
pe featy eir place we reproduce
brig pees from the U.S.
OW
Pbreciation we express

majority of the Canadian people
voted against nuclear weapons.
But the prime minister was
unmoved. On August 17, 1963, he
signed the fatal agreement — while

Parliament was insummer recess. . ppae
security.

Only two weeks before, foreign
ministers from Britain, the United

One of the Genie nuclear warheads as
they were installed in Comox in May,
1965.
States and the Soviet Union had
initialled the historic partial test
ban treaty. NDP leader T.C.
Douglas and leading Conservative
Howard Green called for the
government to uphold the prin-
ciples embodied in the treaty and
not accept nuclear weapons.
Their protest was followed
swiftly by resolutions of con-
demnation from several MPs, the
Vancouver Labor Council, the
Canadian Labor Congress and a
further massive demonstration in
Comox organized by the League
for Total Disarmament and _in-
volving several peace groups.

Enter PT contest

Get your entry in for the PT
poster and cartoon contest on
Disarmament Week as early as
you can. The contest closes
April 22. :

Cartoons or posters must be
on the theme of disarmament.
The winning entry will receive a
$50 prize. The contest is open to
anyone, including readers of the
PT.

But despite demands throughout
the country to place the matter of
the agreement before Parliament,
Pearson banned all debate. He
predated Nixon and stated that ‘‘it
was not in the interests of national

*

While Parliament was muzzled,
Pearson ushered in the new year
for 1964 with the arrival of nuclear
warheads on Canadian soil, only
hours after stories had been fed to
the press that such warheads were
not expected for some time yet. A
second shipment came into North
Bay, Ontario — under cover of

darkness.

In defiance of Parliament, in
defiance of the Canadian people, in
defiance of history, Pearson was
determined to tie his country to the
Pentagon.

And all the fit the U.S. nuclear
strategy which intended to place
nuclear missiles on the periphery
of Canada in order to ‘‘dilute” any
nuclear attack and minimize the
danger to the continental United
States while posing the threat of
terrible devastation to Canada.

It was not antil May, 1965 ‘that the

nuclear warheads — intended to
arm the Voodoo jet interceptors
and now intended for the CF-101
jets — arrived in Comox. But in the
space of that year, the campaign
against nuclear arms resounded
across the country. The Canadian
‘Campaign for Nuclear Disar-
‘mament, the B.C. Peace Council,
‘the Voice of Women, the Com-
munist Party, the New Democratic
Youth, the Fellowship of Recon-
ciliation, the Young Communist
League, the Canadian Youth. for
Disarmament — all demonstrated

their opposition.

Pearson defied the people

In the B.C. Legislature, Dave
Barrett, then the NDP member for
Dewdney, introduced a motion
“that this House urge the federal
government to remove nuclear
arms from Canadian soil.” The
B.C. Peace Council responded with
a lobby to the Legislature urging
support for Barrett’s motion and
collected more than 5000 post cards

The motion was defeated by a
Socred majority but the
momentum gathered by the peace
movement was not to be turned
back by governments in Ottawa or
in Victoria.

The issue of nuclear arms
receded as the threat that they
presented became overshadowed
by the war of aggression against
Vietnam but the larger issues — of
Canada’s participation in NATO
and NORAD — that the peace
movement and the Communist
movement had raised were taken
up by the Canadian Labor
Congress and the New Democratic
Party. That the present Liberal
government only renewed the
NORAD agreement for one year
indicated its sensitivity to a
decisive issue. <25% 2 :

Yet, at Comox, at Bagotville, at
Chatham, the warheads remain as
the expression of our continued
link with the U.S. military and with
the aggressive pacts of NATO and
NORAD.-At a time when the world
is moving towards an easing of
tensions, when the movement for
detente initiated by the socialist
countries is gaining new
adherents, the Liberal government

still lingers in its embrace with the’

Pentagon.

It’s time the affair was ended.

APRIL 27

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MONOPOLIES HIT

‘One law for
rich another
for the poor’

‘What kind of justice is it that
will see a poor man sent to prison
for 30 days for shoplifting
something he couldn’t afford to
buy, and having his name
publicized and given a criminal
record for the rest of his life; while
a rich man who engages in a
monopoly conspiracy against the
public which takes millions out of
the public’s pockets, gets away
without a prison sentence or even
having his name mentioned
publicly for his crime?”’

“Yet that is what is happening
today,’ said PT editor Maurice
Rush, speaking at a supper rally at
the Grandview Community Centre
in Vancouver last Sunday. He
pointed to the recent cement
monopoly case in B.C. which
brought fines against the major
cement companies but no charges
against the main conspirators in
the price-fixing monopoly
arrangement.

Speaking on the subject of high
prices, Rush said every section of
the population is suffering as a
result of inflation except one: the
giant corporations, ‘“‘who’’, he said,
“are enriching themselves as
never before from the suffering of
the people.”’

He pointed to the large profits
being made by Canadian and B.C.
corporations which are at an all
time high, while standards of living
of the people are declining rapidly
as a result of inflation.

Drawing attention to the recent
brief presented by the Canadian
Labor Congress to the federal
government which said that the
average worker in Canada has
suffered a loss in real earnings of
$5.50 a week by the fourth quarter
of 1973, Rush said ‘‘inflation today
is the main means by which the big
employers are cutting worker’s
wages.”

Pointing to the sharp rise in food
prices for the month of February of
2.6 percent, Rush said all signs
point to 1974 being the worst year
yet for consumers. ‘“‘At the rate
prices are rising, and the wave or
recent prices increases, the:cost of
food this year may easily exceed 30
per cent. This is coming at a time
when millions of Canadians have
already used up their reserves and
have little to fall back on,”’ he said.

Giving some startling figures on
the deteriorating economic
position of most Canadians, Rush
said that more than half of
Canadian families, to be exact 53.5
~per cent, have no saving deposit in
any bank and 80 percent do not own
any Canada Savings Bonds.

Showing his audience a chart of
the holdings of George Weston Ltd.
which he described as the biggest
food monopoly in Canada, Rush
said ‘‘the Weston empire is like a
huge milking machine — milking
the Canadian consumers dry
through inflated prices while
rolling up an 86 percent profit in
1973.’ He called for strong public
action to break up the big
monopolies and for changes in the
Combines legislation which would
require that monopoly con-
spirators be sent to jail.

The supper rally was sponsored
by the Kingsway Club of the
Communist Party. The popular
singing group from Surrey,
“Bargain At Half the Price”
provided an excellent program of
songs.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 1974—PAGE 3