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TORONTO — The labor and democratic
movement must be in a position to help determine
the basic principles of any new Canadian constitu-
tion, the Communist Party insists. Otherwése, the
‘‘Wheelers and dealers’’ of the Liberal and Tory
parties will continue to divide Canada, the Com-
munists say in a statement of the party’s central

executive committee, Oct. 17, noting that the

NDP, as well, had failed to offer a democratic
alternative.

Standing in opposition to the status quo of the big
business politicians, the Communist Party puts
forward proposals of its own for a democratic solu-
tion to the constitutional crisis.

“The decision of the Trudeau government to
patriate the British North America Act unilaterally
has led to a sharpening of divisions within the
country,” the Communist statement underlines.
‘The three-point program, instead of preventing
decentralization of Canada, instead of being a
means of uniting the country is dividing it, and will
divide it further.”’

The Liberal plan calls for patriation (that is,
bringing to Canada the BNA Act), inclusion of an
amending formula (over which there is currently
conflict with most of the provinces), and enshrining
in the constitution a charter of rights (again a con-
tentious point among provincial premiers).

‘What is being sold to the people of Canada is
not a new made-in-Canada constitution but the
same old BNA Act under another name,’’ the
Communists charge. ‘The charter of human rights
and freedoms gives formal, not genuine, rights to
the Canadian people.

Ignores Rights
‘‘Decisively important is the fact that the three-
point program ignores completely the national

LABOR, DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT MUST BE INVOLVED

Alternative to ‘status quo’ constitution

their right to self-determination and equality,”” the
statement says.

It protests that ‘Substituting linguistic rights for
national rights, ignoring completely the necessity
of economic, political, social and cultural rights of
Canada’s two nations, ignoring as well the rights of
the Native peoples — all this shows that the prom-

ises of change, made to the people of Quebec and

to the people of Canada during the referendum (in
Quebec) have been pushed under the table.

‘Trudeau has misinterpreted the referendum re-
sults,’ says the statement. ‘**Quebeckers want a
united Canada, but not Trudeau’s conception ofa
united Canada.

“The vision one gets of so-called constitutional
reform is one of cheap naggling and bargaining, all
at the expense of the Canadian people, who have
been completely excluded from the debate.”’

As for the New Democratic Party, ‘‘Rather than
coming forward with a truly democratic alternative
to the constitutional crisis, the NDP too has be-
come part of this ‘wheeling and dealing’ at the
expense of the national rights of the French Cana-
dian people, the rights of the Native peoples, the
economic and social rights of the Canadian
people,” the statement charges. From being
among the advocates of Canadianization of re-
sources, the NDP has now become the champion
of provincial ownership of resources, even though
these resources are in fact in the hands of the
multi-national corporations.

Bi-national State

“The Trudeau policies for patriation serve no
useful purpose;”’ says the Communist statement,
‘‘neither do the policies of those who advocate
decentralization of power. Instead, basic to a
democratic solution of the constitutional crisis are
the proposals advanced by the Communist Party of
Canada,” including: ‘‘adoption of a new made-
in-Canada constitution based on the equal volun-

tary partnership of the two peoples in an indepen-
dent, sovereign and bi-national state, buttressed by
a Charter of Rights guaranteeing genuine rights for
all Canadians, economic and social policies to
overcome inequality, including guarantees for the
rights of the Native peoples.”

The Communist Party argues that: *‘Only a un-
ited Canada, which upholds the national rights of
the French Canadian nation can effectively fight
for its independence from the pressures of U-S.
imperialism. Without Quebec, Canada can’t be un-
ited and without such unity Canada can’t be inde-
pendent.

‘*No less basic to a democratic solution of the
constitutional crisis,”’ it says, ‘‘is the need to take
natural resources and energy out of the hands of
the multi-national corporations through national-
ization. Joint federal-provincial crown corpora-
tions should be established to ensure that the bene-
fits from the development of these natural and
energy resources accrue to the people of Canada as
a whole, as well as to planned industrial develop-
ment in the provinces where the resources are
found. a

‘What is increasingly evident,"* the Communist
statement points out, ‘‘is that unless the Canadian
people intervene in a massive way in the debate,
the ‘wheelers and dealers’ will win out, an¢ what
Canada will get is a constitution which perpetuates
the status quo, divides the country, and further
undermines Canada’s independence.

‘*To leave it to the politicians as Premier Davis
of Ontario proposes, is to leave it to the status
quo,”’ the statement charges. ° ‘To prevent this, de-
mands that the labor and democratic movement
help determine the basic principles to be embodied
in the new constitution, principles which
strengthen democracy and correspond with the
kind of Canada to strive for.”’

aspirations of the French Canadian people and

J

In the war between Iraq and Iran, Iraqi
forces had, at this writing, moved into
Iran, demolished sections of the port city
of Khorramshahr, and were battering the
oil refinery centre of Abadan. The
hositilities are a threat to the Middle East
and could ignite the fuse of world war —
that is to say, nuclear war.

Time Magazine, in its Oct. 27 issue,
Poses the question of whether the Per-
sian Gulf is about to explode. The ans-
wer depends, on the one hand, on the
Western oil monopolies, the degree of
U.S. interference, the aggressiveness of
NATO, and the reactionary Middle East

Seamer
Toronto library
| workers strike
_. TORONTO — Striking To-
‘fonto Public Library workers
took time from picketing; Oct.
- 18, to join the thousands of On-_
tarlo workers taking partin the —
Ontario Federation of Labor's —
“Ontario Can Work” rally. at —
Queen's Park. Pe en
: As they enter their fourth = |
-wéek on strike, the librarians,
_ members of Canadian Union of |
| Public Employees Local 1996
“have won the full backing of the
-'160,000-member Metro Toronto
Labor Council in their fight
Local 1996 president: Kathy —
-Vinertoidthe delegatesthatjob
evaluation and management's.
_bids to exclude more andmore |
“members from the bargaining S
- unit are the strike’s keyissues. ~
One-third of her local’s mem- |

_bers, she said, earn less than
$10,000 a year. The union wants
| the board to set aside more

than 3.6% of their budget for the
Job evaluation program.

regimes dedicated to upholding U.S. im-
perialism. It depends in part on world-
wide efforts toward a political settle-
ment.

Time notes that the U.S. Rapid De-
ployment Joint Task Force (RDF) ‘‘con-
sists of 250 officers and senior NCOs at
MacDill Airforce Base in Tampa, Fla.,
and 200,000 soldiers, sailors, marines
and airmen who would come under their
command”’ in an emergency. “‘In place”
are 33 navy craft, 17 of them warships,
which, in the Indian Ocean, “‘outnumber
29 Soviet vessels, 12 of which are fighting
ships.”

TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS

Seven specially fitted cargo ships are
stationed at the disputed U.S. base on
Diego Garcia, with supplies “for a
12,000-marine amphibious brigade
fighting for a month.”

According to Tom Foley, in the Daily
World, New York, the 2.5 million barrels
a day (mbd) ‘‘oil glut’’ before the Traq-
Iran war, was erased by lost exports of
3.5 mbd for the two warring countries.
Then Saudi Arabia announced Oct. 5
that it was stepping up production by
900,000 barrels aday with neighboring oil
states making up’the remainder.

“‘In the case of Saudi Arabia,” says
Foley, “this means Exxon, California
Standard, Mobil and Texaco, the four
U:S. oil monopolies that are joined to-
gether in the giant oil trust known as the
Arabian-American Oil Company
(ARAMCO). Saudi oil production before
the war had been 9.5 mbd, of which
seven mbd went to ARAMCO.” Clearly,
the multi-nationals are realizing a good
profit from the conflict.

While the imperialist media would like
to cast the Soviet Union as a villain, the
Soviet Union has demonstrated its desire
for an end to hostilities.

Writing in no less authoritative a pub-
lication than Pravda, back on Sept. 24,
U. Glukhov emphasized: et

‘‘The historical experience accumu-
lated by Iran and Iraq shows that their one
common enemy is imperialism .. .

“It is no wonder then that the aggrava-
tion of the differences between Iran and
Iraq causes grave concern and profound
regret with the friends of the Iranian and
the Iraqi people. One would like to be-
lieve, however, that good will will result
in a peaceful settlement of all differences

by way of negotiations, without any out-
side interference. Restraint and good
reason must get the upper hand so as to
prevent a further spreading of hostilities
and to secure their termination.”

,

Mideast explosion depends on oil giants

As if to put to death any such possibili-
ty, the USA on Sept. 20, sent four Air-
borne Warning and Commands Systems
(AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia. The
AWACS is a sophisticated, flying mili-
tary command post, capable of
co-ordinating a full-scale military attack,
directing fighters and bombers, con-.
ducting spy missions and tracking other
aircraft.

Iran has already protested that the.

Saudi AWACS are relaying information
on Iranian air force movements to Iraq.

William Arken, a researcher at the
Centre for Defence Information in the
USA, said that AWACS are another sign
that President Carter is pushing in the
direction of military intervention in the
Middle East.

‘« . the whole trend’, he says, “‘is
obviously toward a proliferating danger
of U.S. military involvement.”

In an interview with France-Press,
Sept. 17 Iran’s president Abolhassan
Banisadr, said that Iraq has ‘‘from the
very start taken a hostile stand toward
the Islamic revolution’ in Iran, and that
Baghdad's present war moves suggest
that it is planning to seize the Iranian
province of Khuzistan in the extreme
southwest, where up to 90% of Iran’s oil
Tesources are located.

Soviet President Brezhnev made clear
the Soviet position on Oct. 8, when he
said:

‘We are not going to intervene in the
conflict between Iran and Iraq. We
stand for the earliest political settlement
...” And he warned others: ‘‘ The Per-
sian Gulf area, just as any other region of
the world, is the sphere of vital interests
of the states lying there and not of some
others, and no one has the right to med-
dle from outside in their affairs, to appear
in the role of their guardians or ‘self-

799

styled ‘guards of order’.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 31, 1980—Page 5