By MEL DOIG

cae Quebec Bureau of the
Sane Tribune interviewed
Chee Walsh, president of the
th unist Party of Quebec, on

€ tapid-fire
Week's dr succession of last

meee)
SOme

nee amatic developments
bec. The following are
of his remarks:

Quire main content of the Parti
act ee Convention was the
ee a It is projecting itself
Detty.-b @c as the party of the
for cape actually going
raditi Itical power, using all the
3 on bourgeois gimmicks.

they ¢ Tse, they have no illusion
. an become the government

i
but the next Quebec elections,

Possibi}} :
ba auity or either holding the

Ce of power or of b -
in ecom
iia Official opposition.
Si Québecois conven-
fence the bid for election
Pierre > xecutive Council of
ein former head of
De ement pour 1’Indé-
ae Nationale (RIN), which
. Bee uression of a desire to
to attra Image of respectability,
all for ct rural votes, to reject
Mass tue of extra-parliamentary
‘pault i eeele, with which Bour-
: 42 associated.
Wor Small percentage of
come Class represented at the
Vesque was, as René Lé-
cause th Imself pointed out, be-
win ¢ main objective was to
Sections. peuy bourgeoisie and
Ts: : ! the upper brackets of
Collar TKing class and white
Cideq workers. The program de-
Vention nen at the founding con-
baseg »@ year ago was not one
and pron, Working class needs
; THe nciples.
of the steetzement of the role
tor refe ate in the economic sec-
> ae to by Lévesque as
at this evelopment introduced
ation of ecotion is a continu-
iberals € policy of the Quebec
th when first elected in
in the ¢ € policy was expressed
Pasion ion of the General
Générate Corporation (Société
exist, de Financement), still
Biitver whose purpose is
Nation ee funds in the for-
- lative Of monopolies out of re-
Driseg” efficient family enter-
ital So that French Canadian
tional oo compete in interna-
Utilizati Bees: This is, of course,
Collect Nn of the state for the
©n of public funds to de-

tion
t

€y are putting forward the’

velop monopoly. This was not in
the original program of the Parti
Qwébecois, and has been intro-
duced into it ‘by Jacques Pari-
zeau, who was the architect of
this project in the first place as
economic adviser to the then pre-
mier of Quebec, Jean Lesage,
and later to Daniel Johnson. It
is amusing, therefore, to see
how the Anglo-Canadian press
refers to this as ‘doses of social-
ism’ being introduced by
Jacques Parizeau and Lévesque.

e

I think the Parti Quebecois
will get a very large vote par-
ticularly from the urban, but
also from rural petty-bourgeois.
If the Créditistes finally decide
to enter the Quebec election
campaign vigorously, ‘they will
cut into primarily the rural vote

of the PQ, which in any case is

not likely to produce many
seats. Representation at the
Parti Quebecois convention
would indicate they are far from
having a majority of the work-
ing class support. The creation
of a mass party of labor spon-
sored by the trade union move-
ment would reduce even this
percentage considerably.

e

The Trudeau-Marchand speech-
es were timed as a counter-blow
to the PQ convention and in fact
succeeded in stealing the front
pages of béth major English
language papers in Montreal, as
well as taking the limelight in
the French language press. Their
speeches were not so much a

direct attack on the Parti Qué-

becois, but an effort to rally all
rightwing forces in all parties,
as well as all those opposed to
any change from the status quo
in the direction of recognition of
the right of the French-Canadian
nation to self-determination and
equality. Their thrusts were
aimed in several directions.

First, the Quebec Liberal
Party, on whom they repose
their main hopes for enforcing
both their program for austerity
and of “One Canada — One Na-
tion,” was given a stern warn-
ing. Their leadership hopefuls
must be even more “ynequivo-
cal” federalists—that is to say,
against self-determinaticn for
Quebec. So far, candidates Rob-
ert Bourassa and Pierre Laporte,
have made this unmistakably
clear, but have tended to give

luken re-elected alderman
—Kardash defeated by trickery

AldeeY WILLIAM ROSS
Relecayen Joseph Zuken was
election | in Winnipeg’s civic
Schoo) 70% October 22. but
Was unanrstee Mary Kardash
the gq able to retain her seat on
Political road because of the

ieg €rrymandering  car-
Tory pfough by the reactionary
in reqaeet@l_ coalition (GWEC)
from ‘Cing the size of the Board
Labor El Members to 9. Both
dates -, ction Committee candi-
Votes ceived almost the same
. €y polled two years ago
Polls Smaller turnout at the
histor, ©. lowest in the city’s
ence tp; 22 Per cent). The differ-
‘Wo oe year, however, was that
it each Stees were to be elected
inste,, “2td for the 2-year term

. The, of three,

the control by reaction over the
civic administration. On City
Council GWEC now has 10 seats,
a gain of 2, the NDP has 6, 1 in-
dependent and 1 LEC. On the
School Board GWEC holds 6 of

‘the 9 seats. The NDP victory in

the June provincial elections was
not followed through on the civic
level, The aggressive campaign
waged by GWEC was not
matched by the NDP which con-
ducted a listless, routine cam-
aign. ‘
é The main lesson to be drawn
from the election results is that
it requires unity of the entire
labor and progressive forces

around a civic program which.

challenges and offers an alter-
native to the reactionary Big
Business administration of
GWEC to win a labor majority

oe

expression to qualifying French-
Canadian national aspirations.
Messrs. Trudeau and Marchand
are not satisfied, and underlined
the point by having spread across
newspaper pages the photo of
the Prime Minister himself, with
Madame Marchand, in the com-
pany of Claude Wagner, the
“law and order” Liberal leader-
ship man-on-horseback.
Secondly, Trudeau and Mar-
chand went on the offensive once
more against the Union Na-
tionale government’s concern
with the “international voca-
tion” of Quebec. They attacked
the government directly, and
highly-placed civil servants,
probably aiming at Mr. Morin,
deputy-minister of inter-govern-
mental affairs. This is an expres-
sion of the dissatisfaction of St.
James Street — the main back-
ers of the Trudeau-Marchand
team —with the inability of
Prime Minister Bertrand to clear

out of his cabinet representa- —

tives of the national petty bour-
geois in Quebec, and of their
patron saint Jean-Guy Cardinal,
as well as to force the Quebec
Liberal party off, the “interna-
tional vocation” platform which
they were the first to introduce
in Quebec politics.

Thirdly, the attack on the
“separatists” in the CBC (Radio
Canada) was part of the Tru-
deau-Marchand line announced
on the weekend, that they con-
sider the Canadian government
responsible for curing every-
thing they believe to be ills any-
where in Canada, including Que-
bec. ; ;
To this can be addéd their de-
cision to have a parliamentary
committee investigate the Libe-
ral baby, the Company of Young
Canadians, in a hunt for “sub-
versives.”

The speech to the Mount
Royal Women’s Community
Club by T. R. Anthony Melcolm,
co-president of the Canada Com-
mittee and vice-president of the
Liberal Federation of Canada,
was the number three punch, fol-
lowing the one-two of Trudeau
and Marchand. Mister Malcolm
is a damned liar. There is no
leader or ex-leader of the Young
Communist League of Quebec

who “had been trained in Cuba -

and is now in Moscow.” I know
of no Robert Favreau, the person
Malcolm is said to have named,

The Labor Election Committee
publicly called on the electors to
vote a full labor slate but this
was not reciprocated by the
NDP. The LEC campaigned to
break the stranglehold of GWEC
over the civic administration but
the NDP conducted their cam-
paign as if GWEC didn’t exist. It
is also no secret that the NDP
trustees received little encour-
agement from their party offic-
ials in beating back the GWEC
plot to reduce the size of the
School Board. As a matter of
fact, a few of the NDP cabinet
members had expressed them-
selves privately as being in favor
of a smaller School Board in the
name of efficiency. The result is
that in addition to Mary Kardash

being squ

eezed out, NDP rep-_
“resentation on the Board was re-

in the leadership of the YCL in
Quebec at any time. His whole
witch-hunt speech was aimed to
create. hysteria and to lay the
basis for the formation of a
reactionary “united front”
against democracy and the na-
tional aspirations of the French-
Canadian people. The fact he
dragged in Cuba, Algeria and the
Soviet Union in his attacks
shows how far he is ready to go
to rally support around the “lib-
eral” Trudeau-Marchand-Pelle-
tier leadership.
: fo)

The conference of the Federal
Council of the Confederation of
National Trade Unions had an
effect on these developments.

On the one hand, Michel Char-
trand and his followers were
able to get a two-thirds majority
calling for unilingualism in Que-
bec which was a divisive, dan-
gerous distortion of the demo-
cratic national aspirations of the
French-Canadian working peo-
ple. At the same time, they did
take Trudeau sharply to task for
his attacks on the CBC and CYC.
They also criticised the Drapeau-
Saulnier Montreal administration
for their terrible neglect of hous-
ing, but the Union Nationale po-
lice state program is curiously
still left without commentary.

The Union Nationale govern-

ment is submitting to the Na-
tional Assembly Bill 63 on the
matter of language and educa-
tion in Quebec.

The Communist Party of Que-
bec has not had an opportunity
to study this bill. However, in
September, 1968 we called for
the recognition of French as the
general and principal language
of Quebec, hence rejecting offi-
cial bi-lingualism and at the
same time opposing unilingual-
ism. We also demanded the
right of parents, regardless of
national origin, to choose the
language of instruction of their
children, subsidised by the gov-
ernment, as well as measures
providing for such students to
acquire a working knowledge of
French before receiving a diplo-
ma. We also called for measures
to help make French a language
of work, short of what is really
necessary to accomplish this—
nationalization of key industries
in Quebec. Our criticisms of Bill
63 will centre on the degree to
which it does not guarantee in
fact the accomplishment of these
aims, and will in no way be asso-
ciated with the criticisms by
Raymond Lemieux of the League
for School Integration which at-
tack it from a narrow nationalist

standpoint.

The National Committee of the Communist Party of
Quebec at its meeting of October 20, 1969 declared that
the Union Nationale Government and the Drapeau-Saul-
nier administration are mounting very dangerous attacks
against democracy in order to hold back the very big
movements demanding wage and economic equality with
English Canada, as well as the movements for the right
to self-determination of the French Canadian nation. They
are looking for scapegoats in the Left and in the trade
union movement to cover the bankruptcy of their ‘‘policy
of glory” which goes with their policy of betrayal of the
interests of our people. The government has already adopt-
ed-and put into practice its ten-point Special Police Mea-
sures program, which gives us the appearance of a “police
state’ seconded by the federal army and police. It has
amended the labor code, and intends to amend it further
in order to create a corporate state, undermining the right
to organize strikes and picket freely. Here is another very
broad base to create the greatest unity between the work-
ing people and the national democratic forces in Quebec..

The Communist Party of Quebec sounds the alarm that
we are on the threshold of neo-Duplessis-type darkness.
The moment.urgently demands unity.of all the democratic
and trade union forces, regardless of ideological differen-
ces. We declare that we are ready to participate fully in
every effort aiming at unity in order to eliminate discrimi-
nation and to restore and enlarge democracy in Quebec.

By CHUCK McFADDEN

Ten young people met on
Thursday night, October 23, to
found the Young Communist
League of Manitoba. The first
public’ activity of the YC: of
Manitoba will be to assist in
building the November 15 dem-
onstration in Winnipeg against
Canadian complicity in Vietnam
and for the complete and uncon-
ditional withdrawal of US.
troops, ‘

Serious attention was given by
the meeting to the need for a
program of study of Marxism-
Leninism and for a public edu-

cational program that would
serve the needs of left-moving
working and student youth. »
Nick Ursuliak was elected
General Secretary, and Ray Sep-
tember, Labor Secretary of the
Manitoba YCL. They will serve
as corresponding members on
the Initiating Committee for an
all-Canada League. The Manito-
ba YCL delegated them to at-
tend the expanding Initiating

Committee meeting to be heldin
Toronto at the end of December. —

This meeting will prepare for the
March, 1970, Founding Conven-
tion of the all-Canada League.

4: OVErall res i ce
io ult of the civic
M Was the strengthening of

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