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NEW WAR THREAT
BY U.S. IN ASIA

The Vancouver Sun story from Washington, D.C. dated
December 5, seen here on the left, was a tipoff on the
preparations underway by the Pentagon for a sharp escalation
of the war this spring.

There are many signs that the U.S. is busy on the military
and diplomatic fronts to line up support for spreading the war
in South East Asia. Already armed forces have been built up
so that combined U.S. and South Vietnamese puppet troops
exceed 1,300,000 men.

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READY TO DEFEND THEIR COUNTRY. Photo shows North Vietnamese
antiaircraft soldiers undergoing training. Gunners such as these have taken a

heavy toll of U.S. bombing planes.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1968

VOL. 29, NO. 1

By MAURICE RUSH

As British Columbians enter the first year
of Canada’s second century the preservation
of peace emerges as the major overiding
issue of 1968. On it depends not only our
physical survival but our economic security
and well-being.

Canadians have never realized before, as they came
to realize in 1967, that the U.S. aggression in Vietnam
and its heavy financial burden is having an adverse
affect on Canada’s economy. Rising interest rates and
prices, skyrocketting rents and cutbacks on
construction leading to mass unemployment, are the
direct results of the Vietnam war.

While Canadian troops are not fighting in Vietnam,
we are nevertheless, because. of the economic
domination of our country by the U.S., feeling all the
economic backlash from the Vietnam war.

The most serious of all problems we face in the first
few weeks of the New Year is that at any time the U.S.
military machine in Vietnam may unleash new actions
which will escalate the war in Asia and open the danger
to mankind of a nuclear holocaust.

It was clear from all radio, TV and newspaper “‘year-
end round ups” that this was the thing that worried
most people. And so it should. The vast U.S. build-up of
troops and equipment in Vietnam is not just for show
— the Yanks intend to use it if they can to clobber the
small nations of South East Asia — and in the first place
Vietnam — who refuse to line up with American policy.

Canadians are not without means to influence the
present dangerous situation — if only they act to
compel the government to repudiate the sale of
Canadian arms to the U.S. and to publicly dissociate
Canada from U.S. policy in Vietnam. Such action would
help stay the hand of American aggression and arouse
the people of the world against the new war crimes
being planned in the Pentagon against mankind. :

Tribune

10c.

SS

PEACE TOP ISSUE IN ‘68

Hiding behind the economic affects of the Vietnam
war on Canada, the big monopolies, aided by federal
provincial governments, are seeking to turn Canadian
political policies to the right: to roll back social
security measures, cut government spending on housing
and other needed projects, impose higher taxes on the
poor, and to threaten labor with dire consequences if
workers seek wage increases.

Substantial wage boosts have become inevitable in
1968 as a result of rising prices, rents, interest rates,

‘taxes and other levies imposed on working people by

capitalist governments to make them carry the major
burden of Canada’s present financial difficulties.

Thus 1968 holds promise of very sharp struggles
between rapacious big business bent on retaining and
increasing profits, and the mass of working people and
their families who need more purchasing power to
maintain a decent standard of living. In B.C. the Socred
government has already shown, as has Vancouver’s
Mayor Tom Campbell, that. they stand with the big
bosses against labor.

***

1968 is also the year in which Canada will have to
move much more decisively to meet the problem of
Canadian independence from U.S. domination and to
find a lasting solution to Canadian unity based upon the

recognition of the equal rights of both of our founding ~

peoples in a new Constitution.

It will be a year in which Canadians — and especially,

we here in B.C. — will have to face up*to the task of 3

stopping the massive takeover of our resources and
industries by U.S. and foreign monopolies. It will be a
year in which the people, and in the first place the labor
movement, will have to take up the fight to restore
Canadian ownership of Canadian industries and
resources.

Above all, 1968 will be a year which will demand
greater labor and peoples unity than ever before if we
are to meet the challenge of 1968.

U.S.-DICTATED GAS PRICES REJECTED

By NIGEL MORGAN
_ Canada’s National Energy Board
handed Canadians a hefty Yuletide
present in it’s Xmas eve rejection of
Westcoast Transmission-El Paso
export license.

The application involved the sale
Of 200 million cu. feet of natural gas
per day, and the decision is an
important precedent in that it
challenges the U.S. Federal Power
Commission's attempt of last
Summer to set the price and terms
on which Canada may export its gas.

In ea lengthy written: judgement

opposing the application of
Westcoast, which was supported by
the Attorney Generals of B.C. and
Alberta, B.C. Hydro, Inland Natural
Gas, Pacific Petroleums, and
Cominco — the Board declared they
were ‘‘unable to satisfy itself that
the proposed export price . . . for
which export license is sought is just
and reasonable in relation to the
public interest.”

' “We are asked to approve an
export at a price which we find to be
materially less than fair market
value» and» to accept- a» pricing

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method which, in our view, is
completely unacceptable.”

The difference in price is a
material one the Board, stated. It
amounts to more than $8,100 per day
— more than $68,000,000 over the 20-
year period of the contract. The
NEB’s policy decision could mean a
better deal for Canadian gas users.

Referring to the present export
contract, known as the ‘‘1954
Agreement” in which gas is exported
at! 22 cents (U.S.) until 1977, the

Board said: ‘‘Experience has shown
that a bad bargain is very durable’.

As NEB Commissioner Douglas
Fraser declared, ‘‘There is no merit
in Canada subsidizing U.S. industry
by selling gas in the export market at
prices significantly lower than the
least-cost alternative’. The Board
pointed out that the price dictated by
the U.S. board was 4% cents cheaper
than gas from the southern U.S. It
wisely rejected the U.S. attempt to
dictate that B.C. be included in the

-U.S. ‘‘in line”’ policy for pricing gas.

This method holds that gas must be

sold at a price in line with prices in
adjoining states in the same region.
Since B.C. prices are lower than
Oregon prices, it would have meant
the only way Canadian gas exporters
could have received a better price
for their product would have been to
increase the price to their Canadian
customers, regardless of the
competitive or cost relationships
that might exist. The NEB noted that
the U.S. board didn’t follow this
principle when it recently authorized
the sale of American gas to Ontario.

See GAS PRICES, pg. 12

TRY