Looki
his 4
Photas”

—Refore they change again.”

n .

§ wistfully at cuts of meat now completely beyond the reach of
Race shopper in Vancouver supermarket told Tribune
Wickly b Pher Sean Griffin. ‘You'd better photograph those prices

Vigi commemorates
Hiroshima bombing

Au
Worlasst 6th, 1945 was a day the
Amen; illnever forget. Afteran
Ver 2" Plane had thundered
Clear paving released the nu-
Of Hip ago on the Japanese city
Monst : Ima, it looked ‘‘asifa
Ver | Steam roller had passed
°Xisten and squashed it out of
Che ae as Wilfred Bur-
the Ci € first reporter to enter
Y after the bomb had
mae in his diary.
League ; Vver’s Peace Action
Com pioined With the world in
Sma aration of that dayina
tiday a Meaningful vigillast
tthe courthouse.

Hitoshins 8:15 a.m. when
hat kill 4 awoke to the blast
ual ee 100,000, injured an
akes its att and still today
ietor : a 1 deaths and birth
Mpoicn, Caused by radia-

titos ete: The relevance of
€casy » though, lies not with

alties, for the war saw

many events almost equally as
horrible.

see HIROSHIMA pg. 7

FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1973

While the major news media in
the country were struggling
frantically to take the edge off
the remarks of federal agricul-
ture minister Eugene Whelan
and blame high meat costs on
‘‘hoarding’’ and ‘‘panic-buy-
ing’’, prices in Vancouver and
elsewhere began leaping
upward Tuesday. Onsomecuts
of beef, the increases in certain
stores exceeded 50 cents per
pound and further increases
were anticipated.

In at least one supermarket in
Vancouver, meat packaging em-
ployees were instructed to take
old stock from the display cases

and re-package it — with the’

new prices.

Even on the product some are
coming to call ‘‘ersatz ground
beef’’— ground beef to which has
been added water, spices and
soya bean meal — the price,
listed at 79 cents per pound on
Saturday, had jumped to 99
cents on Tuesday.

Several sources blamed either
the.railway tieup or-pani¢ buy-
ing by consumers for the huge
price increases but the voices
were all from people like
Richard Stocks of the B.C.
Federation of Agriculture and
the editors of the Vancouver
Province and were directed at
covering up. massive
profiteering that even Eugene
Whelan had to admit was going
on.
Whelan’s statements that
““somebody’s _ taken an
unscrupulous ~ markup’’ and
remarks levelled at super-
markets and meat packers
whom he referred to as
unscrupulous gangsters’ were
echoesiof consumer groups’
claims over the past months.

“This is what we’ ve been Ssay-
ing for some time,’’ Elaine
Podovinnikoff, spokesman for
the Coordinating Committee of
Concerned Organizations said.
The Committee has been active
in organizing a campaign
against high prices aimed at pres-

Vol. 34, No. 32

eat prices shoot up

suring the federal government
into giving authority to the
Prices Review Board to curb
price increases and roll prices
back.

‘“‘There can be no question
about profiteering when stores
are taking what are obviously old
meat stocks off the shelves and
raising the prices,’ Mrs.
Podovinnikoff charged. ‘‘That’s
not just profiteering — that’s
blatant profiteering.”

Several organizations, among
them the Coordinating Com-
mittee, the Communist Party
and several trade unions, have
called for curbs on monopoly as

> ribune

15°

the only effective means of
bringing prices down. Denying
any examples of profiteering,
the federal government has
stated that ‘‘prices monitoring”’
by the Review Board would be
effective means enough to
control increases.

But Whelan exploded any of his
government’s illusions that
prices could be in any way con-
trolled without action being
taken against major food mono-
polies. Incommenting on anti-
cipated increases in the price of
bread, Whelan admitted that
‘‘Weston’s or these big com-

see WHELAN pg. 8

Communists emphasize
action on- prices now

Communist Party provincial
secretary Nigel Morgan in a
statement to the Tribune
Tuesday called for “‘strong
effective action immediately to
curb monopoly profiteering and
halt the astronomical rise in
prices that is robbing working
people and _ particularly
pensioners and those on fixed
incomes of their standard of
living.”

Citing to the party’s central
committee report issued in
May, Morgan said that ‘‘living
costs are rising faster than ever
before in our history. We are
now seeing the results of a tie-in
by successive Liberal and Tory
governments with U.S. imper-
ialism, and the monopolization
of finance, production and.
marketing within our country.”’

Corporation profits after taxes
have risen five times faster than
wages in the first quarter of
1973, with food processors
profits up 65.4% over the same
period last year, he said.

Morgan called for action by
the entire labor and progressive
movement to ‘‘tell Mr. Trudeau

that we’ve had more than enough .

of his toothless Price Review
Board; that we need firm and
effective action by a board with
regulatory powers to stop in-
creases and roll back prices.”’

We need a Canadian Wat-
ergate-type investigation into
the operations of monopoly in
Canada, he declared.

‘As well, the trade union
movement should seriously con-
sider serving notice of its inten-
tion to reopen’ contract
settlements unless prices are
immediately rolled back.”’

Morgan warned that, without
action to reduce price levels,
more is yet to come. ‘‘Union
members, pensioners, house-
wives and all people’s organi-
zations should demonstrate
their anger and demand immed-
iate government action,’ he
said.

QUESTION LOOMS BEFORE HEARINGS

Who will control natural gas?

As the hearings into the
natural gas industry held by the
B.C. Energy Commission
moved back to Vancouver
again, the Commission was
served notice by the National
Energy Board that the defer-
ment on national board hearings
sought by B.C. would not be
granted. sae

The NEB will be ruling within
two weeks on the agreement
sought by Westcoast Transmis-
sion with E] Paso Natural Gas in
the United States which includes

among other requests, an in-
crease in the amount of gas that
Westcoast can export to the U.S.
The B.C. Energy Commission
had sought a deferment on the
NEB hearing into the agree-
ment until it had completed its
own hearings.

The requests made by West-
coast Transmission to the NEB
are of decisive importance 1n
the future of B.C.’snaturalgas
development and despite the
fact that the B.C.. Energy

Commission was asked to .

release an interim report on the
El Paso-Westcoast agreement,
the provincial governmenthas
already made it clear that it
does not intend to take the neces-
sary steps to guarantee that
natural gas resourcesi in B.C.
will be developed and used in
the interests of the people of
BC’

Earlier in the hearings, the
B.C. Federation of Labor, speak-
ing for more than 200,000 trade
unionists in the province, called
for a takeover of Westcoast

Transmission to ensure public
control of the increasingly val-
uable resource and to protect
B.C. consumers from price in-
creases that Westcoast is now
seeking. The call for a provin-
cial government takeover was
made some time before by the
Communist Party in B.C.

The provincial government
opted for a two price system
with export costs to be raised
substantially and also indicated
opposition to further increases

see NATURAL GAS pg. 8