ATTENTION! Vancouver Island B.C. NEEDS NEW JOBS! Session marked by failure | of CCF to act as opposition By KEITH RALSTON. ° VICTORIA, B.C. With the annual spring session of the provincial legis- lature at an end and the political combatants resting before the battles of the Lillooet byelection, it is time to s¢e how each of the three parliamentary parties has come through a A SERIES OF PUBLIC MEETINGS LAKE COWICHAN March 28 - 8 p.m. UNITY HALL VICTORIA March 29 - 8 p.m. WILLIAMS HALL 749 BROUGHTON ALBERNI March 30 - 8 p.m. ERIC GRAF HALL CAMPBELL RIVER March 31 - 8 p.m. TRADE UNION CENTRE CUMBERLAND April 1 - 8 p.m. ODDFELLOWS HALL PARKESVILLE April 2 - 8 p.m. PARISH HALL. NANAIMO _ April 3 - 8 p.m. CHASE RIVER HALL DUNCAN April 4 - 8 p.m. ODDFELLOWS HALL LADYSMITH April 5 - 8 p.m. To Be Announced CHEMAINUS | _ April 6 - 8 p.m. . To Be Announced AUSPICES: LABOR- PROGRESSIVE PARTY the hurly-burly of the House. | Careful observers could find no sign during the session of any stresses and strains in the. ranks of Social Credit. There is the fact, undisputed by any political commentator, that Premier W. A. C. Bennett is in complete control of his party. In the three years since he left the Conservatives — now without a seat in the House—to throw in his fortunes with Social Credit, he has won absolute ascendancy in the provincial party. The ascendancy of Premier Bennett is the ascendancy of the moderate ex-Tory wing of the party over the antiimonopoly wing of “true blue” Social Cre- ditors, who make up the orig- inel core of the party. How completely the Bennett from the appointment of W. N. Chant as minister of public works. ag Chant likes to think of himself as spokesman for the orthodox monetary reform Social Creditors, and many thought this disqualified him from getting a cabinet ‘seat. But it was necessary for Ben- nett to have a Vancouver Island cabinet minister and he didn’t by- pass Chant because he has nothing to fear from the orthodox wing whose fervor for monetary reform speeches grows dimmer with each session. : * * * The path Bennett has chosen for Social Credit can be seen from his negotiations with Kaiser and Aleoa and Frobisher, negotiations in which Bennett personally play- ed the largest role. At the end of its third year in office, the Bennett regime has the stamp of a conservative gov- ernment, rigidly orthodox in its finance and very friendly to big business. Bennett himself defined his gov- ernment’s position in speaking about the biggest question of the day: who is going to control our natural resources, and whether they are to be used to build new industries in B.C. or shipped across the border to feed U.S. industries. “We must cooperate with the great United States in natural re- sources,” he told the House in de- fense of the Kaiser deal. He said there must be cooperation in war wing is in charge can be seeny and in peace. Canada would re- criticism can best be seen, in the resources question which is the touchstone of B.C. politics today. Kaiser dam deal, the CCF offered no consistent criticism and _ alter- native to the big business re- sources policy put forward by the Bennett government. : On the deal to export gas from the Peace River the CCF was practically silent for the most of the session. And then it spoke with two voices when the subject came up. : Arthur Turner (CCF, Vancouver East) favors North-South gas lines and opposes a Trans-Canada line. Randolph Harding (CCF, Kaslo- Slocan) spoke against the West- coast Transmission plan to ship the bulk of the natural gas across the line. With the single exception of the} fuse to cooperate “at our peril, if a test comes with a certain other group of powers in the world.” The cold war premises of this pronouncement are those of Ex- ternal Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson, and show the basic unity of Social Credit and the old line parties in accepting U.S. domina- tion of Canada. * * * In contrast to the confidence of the Social Creditors, the CCF did not present in this session the pic- ture of a party that feels it is on the move. As an opposition, in fact the of- ficial opposition, the CCF did not put up the fight that would make it the next government. Its criti- cism was noticeably weaker than in past years and it voted with the government on many major issues during the session. It offered no amendment to the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, the outline of government policy for the session. Instead it voted for a-~ Liberal amendment regretting lack of action on the resources question. But then the CCF turned around and voted with the government to}. approve the Address in Reply. On the budget, the CCF did pre- sent an amendment, one which made no mention of hydro-electric or gas development, but confined itself to a series of less important points — the vote for the agricul- tural ‘department, hospital per diem grants by municipalities, toll- free roads and bridges, and tax reduction on farm lands. In addition, the resolution re- gretted the failure to provide for changes in federal-provincial tax agreements, provincial - municipal fiscal relations, as well as chronic and convalescent hospitals and housing for the aged. But on none of these points did CCF speakers in the debate prov- ide any real elaboration — they talked on just about everything else. And having gone through the motions of offering an amend- ment and having it voted down, they turned around and voted with the Socreds to approve the budget. x x ea CCF trouble is lack of an over- all policy. The “Program for Action” adopted last year is not a policy document but an organiza- tional plan to get into office with- out waging a fight to win public support on fundamental policy. Two voices.on gas The day-to-day nature of CCF, Some other CCFers raised in a partial way the need for see- ing that our resources are de- veloped first of all to give jobs in B.C. But the party as a whole did not fight effectively on this most important question. Another CCF problem is one of leadership. Arnold Webster, as House leader, has not, in the three sessions, developed into a’ good parliamentarian. ’ : Webster is not a fighter. He tends to be still a civic rather than a provincial politician and makes an adequate presentation on only a very limited number of topics. His lack of effectiveness may be measured partly by the compli- ments paid him from the cabinet benches and the comparisons made by Socreds between him and his lieutenants, to the detri- : e e f Britain’s TV baby _- , Here Britain’s most publicized baby, Sarah Mary Catherine: a snuggles in the arms ‘of her mother, British TV actress Betty Laif, all unaware of the fact that she disrupted the BBC’s television schedutes and caused concern to millions of viewers by her tardy — arrival in this world. Her impending birth was a feature of the BBC’s program, Family Affairs, and when she failed to arrive of the expected date, February 18, schedules had to be revised. She finally arrived on March 13. Ae ment of the latter. The govern-; In many instances Art Laise | ment simply does not fear Web- was able to manoeuvre the ster or take him seriously. ‘into voting with the governm 0 Another index of the failure while the Liberals voted agains! 7 of the CCF opposition to com- 7 it, and nothing pleased the }” mand the respect of the govern- Me ment was the cabinet’s slight Sitges in the 5&& contemptuous refusal to hear the’ .. aa executive of the 50,000-member; sio”, the Liberals ant with B.C, Federation of Labor (CCL). Hie hb wee. pps ; ‘ne Pi oe eee at ; pS alk ed the Socreds six times inclU@ © e Socreds dismisse e heads | - pas a of the BCFL as interested not ing both the Throne: SF i in presenting the requests of Budget. : sive é . : ; e) <: the trade unions but in making BUY Osos Bb hele aeen pot | i LAV EK CCF political capital. | conduct, the Liberals have ‘ Xe cos (been able to give much subs wit? | The Liberal group in the House the famous Gibson charges” ‘to their attack. Beginning ie has been the noisiest section of ending with Laing’s blast ag ’ the opposition in this session, and the buying of B.C. Fruit) pds 7 with the help of a friendly daily their charges have contained © press has grabbed some of the fury of dispossessed politicia® t biggest headlines. {but not the policy of a party COU | Inside the House the Liberals cerned with the people’s interes’ | have made a determined effort to, And the session showed that | displace the CCF as the main op- the people sorely need a fighter a | ponents of the government and to, in the House to battle for theif | some extent they have. succeeded. | interests. ' { f ef | “DESTROY THE BOMBS, NOT THE PEOPLE” | | DR. JAMES | ENDICOT Fri., March 25, 8 p.m. — Pender Auditorium | — EVERYONE WELCOME B.C, PEACE COUNCIL “eel ancient PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 25, 1955 — PAGE