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Action needed now

:  gcaahientsy of prices on a wide variety of consumer
goods and services took a big jump last weekend,
drastically reducing the list left under price control. To
soften the blow Finance Minister Abbott emphasized in his_
lengthy statement covering the latest decontrol order that
the ‘big four’—food, rents, fuel and textile controls would
remain. The latest relaxation of controls is the fourth ma-
jor decontrol step during the last six months. On every
occasion we have had ministerial and official assurances
from WPTB chief Donald Gordon, that the process was
‘necessary and unavoidable’, that it ‘wouldn’t affect living
costs’, and that price control ‘would remain’, etc., and so
forth.

While Abbott is ‘assuring’ us that the ‘big four’ will
remain, Ottawa has already indicated that boarding-house
rates will be boosted, thus inserting the thin edge of the
wedge for an early elimination of rent controls. Such ‘assur-
ances’ have proved to be sheer bunkum, and the Canadian
people generally are getting tired of being regarded as a
bunch of imbeciles by official Ottawa. Every housewife
knows that each step in the decontrol of prices, immediately
affects living costs, and that her purchasing dollar is
shrinking faster than the last inflated shirt she managed to
buy for her husband.

The bulk of the list coming under the most recent
decontrol order will hit the working people, and hit them
hard. Houseltold goods, clothing, canned goods, movies,
haircuts—only to mention a few, to say nothing of the
price boosts already authorized by the WPTB during the
last six months, will mean millions more profit to the
monopolists and depressed living standards for the people.
Based upon the false and misleading theory that supply has
now reached demand levels, which will result in a conse-
quent drop in prices, the people—veterans, workers, small
businesses, etc., are being systematically mulcted of their
savings and gratuities by government-monopolist inspired
inflation. ‘

The rental ‘line’ will not be held by the Abbott-Gordon
promises, but by decisive and determined action on the
_ part of the people now being hoodwinked and gouged by
government-monopolist price manipulation.

First things first

AYOR G. G. McGeer has already indicated the pro-

jects he intends to sponsor in an effort to live up to
the exaggerated election picture the Civic Non-Partisan
Association drew of him as “the man who gets things done.”
He is going ahead with plans for the new civic center. He
wants a bowl on Little Mountain. He admits the need for
a cross-city express highway. And he thinks a central
safety center to house police and health authorities modelled
after the $500,000 project now under construction in Seattle
will contribute to a more efficient police force.

A Little Mountain Bowl is a luxury item compared to

the desperate need for slum clearance and modern low-
rental housing, which would over a period, save the city
thousands of dollars in health, fire and police costs and les-
sen the burden on the police department.
_ Construction of a cross-city highway without rebuild-
ing Cambie and Granville bridges, resurfacing virtually all
the streets in the downtown area and embarking on a
long-range modernization program will contribute little to
the solution of Vancouver’s traffic problem and certainly ,
will not do much to lower the alarming accident rate at-
tributable in the main to the dangerous condition of the
city’s streets and streetcar tracks.

McGeer prefers to ignore the pressing issue of. trans-
portation and is only too happy to accept the 1946 council’s
last minute action in railroading through the agreement to
give the B.C. Electric a new 20-year franchise. Yet if ever
a transportation system showed its inadequacies it was the
BCElectric during this week’s snowstorm when the city’s
own lack of preparedness to deal with such an emergency |
was a contributing factor in paralyzing many services
completely. »

If McGeer wants to get things done, no chief magis-
trate ever had a better opportunity. Nothing has been
done for so long that nearly every civic service now needs
overhauling. But the place to start is where the problem
is most urgent, where the greatest hardship can be allevi-
ated and where the greatest good for the community can
be accomplished. McGeer has still to show the people that
this is his concern.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

pees

Gorse eS
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su <f ve Soon Tiree gieeees

ANNAN A

As we see it

AQT By To m Mc Ewen

IN the sands of the old
year run out and the new
year steps jauntily across the
threshold of time it is custom-
ary for public men and women
in all walks of life to pay their
tribute to past events as they
saw them, and to speak hope-
fully of the future.

In our opinion it is a rather
fine custom, synchronizing for
a brief period at least the uni-
versal hope of mankind for a
better and fuller life. We don’t
agree with all that is said, either
on estimations of the past, or
prophesies for the future. Nor
do we expect that all who read
what we have to say agree with
us. But we rigidly avoid be-
smirching the custom of new
year greetings by using them to
®slander those whose ideas on
progress may differ from ours.

In the January 2 issue of the
“CCF News” Provincial Secre-
tary Frank McKenzie wrote a
lengthy new year’s message en-
titled: “A review of the past
year—a glimpse of the future.”
The message is utterly devoid
of a Marxist interpretation of
events, either past, present or
future, a matter of some import
“when penned by an alleged “so-
cialist.”

The housing’ shortage, we
learn, is “a result of prosperous
conditions,” in which “many a
young man who vainly sought
decent shdlter for his family
would have been a single man
living in a relief camp, had the
times been less prosperous.” Cer-
tain sections of the bourgeoisie
who clamor for high prices and
depressed wage levels also ad-
vance the theory that “prosper-
ity” is bad for the workers.

That is but a mild sample of
the numerous estimations of eco-
nomic trends as they affected
Canada in 1946, as seen by our
CCF “theoretician.” He compli-
ments the King government in
refraining “from actual violence
and wisely did so” in the big
strike struggles of 1946. Obvi-
ously the crash of massed police

attacks upon seamen, _ textile,
metal steel and other workers—
and Alberta farmers, striving to
win the post war they worked,
fought and died for, never pene-
trated the ivory tower where our
CCF Lothario peers into his crys-
tal ball to weigh the future on
the scales of the past.

From this ivory tower every-
thing seems to be black indeed
—save for one shining light; no,
not the legendary Star of Bethle-
hem, but the “beacon light” of
Saskatchewan. brightening the
path to a better world. We’ll skip
comment on this “beacon” to a
later date.

FTER drawing the. atten-
tion of suffering humanity
to this scintil-
lating torch of
neo-socialism in
Saskatchew a n,

CCF leader
McKenzie gets
down to. the

business in
which = social
democrats and

3 their Trotsky~
Tom McEwen ite brethren.
have become

the most adept proponents—

slandering the communist move-
ments and the USSR. After
chiding the King government on
its “wrong . .. methods” used

_In the recent espionage cases, we

read that the royal commission
(Taschereau-Kellock) established

heyond reasonable doubt that
there are Canadians who are
wiling to place themselves at
the disposal of the Soviet gov-
ernment without reserve, and to
carry out the orders of that gov-
ernment transmitted | through
its embassy and through the
Labor-Progressive Party... .”
That almost half of those Ca-
nadians charged by the star-
chamber gestapo methods of the
Taschereau-Kellock Commission
on the evidence and with the aid
of such notorious individuals

as Inspector Leopold, alias Essel-

wein,
bezzler Gouzenko, have been
judged not guilty by the courts
of the land, while those already
indicted or sentenced have been
deprived of the most elementary
rights of citizens in their own
defense, means little or nothing
to CCF leader McKenzie. Mac-
kenzie. King only . erred in
“method” in his launching of the
espionage ramp, but the results
are accepted as potent weapans
of political slander in the arsenal
of the CCF.

Frank McKenzie borrows the
slander of the “iron curtain”
from Churchill, as that worthy
borrowed it for Goebbels, Yo
smear Soviet domestic and for-
eign policy. With this ‘iron cur-

tain’ the Soviet are able to hide — |

their great military potential,
“sufficient for the envelopment
of the whole Eurasian land
mass. ...” Thus does a leading’
spokesman for the CCF join.
with the warmongering assort-
ment of Tory imperialists in
London, Washington and Ottawa
to heap slander and villification
upon the USSR, and misrepre-
sent the policy and purpose of
the communist movements—in
this case the LPP. :

In a recent meeting early in

the New Year, as quoted from

the Vancouver Sun, McKenzie
repeats his cannards against the
LPP: “Loyalty of the LPP ta
the Soviet Union" says
learned social democrat, “is the
only loyalty it knows,” and, as
does every arch, enemy of labor,
represents the LPP as the “agent
of a foreign power.” Communist
loyalties are only questioned by
the enemies of labor, and the

record of our communist dead.

On every battlefield for freedom

throws the slander back in their

teeth.

McKenzie’s ‘farewell’ to 1946,
and his “glimpsing”, of 1947, pro-

vided an opportunity to display”

his special talents. They do not
(Continued on Page 5)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17%, 1947:

4

and the traitor and em-

our —

ae