NEWS ITEM:

BERYL PLUMPTRE "ONE TIME” PROTECTOR

OF THE CONSUMER, AS HEAD OF THE
FOOD PRICES REVIEW BOARD, IS APPOINTED
TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF DOMINION STORES /

‘

25 years ago...

LET CANADIANS HAVE

SAY ABOUT PIPELINE
A petition initiated by LPP
~ federal candidate Bruce Mag-
nuson, Thunder Bay East, urges
Lakehead mayors and aldermen
to organize a representative con-
ference favoring an all-Canada
route for the projected natural
gas pipeline from Alberta to
Eastern Canada. The delegates
would include delegates from
towns in Northern and North-
western Ontario, business, labor
and community organizations.
The petition notes that diversion
of the pipeline through the U.S.
would deprive local industry
and homes of cheap power and
fuel to the detriment of a steel
industry on the Lakehead based
on Steep Rock ore.
: Tribune

June 22, 1953 |

50 years ago...

PRISONS SAVE

ON PENSIONS
Montreal has found a cheaper
way of caring for the aged in-
stead of old age pensions. Al-
phonse Lauzon, about 80 years
old, address unknown, was
brought before Recorder Morri-
son ona charge of vagabondage.
He asked to be sent to prison as
he had no home. He was sen-
tenced to two months impri-
sonment. A few days later, Anna
Rose Paquette, 60 years of age,
address unknown, came before
Morrison, charged with vagran-
cy, she also asked to be sent to
prison as she was without work
and had no home. Morrison sen-
tenced her to six months
imprisonment and a fine of $50

or an additional six months.

: The Worker
June 23, 1928

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—June 23, 1978—Page 4

IDITORILATL
COMIMUENT

Which way jobless youth?

Young people remain among the har-
dest hit by unemployment, the new
Statistics Canada figures reveal. What is
in young people’s minds is the question
of how to respond to it.

Even “official” figures, with the gov-
ernment’ having. written — off
half-a-million jobless, show a grim pic-
ture. According to Ottawa the May job-
less rate stuck at the March-April rate of
8.6% — still the highest since the 1930s.
For 12 months now it has topped 8%.

But this is spring when, traditionally,
there is a surge of job opporunities. So,
in fact, the situation has worsened. If the
overall rate of 8.6% is bad, the rate for
those aged 15 to 24, male — 15.8% and
female — 14.2%, is a-disgrace to be laid
right at the door of the monopoly-run
system and the Liberal, Tory and Social
Credit governments subordinate to it.

Youth unemployment has a far

deeper meaning for the young people
involved than simply not going out to

work today — or even next week. The

system run by and for big business de-
mands either that they have “faith” in it
whatever its crimes, or else shrugs them
aside to live only for today, which many
do without realizing the destructiveness
of this philosophy thrust upon them.

Federal government policy is mass un-
employment on the pretext that this

fights inflation. Anyone can see this is
bunk. The real purposes of big business,
its governments and its two-faced media,
._patronizing the youth while tightening
the system which is their worst enemy;
besides destroying or neutralizing many
young people, is to make vast fortunes
for the Canadian and ‘multi-national
corporations.
The effective answer for the young 1
not to give up but to fight for the future,
a future with genuine opportunity. And
that means a fight against the exploiting
system. : a8
In the June issue of New Horizons;
the publication of the Young Com-
munist League, an item headed, Work-
ers’ rights and capitalism, notes: “The
thing that distinguishes a worker’s life 1s
that he -has to work, to sell his
labor-power in order to get by. Not just
his ‘survival’ hinges on this, but also his
human dignity, as a useful member of
society, and the comfort and security of
himself and his family.” ,.
The answer New Horizons finds for
youth, those discouraged over no job, OF
an inadequate educational system, is to
fight back, always shoulder to shoulder
with the workers who are battling the
same enemy — the monopolies and thei!
forces of coercion. :
Youth has a creative future — it’s
found through unity and struggle.

For closer ties with Cuba -

Allowing Canada’s aid program to
Cuba to die — which Prime Minister
Trudeau has indicated as policy — can
be seen as capitulation to United States
pressure, and to the snarling and snap-
ping right wing in Canada.

Rightist Tory Otto Jelinek tried to
move a motion in Commons May 23 to
have aid to Cuba formally cut off on the
basis of the big lie that “military advisers
from Cuba trained and possibly led the
Katangan rebels in this horrendous
bloodbath.” He failed to get unanimous
consent for debate of this propaganda
stunt.

Diefenbaker, who shows little concern -
for Canada being “an accessory” to the

“international brigandage” of NATO
troops occupying African countries to
re-establish colonialism also' demanded
punishment to Cuba, the real sting being
Cuba’s answering of the call for help of
fraternal governments in Angola and
Ethiopia.

Where were Diefenbaker and the To-
ries when Canada was reaping profits
from the U.S. war of aggression in Viet-
nam? When will he take a stand against
Canada’s continuing dealing with apar-
theid South Africa, racist Rhodesia and
fascist Chile?

The Trudeau. government on the
other hand takes an easy out. It neither
cuts off aid to Cuba, nor carries it on,
merely achieves its purpose by letting
the agreement terminate as the
agreed-upon funds are exhausted. It 15
an unprincipled means of meeting U.S.

and right-wing demands.

What Canada should be doing for its
own benefit is reinforcing its relation-
ships, including trade, with Cuba, which
sets an example of progress, democracy

_and principle for all Latin America, and

which shows by deeds its upholding of
the United Nations directives for putting
and end to colonialism. :

Peking has a sorry record

The Maoist leaders of China are estab-
lished an unenviable record as oppo-
nents of disarmament and_ peaceful
co-existence, as collaborators with the
worst dregs of imperialism, racism and
colonialism, and as distorters of good

works done at United Nations and at in- |

ternational conferences, designed to
make more of humanity free and pros-
perous and secure from nuclear holo-
caust. Maoist military ambitions not only

run counter to the interests of the
Chinese people, and crudely threaten
many neighboring states, but their at-
tacks on the socialist world, combined
with claims to a right to dominate Asia
brings to the fore their dangerous cam-
paigning for world war. People concern-
ed with peace, sovereignty and human
progress can give no quarter to the
Maoist provocateurs.