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THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

* CONGRESS FLAILS GOVERNMENT

AT ANNUAL BRIEF PRESENTATION

Using such words as
“brutality,”’ ‘‘callousness”’ and
“studied indifference to human
consequences”’ the Canadian
Labour Congress charged the
federal government with direct
responsibilities for the high
rate of unemployment. At its
annual meeting with the
cabinet Canada’s major labour
organization submitted a
15,000-word memorandum
which was one of the hardest-
hitting in the long series of
such meetings. The document
covered a wide range of sub-
jects including social and
jabour legislation, human
rights, taxation, housing,
pollution and international
affairs.

It was no surprise, however,
that major attention was
directed at the economic
situation and unemployment.
The CLC said, as a result of
unjustified government
policies, it was unlikely that
full employment — measured
in terms of not more than three
per cent unemployed — would
be reached before the end of
the 1970’s.

National Sickness

Unemployment was
described as ‘‘a national
sickness’ and the CLC said
official figures failed to reveal
the full extent of its impact
which affected highly skilled
and professional people as well
as others. The economic costs
had been estimated by the

Economic Council of Canada
as about $4,000,000,000 a year.

The government’s rigid tight
fiscal and monetary policies
made it impossible to return to

a full employment position for:

a long time. The policies
adopted in the December, 1970,
budget had made it clear that
“vour government is not
serious about achieving full
employment in the quickest
possible time.”

Specific Proposals

There was urgent need for ‘“‘a
high employment budget”’ with
bold, imaginative action to
start the economy moving
toward its potential. The CLC
went on to make specific
proposals:

—Immediate reduction of
personal income taxes in the
lower brackets.

—Abolition of the three per
cent surtax.

—Immediate implementation
of the proposed new system
of unemployment insurance
benefits.

—Major improvements in old
age pensions.

—Removal of the 11 percent
sales tax on _ building
materials.

—A further expansion of the
government’s housebuilding
program.

Sharp Criticism
The CLC’s criticism of past
government action was
unusually sharp:
“What disturbs us, and many
others, is that our current

IWA BOOK REVIEW

THE NATIONAL CCF:
ANATOMY OF THE PARTY

THE NATIONAL CCF: the
anatomy of the party by
Walter dD. Young,
University of Toronto Press
— $6.50

If the CCF had to have a
postmortem, no better choice
of a coroner could have been
made than Professor Young
who provides a painstaking
account of the life and death of
the CCF.

The CCF — Co-operative
Commonwealth Federation —
was established in 1932. For 28
years it pursued a contentious
life which it gave up only after
being assured of its re-
incarnation as the NDP.

The CCF was throughout its

history torn between two

forees — the desire to be a

movement and the need to be

an effective political party.

In Saskatchewan it suc-
— ceeded in

being both. In British
ia, in Manitoba, in
. it almost succeeded.
the rest of Canada it failed.
The CCF began its
ionary work in the west —
Regina Manifesto was its
ble — with an agricultural
ise and eastern intellectual
rb 10 bef
10 years ore
made

its ine

fluence felt. By that time the
CCF had almost won a
government in British
Columbia and Ontario and did
win the government in
Saskatchewan.

The successes, the failures,
are all accounted for here. The
names of people who built the
movement and stayed with it
through thick and thin —
Woodsworth, Coldwell,
Douglas, Lewis, Mosher,
Millard, Dowling and dozens of
others, are enshrined in these
300 pages.

This is a very well
documented account of a very
interesting phase of Canadian

history.

THANK GOD
FOR THE COLOR

The Irish widow was talk-
ing to her lady friend about
the death of her late husband.
“And what did he die of?”
asked the friend.

“Tt was the gangrene,” she
said.

“Well,” said her friend,
“Thank God anyhow for the

color of it!”

unemployment problem has
been artificially created. It is
not the result of natural
business recessionary con-
ditions. It is the direct result of
coldly-calculated _ policies
whose sole object was to induce
unemployment in order to
combat inflation. Your
government’s anti-inflationary
program, based for a long time
on very’ tight fiscal and
monetary policies, has been
primarily responsible for the
fact that we have hundreds of
thousands of unemployed
Canadians. Your government’s
strict adherence to- ‘con-
ventional economic wisdom’ in
attempting to deal with an
inflationary situation which
was largely external in its
origins, is perhaps the most
incredible phenomenon we
have yet seen on the economic
front in Canada.

Never In History

“Never before in the history
of this country did a Prime
Minister state before a
national audience that it was
his government’s intent to
allow unemployment to rise, ‘if
necessary to six percent,’ to
combat inflation. Never before
did any federal government
knowingly, consciously, and
with a cool detached
deliberation sentence hun-
dreds of thousands of Canadian

IWA ANNUAL MEETINGS

Local 1-417 IWA Salmon Arm, April 17-18, at the Stockmen’s

Hotel, Kamloops. .

Local 1-423 IWA Kelowna, April 17, at the Legion Hall,

Kelowna.

Local 1-424 IWA Prince George, April 17-18, at the Simon

Fraser Inn, Prince George.

Local 1-405 IWA-Cranbrook, May 15-16, at the Nelson Hotel,

Nelson.

Local 1-71 IWA (Loggers’ Local) May 22, at the Hallmark —

Hall, Vancouver.

workers and their families to
the hardships of unem-
ployment. The brutality, the
callousness, the studied in-
difference to the human
consequences of this anti-
inflationary approach were
matched only by its ineptitude.

“Had we had rampant in-
flation, had we had a crisis in
our balance of payments
position, had our dollar been
weak in the international
financial markets, then
perhaps there might have been
some justification for im-
plementing such stringent
policies. But such was not the
case. On the contrary, our
international financial position
has been, and continues to be,
extremely strong. Indeed, in
international terms, we are in
one of the strongest position of
the entire post-war period. Our
export trade, which has been
on the upsurge for a number of
years, increased by 13 per cent
during 1970, registering an
unprecedented surplus of

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nearly $3 billion. In addition,
we ended up with a surplus on
current account, something
which has not happened since
1952. Our foreign exchange
reserves are at a very high
level of nearly $4,700,000,000.
The strong foreign value of our
dollar, which quickly rose
above its pegged rate when it
was allowed to seek its own
level in a free international
money market, is another

indication of our very
favourable international
position.

Campares Well

Our rate of inflation com-
pares very well with the
world’s major industrial
countries. We are doing far
better than the United States
with whom we have more than
two-thirds of our export-import
trade. But we are also doing
better than other major in-
dustrial countries such as the
United Kingdom, France,
Western Germany, Italy,
Japan and so on.”

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