Tenants fight gouge. . . rs.3
Dogs attack pickets. . . Pz. 12
Labor and the NDP... Pe. 7

One of Canada’s top farm leaders
the real cause of rising food prices an

Food chains
o blame for

es i Fe
charged last week that the big food chains are
d suggested the government bring them under

public regulation through price controls.

Presenting a brief on behalf of
the National Farmers’ Union,
Roy Atkinson, president of the
association, told the special
Commons committee on food
prices that it was not the farmer
or the wages of workers which
were responsible for rising
prices.

The main blame, he pointed
out, lay with the growing concen-
tration of power by the large
food companies, who, he
charged, had over-invested.
“There is overcapacity in retail
food stores. The workers did not

make the decisions to expand
and over-invest.’’ He said the
companies make those deci-
sions and it was unjust to blame
labor. .

The hearings are continuing in
Ottawa this week before the 25-
member Commons committee
while prices were continuing to
soar to unprecedented heights
all across the country. Last
Thursday representatives of
the meat packing industry
refused to provide the com-
mittee with information de-
manded by members.

‘Free South Vietnam

on FRED WILSON
the United People, gathered at

astings Church at Gore and
_ » {Uesday night, unani-
Passed a resolution
N the Provincial and
80vernments to press
release or the immediate
Prisoner the 200,000 political
ues being held in Thieu’s

Callin
80
Federal
Saigon

The
Te : ae
20 coy Solution specified that

any kg ntry should give aid of
"til the to the Saigon regime

tr feoners are released
Peasants «« the thousands of
sly Bye pisoned” in Saigon
their Bare we! to return to

e

lowntows ow crowd at the
hear Do 4 church had come to
Ponde a ase, author, corres-
Clooo: riculturalist, an
Mese nrc authority on Weine:
Mg andt ure, speak of the suffer:
Thiey: °rture that prisoners of
Luce Bee are subjected to.
ag © pai 1S audience captive
the 9 {ited a vivid picture of
durin FPLeSsion he had. seen
'h Victiam years that he lived

es ,
farmers © Of the some 8 million
Slums. ae €rded into the city
orphan he chronic conditions
Mortalit @8es where the child

Y rate soars above 50%,

of the corrupt law enforcement
system in which policemen’s
jobs are bought and sold, and the
thousands of young children
shining shoes, selling narcotics
and prostituting themselves, in
large part living from the
degeneracy of the U.S. Army.
But now, the American
evacuation is leaving a vacuum
among the jobless masses in
Saigon streets, which Thieu is
attempting to fill with fear and
repression. Within one week of
Kissinger’s ‘‘Peace Speech”
40,000 more arrests were made.
Numbering among the impris-
oned is the runner-up in the last
presidential election, the most
voted for congressmen in the

political prisoners’

last election, the president of

the national student body, 5°

catholic priests, and over 300
Buddhist monks.

It was Luce, who in 1967,
together with two U.S. congress-
men, discovered the notorious
“tiger cages’. These 5» x 10
cages which are impossible to
stand erect in, first used by the
French colonialists bequeathed
to the Japanese fascists during
W.W.2, and now being used by
Thieu, hold either 3 men or 5
women per cage.

Luce left no doubt of U.S.

incrimination in such torture

treatments when he revealed

that the U.S. Navy has given a
$400,000 contract to Raymond,
Brown, and Knutson, the world’s
largest construction consor-
tium, to build 400 new tiger
cages, each of them to be 2
square feet smaller.

Luce pointed to support for
individual political prisoners as
an effective method of inter-
national protest. Earlier in the
day while speaking at UBC, the
students agreed to press for the
granting of an honorary degree
to the imprisoned leader of the
South Vietnamese _ national
student association. Luce urged
all students to support this ef
fort.

Over 200,000 South Vietnamese are political prisoners under the Thieu regime.

H.K. Leckie, general man-
ager of the Meat Packers Coun-
cil of Canada, would not reveal
how muchof theindustry isdom-
inated by the five biggest pack-
ers. He said the council did not
have to supply this information
to Canada’s elected representa-
tives, and that it was private and
privileged information.

Faced by this arrogant stand
of the meat packing industry,
the Commons committee
passed a motion instructing the
Packers Council to report on the
share of the meat packing indus-

“try in Canada controlled by the

‘‘Big Five’’ — Canada Packers
Ltd., Swift Canadian Co. Ltd.,
Burns Food Ltd., J.M. Schneider
Ltd., and _— Intercontinental
Packers Ltd.

On Tuesday of this week the
heads of the food processing
industry adopted the same arro-
gant stand as the meat packing
monopolies. They refused to
give the Commons committee
certain information necessary
to the committee’s work on the
grounds that it was ‘‘privileged
information.”’

While the food monopolies
thumb their noses at the Cana-
dian public and their elected
representatives, they continue
to amass huge profits from sky-
rocketing prices. In B.C. this
week two major producers and
distributors of consumer goods
reported record profits.

In its annual report, B.C.
Packers, which is U.S. owned
and which dominates the fishing
industry, reported an all-time
record profit for 1972 of
$3,080,000. Simpsons-Sears Ltd.,
reported net earnings for 1972 of
$26,252,000 — a jump of about
40% over the previous year.

Strong action is needed all
across the country to demand a
curb on prices and that the
Federal government act to set
up a prices review board now to
put a check on the profit frenzy
of the big food corporations,
who are robbing the pockets of
Canadian consumers.