Siagacatacace tsar ss" + Canadians were nok amu of any part of Canada.” Keep Albe big issue The sell-out of Alberta’s Alberta an economic colony of main scandal and crime of the Social Credit government. Bobo nocss nina ata pragaras a" tenmeaee = when the New York Times, in a spondent last December noted: “The province of Alberta has sometimes, humor, been referred to as the 49th state By BEN SWANKEY rich resources of oil and the U.S. ' |We raised the cas report from its Calgary corre- and not always with good ieee because it has the greatest concentration of U.S. citizens rta Canadian of election EDMONTON natural gas to foreign interests is the The Manning government is making There are over 5,000 producing oil wells in the province, which last year produced 87 million barrels of oil. Reserves are estimated at billion barrels. alone increased Alberta’s | bina field reserves by somé 50 percent, and it is likely that more fields will yet be discovered. Natural gas production last year was 187 billion cubic feet and total reserves are now over 14% trillion bic feet. ; oeWho owns snd who benefits from these rich resources today? They are owned, not by the peo- ple of Alberta, not even by Cana- dians. The Social Credit govern- ment which in 1935 under Premier Aberhart promised to preserve the province’s resources for the peo- ple, by 1955 under Premier Man- ning has handed over its riches to U.S. international oil cartels. Five of them: Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Cocony-Vacuum, Gulf Oil and Texas Oil and their Cana- dian subsidiaries such as {m- perial Oil, Texaco, Canadian Gulf, McColl - Frontenac and — = today own and control bulk of Alberta’s oil and natural gas. What do the people of Alberta get out of it? _ The Alberta government collects 12% percent royalty on oil com- ing ‘from crown or government- owned lands. On other-and priv- ately-owned oil lands it gets next to nothing. The 12% percent is a low roy- alty, lower than in most other countries. ran, for example, was getting 25 percent and de- | manding more. Some countries Last year, oil royalties in Alberta were only slightly higher than the profit the government got from the sale of liquor, =. Where does the government get its many more millions in oil re- ‘Most of this comes from the out- right sale of crown lands which have proven oil reserves. These = sold for cash to the highest bid- er. He Several years ago, when the gov- ernment started - selling . crown lands that had proven oil reserves it accepted only royalty bids, not cash. But when some companies bid and offered to pay as high as 75 percent royalty, the government quickly put a stop to this method of sale and changed it to a cash A small company — and most of the Canadian companies are small — is not in a position to bid several hundred thousand dollars or even a million dollars for a single lease. The result is .. that the big U.S. oil corporations are gobbling up’ all the good oil and gas leases. eee ~~ The government makes much of the fact that it has taken in $293 million from oil during thé past The discovery of the Pem- five years. It tries to use this fig- ure to prove that it is getting a fair share of oil profits. Such is not the case. One U.S.-owned company alone (Imperial Oil), last year made a clear profit of over $4942 million. Its-oil and gas holdings now run into the hundreds of millions. Multiply this by 10 or 20 years ‘and you get an idea as to where the profits are going. U.S. bankers ‘are lining their pockets while Al- ‘berta farmers don’t even get the benefit of the. oil and gas their tractors roll over. - (Imperial Oil profits before taxes in the three-year period 1951-53 totalled $216 million, an average of $72 million a year. In the past nine years, from 1946 to March 31, 1955, the Manning gov- ernment has taken in only $366 million from sale of petroleum and gas lease and reservation rights, fees and rentals of Crown Jands and royalties—an average of only $41 million a year). The people of Alberta do not object to U.S. capital being invest- ed to make a reasonable profit. But they certainly object to own- ership and control of their re- sources going to U.S. firms. é As matters stand today, U.S. interests decide what oil and gas fields will be developed, to what extent they will be developed, which will be capped, where and to whom the oil and gas will be sold. and what prices will be charged. None of ‘these decisions made on the basis of what is good for Alberta or Canada, but purely on the basis of what will produce maximum. profits for U.S. trusts. The sorry position this leaves Canadians in was illustated a few months ago when the Canadian government agreed to finance Trans-Canada Pipelines Ltd. to build a natural gas pipeline to bring Alberta natural gas to the homes and industries of central Canada. ; ‘ At that time the U.S. Gulf Company, which controls the fabulously rich Pincher Creek field, arrogantly refused to de- liver Alberta natural gas to an _all-Canadian pipeline that would in any way be subject to the control or influence of the Can- adian government. This means that foreign corpor- ations are dictatorially preventing the building of an allCanadian pipeline. and the fobs and indus- trialization it would bring to Can- ada and Canadians. : U.S. corporations are denying Canadians the right to use their ernment didn’t even protest, let alone compel the U.S.-owned Gulf ‘ are own resources in the interests of Canada. ,The Social, Credit gov- Oil Company to change its stand. Another equally harmful effect of U.S. control is that U.S. develop- view to industrializing Alberta or Canada. Any industrialization that is taking place is incidental and of the kind that cannot be done more profitably in the U.S. The whole purpose of development is for ex- port to the U.S. ' This whole policy means that sections of Alberta may boom as long as there are new fields to dis- cover and develop, but once the wells are drilled and the pipes to the U.S. laid, the boom is finished. Redwater is an example of what happens to a town when the boom is over. So are the thousands of unemployed oil workers in the province today. x * x The Labor-Progressive party has been consistently advocating that these resources be used to build jup and industrialize Alberta and provide jobs for Alberta workers and a stable home market for Al- berta farmers. Is there any reason why there should not be a steel industry in Alberta, using the iron ore in the Peace River and Pincher Creek area? Why cannot there be a pulp and paper industry, coal by-products industries, petro-chemical indus- tries? Why shouldn’t more raw mater- ials be processed before export? This sort of industrial develop- ment would mean full employ- ment, a market for farmers, an op- portunity for youth and expanding business for local businessmen. It is time the Alberta govern- ment put a stop to U.S. capital taking over control of any more of our resources. The province ‘has the powers to do this under Section 92 of the British North America Act. i To secure such new policies in the Alberta legislature the people fight for them. : The Liberals and Conservatives certainly will not do that because their governments in Ottawa and Ontario are carrying out exactly the same sell-out policies of sub- servience to the U.S. Neither can the CCF whose leaders in Ottawa are going along with the basic policies of the Liberal government. The election of a bloc of LPP members. will guarantee that a fight will be made for such new all-sided Alberta economy d making the people the beneficiar- jes of the riches with which the province is so generously endow- ed. The LPP is fighting to keep Alberta Canadian, and to stop the Sell-out to the U.S. ment today is not going on with a|| must elect candidates who will policies directed to developing an; now we need subs Dear Reader: : yest before I left for Campbell River on a sub-hunt 1a the following telegram arrived from A. A. MacLeod, 10% LPP member of the Ontario legislature: ‘f ‘the Pa fi o the Paeifit “Hearty greetings and sincere congratulations Tribuneers on their splendid victory in the financial nt hope they will now tackle the job of taking the paper © people and make its influence mightier yet.” : : Our sentiments exactly.’ But sentiments must be tran into action. The figures below show the 1955 sub targets ed by press clubs at the beginning of the year, and standi date (including credits for paper sales). La Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if we could hit these two months ahead of schedule, and thus guarantee a subs! increase in circulation for the year? : I hope every press club will make sub-getting part of aie work during the summer months. More subs, more sales, more street salesmen—these are the needs of the in order’ to guarantee that the PT will get into the hi more and more people in coming months. : | | Rita Ws GREATER VANCOUVER PRESS CLUB : OBJECTIVE AC eA VANCO ie ae tent ee) ee Oss 60 Ay ES Smith. 2232. 50 Broadway ee 60 Building Trades — 45 Dry Dock: 0760-7. sso. gh Se ls eee 60 East End ....... 40 Electrical : 55 Forest Products 125 Georgia 40 Grandview) 2253.22 ee a: 140 Hastings East ..... 90 Kingsway .............-.- 30 Kitsilanons..22e6..4 90 Little Mountain 50 a Moberley .............-- 110 F Mount Pleasant 60 0 Niilo Makela 55 pe Norquay 90 0 PROV gi ce ee ec ne 30 4 Penge Raith .6 be st 10 1 Philip: Halperin, 63: 45 ‘553 _ Point Grey 25° 5 Strathcona 45 gl Wictory. Square: oe deen 150 2B Waterfront