PARLIAMENT. HILL ‘ OTTAWA : A RMaMents, trade and housing‘are among the is- , Sues to be discussed during the 21st parliament, ac- : Cording to the Speech from the Throne. ae A significant ommission from the Speech was any Mention of a national health plan. This guarantees that Without widespread public agitation for such an act it Will suffer the usual fate of Liberal promises. Armaments and Canada’s participation in the At- lantic pact on the other hand received prominent at- tention. The Tories are expected to direct most of their fire at this section during the present debate. They will Criticize the government for not participating in the - Berlin airlift and demand increased expenditure on atmaments, (The government is already spending 58 Percent of the national revenue on armaments.) ,. & note of uncertainty was sounded as to how long the European dollar shortage and “unbalance of trade” Would last. The section on Canada’s foreign trade was, _ A0Wever, in the same vein of false optimism that has Tacterized previous government statements on the £ Subject, Long overdue legislation to enable Canada to dmend her own constitution will be introduced. Although the daily press is making much of this, it is in reality only & partial ‘solution to the problem since it only affects Matters under purely federal jurisdiction. The vital _ Westion of joint Dominion-provincial issues will be left © a conference at the end of the session. The last such Conference took place in 1935 and its breakdown en- : abled the government of the day and indeed every gov- €rnment to date, to evade responsibility for Dominion- Wide social services. , A letter sent by St. Laurent to provincial premiers Mviting them to attend. a Dominion-Provincial confer- “nce suggested a preparatory conference immediately. It dia not, however, propose that such a conference Should discuss such vital problems as housing. Peech promised legislation to “broaden the scope of 4 > ‘ ‘ Throne speech evasive on fullfiling Liberal promises By RALPH R. COOK The Footnote to history ITH a two-unit goat milker and a herd of of 30 British White and Nubian goats, Mrs. Stansby of Adderbury, near Banbury, Eng- land, is on her way to Victoria, B.C. Since her husband's death in 1946, Mrs. Stansbury has been breeding high-class goats. Now she has left her 300-year-old home, taking with her her two daughters, her housekeeper, the goats, four dogs and her furniture. The trip to Canada will cost ~ over $6,000—which figure, incidentally, is also | the valuation of the herd of 30 goats. Her daughter Anne will accompany the goats in their compartment, even sleeping with them, throughout the 6,000 mile Atlantic and Prairie trek to Victoria. Thirty ‘lovely blue-irimmed woollen blanket coats have been provided to keep the herd cosy. The party will have the ship all to themselves.—United Kingdom Information Service. the National Housing Act.” Details of this legislation are not yet available, but it is assumed here that it will - not entail any radical departure from the present act. This would mean a continuation of the haphazard ar- rangement whereby provinces are given assistance not in accordance with their needs but according to their bargaining power. a Talks currently taking place between Reconstruc- tion Minister Winters and provincial premiers hold forth little hope that even those provinces able to make the best deals with the Dominion are contemplating any large scale low rental housing projects. The emphasis is on assistance to those capable of paying the down payment on a new house and interest rates,of 4% per- cent on a loan to be repayed in 20 years. : e/ [CONSOLIDATED] TRUST BANK |% ... and fact ees Fiction - the RIPPS told the 4 press: “We are not able to cut our defense expen- x we “T told you we pate depend on Sir Stafford” ditures.” “We will not cut our social service expendi- . tures.” The Labor govern- “ment stands by its wage freeze, and will oppose any general in- ereases, Manufacturers and. operators should take immediate full advan- tage of devaluation to boost sales to Canada’ ‘and the, United States. —London dispatches to the daily press. * * “The Labor govern- _ment’s foreign policy has entailed an arms budget of more than $3 billion and an enor- mous expenditure of foreign currency in Greece, the Middle Kast, Malaya and’ elsewhere.” “Under the Labor government, profit and interest are up 20 per- — cent, prices 11 percent, © wages 8 percent—real. wages are down 3 per- cent. Wages are frozen, ‘profits are not.” : “The first conse- quence of devaluation was an increase jin the price of bread — from fourpence-halfpenny to Sixpence a loaf.” —London dispatches | to the Pacific Tribune. cay : THE NATION By TIM BUCK CCF is being morally disarmed press release issued by the CCF national office about a week ago, illustrates Perfectly the process of moral and political disarmament | being carried through that party by. its leadership. The press release consisted of selected excerpts from an address delivered by the national leader, M. J. Cold- well, to a CCF summer school. The excerpts deal entirely with the attitude of the CCF towards the class struggle, capitalism and socialism. Because it was a carefully prepared lecture to. an official CCF school it is worthwhile to study the political position presented to the students on those three vitally important questions. Concerning the first one, the class struggle, Cold- well’s position was categoric—there doesn’t need to be any. According to what he told those students, the. idea that the class struggle grows inevitably out of antago- nistic class interests is false; worse, it is invented by the Communists who rely upon “the primitive instincts of hatred and antagonism.” There is no real necessity for conflict, argued Coldwell, therefore the CCF relies upon “civilized virtues of tolerance and goodwill.” ~ If one did not know to the contrary, Coldwell’s speech would suggest that he had never heard about the Johns-Mansville Asbestos Corporation and its em- ployees at Asbestos, Quebec, or about the Canadian Steamship Lines, or Duplessis’ Padlock Law, or about Mackenzie King’s conflict with Lord Byng concerning the authority of the electorate versus the authority of the Crown. But, knowing that Coldwell has heard of all those and numerous other examples of how the class struggle grows out of contradictory class interests and aims, Canadian workers must look further for the ex- ‘ planation. Sure enough, it is to be found in Coldwell’s ex- planation of the official position of the CCF on the sec- ond ‘question noted above—capitalism. e@ Concerning capitalism, ‘Coldwell was not by any means as categoric as he was about the class struggle. In fact he did not once refer to it by its proper his- torical name. He used the terms “private ownership,” “individual enterprise,” “private business,” and “manage- r ment,” never capitalism or the profit system. Coldwell _ went out of his way to emphasize that ‘the CCF is not opposed to capitalist profits. Indeed, he declared it to be his considered opinion that some capitalists—the im- plication was clear that he had in mind a great many— are not doing as well today as they should and would be able to do under a CCF government. It is fairly evident that the CCF national council wants to get across to Canadian capitalists the signifi- cance of the fact that British capitalists have secured more in rents interest and profits since the Labor goy- ernment has been in power, than ever before. They made $700 million more in 1948 than they did in 1947. ; CCF speakers never mention that terrible fact in ‘public, but there is no doubt that Coldwell had it in mind » when he told the students that, under CCF socialism, _ “a yery large section of industry could safely be left to private ownership and initiative.” He added the re- ' vealing anti-socialist thought that CCF socialism would “liberate many privately owned industries from inse- cunity.25 32 ' . * For those students whose thinking was acute enough to \make them wonder whether finance-capital and its monopolies can ever be defeated that way, Coldwell had an answer all prepared. “Its success,” he empha- sized, ‘will depend upon the extent to which enlightened self-interest determines the attitude of private business.” What did Coldwell say about socialism? He ex- plained the attitude of the COF leadership to socialism — in a carefully formulated reference which enabled him to make his position clear without exposing himself to the charge that he even discussed it. He referred to the only socialist society in the world, the only so- _ ciety in the world in which there is no capitalist profit, no capitalist class, no capitalist exploitation, as “the © state capitalism of Stalin.” It is significant that Coldwell _ did not. once mention danger of war and that the only hostility voiced in his entire lecture was against c - Mmunism and the USSR. ce It is necessary to put the question, very seriously, , to every worker who recognizes the need for working- ‘class unity in defense of trade union rights, living standards and jobs, to every worker and middle-class person who is in favor of action to maintain peace, to , every Canadian who believes in the great ideal of so- cialism: “Can this systematic campaign to disarm the working-class movement morally and politically be al- lowed to go on without challenge?” — : The answer must be No! It must be challenged in every plant, in every meeting—everywhere where Ca- nadian workers meet. “PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 23, 1949 — PAGE 9 f