The CUA ‘holdup’

The Canadian Underwriters Association, which includes
some 100 or more car insurance companies, have en-
nounced a 20-percent hike in car insurance rates for
Greater Vancouver. For Victoria this premium hike is es-
timated at around 28 percent, while for all-Canada simi-
lar increases are to be applied Pau from 10 to 28 per-
cent, effective as of January 1, 1965.

This arbitrary and massive gouge decreed by the car
insurance companies, (aside from its obvious “‘price-fixing”’
conspiracy), to rates already excessively high, is to be lev-
ied on the pretext that accident and collusion statistics
are climbing so rapidly that the insurance underwriters
just “cannot afford’ to meet these rising “‘claims” costs,
and so plan to squeeze another 20 or 28 percent premium
hike out of the already high-taxed car owner!

This latest insurance monopoly raid upon the car
driving public should serve to give new impetus to an old
demand, that of a government-operated automobile insur-
ance plan, operated at cost. :

While the Canadian Underwriters Association on be-
half of its member companies claim they “cannot afford”’
to meet rising “claims” costs, a cursory glance at the pro-
fit balance sheets of not a few of these insurance sharks
tells quite a different story.

It may be recalled some years ago when CCF govern-
ment in Saskatchewan introduced legislation establishing
a government-administered plan for car insurance in that .
province, with equal coverage, but with annual premiums
well below monopoly insurance rates, the car insurance
plunderbund howled like stuck pigs about government “in-
vasion” of their presumed “rights’’ to squeeze the car
owner dry.

The time is now more than ripe for similar legislation
in British Columbia; for the government to move into the
car insurance field, not to ‘take-over’ the big insurance
companies, but to set up a government-controlled car in-
surance scheme which will limit their sphere of ‘‘hold-up”’
operations, and give the B.C. car owner a break.

A scheme which would provide car insurance ata
much lower premium, and protect the responsible and
careful driver from being penalized as a result of the in-
sanities of the reckless ones, as is now being attempted by
the car insurance sharks in their premium hoist upon the
car-owning public.

A government car insurance scheme, designed to put
a crimp in the organized robbery of car owners by the
CUA, now becomes an urgent government responsibility.
A mass campaign for this objective is the only way to
face-up to this latest “hold-up”!

THE SUPER-SHOPPER

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s PACIFIC TRIBUNE

An historic event

Following thirty-three days of* debate, plus six full
weeks of an all-party House of Commons Select Com-
mittee, this week Canada can finally hail its own flag.

As the “midwife” of Canadian history, Parliament
decided on December 14, 1964, by a vote of 163 to 78 in
favor of a flag design symbolic of Canada.

Regardless of the division in Parliament and the pub-
lic generally on the design adopted, the prime historic sig-

nificance of this momentous decision is that Canada, on

the eve of the Centennial of Confederation, now has its
own flag chosen and designed in Canada, with all vestages
of a colonial past eliminated.

he future historian may well say that this flag was
conceived in partisan political iniquity, and born under
duress :of “closure”; that Parliament in its capacity of
“midwife” had to be “gagged” before this “Caesarean”

birth of Canada’s own flag could be accomplished!
FS Be that as it may, Canada this week salutes its OWN
ag.

never been tarnished withtheac- ment, and an equally average

Tom

McEWEN

hen the Prime Minister of

Canada feels compelled to
sit down and address a letter to
his Liberal cabinet colleagues
on the principles of ethics, mor-
ality, honesty and so forth, things
must be pretty ‘‘rotten in the
state of Denmark’’ to quote Ham-
let. Only in this case the stench
emanates from Ottawa,

Obviously sensing that all was
not as ‘‘ethical’’ or ‘*moral’’
as it should be, what with nar-
cotics, furniture and _ other
‘«sales’’ influences invading his
eabinet, the prime minister ap-
parently felt it necessary to cast
himself in a role, so well out-
lined by the great French phil-
osopher of nearly a century
ago, Jean Jacques Rousseau
(1712-78).

*<T have entered on a perform-
ance which is without precendent,
and will have no imitators, I
propose to show my fellow-mor-
tals a Man in all the integrity

of nature; and this man shall be
myself,’’ It now seems Rousseau
has an ‘‘imitator’’, Lester B,
Pearson,

A local paper heads an edi-
torial on the Pearson letter to
his cabinet members, ‘‘The
Pearson primer on ethics, mor-

_ality . .”’, then goes on to say;

‘“‘This choice throws a grave
shadow on the qualifications of
the whole Pearson cabinet, If,
after 300 years of the world’s
growing appreciation of the
basics of British parliamentary
practice, Canadian cabinet min-
isters remain in ignorance ofthe
standards of conduct expected of
them, they are not fit for office.’’

Sounds extremely ‘“‘virtuous’’
as befits an ultra reactionary
Tory sheet, but it is mostly
‘*sound.’”’

One would gather from the
above blurb that these bi-parti-
san ‘‘basics’’ of Old Blighty have

cusing stain of graft, corruption,
scandal, etc.

The most recent Profumo de-
monstration of Tory ‘‘ethics and
morality’’ scarcely added lustre
to these ‘‘basics’’ of correct
governmental behaviour—and the
Profumo scandal was only oneina
long chain of many,

It is quite in the scheme of
things that when the Liberals
find themselves in the ‘‘valley
of humiliation’’, as they not in-
frequently do, the Tories whoop
it up as the most ‘‘virtuous’’
of all political virtuosos. Like
barnyard chickens on a dunghill,
they scratch with unexcelled dili-
gence to stir up all the dirt
available to throw at their parti-
san opponents, And vice versa;
when the Tories become embroil-
ed in extra-curricular shenani-
gans, the Liberals don the ‘‘vir-
ginal virtuosos’? garb and whoop
it up like a Billy Sunday ‘‘evan-
gel’’,

Anyone who cares to take the
time, and they will find old edi-
tions of Hansard most interest-
ing reading on the subject, will
soon discover that the Liberal
Tweedledees and the Tory
Tweedledums had a fairly equal

batting average on omission of,

“ethics and morality” in govern-

batting score in top-notch ‘‘scan-
dals’’, So much for the ‘‘basics’"!

For really juicy scandals we
would refer the Hansard re-
searcher to the ‘‘war scandals”’
of World War 1, to the Jacques
Bureaux “Customs” scandal of
the mid-twenties, to the Beau-
harnois power-graft scandal, or
to lesser incursions into the
realms of Liberal and Tory eth-
realms of Liberal and Tory
‘tethics and morality’’, where a
bit of easy boodle or a ‘‘help-
ing hand’’ to a deserving poli-
tician is all duly recorded—but.
unfortunately too readily for-
gotten,

The main thing at the mom-
ent, against the background of the

ATR

caenc PO

liE3

Worth

Quoting
sie

At the recenf secret Conference in
Peking. . it is known that repre-
sentatives of the Communist parties of
China, Indonesia, Korea, North Viet-
nam, New Zealand, Albania, also pro-
Peking supporters from Belgium and
Australia attended this meeting . .
about which only tight-lip whispers
have begun to circulate. . .

It is said that Mao Tze-tung per-
sonally attended this conference and
emphasized the need to set up a
‘Communist International’ to imple-
ment the ‘revolutionary ideology’
now emanating from Peking.

—CEYLON TRIBUNE,
September 19, 1964

*

Labor-Party members are told not to
“rock the boat’’. They were told this
between 1945 and 1951, when
Ernest Bevin’s cold-war and colonial
policy abroad and the policy of wage-
freezing at home wrecked the hopes
placed in the postwar Labor Govern-
ment and led to a Tory comeback and
13 years of Tory rule.

Those who want to prevent this
happening again are not rocking the
boat. They are trying to get it on to
the right course. They are trying to
prevent it being sunk by those who
are opening the bung on the pretext
of letting out the Socialist ‘bilge’,
only fo let in the capitalist seas.

—BRITISH DAILY WORKER,
Dec. 12, 1964.

*

To all who are within range of our
voice, we must repeat; If you voted
for President Johnson in the hope of
peace and an easing of international
tensions, let him know at once how
you feel about the Congo—and Viet-
nam. If you believe that, as a pro-
fesional politician, he can be in-
fluenced by public opinion, there will
be no hope of influencing him unless
this opinion is expressed swiftly and
vigorously.

—NATIONAL GUARDIAN,
Dec. 5, 1964.

Pearson ‘t*homily’’ to his cabinet
members on ‘‘ethics and mor-
ality’’, with narcotics anda brisk
furniture trade in Liberal
circles, is not to lead us Henry
Dubbs into thinking that the Lib-
erals are all bad, and the Tor-
ies on a par with Ceasar’s wife,
‘tabove suspicion*’.

The Pearson letter to his cab-
inet is symptomatic of an era,
marked by a growing corruption
in high places, best summed up:

-in the standardized cliche, ‘‘get

it while the getting is good.’’
No wonder a growing segment
of the public cynically refer to
politics as ‘‘a dirty business’’.
The Pearson letter to his narco-
tics and ‘‘home furnishing’’ de-
partments is a further confir-
mation of that description.

Hil tt Hitt
| oy

Ud

CTH

ii

Vancouver 4. B.C.

of postage in cash.

Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Circulation Manager — JERRY SHACK
Published weekly at Room 6 — 426 Main Street

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December 18, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4