serve the public interest

By PHYLLIS CLARKE

UST before Christmas the an-
nouncement was made in the

_ House of Commons of the in-
terim report of the Joint Senate-
House Committee on Consumer

Credit, The, committee’s main‘

recommendations were for the
establishment of a Department
of Consumers’ Affairs, for an
end to “cents-off”’ food sales
gimmicks and for fuller disclo-
sure of the financial operations
of private companies.

It recommended that. the im-
plications of the food industry
being concentrated in a few
hands required’ a deeper probe
than had yet been accomplished.
A thorough assessment is need-
ed of the organization of the
food industry, the report said, to
publicize any monopolistic ten-
dencies and determine whether
the market power of any group
is sufficient to impair the work-
ings of the competitive market.

“The domination of a few
large corporations in some sec-
tors of the Canadian economy is
clearly evident and gives rise to
the question, ‘Is this in the pub-
lic interest?’ ”

At this stage, though, the com-
mittee felt that it could not pin-
point any single source as the
cause of increases in consumer
prices.

The committee plans this year
not only to continue its hearings
in Ottawa, to which they will
ask representatives of the pro-
cessing and distributing firms to
see what more they can disco-
ver, but a section of the com-
mitiee will also travel around
the country to hear representa-
tions from consumer and other

organizations which wish to
appear.

There are obvious points. of
merit in this interim report. The
disclosures which the commit-
tee has forced on the operation
of the giant monopolies in the
food industry, are in themselves
an aid to finding solutions.
After all their hearings they
found that Weston and four
other chains—A & P, Dominion,
Steinberg’s and Safeway — ac-
count for 75 percent of the Can-
adian grocery business. Weston
alone has about 30 percent of
the food market and 50 percent
of the biscuit market.

The days of free competition
in the food industry are long
since past. The question now is
whether. control over such a
vital part of the economy and
life Me our country can remain
uncontrolled in ‘so few hands.
This the committee has not yet
really tackled. And when it says
it is unable to decide where the
source of the price increases is,
it reflects the difficulty of deal-
ing with the huge corporate em-
pires that exist in this field
(which take in the food item at
all stages of production and dis-
tribution) and which use all
means to obscure how much
profits on food are really being
made.

The report said that the reve-
lations of the Weston empire,
“surprised even the sophistica-
ted.” Well, it’s time that one
went beyond surprise to exam-
ining what must be done about
it. :
Even the committee’s propo-
sal for a Department of Consu-
mers’ Affairs leaves some rather
big questions - in doubt.

In an article in a recent issue
of the Financial Post the opinion
of spokesmen in the food indus-
try is presented as being fully
in favor of such a department,
provided it is only an amalga-
mation of various consumer-
orientated branches which pre-
sently exist, and has no new
functions.

“Some MP’s” continues the
article, “have been pressing for
a department-which would oper-
ate testing laboratories and have
major public education  pro-
grams. Such a department would
worry the food industry.”

The committee’s interim re-
port certainly falls short of clar-
ity as to how it would see a

‘Consumers’ Affairs Department,

although it is quite clear that
one of the major propositions
that has been put forward by the
labor movement and consumer

operative

groups, a prices review board,
was not included in its concept.
The need for a prices review
board, however, will without
doubt be pressed by many or-
ganizations as the committee
ventures out of Ottawa. Without
some such concept, protection
to the consumer from monopoly
price gouging remains a pious
wish and all of us know from
bitter experience that rigging of
prices to get the highest pos-
sible profits is the way of life
of the Westons and their ilk.
It is expected that in addition
to the various housewives or-
ganizations, who had pressed the
committee to hold hearing across
the country, trade unions, co-
organizations and
other groups will utilize the oc-
casion to let this committee
know what they think is the
cause of the high food prices.

°

{/e

“Unfortunately, madam, we have nothing that would
substitute for food and cost less.”

Vie Nuove (Rome)

Meantime there is nothing !
prevent the government gett!
immediately to work on SOM
questions that the committee he
already raised: the “cents 9%
gimmick; products to be

‘scribed by their generic nail

products of a certain type, V@

ty and quality to be grad@

packages to be designed in tet!
of size, shape or dimension ”
buyers will not be. deceived ®
misled; net quantities to be
pressed in_simple. terms; and
formation about the product
be printed in a prominent pla®
in the label.

Action by the housewives ©
particular last year helped ©
push forward the problem ©
high food prices. This year no
only can the exposure of th0®
responsible be continued,
the need for governmental %”
tion which can protect the CO™
sumer can be fought through |

The owners of the food ind
try will be putting the heat &
their Ottawa friends to prev@
any laws with real power ©
control their activities. But ©
demand for such legislation ‘
already growing and in the n@
few months the Senate-Hov®
Committee may find itself pre
ty hard pressed to deny
widespread public view that
problem lies in the food mol
polies and the answer is to pla
restrictions on their exploitati®
of the consumers. 4

This can be achieved if
same spirit of militancy
unity prevails in 1967, as W
demonstrated last month wi
in Ottawa women from act®
this country gathered to est#
lish a national organization ;
fight for the Canadian consum™

Gre heen = nazi revival—author

The se of Kurt Georg
Kiesinger as chancellor. of the
German Federal Republic is a
blow against all mankind.

This was the warning given
by author and commentator
Peter Lust, to a protest meeting
called by the United Jewish Peo-
ples’ Order in Toronto last week.
Lust was born and raised in Nu-
remberg, and fled from Nazi rule
to North America in 1933.

The coming to power of Kies-

inger, he declared, has given
hope to every other former Nazi
that the day is coming soon
when they will be able to return
to the highest offices in Germa-
ny. Already the’ neo-Nazis
grouped in the so-called Na-
tional Democratic Party have at-
tained in’ Hessen and Bavaria
the same voting strength that
Hitler held in 1928. Five years
later he was in power.

“Of course,” said Lust, “that
was a time of major economic

“Great, these fellows are neicher white nor black.”

depression, but it is not good
enough to ‘hope’ for prosperity
as the means of keeping the
Nazis out now.”

Lust scornfully dismissed the
present claim of Kiesinger that
he “did not know” of the geno-
cide of the Jewish people and
many others in Hitler’s concen-
tration camps. Kiesinger, Said
Lust, had been responsible to
the Nazi foreign office for the
monitoring of BBC broadcasts,
which in the years 1942-1944
dealt 16 times with the murders
in the camps.

Traciug the “tragic history”
of Germany since the defeat of
the democratic revolution of
1848, Lust showed how the same
evil forces of nationalism, mili-
tarism and profit-hungry cartels
which had dominated modern
German history were behind the
sharp revival of the nazi danger
now.

Together with this, he charg-
ed, goes the responsibility of the
United States government from
the death of Roosevelt onward
in failing to exterminate nazism.
After the war in. the Soviet

zone, the nazis were gotten rid
of. “Even in the British and
French a better job was done.”

But it is significant, Lust
pointed out, that Hessen and
Bavaria where the neo-nazis are
now making their big gains were
in the American zone.

The revenge-seeking program
of the neo-nazis was outlined
by Lust. It calls for the “forced
unification” of eastern and west-
ern Germany, which would be
opposed by people of all walks
of life-in the German Democra-
tic Republic, as his personal dis-
cussions in extensive visits to
the GDR had convinced him.

The NPD program also calls
for the overrunning of the pre-
sent western border of Poland,
and the restoration of the “right-
ful frontiers of Germany” with-
out ever defining whether these
are the frontiers of 1937 or of

1943, when Hitler held sway

over most of Europe.
But although these objectives

-are to the East, Lust warned

gravely of the danger of Ger-
man imperialism once more
turning to the West.

“The answer to this threat
up to mankind,” he concludé
“We must not let-up our gua
for one single minute.”

The second speaker at
UJPO’s protest rally was to ha
been Rabbi Abraham L. F
berg of Toronto, but that aff
noon the dramatic news }
broken that together with th
other distinguished  religiO™
leaders, he was on ne way”
Hanoi. *

In a message read to the me
ing, Rabbi Feinberg called %
Jewish people “faced by #
moral challenge of Vietnam
accept a responsibility for p

test going far beyond that |

previous generations.” But pea!
is not possible, he added, gn
nazism is eliminated from
world.” Inevitably” nazism—
anti-Semitic and militaristi

The meeting; which was cha!
ed by Jack Cowan, president,
the Order, adopted a resolut!
calling on the Canadian govell
ment to speak out against ©
resurgence of nazism and sv.
port all measures for the eas!!
of tensions in Europe.

January 13, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page”