Labor petition calls
for prices rollback

OTTAWA — The Hamilton and
Area Labor Committee last week
presented to John Munro, the
federal Minister of Labor, over
21,000 signed petitions demanding
the roll-back of prices. The
petitions were gathered in a few
hours at shopping plazas in
Hamilton, Burlington and Oak-
ville.

The committee, headed by
Secretary Tom Davidson, national
co-ordinator of the UE, is made up
of the presidents and business
agents of the Steelworkers, UAW,
UE, Teamsters and the building
trades unions in the Hamilton and
Oakville area. The unions and
councils represent 63,000 workers.
The councils on the committee are
the Hamilton and Oakville Labor
Councils.

At the presentation last week in
Ottawa, a brief was read to Munro
and Mackasey, the Postmaster
General in the offices on
Parliament Hill. The six point brief
strongly urged the government to
roll back prices to the 1971 level
and comménce a massive housing
program declaring that ‘housing
be made a public utility under
democratic public control.” And it
also called for the pegging of

¢

mortgages at no more than 6%
interest rates and put an end to
land speculators.

The brief called for the establish-
ment of a Prices Review Board
with ‘“‘teeth,”’ with the power to
halt and ‘‘roll back unjustified
price increases.’’ Measures were
demanded that would sharply
improve old .age security and
allowances for those on fixed in-
comes, with full cost-of-living
adjustments, an end to tax on
pensionable incomes and an im-
plementation of a $3.50 minimum
wage.

The brief called for the setting up
of a Crown corporation with the
power to nationalize and control all
energy resources, their production
and distribution. It demanded the
building of an all-Canadian gas and
oil pipeline, an East-West power
grid and e placing of Bell
Telephone Corporation under
public ownership.

The sharp and extensive brief
addressed to the government
called for the government to take
action to head off a depression and
put an end to the highway robbery
through inflation of the earnings of
the working people and those on
fixed incomes.

Canadians visit vast
development in Siberia

By JOHN WEIR

MOSCOW — ‘‘Spectacular!” was
the opinion expressed by a group of
provincial leaders of the Com-
munist Party of Canada, who
visited the Western Siberian
centres of Tyumen, Khanty-
Mansiysk and the famous Samotlor
oil field.

During five days the group,
headed by Sam Walsh, and con-
sisting of William Stewart, William
Ross, William Beeching, William
Tuomi and Nigel Morgan, held
discussions with Party leaders and
officials of the oil industry,
educationists, workers and repre-
sentatives of the Native Peoples,
seeking to get a broad insight of the
cultural and historical background
of the area as well as the present
lifestyle. :

Interviewed briefly on their
return to Moscow the Canadian
visitors said they were amazed by
the great development of Siberia.

“You read about it, but you
really have to see it yourself to

appreciate the miracle,” said Sam
Walsh.

The delegation was surprised to
learn that Tyumen, the hub city of
Western Siberia, is over 300 years
old and has a population of a
million and a half.

The Tyumen region boasts
300,000 Jakes.

This region will this year draw
more than one billion barrels of oil,
37 billion cubic metres of natural
gas, and 12 million cubic metres of
wood (one of every three trees in
the world grows in Siberia).

Fishermen in this region caught
62 million pounds of fish last year.
Farmers harvested 15 million tons
of.wheat and delivered 117,000 tons
of meat, 495 tons of milk, and
chickens cranked out 300 million
eggs.

Industrial production has
doubled during the past four years
and is scheduled to jump 21-22%
this year.

It is a study in contrasts how
socialist Siberia has grown from a

The labor chorus, Union Train (above) formed last year under the musical direction of Karl Kobylansky, is
one of several groups featured at the Pacific Tribune 40th anniversary concerts April 6,°8 p.m., at Surrey
Centennial Arts Centre and’April 13, 8 p.m. at the Queen Elizabeth Playhouse in Vancouver. Tickets are now

available.

—Carey Robson photo

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The budget & city taxes

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Mayor Art Phillips is blaming
the provincial government for an
expected increase in city property
taxes. So is Alderman Jack
Volrich. Both claim the tax in-
crease could be 25 per cent with a
lower figure possible, if services
are cut. Mayor Phillips called
Premier Dave Barrett’s budget a
‘disaster’? and an ‘‘insult’’
because the per capita grant
wasn’t increased.

Both are playing politics, Liberal
Party politics, big business
politics, making their contribution
to the media industry campaign to
defeat the provincial government
in the provincial election expected
next year.

I also think that the per capita
grant from the province to the
municipalities, which now stands

wilderness, which these Native
Peoples roamed as nomads, to a
modern industrial giant, in-
tegrating the native population
step by step in the process, while in
our own country our native
population is~ treated with
brutality, robbed of their land and
heritage, and herded into reser-
vations.

In Khanty-Mansiysk the dele-
gates had the opportunity to visit
many Native people and spent

See SIBERIA, pg. 11

at $34 should have been increased
in the current budget.
I believe also that increasing the

‘school tax removal grant to a

minimum of $80 from $40, (the
homeowner grant stays the same,
at $200), is just not enough. At this
rate the NDP provincial govern-
ment will not redeem its election
pledge to remove school taxes
from homes and family farms
within five years.

But there’s something to be said
on the positive side too, for the
government, which our TEAM-
Liberal aldermen conveniently
overlook.

The budgetary provision that
municipalities get one third of
natural gas revenue above an
export price of $1 per thousand
cubic feet could mean a sizeable
chunk of money for Vancouver.

It should also be mentioned that
the province reimbursed the city
for the new law court building on
Main Street. That was about $6
million.. The province has taken
over certain legal functions which
save the city a lot of money. The
province paid the city some $3
million for its welfare assets and
also reduced the municipalities’
welfare contribution from 15 to 10
per cent.

And what did City Council do
with this additional revenue?

Did it save it to reduce taxes, or

to build new housing? You know
the answer as well as I do. These
are not priorities with the TEAM
council.

This money was used to build
that ugly and useless Granville
Mall, to purchase the Orpheum
Theatre, to make extensive im- |
provements in Gastown, (all to
help out business interests), and to
make an unnecessarily large in-
crease in the police force without
even bothering to reorganize that
force with the aim of making
economical use of the police of-
ficers we have.

So Mayor Phillips, Alderman
Jack Volrich and other aldermen
have no right to blame the
provincial government if today
Vancouver is short of money.
There is not even any guarantee
that if the province did increase the
per capita grant, that this City
Council would use the increase to
reduce taxes.

What Council requires is a dif-
ferent set of priorities that place
the—needs of homeowners and
tenants ahead of business in-
terests. Then the money that we
have would be put to better use and
taxes would be reduced. And since
this new Council has almost two
years to go before it is up for re-
election, a change in priorities can
only be brought about by citizen
pressure.

An,

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“

sae ~ —_

factory and farm. To Tim Buck the wealth of a nation was
its common people. . . not its highly questionable abilities
to accumulate worthless paper dollars, power or pelf.

When a power-drunk Establishment of over 40 years ag?
attempted the murder of Tim Buck in his steel-bound cell
in Kingston Penitentiary in 1933, their assassin bullets
ricocheted across all Canada and around the world. ‘‘Wé
did it only to quieten him,’ they said, when all theif
specious denials of this foul act had been rejected and
thrown back in their teeth.

It is therefore good to remember that as long as im
perialist wars, plunder and oppression may last, thé
Communist that was Tim Buck could not be Ss?
“quietened.”’ Nor will he be. The heritage and example he
left us will outlast and help end the tyranny of injustic®

his having lived, but from the satisfaction of knowing that
only death had accomplished what they couldn't.

Among the few who commented his passing was ex-
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who said in the Toronto
Globe & Mail of March 14, 1973: ‘‘.. .He was a man of
great ability who devoted his life to the Party.”

Tim Buck had no “‘honorary”’ degrees from universities
conferred upon him, but he had won the love and deep
respect of millions of working people in Canada and
throughout the world . . . a respect and love which makes
such “honors’’ small and pygmy by comparison.

The extent and vast scope of the Select Bibliography of
Tim Buck by (Progress Books, Toronto) is in itself a
warranty that a future Canada, unfettered by the class

TOM
McEWEN

n the eleventh day of March in the year 1973 a mighty
Canadian voice was stilled in death. Far from his
adopted land to which he had given so much, Tim Buck,
founder and beloved leader of the Communist Party of
Canada, crossed the Great Divide. Today we com-

memorate the second anniversary of his passing.
Two years without his wise counsel on the leading
organs of the Party, without his comradely smile and

warm handclasp. Two years during which his memory.

has now become a proud Communist tradition. In the
words of a famed world writer, so we too say, ‘because he
lived among us, the world is a better place.”’

In the Communist Party of Canada which he founded
and led through all the problems of half a century or more,
his courageous voice is sorely missed. Armed with the
unassailable science of Marxism-Leninism, his was the
voice of the future.

The writers of a kept monopoly news media, who never

missed an opportunity to slander and misrepresent the.

purpose and aim of his life’s work, maintained a
characteristic silence at his death — not out of respect for

hate, prejudice and bigotry of a dead past, will yet do
honor to its foremost revolutionary son.

In the sum total of the great literary heritage he left to
future generations of young rebel fighters for a free, in-
dependent and Socialist Canada, the name of Tim Buck
stands out like a shining beacon; like an intrepid pioneer
who scaled the mountain tops and deep valleys of his
adopted Canada, and there planted the indestructible
banner of Marxism-Leninism for younger hands to carry.

Thus, unlike the “‘greatness’’ of other so-called ‘‘great”’
men, Tim Buck’s greatness is preserved in his vision of a
new Socialist Canada; not the Canada of so-called
“statesmen’’ who speak with forked tongues and sell their
country, its people, its resources and heritage for ‘‘a mess
of pottage’’ to the biggest and loudest monopoly brokers,
but dedicated to the wellbeing of its common. people of

and oppression — the prime objective of his life’s work —
and beyond to the Good Earth which enshrines his dust.

Your clarion voice they could not still

Nor efface the steadfast courage from your heart;
Nor the warm smile which wreathed your face,
Matching the firm handclasp of your comradeship.

Despite Oppression’s wars, man-made hates and
worse.

You quietly said ‘‘And Still it moves. ...”

As Gallileo once said of a World hurtling on

Toward the brighter dawn of happier Tomorrows.

With every sunrise we will remember you,
In every struggle, come victory or defeat;
In every hour, e’en though inspiration dims, yet
With your Name, we'll claim our heritage.

we 3

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1975—Page 2

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