Se ee es

New stage in se

~y, __ By DON CURRIE

eo amount of talk about the ‘na-
oe interest” can cover up the fact
Mat the sell-out of Canada’s resources

he United States has become the

oS ef stock in trade of state-monopoly

“| Pitalism—and Trudeau is proving to

lhe of the top salesmen.

ay. S00th the way for an energy

“Out deal, Trudeau last month ap-

;

“sell

Pointed a 38-year-old “bright young ~

aa from Vancouver, Mr. Jack Aus-

a assist Minister of Energy and
jy. curces J. J. Greene. In appointing

Bora. the top post Trudeau said that
| the a Would contribute materially to
it Si €velopment of policy.
1 the hee Mr. Greene has been lauded in
Me alist press for his so-called
et Pro-Canada speech in the U.S.
‘ass; Y, One would think that his top
stant would likewise be a “tough”
anadian voice. Here are ex-
“pts from Mr. Austin as reported in

Mayu’ 26 issue of the Globe and

«
Our experience in natural résource
. aid with the United States shows
Sai. that our position has been and
| be that of a trader who must be
“qalbetitive in what he sells ... At
ceo ment in our economic history
: Who are senior industrialized nations
duce have need of what we can pro-
With and their demands provide us
sent the opportunity for capital for-
from the sale of natural re-
pl Tees. We should produce and sup-
Y for the best prices we can and as
ckly as we can...” ;
austin's statements illustrate that
is absolutely no difference be-
et the sell-out policy of the post-
seat MacKenzie regime and the pre-
ut Trudeau Administration. The only
ia is the new political reality
iM which Trudeau is compelled to
Perate,
King based his sell-out strategy on
Toda communism plain and_ simple.
ia 4Y so widespread among the Cana-
= People is the sentiment for Cana-
ee iNdependence and genuine east-
Ee economic development, that no
een Prime Minister can justify
te put by simple anti-Communism.
a Act, sell-out of resources can only
Carried‘ out under the cover of talk
Sovereignty.
Mt 's explains J. J. Greene’s so-called
“owen, speech in the U.S.— he got
fee. to get a better deal for Cana-
no Oil exporters in the face of Nix-
: . Curbs on Canadian oil imports.
Tudeau went on his Pacific tour to
buyers, mainly in Japan, to bid

a the price for Canadian natural re-
feo Mr. Austin frankly admits

“«

i. And we must never be without al-

|  M™atives. Our well-being requires the
warch: for markets in Europe and the
acific Rim and the development of
ae with those countries. We must
fect allow the continental concept to

‘oh Canadians to believe that our

§ Ure is tied completely to the United
tes .. . the United States will re-

in our chief market place for the

Seeable future. If this is to be, then
Ntinentalism if necessary but not

sae essarily continentalism is the rea-
nable Canadian attitude.”

“phe more “independent” stance of
Udeau and Greene as echoed by Mr.
ag has nothing at all to do with
eruine independence. It is all a mat-
" of getting the best price,

€ same applies to the talk in the

S about a new Canada Develop-

mt Corporation. This new centre for

i Mvestment of Canadian tax dollars

A the monopolies, according to Mr.

UStin, is being set up to develop and

©ontrol Canadian “patrimony,” i.e. na-
Ural resources.

_ The policy of the Trudeau Govern-
Ment is to strengthen control over the

me of resources. It is not a policy de-

ma
Y tor

Pres

signed to strengthen Canadian control
over resources as a basis for the ex-
pansion of industry in Canada.

This strategem of talking indepen-
dence while pursuing a policy of be-
trayal poses a most serious threat to

the future development of the coun-

try. The stepped-up attack on Canada
by U.S. monopoly interests for greater
control of energy and other resources
is a real attack that will not be with-
stood by sham talk of independence.
This threat involves a sinister drive to
completely subordinate all of Canada
to long term U.S. industrial growth
neéds.

At a recent joint U.S.-Canada confer-
ence sponsored by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Deve-
lopment, U.S. Interior Secretary Wal-

.ter Hickle said that Canada was

“caught in the middle of the United
States.” Hickle’s Department is under-
taking a long-range study of water re-
sources in the U.S. and is known to be
an advocate of diverting Canadian
water into the U.S. The annual conven-
tion of the American Water Works
Association held recently in Washing-
ton also demanded diversion of Cana-
dian fresh water to U.S.

With the official Canadian govern-
ment policy regarding rescurces sim-
ply a matter of the best price—how
long will it be before the price is right
to start discussing the sale of water?

TOUTING FOR U.S.

The pressure from the U.S. on an
official and semi-official level is accom-
panied in Canada with a barrage of
newspaper speculation designed to pre-
pare Canadian public opinion for mas-
sive resource betrayals. The Toronto
Telegram is presently running a series
by the notoriously pro-U.S. “journal-
ist” Aaron Einfrank, who pleads for the
Canadian government to speed up the
sale of our energy resources or the
U.S. will go elsewhere. Another more

sophisticated but no less pro-U.S.

series is being written for the Globe
and Mail by a Terrence Wills. Mr.
Wills speaks bluntly enough about im-
pending increased natural gas exports
to the U.S.:

“The question is not whether Ottawa
will approve increased exports—but
how well it will play its trump card.
What will it get for Canada’s natural
gas—not just in terms of opening big-
ger U.S. markets for Alberta crude oil

- and uranium, but interms of the price

of the gas itself.”

Only in the last two paragraphs of
a very long article does Mr. Wills con-
sider the people of the country.

What’s in it for the Canadian peo-
ple? Higher natural gas prices for
Canadian- consumers, that’s what.

“For Ottawa, setting the price for
gas exports could become a sticky do-
mestic political question,” Mr. Wills
says. ;

“The better price Western Canada
gets in the United States, the higher
gas consumer prices are likely to be
in Eastern Canada... the inflationary
effects in the cost of expansion may
reach the point where Western Cana-
dian gas may price itself out of cer-
tain segments of the Canadian market.”

RESOURCES “CORRIDOR”

Along with the drive for stepped up
exports of Canadian natural gas, which
will push up gas prices to consumers
in Eastern Canada, is the big scheme
now being worked on to build a 2,500-
mile gas transmission pipeline from
Alaska through the Canadian West to
the United States to supply a market
of 40 million. Estimated cost of the

gas pipeline is $2.5 billion and already

six pipeline companies have undertak-
en a feasibility study.

What this means is a great “resourc-
es” corridor owned and controlled by
the United States monopolies cutting
through three of the resource-rich

-out of Canada

Canadian provinces — Alberta, Sas-
katchewan and: Manitoba.

Along with plans for a gas pipeline
are plans for additional right-of-way to
construct an oil pipeline. Such a deve-
lopment would tend to subordinate all
of the gas and oil potential of the
Prairies to the pipeline going to the
U.S. Midwest and create an obstacle
to the urgent need for an additional
larger east-west gas and oil pipeline to
serve Northwestern and Northern
Canada and the big Eastern Canadian
market.

The outcome of this development
will be to turn over the whole Eastern
Canadian market to big U.S. oil and
gas producers while ,turning over the
Western Canadian supplies of oil and
gas to the U.S. Midwest. It will effec-
tively give complete long-term control
of Canada’s gas resources and markets
to the big U.S.-controlled gas monopo-
lies.

THE BIG STICK

U.S. imperialism rose to power
around the world on a policy of the big
stick and is not likely to stop using it
in relation to Canada. In fact the signs
that the U.S. monopoly interests, which
are driving for a big energy package
and complete control of Canadian re-
sources, are prepared to retaliate

against the Trudeau sales line is al-

ready evident.

Faced with tougher competition
fom the ECM, the drain on the econo-
my from the war in Vietnam and in-
tlation at home, U.S. trade policy is
moving in the direction of higher
tariffs. Canada sells over $9 billion in
exports annually to the U.S., or 65%
of total Canadian export sales. Any
move by the U.S. to cut Canadian im-
ports will rebound in increased unem-
ployment in Canada. Pressure is alrea-
dy mounting in the’U.S. for the rene-
gotiation of the auto pact; oil imports
have been cut; sulphur import quotas
have been imposed that could cut Can-
adian sulphur sales to the United States
by one-half, striking a blow at the
Alberta economy.

The U.S. imperialists will not hesi- ~

tate to turn the screws on the Cana-
dian economy to secure for themselves
a resources agreement with Canada.

TRUDEAU’S PLEA

As Trudeau gets deeper into the
business. of betrayal and meets esca-
lating demands from the U.S. for bet-
ter and better terms he will no doubt
turn demagogically to the Canadian
people for “support.”

What in fact he will be doing is ask-
ing the Canadian people to support
one greedy monopoly grouping to slug
it out with another greedy monopoly
grouping as to which one will get the
best terms in ransacking our country.

This is not our alternative for the
Canadian working people. The days
when the interests of Canadian capital-

-ists despite their rapacity coincided

with the interests of the country have
long since passed. Today the “genuises
of finance capital” are eagerly, jointly
engaged in the plunder of the country
at the expense of its independence and
best interests.

It was the Communists of Canada
that unravelled the seemingly contra-
dictory nature of Canadian finance
capital. In his recent penetrating book
Lenin and Canada Tim Buck provides
an analysis of the post-war evolution of
the policy of betrayal. He points out
that 20 years ago the Communist Party
said:

“The dominant monopoly-capitalist
interests are not concerned primarily
with the development of Canada’s eco-
nomy or the welfare of her people. The
correspondence which did at one time
exist between the aims of Canada’s in-

_ dustrialists and the national interest

has disappeared. It disappeared with the”
transformation of Canadian economy

from competitive capitalist enterprise
to monopoly capitalism and the as-
sumption of control by the “geniuses of
financial manipulation.”

How clear and profound an analysis
that statement was can be seen in the
July 11 issue of the Financial Post
which lists Canada’s top 100 industrial
and financial corporations.

All told they sell more than $29 bil-
lion worth of goods and admit to earn-
ing $1.8 billion in profits after taxes.
The top 25 financial giants control as-
sets of $62,132 million and the top five
banks alone control 62% of this total.
But the most startling statistic of all
is the fact that one out of every two
of these biggest monopolies is owned
by foreign capital,-in the main Ameri-
can. The remainder are all ‘deeply
penetrated with U.S. capital as well.

The policy of the, Trudeau Govern-
ment is shaped to attempt to meet the
conflicting and changing interests of
these giants. Their fierce inter-mono-
poly competition underlies the seem-
ingly contradictory policy of the mo-
nopoly state, presently run for big
business by Trudeau and his “bright
young men.” :

SHRINKING MARKET
These monopoly giants are confront-

~ ed with a real world of intensified com-

petition for a shrinking capitalist
market, where ‘socialism is developing
rapidly, and at a time when the world
imperialist system is reeling from deep
crisis of inflation. In such a ruthless
political struggle, these giants care
little about the “national interest.”
They are concerned about maximum
profits and saving their besieged and
dying system.

No state-monopoly regime can ever
again act in the “national interest.”

The way out for Canada lies in in-
tegrating the fight for the nation with
the struggle of the working people for
jobs, rising standards of living and a
happy future in peace. The unity of
the interests of the working people and
the nation were never more vital and
clear.
_We do not share the pessimism of
Melville Watkins of the Waffle group
of the NDP who declared in the press
that if the energy sell-out ‘takes place
Canada is “finished.” This statement
merely illustrates that it is not enough
to recognize the problem but the real -
question is what to do about it if we
are to avoid defeatism.

PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT

There is no doubt that 20 years of
national betrayal have been very grave
for the working people in terms of lost
opportunities, jobs and lower stand-
ards of living. But they have also been ~
years of the quantitative growth of the
experience of the people of this coun-
try with varieties of sell-out policy. At
a critical moment in our political life
that accumulated experience will

merge with the bitter class battles now
being waged into a great people’s
movement for independence and real
genuine economic development of our
rich resources.

The fight for the independent deve-
lopment of the economy in the inter-
ests of the people is not a long-range
abstract problem. It is an urgent im-
mediate question for every worker.

The fight to nationalize the banks, to
compel the government to retreat from
its plans of betrayal and undertake
massive investments to build a great
industrial base in Western Canada,
construct an_ east-west integrated
power grid, take public control of re-
sources to guarantee their develop-
ment, not their sale—must become one
of the big battles the labor movement
and the farm organizations must un-
dertake as part of their fight-back
against Trudeau’s austerity policy.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 24, 1970—Page 5