FLASHBACKS FROM |
THE COMMUNIST PRESS

25 years ago...

TROOPS GIVEN MOST
DANGEROUS JOBS

OTTAWA — _ French-
Canadian troops in Korea are
being sent into the most danger-
ous positions and are being
given the most tedious jobs to
perform, P.E. Gagnon, Inde-
pendent MP for Chicoutimi, de-
clared in the House of Com-
mons, Nov. 5.

Gagnon refused to withdraw
his statement when ‘challenged
arid maintained his information
was based on information given
to him by wounded veterans re-
turning from: Korea. Jean Les:
age parliamentary assistant to
External Affairs Minister Pear-
son, made the demand for the
withdrawal.

Gagnon said it was “humiliat-
ing” to see how French-
Canadians were treated in. the
armed forces. He called for an
investigation into the dismissal
of J.G. Desroches of Quebec
from the RCAF because he had
championed for the rights of
French-speaking Canadians.

The Tribune
December 13, 1951

50 years ago...

THE OLD AGE PENSION

BILL

The Old Age Pension Bill
which was passed by Parliament
but thrown out by the Senate will
come before the House again
this session. The discussion that
took place in the House. has
evoked a great deal of public
sentiment both for and against.

“Organized labor, though not
agreeing with the Bill as drafted,
thought it wiser to support it
rather than have the whole
measure defeated. They be-
lieved it was the thin edge of the
wedge and a Bill of such anature
on the Statute books, even if not
operated, was an advance on no
bill at all.

In addition to ensuring that
the Bill be passed labor is de-
manding that the Bill be a Fed-
eral Act to ensure that it is en-
forced in all provinces. At pre-
sent it is bemg put forward as a
Federal-Provincial Act which
means the provinces can reject it
if they so wish.

~ The Worker
December 18, 1926

PLOY

,
STAT2 AROY W3AnK

TWAS THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS.. .

—)

oie
[T] a
Si
J

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 17, 1976—Page 4

EDITORIAL
COMMENT

Reject NATO’s arms call!

The North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion’s military brass is beating the war
drums again, demanding more arms
spending by member-states.

That would mean another jump in
Canada’s nearly $5-billion a year military
spending. And every worker knows it
would mean more severe slashing of so-
cial spending — if we were to obey
NATO’s warped commands. Defence
Minister Danson has no mandate from
Canada’s people to make such unjusti-
fied expenditures.

Voices of common sense here and the

world round demand an end to the arms .

race which profits only the monopolies
which live off the avails of death and
destruction. The Stockholm Appeal,
signed by hundreds of millions of
people, and signed or endorsed by more
than a million in Canada, is evidence of
the overwhelming desire to end the arms
race.

Yet, in Canada, both Liberal and Tory
governments are cutting back on real
needs, as more money is drained off to

bolster NATO’s phoney “defence” —

against a mythical threat from the Soviet
Union.

But it is precisely the Warsaw Pact
countries, including the Soviet Union
which offer a policy of détente and
peaceful co-existence of the two systems.

Valuable civic campaigns —

Careful observers will not underrate
the importance of recent municipal elec-
tions in various parts of Canada.

In Metro Toronto, where the Move-
ment for Municipal Reform scored not-
able successes; in Vancouver, where the
Committee of Progressive Electors won
key posts and made its program felt in
other areas; in Regina where that city’s
Committee of Progressive Electors got its
program to a significant section of the
electorate, and throughout Ontario
where progressive candidates gave
answers to the crisis of municipalities,
civie Campaigning was raised to a high
level. It laid the groundwork for sig-

A policy of unemployment

As long suspected, the federal gov-
ernment’s failure to develop policies of
full employment is a neat balance of in-
competence and deliberateness.

In announcing its patchwork of
make-winter-jobs, with an allocation of
$150-million to placate workers’ anger,
J.S.G. Cullen, manpower minister,
moved toward equating 7% un-
employment with “full employment”.

On top of the wage-slashing “anti-in-
flation” Bill C-73, threats by Anti-In-
flation Board chairman Jean-Luc Pepin
to illegalize catch-up pay when controls
end, and the legislating of thousands of
unemployed oft the unemployment in-
surance rolls, Ottawa will assist only
areas where unemployment is above 7%!
Layoffs are rampant, the Foreign In-
vestment Review Board is daily handing

“defensive pact simultaneously with the

“ment isn’t too bad.

‘780,000 “officially” jobless, for tens of

The Warsaw Pact proposed at its recent
meeting that the four nuclear powers
who signed the Helsinki Final Act
(USSR, Britain, USA and France) pledge
their rejection of first-strike use of nuc-

lear weapons..All 35 signatories to the

Final Act (including Canada) should
adopt an agreement “for the stop-
page of the arms race, the reduction and
liquidation of nuclear arms, and a total
and general ban on nuclear arms tests.”

What is more, the Warsaw Pact coun-
tries propose the dissolution of their own

dissolution of the aggressive NATO
bloc. One great difference between the
two is that no, one reaps profits from
arms production in socialist countries,
whereas fortunes pile up at workers’ ex-
pense from arms production in imperial-
ist countries like Canada. :

Leonid Brezhnev told a 35-member
U.S. government team, and 250 U.S.
businessmen in Moscow, Nov. 30, that
the USSR had recently again cut military
spending.

Canada should have no part of NATO
and its first-strike philosophy. This
country’s policies should be geared tc
ending the disastrous arms race, and the
lying anti-Soviet propaganda on which it
feeds.

nificant municipal reform, for demands
on senior governments for funds to meet
civic needs.

In the face of high-priced campaigns
for mouthpieces for the get-rich de-
velopers, the spokesmen for tenants, for’
worker home-owners,-for the low and _
average income family, for sole-support _
parents, for those in need of daycare,
made an impact, even in cases where
they should have been, but were not,
elected. They prevented a shift to the _
right in municipal politics which, but for
their vigilance and dogged efforts, might _
have succeeded. a

over Canadian businesses to the tender
mercies of U.S. monopoly, and this mis-
erable government says 7% unemploy-_

Workers know it is bad — for the

thousands wiped from the records —
and for all Canadian workers forced to—
pay for the crisis of the monopoly
capitalist system, while, profiteers grow —
fatter. Be
If ever workers — and their allies of
October 14 — were called upon to de-
fend past gains, and launch an offensive, __
it is now. Liberal-Tory plotting to dictate
shrivelling living standards makes ur-
gent.an anti-monopoly coalition with the
potential for forming a goverrimentrep-
resenting the genuine interests of the
non-monopoly majority. . .