This page inserted by the central ex-
exutive committee, Communist Party of

Canada.

High interest rates help banks, n hot people!

High interest rates are causing loss of homes
and farms, the closing down of plants, growing
unemployment and rising inflation. They are
driving down living standards.

High interest rates are part of the economic
policies of the Trudeau government as they are
part of Reaganomics.

These economic policies, as the MacEachen
budget showed, are calculated to pro-
mote unemployment and recession — all in the
name of “combatting inflation”. These policies

protect the corporations and the banks, not the
people.

Liberal and Tory governments alike, are
responsible for these Sica Lily economic
policies.

This intolerable situation is making Cana-
dians increasingly angry. They want high in-
terestrateslowered andneweconomicand social
policieswonto protectthem from agrowingreces-
sion. This is what we work for.

Roll back interest rates to 12%!

The Communist Party proposes that morgage develop its own policies free from outside
interest rates be rolled back to the 1979 level of interference and control.

3 In the interval a moratorium should be de-
12%. The argument that Canada must be tied to clared to prevent people from losing homes or
U.S. policies is eee false. Canada should

Affordable housing! Protect tenants!

This should go together with a massive public
housing program for low and medium incomes
with housing considered as a public utility.

Tenants too must be protected. Rents should
not be more than 25% of a person’s income. The
government should subsidize rents through a
shelter allowance.

Prices on essential foods should be frozen;
and the transnational oil corporations, not the

people, be made to pay for Canadianization of
energy. Oil and gas prices shoutick be rolled
back.

Pensions should be raised to $600 monthly,

be portable, and the pensionable age reduced.

Hours of work should likewise be gradually
reduced with no loss in take-home pay, thereby
creating more opportunities for new jobs for a
growing labor force.

. An excess profits tax should be instituted as
' part of the longer term aim of nationalizing the
banks and credit system, using their enormous
funds for all Canada development programs to
strengthen Canada’s independence.

Exchange controls should be established.

Resources, energy and U.S. branch plants
_ should be placed under public ownership.

These are some of the measures needed to.

deal with both high interest rates and a develop-

More and more Canadians now realize that
the roots of the crisis are imbedded in the
capitalist system whose aim is: everything for
profit, and to hell with the well-being of the
people. We need to establish a new priority
based on the principle that people’s needs
come before monopoly profits.

The working people have it in their power to
achieve this objective. But sustained and united
effort combined with independent labor political
action.will be required to win.

ing crisis.

For a new economic program!

The new economic policy we call for needs
a new government to implement it, one based
on a coalition of all democratic and working-
class forces in Canada.

The Communist Party pledges to give this
its every support.

We are mindful of the fact that Canadians
will ask where is the money to come from to
implement the program of recovery and de-

velopment the Communist Party calls for. We.

say: instead of giving hundreds of millions of

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 27, 1981—Page 6

dollars to corporations without any guarantee
of jobs for Canadians, use these sums for
creating jobs and advancing the well-being of
the Canadian people.

We say: Take it out of the so-called defence
program. That program costs Canadians over
$6 billion annually. Let this sum of money and
more be used for economic growth and de-
velopment, for strengthening Canada’s inde-
pendence and making it a vital force for peace
in the world.

‘