© 1867 and 1947

Confederation and the West

Bay Company on the other.

The company had got it in the
first place as a slight token of
&8ppreciation from a Stuart mon-
arch whom the gentlemen con-
cerned had helped to restore to
the throne of England. There is
No record to show that it was the
Monarch’s property, but he gave
it away anyhow.

Not that the West was against
Confederation at that time, or is
Now. But that little fact of his-
tory has had much to do with
the history of the West during
the past 80 years and even unto

€ present day.

It wasn’t as though there were
‘0 people in the West but the
Udson’s Bay Company factors.
There were the Indians, of
Course. And there were the Metis
along the Red River and “the
Scottish settlers at Selkirk and
elsewhere,

These people didn’t want the
Company regime to stay. They
had fought it bitterly for de-
_ fades. What they wanted was
that the West become part of
Canada as one of the partners,
with democratic rights, with
deeds to the lands they tilled and
Provisions for schbols and roads.

__So while negotiations between
the then separate colonies and
between the initiators of Confed-
ration and the Hudson’s Bay
as Company were «going on, the
€sterners sent ‘delégations
down Rast to plead their cause,
: i as many a delegation has

Ne since,
_And as has happened so often
Since then, the businessmen-poli-
Clans made the Westerners
“Some vague promises and pack-
hem off home.
Once the deal was done, the
°sses of the East congratulated
€Mselves on a smart piece of
al estate business and proceed-
to treat the West as their
# vate property and the West-
_“Mers as trespassers.
; as took a couple of rebellions
Ww @ lot of battling—East and
Sts *st—to win provincial rights
t the Prairies,
?

Wear did Confederation and
the end of the Hudson’s Bay

Com
Npan
West Y monopoly mean to the

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by Frank Lesser

y Derek Kartun

west Territories—never joined Confederation.
Was annexed via a little business deal between the bosses
of Ontario and Montreal on the one hand and the Hudson’s

LPL

by JOHN WEIR

A’ a matter of historical fact, the West—meaning pres-
ent day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the North-

The West

The Prairies were tied up with
the growth of Canadian economy,
The plains were spanned by a
railroad, the basis for the even-
tual ‘opening up’ and develop-
ment of the West was laid in
1867.

That was historical necessity.
it was good,

But the way it was done frus-
trated those very ends for a gen-
eration and until the present day
has conditioned the development
of the West on the profit inter-
ests of Eastern industrialists and
financiers who took over the
country with Confederation.

In the first place, the ‘deposed’
Hudson’s Bay Company was left
with large tracts of the best
lands and with its fur and trad-
ing monopoly, as well as given a
generous cash settlement. The
CPR got more lands, the trans-
portation monopoly and first
choice pickings of the natural
resources.

So the. settlement of ‘the
Prairies proceeded slowly because
the land was not free—it was
held for sale by the big shots.
The Ontario militia “volunteers,
who were sent to put Riel down,
got no farms as their reward;
many of them trekked south-
ward to get homesteads across
the border. The railroad build-
ers. (including Chinese coolies)
wiped out the buffalo but few
of them remained to populate the
plains, It wasn’t until the 'nine-
ties that the homestead era real-

ly opened the gates to Western .

development.
e

Wwe: the change of heart? Hav-
ing milked the country dry
as its price for building the
trans-Canada railroad, the CPR
now wanted to cash in via
operational profits — freight and
passenger. !

So long as the west was
sparsely settled the lands held
by the CPR, Hudson's Bay Com-

“pany et al brought no revenue.

Settlement would not only at-
tract buyers but would raise the
value of these properties as well.

The new Hastern manufactur-
ers wanted a larger home market
for their products.

mn

Kil

Sed Building from the ruins

What con happen in germ warfare
by Prof. J. B. S. Haldane

® The United States invades Europe

JOHN WEIR

Rapidly industrializing Europe
needed wheat which the slower
mechanization of agriculture and
the persistence of feudal rela-
tions in the agrarian countries
of the Old World could not
supply.

In the meantime, having
pushed their frontier all the way
back to the Pacific, the enter-
prising Americans were begin-
ning to push north. If the Can-
adians didn’t do something about
the Prairies pretty soon, the
Yankees would.

And, of course, there was al-
ready a larger body of people
throughout the West, pressing
on Ottawa.

So a new chapter in the his-
tory of the West began. Immi-
grants poured in. Homesteads
were snapped up. The former
grazing grounds of the buffalo
were put to the plough and from
Lake Superior to the Rockies
there was created one vast field
of golden wheat. The coal mines
were dug to fuel the engines
that brought in carloads of im-
migrants and took away thous-
ands of tons of grain, Cities and
towns sprang
ground.

It was the fulfillment of Con-
federation for the West. But....

iY have the winds of re-
‘© bellion blown ever more

gustily across the Praries? Why |

the seething protest from the

days of Riel’s two rebellions to

last year’s non-delivery strike?
What's eating the West?

The financial-industrial East
has continually milked the agra-
rian West. It was so at the be-
ginning. It is so today.

The West produces Canada’s
No. 1 export commodity—wheat
—but it has always been finance
capital (Eastern) that dictated
the terms and skimmed off the
cream.

Due to the higher composition
of capital in industry (Eastern)
and the privileged position of
the industrial and financial mag-
nates in the seat of power at
Ottawa, prices for farm pro-
ducts are continuously falling
and the prices of machinery and
manufactured goods the farmer
must buy continually rising.

The Western farmer gets it
coming and going—in the neck!

And he has been fighting
back.

up from the

Forced to subsidize the steel
and implements industries of
the East, the West even talked
of secession to the United States
and voted for ‘free trade’ Liber-
als as against ‘high tariff’ Con-
servatives — until the Liberals
came to power and continued
the Tory ‘protection’ policy.

In order to bring down ,the
exorbitant tribute collected by
the CPR the West demanded
and got a second railroad—but
that was soon ‘nationalized’ and
coordinated with the CPR, while
high and discriminatory freight
rates remain to this day. Seek-
ing to bring those rates down,
the West also turned to Port
Churchill and the northern sea
route as a way of by-passing
the railroad monopolists, but the
latter have brought that to
nought as they have kept the
St. Lawrence Seaway from be-
ing built.

Seeking to take the market-
ing of their produce out of the
hands of the financiers and
speculators, the Western farm-
ers built their Granges and fi-
nally set up the then largest
network of producer cooperatives
in the world—the Pools. They
did bring some benefits and still
do, but the Canadian (Eastern)
and international financiers still
rule the roost and make the
rules for the ‘game’— and with
the coming of the agrarian crisis
after World War One they were
able to ‘tame’ and subordinate
the Pools, generally speaking.
to their might.

The Winnipeg Grain Exchange,
that fantastic, cynical poker
game where financiers and spec-
ulators (and some of the top
strata of farmers) gambled with
the Western wheat and its
prices, was long the object of
the farmers’ wrath. It was fold-

‘ed up during World War Two,

but that, of course, did not give
the Western farmer control over
his produce or its prices.

R a generation the West

has been seeking new paths
of political action to right its
grievances. The end of World
War One saw the Progressives
come to power in Manitoba and
the United Farmers in Alberta.

The first were ultimately sub-
verted back into the Liberal
fold and are the conservative
provincial government of today
via a coalition.

The UFA failed to live up to
the hopes placed in it and
crumpled up in the early years
of the economic crisis, giving
way to Social Credit, which
demagogically promised to slay
the dragon of finance capital.

And a couple of years ago
Saskatchewan ditched the old
parties and swept in a CCF gov-
ernment.

All of these developments were
revolts against the ‘Eastern in-
terests,’ against the old-line par-
ties in power at Ottawa, at-
tempts to correct the exploita-
tion and cheating of the West.

But the situation has remain-
ed basically unchanged.

‘Maverick’ provincial adminis-
trations are permitted to run
their affairs within circum-
scribed limits, but once they
step out of the field allotted to

them and propose anything that

even timidly encroaches on the
sacred rights of bankers, mort-
gage companies, the CPR or the
industrialists, a Supreme Court

over

(Eastern)
window.

The West ‘has tried economic
action via cooperatives. It has
tried political action of various
kinds. It has elected provincial
governments and ‘Western blocs’
to federal parliament. It has
sent delegations, it has protested,
it has demanded.

It has clearly worked out its
program for equality within the
Confederation, coining the
phrase ‘parity prices’ to cover
the practical proposals for elos-
ing the scissors between agri-
cultural and industrial prices,
demanding an end to discrimina-
tion in freight rates, seeking
security of land tenure from
the financial sharks, planning
to curb the new packing mon-_
opolists, urging the development
of industries on the Prairies
where coal, oil and potash abide
and where wheat itself can be-
come the raw material for new
industries.

It demands a taxation policy
where the money collected from
the West by Bay and St. James
Streets magnates would be
returned, at least in part, in the
form of social measures.

It looks out upon a hungry
world and wants policies that
would send its wheat and meat

throws it out the

‘to Asia and Europe—and pay

the West to do it.

And all the time it comes up
against the opposition of the
big interests in the East who
are running the federal govern-
ments, whether they be Grit or
Tory.

'W a new weapon has been
added to the Western arse-
nal. The non-delivery farm
strike is a powerful political-
economic weapon. It hits direct-
ly where it hurts the big shots
most. Western produce is one
of the pillars on which the
whole of Canadian economy is
based. A farm strike shakes the
whole _ structure. Last year’s
preliminary skirmish
caused a lot of headaches at
Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.
There is the heavy rumbling of
a rising new storm across the —
Prairies today as we mark the
80th anniversary of Confedera-_
tion.
Is the basis of Confederation
crumbling?
Is it the West vs. the Hast?

No, the storm is brewing all
over Canada. The cheated peo-
ple of the Maritimes, the mon-
oply-hating French Canadians,
the gxploited industrial workers
of Ontario and British Colum-
bia are all getting into moticn
and their enemy is the same
which has milked the West for
so many decades: the industrial-
financial overlords of Canada.

One of the most significant
features of the non-delivery
strike last year was that the
initiative in the battle for the
interests of the West passed
into the hands of the
working farmers. And in the
West itself today there exists
a working class too, which is
organizing and beginning to
demonstrate _ political activity

‘beyond each its own little baili-

wick.
An alliance of the workers and
working farmers in the West

“can carry the prairies to a high-_

er plane in the 80-year-old fight.
And the alliance of a radical

West with the militant legions

of labor, with the discontented
Maritimers and French Cana-
dians, can put a people’s coali- —
tion into power in Ottawa which
could proceed to satisfy the
grievances of the West as part
of the national revamping of our :
way of life.

Confederation wouldn’t die—it
would be reborn, better and

stronger than before. The very. >

articles of Confederation could
be brought more up to date to
serve that purpose.

And the West would at last
be in the Confederation as an
equal partner—as it should have
been from the beginning.

quickly _.