OIL MONOPOLIES

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FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1964
VOL. 25, NO. 3

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"Don't sign protocol,
let Parliament decide,’
urges wire fo Pearson

Following the announcement
this week that Ottawa, B.C. and
the U.S, had agreed on terms
for the sellout of the Columbia,
and that Prime Minister Pear-
son is expected to sign the pro-
tocol in Washington on Jan. 22,
the B.C, Communist Party sent
the following wire to the Prime
Minister:

‘Request protocol to Columbia
treaty not be signed during your
January visit. Urge content of
protocol be revealed now and that
Protocol and treaty be referred
to Parliament after full public
hearing by External Affairs Com-
mittee,’’

B.C. Communist Party organ-
izer Charles Caron signed the
wire on behalf of the Party’s
Provincial committee. In a fur-
ther statement he called on the
people of B.C, to wire or write
their MP’s Supporting the stand

mn rd
BOMARC MISSILES . warheads
for these are now arriving in large
Quantities in Ontario and Quebec.
ener constitute a menace to Can-
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taken in the Party’s wire. He
urged the NDP to speak out now.

“This issue is of vital im-
portance to B.C. and the public
should demand that the coming
session of the Legislature, open-
ing Jan. 23, be given a full re-
port on the Columbia negotia-
tions and the terms contained
in the new protocol, B.C.’s elect-
ed members of the Legislature
must hold a full debate on the
Proposed sellout contained in the
present draft treaty,’? said
Caron.

The Columbia River for Can-
ada Committee also announced
this week that
giant protest meeting with speak-
ers from Eastern Canada as soon
as details of the new protocol
are announced,

A powerful voice was raised
against the draft Columbia Treaty
and the new protocol when the
Toronto Globe and Mail gave a
full page in its Tuesday edition
to the first of two articles by
Larratt Higgins, a leading Cana-
dian economist with the Ontario
Hydro Electric Power Commis-
sion,

In the article headed, ‘Is the
Columbia River Treaty a Sell-
out?’? Higgins says ‘If the Co-
lumbia River Treaty of 1961 fi-
nally comes into force, Canada

See COLUMBIA, pg. 3

it will hold a’

B.C. PUBLIC

million, probe told

Charges that the B.C. public has been paying $32 million a year

too much for gasoline and that the oil monopolies operating in B.C.
were guilty of price fixing and wasteful marketing practices, high-
lighted the hearings of the Royal Commission on gasoline prices which
opened its sessions in Victoria last Monday.

The charge that the consuming
public is being overcharged to
the tune af $32 million a year
came from Cyril Shelford, Social
Credit MLA for Ominica, who was
the first witness to testify before
the inquiry.

In. a 10-page brief Shelford
referred to a similar inquiry
in 1935 by Mr. Justice M.A.
Macdonald who found prices were
too high and recommended re-
ductions ranging from 11¢ in
Vancouver to 18.3¢ in Smithers.
These reductions were never
carried through because of the
opposition of the oil monopolies
and a government which ac-

quiesced to their demands,
Shelford said ‘‘if the recom-
mended price had been brought
into effect it would have saved
the motorists $4,672,816." He
asked: ‘How much would the
figure be today? Only 44,134,667
gallons were sold in 1935 com-
pared with 310,293,379 gallons
or seven times as much today.”’
Shelford said that a provincial
government report on the gas-
Oline price differential in BCs
made by the Department of Trade
and Commerce in November,
1961 showed that the situation
exists today as it did in 1935,

This mighty river system along with the Kootenay has
been sold out to the U.S. accordin

“If the price is still that far

a

to announcements

from Ottawa and Victoria this week. For what this sell-
out means read the article on page 8 giving the views
of a leading expert with the Ontario Hydro.

out of line, then the consumers
are paying $32,709,712 too much
each year,’’ said Shelford, point-
ing out that gasoline prices today
for regular gas ranges from 36.9¢
in Vancouver to 65¢ in Atlin.

He urged a one-price system
to all at the wholesale level.

Later on Monday, the oil com-
panies, through the counsel for
the Shell Oil Co,, blocked tem-
porarily a submission by the
B.C. Automobile Retailers Asso-
ciation to the Royal Commission.

The automobile retailers sub-
mission was stopped after only
two of the eight pages had been
read when Shell Oil Co. counsel
Douglas McK Brown jumped to his
feet to prevent the brief from
being submitted on the grounds
that it was irrelevant and beyond
the commission’s terms of refer-
ence,

Commissioner Judge C.W,
Morrow said he would reserve
judgment until later in the week,

The B.C, Automobile Retailers
Association brief accused the oil
companies of price - fixing,
wasteful maketing practices and
of using service station operators
as pawns in a giant competitive
struggle.

The brief said the oil com-
panies control the industry in all
metropolitan centres through
ownership of a great number of
the 2,000 gasoline outlets. It
charged that dealers’ inde-
pendence had been ‘‘eroded and
virtually destroyed by the tactics
employed by the major oil com-
panies.’’

’’'This control has in fact re-
sulted in rigid price-fixing by
the various oil companies who
completely control both the
wholesale and retail outlets of
service stations throughout met-
ropolitan Vancouver and through-
out the entire Fraser Valley and
also throughout Greater Victoria
and almost all of Vancouver
Island,’’ charged the brief,

Socred Premier Bennett had
long resisted public pressure for

See PROBE, pg. 3

Make Canada nuclear-free zone’

The Canadian government
should declare Canada to be a
nuclear-free zone, says the Can-
adian Peace Congress. Its pro-
posal was made recently in an
advertisement in the Globe and
Mail,

Dr. James Endicott, chairman
of the Congress, says this step
would change Canada’s whole re-
lationship to achieving peace in
the world and our own country’s
independence,

The New Year’s Eve arrival
of the Bomare A-warheads was
due to ‘intense pressure from
the Pentagon and U.S, State De-
partments,’’ he adds, The nuclear
deal was ‘‘a back-door operation
by the Liberals to pacify cold-

war Americans.’’

The Liberal policy contradic-
tion arises because past policies
were based on the presumption
of a nuclear showdown. ‘‘The
present presumption is an in-
creasing easing of tension, a nu-
clear denoument, and disarma-
ment.’’ Thus, the Canadian and
other governments are faced with
a necessity to readjust to the new
situation.

Dr. Endicott noted that the
Liberals had pledged Canada’s
defense policies would be rene-
gotiated, Pearson indicated the
same thing in his CBC interview,

* * *

The Canadian Peace Congress

stresses that an overhaul of our

defense policy should include two
things:

* Canada should be declared
a nuclear-free zone;

* As long as Canada remains
in NATO, it should use its influ-
ence there to achieve a non-ag-
ression pact between NATO and
Warsaw Treaty countries, in-

-cluding some reasonable settle-

ment of the German problem.
The Peace Congress statement
emphasizes that the idea of nu-
clear-free zones - in the Medi-
terranean, the Far East, Central
Europe and Latin America - ‘tis
gathering strength among people
all over the world. Such zones,
by discouraging the spread of

See A—FREE ZONE, pg. 3

COMOX NEXT?

Associate National Defence
Minister Lucien Cardin said
last Friday in Ottawa that
nuclear warheads will be de-
livered to the Comox RCAF
base later this year,

The U.S. warheads sched-
uled for Comox will be nuclear
tips for rockets fired by the
Voodoo jet interceptors stat-
ioned at Comox.

This week it was announced
that Brockbank and Heming-
way Limited of Vancouver has
been awarded a $485.975 con-
tract for construction of the
dump at Comox,

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