OIL MONOPOLIES tig 4 lt , FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1964 VOL. 25, NO. 3 Overcharge $2 <=" lo¢ "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- a. ; 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, a ee ee rs rs |||