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For Canada, peace and democracy-

A PART Momentous decisions in 1949

year 1949 is going to be a year of momentous decisions for Canada and her people, Far-reaching .issues of na- tional policy will have to be decided, the decisions will affect literally every section of the country and every sector of our national life.

The year opens with the national econ- omy teetering at the top and at the end of the great inflationary post-war boom.

_ The St. Laurent government is trying now to commit us in advance to active par- ticipation in an aggressive

_ War across the seas, under conditions over which Canada can have no effective control... .

_ The decisive question for every demo- ¢ratic peace-loving Canadian during 1949 and in the coming federal elections is: “What can I do to help keep Canada out of war?” The question is not academic, nor does it refer to a danger that is distant. The governments of the world are divided, in riva} camps, and

_ the United States “cold war” has been _ pressed to the point at which a world

, “shooting war” is much closer ‘than the

majority of people think. To keep our country out of war, peace-loving Can- “adians must act to take our country out of the war camp. It isn’t easy but it can be done. There are spreading doubts and divisions within the war camp, in Canada and in all imperialist countries. The camp of peace and demo- cratic progress is growing mightily. The People’s desire for measures to promote welfare instead of measures to promote warfare is growing. Their confidence in their own strength is growing and, with it, their confidence that the warmongers can be defeated. :

This national convention of our party must initiate the greatest campaign that the Canadian working-class movement has

ever carried through so far—the cam- paign to Keep Canada Out of War, to

Strengthen Canadian Democracy, to Keep —

Canada Independent, and thereby to help win the peace. The fight to take Canada out of the war camp is the essence of the struggle to keep our country free. The Labor-Progressive party calls upon all peace-loving Canadians to unite now in a great national protest to STOP THE GOVERNMENT FROM SIGNING WALL ‘S WAR PACT. P

PART 2 : wants a

Wall Street _ Shooting war—the people want peace

governments of the nations of the

world are now divided definitely into two opposing. camps: “The camp of im- _ perialism and anti-democratic forces, _ whose chief aim is the lishment of @ world-wide American Perialist hege- _ Mony and the crushing of democracy; and an anti-imperialist democratic camp whose chief aim is the elimination of imperialism, the strengthening of democ- racy and the liquidation of the remnants of fascism.”*

There is a widespread idea, even among

Progressive people, that there is little

_ €ctual danger of war; that _ pose of the tremendous

. 26 atte by the United

< economy. t acai my. That

to be spent _ three hund aie ome quarters as evidence ; n international relations, but it was nothing of the sort. The three hundred million dollars that is not to be fighters is to be spent upon ae D e The difference is that jet fighters are light, short-range aircraft _ used entirely for defense, while the B3é6’s are great, a refueling, and useful only for bombing far distant : : ie. offensive action. The B36 Superfortresses are | pre-eminently the United States -militarists’ chosen equip- _ ment for a hot, atomic Ware ; LSE Riscigg ideology =<

AS A PART of their drive to weaken

e

imperialist —

the sole ‘pur-" armament ex- States is to

_ tained in the Charter of _ democracy and stimulate fascist ideo- -

logy, the warmongers are seeking now to suppress their most hated opposition in the United States, the Communist Party. On the eve of the national convention of -the Progressive party, that revered leader of the American workers, William 4%. Foster, along with eleven other mem- bers of the national leadership of the Communist party of the United States, Were arrested and have been indicted. They are not accused of advocating viol- ence or even of anticipating violence. ‘They are accused of having conspired to form and of being members of a party founded upon the doctrine of the forcible overthrow of the government—a charge that was rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Schneiderman case only a few years ago.

On all fronts, diplomatic, économic, political and military, at home as. well as abroad, the war camp headed by the bellicose Wall Street imperialists who are in the saddle in the United States, are preparing for a shooting war.

The imperialists can’t win

UT, even if the imperialists commit _ -the maniacal crime of launching a third world war, they cannot win. They no longer have the monopoly of the atomic bomb, the People’s Democracies and the Soviet Union are strong, the New Democracy now embraces hundreds of millions of people in Asia as well as in Europe, while the crisis of imperialism and divisions within the capitalist camp are deepening.

But, the most influential of all the fac- tors which combine to determine that the imperialists cannot win a world war even if they should succeed in starting one, is the fact that the forces opposed to such a criminal war are too numerous and powerful and are growing rapidly.

Forces for peace

The force which precludes imperialist victory is the irresistible democratic force of the people. Newspapers reported Lester B. Pearson as telling an audience in Win- nipeg during January that “the danger of war with Russia is less today than it was six months ago.” He added that, in his opinion, it is because of the mobilizing of world opinion against Russia during the sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations at Paris, What utter non- sense! Mr. Pearson should know that the ; attempt in the General Assembly to stir up prejudice and hysteria against the So- viet Union was not for the purpose of peace but for the purpose of war. Truly did the representatives of the nine European Communist Parties, meeting in Warsaw during October, 1947, declare: “The nations of the world do not want war.” If the Communist Parties and the democratic allies of the working class “place themselves at the head of all the forces ready to defend the cause of na- tional honor and independence, then and then only no plans to subjugate the count- ries of Europe and Asia can succeed.” Stalin was a hundred times right when he told the correspondent of Pravda that “the social forces in favor of peace are too great for Churchill’s pupils in aggression to overcome them.” The present period of uncertainty will end “with the disgraceful donwfall of the instigators of a new war.”

PART 3 Keep Canada out of war

: THE St. Laurent government is seeking

to commit Canadians in advance to active participation in war if Wall Street gets one started. Canada’s political rela- tionships, the direction of her external trade, the very character of her domestic. €conomy are all being subordinated to that aim.

The St. Laurent government has carried the ball for Wall Street at every stage in the development of the scheme to by-Pass the United Nations and organize the cap italist states in an anti-Soviet war alliance under the deceptive title of “The North Atlantic Security Pact.” The plan itself is headed up by the United States, it cannot operate without the United States, but the St. Laurent government willingly made Canada its public sponsor. It was. pro- jected by St. Laurent on April 29, 1948, when he told the members of the House of Commons that he favored joining some sort of alliance of anti-Communist states

' which “were willing to accept more specific

and onerous obligations than those con-. C the United Na- tions.” oe : : That was the first time that the govern- ™ent of a member state of the UN had proposed .that the imperialist member states should ally themselves outside the United Nations, on the basis of commit- : ments more “specific” than their commit- |

~ments-to the United Nations, so as to or-

‘based upon Wall Street interests. _tountry needs an exclusively Canadian

ganize an “overwhelming” preponderance of power against the non-imperialist mem- bers. And, let it be emphasized, that is

- precisely what the Uinted Nations, its

Charter and its veto power, was set up to prevent. ‘ *

The trend to fascist

reaction A§s PART of the imperialists’ drive to war there is a steadily strengthening trend toward the revival of fascist reac- tion. Duplessis’ revival of political repres- sion under the Padlock Law was followed by his attempt to propose a fascist pro- vincial labor act upon the trade union movement. The LaCroix Bill is being in- troduced in a new form, :

The drive to revive fascist reaction is supplemented by a violent and highly or- ganized nationwide campaign of redbait- ing and intimidation ...

It is precisely because red-baiting is so widespread and is so obviously inspired and financed from very high quarters that the resistance to it is so significant. The overwhelming majority of the workers re- fuse to be stampeded by the “red bogey.” Working class organizations continue to grow in spite of the attempts at intimida- tion. Farmers’ organizations as well as labor organizations are resisting the drive to war. Democratic Canadians have not been frightened away from voting for pro- gressive candidates in elections. The decay of the Tories has not been stopped. The will to act to keep Canada independent, to keep Canada out of the North Atlantic war pact. is growing...

To defeat red-baiting it is but necessary to force the redbaiters out into the open and expose them. If redbaiting is exposed and discredited, attempts to revive fascism will be defeated from their start.

The warmongers’ lie ‘HERE is no truth whatever in the pre- tense that there is danger of agegres- sion by the Soviet Union. The first and conclusive proof of this is to be seen in the character of the Soviet state and the fun- damental importance to it of the principle of national self-determination. The deci- sion as to the path to be pursued by each nation must be determined by the people themselves. The second proof is to be seen in the fact that both the immediate and long-term interests of the USSR and the New Democracies demand peace, not war, friendship and cooperation with other countries, not conquest .. .

The warmongers are so short of argu- ments that Lester Pearson, minister for external affairs, resorts to the bald asser- tion that the communists believe that war is inevitable. That is exactly the opposite of the truth. It is the Communists who have been and are still trying consistently to show democratic people that a third world was is not inevitable—that the so- cialist countries and the capitalist count- ries can exist side by side in peace and can cooperate with each other to their mutual advantage if only the warmongers are rebuffed ... :

The fight to take our country out of the war camp is a fight for the rejection of the St. Laurent-Pearson foreign policy Our

foreign policy based Squarely upon the interests of Canada and the need to pre- vent the prior involvement of our country in war...

The LPP proposes a formal declaration by the Dominion government, affirming Canada’s non-participation in or support of any foreign alliances or agreements except as such cooperation is provided for oy the United Nations’ Charter .. .

A “satellite crisis”

[TN January, 1948, the LPP ‘warned Can-

adians that the government’s policy of making Canada’s economic policies sub- servient to the vagaries of the wildly fluc- tuating “boom and bust” economy of the United States. would bring calamitous con-

sequences for Canada. In even shorter.

time than we anticipated the correctness

of our warning is being affirmed by events.

Canadian economy is’ approaching an economic crisis, It will be very largely the

market crisis of a satellite economy — |

brought on, not because other countries don’t need our goods, or because they have no goods to exchange for them, but be- cause Wall Street and Washington are utilizing the Marshall plan to'secure all the market advantages possible for United States interests at the expense of their satellite economies, Short of war, war ex- penditures will not prevent the crisis be- cause, while on the tremendous scale of U.S. expenditures they can delay its out- break, they still equal only a relatively small proportion of the national economy —less than 10 percent and therefore can-

not maintain the great capital goods. in- dustries ....

PART 4 Protect Canada’s people

‘THE Dominion government refused to

pursue policies which would mitigate the effect of the coming crisis upon Can- adian economy. The labor movement should insist now that the government does enact measures to protect the masses of the people. The LPP proposes enact- ment of the following measures immed- iately to protect the living standards of the masses of our people.

(a) Increase Family Allowances to $8 per child for every child in the family up to the age of 16.

(b) Increase federal old age pensions to $60 per month to start at the age of 60

_ without the means test.

(c) Increase unemployment insuragce benefits by 50 percent to meet the ‘in- creased cost of living.

(d) Increase all veterans’ and civil ser- vice pensions to 50 percent above their 1945 level.

(e) Enact a Dominion Minimum Wage Act to apply wherever the Dominion gov- ernment has jurisdiction, of 75 cents per hour. F

(f) Abolish the 8 percent sales tax.

(g) Raise the level of income that is exempted from payment of income taxes up to $1500 per year for single persons. and $2500 per year for married man with - dependent wife, /

(h) Restore governmental subsidies to keep down the prices of essential foods where necessary.

(j) Re-establish the Excess Profits Tax.

(k) Establish adequate floors under and abolish the ceilings over all agricul- tural products except as conditioned by governmental subsidies.

In the coming Dominion elections the LPP will fight to elect its candidates to oress for the immediate enactment of measures to protect Canada’s people from che crisis conditions brought on by the ‘mperialists’ drive to war.

PART 5 Political parties and

the drive to war

‘HE traditional terms and slogans which distinguished the two old-line parties of Canadian capitalism until recently have lost their original meanings, In the past, the Liberal and Conservative parties rep- resented the competing interests of dif- ferent sections of Canadian capitalism and the rival imperialist interests of Britain and the United States. Those differences are now completely overshadowed ...

On the key issue of Canadian politics, the leaders of the CCF as well as the Pro- gressive Conservative Party support the policies of the St. Laurent government. . .

The leaders of the CCF, like the Social Crediters and the Union Nationale, try to maintain an appearance of a difference between themselves and the government on that issue by declaring that they want _ this or that modification, supplement or other secondary condition, complied with. In the meantime, they continue to support the fundamental attitude and aims upon which the St. Laurent policy is based, :

In their effort to identify the CCF com- pletely with the anti-Soviet war policy of Louis St. Laurent and U.S. imperialism, the leaders of the CCF have changed the em- phasis in their political position. During the war and for a while after, they used to put their main public emphasis upon assurances to reform-minded workers and farmers that the CCF was opposed to capitalist big business—sometimes they even declared that the CCF was in favor of socialism. Today they emphasize only their claim that they are the most ag- gressive political enemies of the Soviet Union and the New Democracies—that the main characteristic of the CCF is that of a. force that can be utilized to fight against Marxism and the LPP in Canada...

Peace and social security

GAINST the war policies upon which

the bourgeois and the petite-bourgeois parties are united, and against their at--: tempt to give the imperialist system a new lease of life, the LPP fights to build and extend a broad front of. democratic ac-

_ tion for peace and social security in Can- ada and throughout the world ...

In addition to the measures to protect. Canadian agriculture, to regain Canada's export markets, and to protect the peo- ple’s living standards from the effects of the crisis, the LPP will fight for measures aimed to democratize Canadian economy as a whole. The LPP proposes and calls eRe all’ progressive Canadians to unite oO: :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 11, 1949 — PAGE 4