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B.C.

Whither Canada?

See Canada is being inexorably drawn. into the recl-

less adventure of American imperialism was accentuat-
ed last week in a feature article in ‘the “Financial Post.’
Kenneth Wilson, Ottawa staff’ correspondent of the organ
of monopoly capital in Canada disclosed that Canada had
received “a virtual ultimatum from the United States, call-
ing on Canada to fortify her northern frontier.? As a mem-
ber of the Permanent Joint Defense Board, Canada had been
instructed to build” a system of northern frontier air bases
to be maintained and equipped as part of the general de-
fensive machinery of this continent,” wrote Wilson.

A few days later Mr. King made a feeble protest against
the “Post’s’ revelations in the House. “Absurd, absolutely
untrue,” and so forth, wailed the Prime Minister. But—“‘the
Permanent Canada-U.S. Defense Board was constantly ex-
amining the possibilities of the defense of this continent and
naturally took the northern areas into
Naturally!

The “Financial Post’
should have the widest public discussion. It was no accident
that the daily press played down both the “Post’s’ revela-
tions and Mr. King’s “explanation.” Canadian big business
do not mind Canada becoming a second Belgium, or -her
northern areas being transformed into a second Maginot
line, if they are fully in on the deal. The main error of the
‘Financial Post’ was not in stating the case, but in speaking
out of turn. That is what spurred Mr. King to hasten and
make a “correction,” and probably explains why Canadian
press soft-pedalled the issue.

Mr. King’s “explanation” only confirms what the Post
Said and what the people fear. Organized labor and the peo-
ple must step in and halt this commital before it is too late.
The best defense Canada has is in the fight to preserve
Big Three unity. The most dangerous “defense” is that to
which Mackenzie King has become a willing partner, and
which leads to war provocations against the Soviet Union:
It is time for the people to act.

‘To them that hath’

qe2e budget brought down by Finance Minister Ilsley

last week conferred some “mixed blessings” upon the
Canadian people. In order to give monopoly capital a lot,
the minister gave the wage earners a little. A few shekels
were thrown their way with the date of receipt deferred
until 1947. :

Labor across Canada feels no elation that the new
budget ‘may’ exempt five or six hundred thousand wage
€arners from income tax payments. That is simply another
barometer to prove what is already known—that far too
many workers, both married and single, are receiving wages
below the equivalent of a decent Canadian standard.

The big monopolists did very well in the budget pro-
visions. With the reductions in corporation and excess pro-
fits taxes,-these groups received a gift of approximately
$140,000,000 annually. Cooperatives, which by and large are
working class organizations, are now to be taxed. With the
fine hand of high finance, the cooperatives ‘patronage divi-
dend” will be exempt, but its source will be tapped, and the
‘patronage dividend’ which used to go to the humble co-
Operator, will now go to Mr. Ilsley to help make up for the
$140-million gift he gave to big business in tax reductions.

Fishermen and farmers are granted the concession of
Paying income tax on the basis of average earnings over
a period of years. ‘In principle’ this is highly welcome to
these groups, but in practice there are a few major snags.
The farmer or fisherman will pay their income taxes for
1946-47-48 as usual. Then the finance department will begin
to tabulate. They may even ‘figure’ in 1948 that the fisher-
man or farmer has some refund returnable, and by 1949 or
’30 these groups may get a little back. Under the new pro-
visions fishermen and farmers will have to cultivate what
is known as a Jong-range’ perspective in income tax refunds.

Most important in Mr. Iisley’s budget is the implied
perspective of dual federal-provincial tax levies. This may
come in the way of a political tip to Herren Drew and Du-
plessis, that it does not pay to scuttle successive Dominion-
Provincial conferences, but in the long run it is the common
people who will pay the shot. Mr. Iisley’s budget is very
definitely a rich man’s budget, with a few well-picked
crumbs for the proletariat,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

consideration.”

Staff writer raised an issue which

AN blessing or a curse ?

Only by the destruction of all atom
bombs, and control of atomic de-
velopment by the Big Three for
the benefit of mankind can the

question be answered.

1886—_

Sixty years of

Feo™ the air it has all the magnificence of the metro.
pattern of angled roofs and crooked streets s

spilling across the surrounding hills and stret

sistent Urge to expand. This is Vancouver,

third city of Canada, and in the opinion of

Through the mouth of the
Fraser River, whose waters tra-
verse the entire length of Can-
ada’s richest _ natural empire,
and between the guardian bluffs
of the First Narrows, ships of
every flag carry a fabulous
wealth to the far corners of the

Pacific. The hammer and sickle
of the Soviet Union and the
rising sun of China have be-

come as familiar to its citizens
as the Union Jack. Vancouver’s
prosperity depends upon her ex-
ports, the more so because she
has still to win her long fight
against the strangling influence
of the older eastern cities to
establish herself as a heavy in-
dustrial center in her own right.
manufacturing and processing
the natural wealth which she
must now send uneconomically
across three thousand miles of
mountain and prairie before re-
ceiving it back in finished form.

trade relations with
her great neighbors in the Pa-
cific, the’ Soviet Union, China,
and India, the development of
China and India as modern in-
dustrial states, the freeing of
the colenial peoples of Asia from
the imperialistic interests which
thwart their progress are the
essentials of Vancouver’S own
future progress.

Peaceful

Her people, as the people of
any Canadian city, have noth-
ing to gain and everything to

lose from the mad dreams of ~

Canada’s own imperialists for
war against the’ Soviet Union.

Vancouver lies at the end of
the Great Circle air route across
the northern wilderness. Peace-
ful trade development can make

this route serve Vancouver’s
people by reducing days to
hours, bring the undeveloped

riches of the northland to Van-
couyer’s door, and making of
the Soviet Union the neighbor

By HAL GRIFFIN

She has, in fact; become through
modern air transportation.
War in the Pacific can bring:

cnly the incalculable devasta-
tion of the atom bomb, leaving
the mountainsides blackened

and charred, the modest wood-
en homes of its working people
in ashes, wiping out in a few
Seconds all that 60 years of

HAL GRIFFIN

Struggle has been able to ac-
complish. Vancouver is vulner-
able, the inevitable target of
any such future war, and her
people, more than any other in
Canada, have the greatest stake
in peace.
e

But the Struggle for peace has
many sides, none of which may
be separated from the others
without - distorting the whole.
Look closely at Vancouver as
you drive from the airport to
the city center, and the mag-
nificence is tarnished by the
rundown condition of its Streets,

Vancouver labor

1946

Polis it aspires to be—a vast
prawling between the inlet and the Tiver,
ching up the mountain sides in its in.
only 60° years removed from the forest, the
its people, the finest.

the vigor of its Srowth blighted
by decrepit houses Spreading: ~
the poison of slum conditions
through its civic System.

For a city of its population,
now approaching the half mil-
lion mark in the Greater Van-
couver metropolitan area, Van-
couver’S paved streets are in
worse condition than the gravel
roads of. many surrounding:
municipalities. Only .60 years
Separate the fine, modern
homes of the South Granville
district from the eabins and
Shacks of pioneer Granville. But
the coast climate has been hard
on wooden houses built half a
century or more ago.

Unpainted and dilapidated,
their foundations rotting and
their roofs Sagging, the old
kouses clutter the center of
town and the close-in areas,
their sunless narrow windows

and inadequate heating systems
of the pioneer day shunned by
all except those who Can afford
or find no better. They were
never intended to last so long.
Like the antiquated, noisy
streetcars and the rutted, dang-
erous tracks over which they
travel, they have paid for them-
selves many times over, but as
jong as they can be made to
Pay for themselves one more
time they remain a menace toe
health, a bar to progress, and a4
mockery to civic pride.

The pride and boast of its
working people is that Vancou-
ver iS a union town. No one
disputes this boast, not even the

city’s “first citizens,” the sons
and daughters’ and now the
grandsons~ and Sranddaughters,

of the pioneer businessmen who
like to imagine that they. and
they alone created the ereat
wealth they now control through
monopolistic institutions.’
Forgetful of the damning: in-
(Continued on WNext Page)

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 1946