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Pride and Prejudice
IN the best newspaper tradition, The Fisherman allows its columnists full freedom of expression even when their views are at variance with its own policies. That is why Frank Howard's column appears in this issue. To allow it to appear without comment, however, would be a disservice to the labor movement and, not least, to the New Democratic Party which Howard represents in the House of Commons.
Howard writes that a statement of Quebec provincial secretary Yves Gabais has got his "dander up a bit." What Gabais said, to give his full statement, is that "There is no room for rejoicing about Confederation's one hundredth birthday, but we plan to participate in all the programs that allow us, as Quebecois, to display ourselves." This is somewhat different from the way Howard interprets it. Not lack of pride in country, but exception to the injustices to the French Canadian people perpetuated in the terms of Confederation is the reason French Canada adopts this approach to the centenary.
Whether or not Howard and those who share his nineteenth century viewpoint agree, the French Canadians regard themselves as a nation — a nation that has survived conquest and every effort to undermine its culture and submerge its identity. As a nation, it demands recognition of its right to equal national status within the Canadian state under a new constitution that corresponds to the realities of Canadian existence.
•
The New Democratic Party, of which T. C. Douglas is the federal, not the national leader, has gone a considerable way toward recognizing these realities. But the consistently antagonistic attitude of Howard and others to legitimate French Canadian aspirations represents an obstacle to the NDP—and we find it difficult to believe that Howard is so politically naive as to think the NDP can win a majority at Ottawa without the support of the working people of Quebec.
Howard's position serves to obscure the real issue, and that is the need for unity of English and French Canadian working people against the monopolies, which pay scant heed to the nationality of those whom they exploit, although they find extra dividends in exploiting national prejudice.
The greater tragedy of Howard's position is that he fails to comprehend that Canada's continued survival in face of the US threat to its economic and political independence rests upon the continued ability of its two peoples to live together within the framework of a single state. If that requires constitutional revision, does Howard oppose national equality? It would be a strange stand indeed for an MP whose constituents include many Natives, themselves part of a national minority long denied equality.
We suggest to Howard that his anger would better be directed against the disgraceful statements made in the Newfoundland legislature this week by William J. Keough, minister of mines, agriculture and resources in Premier Smallwood's Liberal government. Speaking in the throne speech debate, Keough proposed that a suitable centennial project for Canada would be to prepare its 10 provinces for eventual entry into the United States.
And that really gets our dander up!
• This is the canning department in the S. M. Kirov plant near Tallinn, one of the largest in the Estonian SSR. It produces 15,000 cans a day, including the internationally marketed Tallinn spiced sprats, sprats in oil and plaice in oil.
MARITIME NEWSLETTER
By JOHN JENNER
THE United Fishermen and Allied Workers' statement that it plans to begin organizing here in the Maritimes this spring has brought at least a ray of hope to those workers in the industry now in the 75 to 95 cent an hour bracket.
While the Maritimes fishing industry in general has increased in every phase of its operation, wages have remained a secluded and shadowed subject in the backwater of the fishing boom.
Workers have lagged far behind their counterparts both on the Pacific coast and in the state of Maine for no more apparent reason than to maintain the medieval outlook of employers in the industry.
One of the finest plants in the world operates within the province of Nova Scotia and it is equipped with the most modern devices the fishing industry has developed, but such things are being paid for out of the workers' legitimate wage.
The great boom in Nova Scotia's fishing industry came to a point last year when, according to the fisheries minister's prediction, 1966 landings would exceed the 600 million pound catch of 1965.
In that year 180 plants employed somewhere in the region of 4,000 packers, filletters and other processing workers to
The Real Inflation Villain
EVIDENCE is mounting that the principal villain in the current bout of inflation is not business or labor, but the war in Vietnam.
This is no longer a "little" war. The United States is now spending $50 million a day on the Vietnam conflict — 5322,000 for every guerilla killed. Total war expenditures for the US during 1967 will exceed $20 billion, which is hardly an insignificant sum, even for a country as rich and powerful as our southern neighbor.
Some $300 million of it will be spent in Canada to pay for armaments manufactured by Canadian firms.
This enormous production of arms and other war material has two decisive effects on the North American economy. First, it tends to reduce the volume of consumer goods; and second, it provides nearly full employment, thus putting more money in the hands of consumers.
As every high school economics student knows, inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few commodities. Supply goes down, demand goes up, and
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rising prices are the inevitable consequence.
This classic pattern has now been set in motion by the war in Vietnam. Its main effect is felt in the United States, but since Canada's satellite economy is so closely linked with that of the US, the shock waves don't take long crossing the border.
In pointing to the war as the chief cause of inflation, we do not mean to imply that the manufacturers and retailers are blameless. Far from it. Many of them have taken advantage of the seller's market created by inflation to set their prices artificially high. But, by and large,
THE FISHERMAN, FEBRUARY 3, 1967
their profiteering is a result of inflation, not its cause.
C. W. Gonick, editor of Canadian Dimension, points out that the vast war expenditures have placed great strains on the entire North American economy— strains which are most evident in such sectors as food, clothing, housing and services, where the producer is typically small in scale and where supply is not very flexible.
Perhaps, under the circumstances, the most effective inflation fighters are not the groups of irate housewives, but those citizens M the various peace organizations who oppose the Vietnam war and are doing whatever they can to bring it to an end.
take care of the record sea harvest and it is these employees who are eyeing the move by the UFAWU with some optimism.
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SOME EXTENT OF THE
progress the fishing industry has made over the past few years can be gathered from the fact that around $20 million has bee'n invested in new construction and modernization of equipment and facilities during the five year record breaking span. More progress and more improvements are to be made as the province's major industry gears itself this year to the world's demand for salted, smoked, pickled, fresh and frozen fish, fishmeal, oil and byproducts.
Completion two years ago of the subsidiary Lunenburg Sea Products $5 million plant on a 12 acre site at Battery Point in Lunenburg, brought Nova Scotia what is regarded as the largest and most modern fish plant in the world.
At the present time it employs 550 persons and is served by a fleet of 11 Company owned vessels.
Altogether, National Sea Products' Nova Scotian operations employ more than 1,500 persons and are capable of processing 110 million pounds of fish annually.
One of the big movers in the fishing industry of Nova Scotia and the Maritimes in general over the past couple of years has been BC Packers. This company has extended the capacity of its million dollar herring reduction plant from 500 tons to 800 tons a day.
★ ★ ★
ACADIA FISHERIES' NEW
$4.5 million plant, which replaces the one destroyed by fire last year, is expected to go into operation at Canso in July. It will employ 275 workers and have an annual processing capacity of 30 million pounds of fish.
Another Lunenburg company, Riverport Seafoods Ltd., invested $1.5 million in plant expansion at Kraut Point and is aiming at 45 million pounds annual processing with work for 330 persons.
At least eight other firms in the province have in the last year, or will this year, spend between $100,000 and $600,000 each in plant expansion, fleet buildup or modern equipment additions.
Growth of the Maritimes fishing industry emphasizes the gap between modern plant and equipment and wage rates that are a quarter century behind those elsewhere in the country.
The gap must be closed, but no one supposes that it will be done easily or quickly.
OTTAWA REPORT
Expo Bill Protested
By FRANK HOWARD, MP
HOW much is one hundred million dollars? How much is $100,000,000? Quite frankly, I don't know. I do know that it is an awful lot of money, that it represents an awful lot of tax dollars that you and I pay.
The Montreal World's Fair will cost the Canadian taxpayer about $100 million, for that is the estimated deficit of the World's Fair, but we won't know the true figure until the Fair is over.
The province of Quebec and the city of Montreal have each made contributions toward the World's Fair, but their contribution was piddling compared to that which the rest of Canada will have to put up.
The World's Fair is being run by a group of people, half of whom are appointed by the province of Quebec. In other words, while Canada pays the costs, Quebec and Montreal run the show, or should I say run up the bills?
★ ★ ★ NORMALLY, I WOULDN'T
object too much to this arrangement, for the World's Fair in Montreal is really a part of our centennial celebrations and will bring benefit to Canada, even though that benefit will be confined to eastern Canada.
But something occurred recently which has got my dander up a bit. That was the statement by Yves Gabais, provincial secretary in the Quebec government, that Quebec will not rejoice with the rest of Canada in celebrating our one hundredth birthday. This is like spitting in the face of your best friend after he has ministered to your needs.
I consider this comment from the government of Quebec to be grossly insulting. The other parts of Canada have become increasingly incensed at the attitude of the various governments in Quebec in recent years, but this latest blurb is too much to take.
When the time comes, Prime Minister Pearson will ask parliament to pay for the $100 million needed for World's Fair bills. I, for one, do not intend to vote that money, for by so doing, I would then be admitting that it is perfectly proper for the province of Quebec to insult the taxpayers in Skeena.
In this regard, I must say that the federal Liberals are just as much at fault because not one of them has had the intestinal fortitude to object to the way in which the province of Quebec has been dragging Pearson and his cabinet around by the nose.
★ ★ ★
AT THE MOMENT WE ARE trying desperately to get live television into our area. The cost of doing this, so far as I can determine at the moment, will be in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year rental payments to the BC Telephone Company.
The government here in Ottawa is balking at spending this amount of money to bring us the service that the rest of Canada enjoys, but it doesn't hesitate to demand that we pay 500 times that amount to finance a project in a province that shuns our friendship and just wants our money.
Yes, $100 million is an awful lot of money to you and me. But, it obviously isn't very much to our federal Liberal government, especially if it is to be used as another sop to its pets in Quebec.
Worth Quoting
• Distribution of the money being spent by the US on the war in Vietnam among the 16 million people would give them the world's highest living standard with an annual income of almost $8,000 for a family of four. — Randolph Harding (NDP, Revelstoke-Slocan).
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• The war in Vietnam is not only good for Marshal Ky, but also for General Motors. — Alex MacDonald (NDP, Vancouver East).