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This Land is Our Land
CPS Election Analysis 2008 - Week 6
Tim Buck – Put Monopoly Under Control – Progress Books 1964
Patriotic Canadians are opposed to US domination. The people of English Canada and French Canada each cherish their national identities. There is rising demand for government action to re-assert Canadian sovereignty.
As we have already said, some Canadian capitalists, including monopoly interests, are beginning to exert pressure on the government for policies which they might hope to regain control of the economy. They want for themselves a greater slice of the pie.
This trend finds expression in the capitalist political parties and even within the monopoly-capitalist state. The campaign keynoted by James Coyne when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, reflected this growing desire.
John Diefenbaker’s attempt to win an election by opposing the US demand that Canada accept nuclear weapons reflected the feelings of Canadians. The Tories who deserted him reflected US influence.
The Pearson government won the active assistance from the US government and one of its first actions after taking office was to accept nuclear weapons for the armed forces and nuclear weapons dumps across Canada, under US control.
Yet, even while this repaying its election debt to US imperialism the Pearson government was also impelled by Canadian realities to offer some resistance to US domination. This domination and a growing desire to end it are both inescapable facts of life.
Conflict between US domination and the Canadian patriotic aspirations cannot be obscured. People are realizing that Canada’s political sovereignty is menaced. The Minister of Finance warned the House of Commons on October 16, 1963 that we shall lose entirely unless we act soon to stop the spread of US ownership and control. Recognition of this finds expression n public discussion of the grave problems confronting us, particularly around the crisis of Confederation.
Despite the confusion about the parties and policies and regional interests which characterize capitalist politics the impact of the great world changes is stimulating enlightenment. The popular desire for democratic change is seen in the crisis of the capitalist two-party system.
Ever gain in the re-establishment of Canadian independence makes the struggle against monopoly on the economic front more effective, and vice versa, because they are the two aspects of the same struggle in which the people will break the stranglehold of the monopolies in their lives.
Along with the struggle against the excesses of the monopolies and to curb them action must be taken to end their systematic crippling of the economy. Public actions is needed for all-round development of the manufacturing industries, which is the one way the production of goods can grow as fast as the population and the only way to give opportunities to young Canadians to find jobs and careers.
We have to create 250,000 jobs every year just to keep pace with the growth of population. In addition we need half a million jobs right now to put everybody to work.
This quite within our capacity if government policies are changed in favour of balanced economic development.
We have everything necessary to expand industry and to turn out more and more products in increasing variety: the labour force, raw materials, power and fuel. The creation of real wealth demands that these be brought together to make socially useful things. This economic possibility can be realized only by public political action, by all citizens, to develop new industries and to make many more of the components that the automobile, the electrical, steel fabricating, chemical, machine-building, construction and other industries import now to the value of thousands of millions of dollars each year. We should also be making many others of the manufactured products that we could be exporting all over the world, especially to formerly colonial countries who are going to be industrialized.
The bankers and their yes-men usually ask this point: “Where will the money come from?” To honest people who are influenced by this we should explain that this question was answered during World War Two by one of the outstanding authorities on banking and public finance, the then governor of the Bank of Canada when testifying before a parliamentary committee. Some MP’s feared that the plans to send half a million men overseas, feed, clothe, house and equip them, keep them supplied with motorized transport, armaments artillery, planes, ammunition, etc., etc., and to build naval vessels, freighters, scores of new factories and whole towns – all at the same time, was beyond Canada’s financial resources. The governor answered such doubts by saying that financing such projects is not a problem, that the only indispensible elements in production are, labour, power, raw materials, machinery and equipment, and transportation. He explained that money or credit is only the lubricating factor which facilitates the brining together of the essential factors, and that credit resources grow with productive activity. The function of the banking system is to make credit available in the volume required. If it is physically possible we can finance it. That was substance of his remarks.
Experience proved that the governor was right. Then it was to help win the war. We should adopt the same approach today; to win the battle to develop Canada so that her two peoples – English Canadian and French Canadian, can help win world peace.
If wasteful military spending were to stop and the money poured into economic development and social and economic standards, a new fillip would be given to production and to all fields of creative human activity.
Not only would work hours be cut and jobs increase, but facilities created for leisure and culture and for people to get into public and community work to learn how to run the government and country. |