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- Written by: Gilberte Côté-Mercier
- Category: September
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Mr. Louis Even and I have returned from a month tour of the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. During this time we held seven congresses of the Union of Electors.
Six full-time workers helped local Crediters prepare these congresses. All of the French-Canadian districts were visited; practically every house in each district was visited by an active Crediter.
Alberta
In the Peace River district, in the far north of Alberta, not far from Alaska where June nights are two hours long and the sun rises at 2:00: a.m., we held a congress at Falher on June 28.
The congress proved to be something of a surprise as more than 400 people from 24 centers were present for the entire day. This was the first congress of the Union of Electors in this province. It is a most heartening experience to witness the enthusiasm of these Crediters for the formula of the Union of Electors. They have made up their minds that, somehow or other, they are going to get from Premier Manning the promised dividend of $25 a month which they should have been getting for the past 24 years; for that is how long a Social Credit government (at least so-called) has been in power in the province.
Albertans have, in fact, received dividend cheques twice. In 1957, they received from the provincial treasurer, unconditionally, the sum of $22 each. In 1958 they received $17.50 each.
These were straight dividends, dividends from the royalties paid to the government by the oil companies in Alberta.
Manning
This year, however, the Manning government which was re-elected, winning 62 out of 65 seats, declared that it would issue no further dividends; that the money would be handed over instead to the hospitals.
A friend of the Manning government whom we met and to whom we remarked that this was certainly not Social Credit, answered us quite frankly, saying that when the government spent the money for the people instead of distributing it to the people to spend on what they want, this was Socialism. But, he added; the Manning government had agreed to apply such measures. instead of Social Credit because of the heavy pressure brought to bear upon it to do so.
It has been said that a large number of associations in Alberta had requested Manning to discontinue distributing the dividends. How many of the individuals composing these associations, individuals, perhaps, who are the first to clamor for the rights and liberty of the indi., vidual, are aware of how dangerous it is for the government to take over the functions proper to the individual, specifically the function of spending their own money as they choose. For any usurpation of the individual's activities by the state is contrary to the natural rights of the citizen. It is statism, Socialism — Communism. However there are in Alberta, as there are elsewhere, adversaries who think that Social Credit is nothing more than a political party.
Among these are the Liberals who are heartily fed-up with being in the opposition for so many years. They have reached the point where they would be quite willing to sacrifice the common welfare in order to take over power. This group was not at all happy to see Manning distribute dividends, which measure was likely to guarantee him greater popularity and a longer tenure of office.
They are ready throw overboard the public good, the rights and interests of each individual in order to become the government; they are not remotely interested in protecting the individual against the dėpredations of the government.
Manning fell into the trap. He gave in to the anti-democratic pressure brought to bear. upon him. He surrendered to the big daily newspapers of Alberta which, like big publications everywhere, are the chore-boys of the financiers.
There is not a newspaper anywhere in Alberta which is truly Social Credit for the people. This, then, is what the Albertans need most if they are to get Social Credit from their government — a newspaper which is of and for the people. Vers Demain and The Union of Electors are two papers which fill this need. And they are coming to be more and more known and read out there. Our Crediters, such as those who gathered at the congress in Falher, understand the importance of these publications and they have committed themselves to the task of seeing to it that, ultimately, one or other of them gets into every home in Alberta. This was the solemn resolution they took last June - 28th, and they are already organizing for the job. For the moment, then, the Manning government will hand the dividend money over to the hospitals, so it says. Thus it is completing the federal hospital insurance plan - a truly communistic measure which forces the provinces in turn to Commun-ize if they wish a share of federal funds.
The federal government promises to pay half the cost of hospital insurance on the condition that the provinces set up the state hospital insurance system. The provinces of New Brunswick and Manitoba have gone all the way in setting up this Communist-type system. For make no mistake about it, this is a page out of the Communist text book; the obligatorý registration of all citizens, without exception, under pain of a $200 fine; the obligatory holding back in advance of money out of the workers' pay; an obligatory annual tax of $24.60 on every citizen, 18 years and up to be collected by employers and municipal authorities. Mr. Manning decided not to slap his fellow citizens in the face with such outrageous conditions; instead he is going to turn the dividend money over to the hospital plan. All very admirable indeed! But the fact remains that the dividend money, which in all justice should be distributed to the citizens to spend as they wish, still remains in the hands of the government. This is 50 percent Socialism; whereas the measures taken in New Brunswick and Manitoba constitute 100 percent Communism. It is Socialism because the government spends for the citizen, plans for the citizen and makes decisions for the citizen.
In Manitoba
Since the Autumn of 1958 when obligatory health insurance became law in Manitoba, there has been little but general discontentment and complaining throughout the length and breadth of this province. Those who previously clamored so loudly for obligatory state health insurance are now tearing their hair out over it. "It's just a new form of taxation;" they are screaming. "When the government needs more money it will only have to raise hospital insurance contributions. And, in fact, it's already doing just that - 8 months after the plan started. They've managed a deficit in that short time!!".
So the people have obligatory registration. And if they don't register, it's $200 or jail. Employers who are already acting as collectors of income tax for the federal government are now being called upon to collect provincial hospital insurance dues. The premium is taken out of the employee's pay envelope seven months in advance. The people are now saying, in Manitoba: "We had the Blue Cross and were quite satisfied with it. Now we pay the same amount we paid the Blue Cross; but what a fight we have to put up if we want to get into the hospital. As far as the government is concerned there is never any case meriting admittance to the hospital. And the government has the last say! And if, on the advice of my doctor, I go into the hospital and the government decides to was not a genuine hospital case, I'm stuck with paying the full cost of my hospitalization. The government won't pay a cent. It was never like that with private insurance companies!"
Some poor souls have been registered in two different places and must pay twice. What job they have trying to get justice and paying. lawyers! This is the most crushing form of bureaucracy; it is typical of pure Socialism under which the individual is sacrificed to the tyrant, the state.
Only the province of Quebec has not yet embarked upon this regime of oppression: Let us hope that one provincial government at least will resist the pressure of socialists, syndicalists and other such groups which are clamoring for this choice bit of Socialism. It is understood of course that Ottawa will continue to rob Quebeckers of their money and will not return it because they refuse to put on the yoke of state: hospital insurance. But the matter shouldn't be left there. Quebec should be given back the monies due to it along with the liberty for its citizens to choose whatever form of medical and hospital insurance they may desire — if they so desire! We demand that the government abolish at once this piece of Communism called state health insurance. We ask that the Bank of Canada issue a monthly dividend, a "liberating" dividend, to each and every Canadian. We request an issuance of $25 a month for every individual. With this money we shall be quite capable of looking after ourselves as we see fit individually, and taking out insurance with the private insurance company of our choice. It is time that we began to pull the reins on Communism among us. If the Social Credit dividend, as a means of distributing the fruits of progress, is not acceptable, then progress itself will bring disaster upon the individual in the form of Communism - which is inevitable unless the dividend becomes a reality.
Saskatchewan is Communist
Those who don't believe that the CCF is Communist have only to visit Saskatchewan. where the CCF has been in power for 15 years: Measure by measure the government there has taken over all sorts of properties and enterprises. It has seized all farms whose owners could not show papers of ownership. These farms have become the property of the government which does not sell them but rents them for a period not exceeding 33 years. At the end of 33 years the government can do what it pleases with these farms. Electricity, telephones and the fur business have all been nationalized, that is, made government businesses. The government, likewise, has gone into the sand and gravel business. The Saskatchewan Timber Board, a government enterprise, controls the lumber industry. No permits are issued for the exploitation of forest resources; government trading stores are simply general stores owned and operated by the government. Autobuses, trucking lines, provincial air lines all belong to the government. Garage co-operatives and all other forms of cooperatives are owned and exploited by the government. Socialism becomes more solidly established there every day. It has a stranglehold on the people.
And, as in Russia, this Saskatchewan Communist government keeps itself in power, not because it has the support of the people, for it has not, but because of its powerful electoral machine and the multitude of functionaries and officials of all sorts who support it to their own interest.
The people of Saskatchewan are saying quite openly (and they should know for they have to live there): "We aren't governed by Socialists; we're being run by Communists, same as in Russia!".
Let's not be too polite about calling a spade a spade; let's call the Socialist's what they really are Communists! For any individual or group of individuals which calls for ever-increasing powers for the state, and which by this fact, works for the oppression and enslavement of the human individual, is a Communist, regardless of what he or they may call themselves.
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- Written by: Editorial Staff
- Category: September
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When President Lincoln printed "greenbacks to help pay the cost of the Civil war, bankers howled, with rage. They said such "printing press" money would cause inflation. Yet, according to an Associated Press article written by Frank Cormier, bankers themselves are "inflating the money supply just as surely as if the U. S. Treasury were printing greenbacks".
Cormier quotes Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson as explaining that bankers manufacture money in the following way:
"The Treasury borrows a million dollars from a bank. The Treasury gives the bank a piece of paper which says Uncle Sam has borrowed the million and will repay it in so many years at a fixed rate of interest. The bank sets up a new deposit of $1 million, against which the government can write checks to pay its bills. Mr. Anderson asks: Where did the bank get this million dollars? The answer is that it got the money from no one. It created $1 million dollars worth of credit on the strength of the Treasury's I. O. U."
"That's just like printing greenbacks," the article points out, and then adds:
"As soon as the government writes checks against that deposit, money, which did not exist before, goes into circulation. This is inflation of the money supply."
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- Written by: Editorial Staff
- Category: September
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We learn that His Holiness, Pope John XXIII, has increased by 25 to 30 percent the salaries paid each month to the 2,000 employees of the Vatican state. He has also doubled the rate of family allowances issued over and above the salaries paid. Mothers get $16. each, and children will get $20. each.
Notice especially the allowance which is special to the mothers. Canadian mothers get no such benefit from the Canadian government. The amount given each child, without exception and regardless of how many there are in the family, is, to put it mildly, very generous.
Pierre Chaloult writing on this act of the Pope, in Le Devoir, was no doubt poking a little fun at the Crediters (who have been pressing for the doubling of family allowances in Canada for a long time now) when he said"
"No doubt the Crediters of Quebec are going to take advantage of this to say that the Pope has fallen under their influence."
No, not quite, Mr. Chaloult. But is is not surprising that they who follow the same principles should arrive at the same conclusions.
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- Category: September
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The question of fluoridating municipal water supplies came up before the congress of the Union of Municipalities at La Malbaie on July 3 last.
Jean-Louis Doucet, Q.C., deputy-minister for municipal affairs, made the observation that dentists themselves are not in agreement with regard to the beneficent properties commonly attributed to fluoridated water. He went on to say that certain doctors even claim that sodium fluoride in drinking water is the cause of certain sicknesses.
The deputy-minster recalled, also, that a judgement of the highest court of Ontario refused to recognize the right of the municipalities to put fluoride in the public water system. The same was true for the province of New Brunswick.
Let us note here, right off, that regardless of what the effects of fluoride might be on the human constitution good, bad or indifferent, this is not an affair that is any concern of municipal councils or water system officials; it pertains stricly to the domain of the doctor and the pharmacist. The doctor treats his patients individually and prescribes for each the medicine he judges appropriate for their condition. Then it is the pharmacist, and not an official of the water department, who furnishes each individual patient with the medicine called for by the prescription made out for him personally by the doctor. And the pharmacist takes the greatest pains to mix the proper ingredients in the correct proportions and to indicate clearly on the bottle or package the size and frequency of the doses, all according to the doctor's prescription. Only quacks, charlatans or those fanatic apostles of Socialism would be so foolhardy as to want to administer medicine wholesale to the community through the public water supply, completely disregarding the matter of dosage and permitting everyone to take it in whenever they open the tap for a drink of water.
Nor can you, logically, draw any parallel between putting chlorine in the water and mix- ing sodium fluoride with it. Chlorine purifies the water. But no one pretends that it gives the water any curative power. Fluoride, on the other hand, in no way purifies the water; it is added under the pretense that it will give some medical value to the water.
Now, if the purifying of the water supply is a function which pertains strictly to the water department, then the medicating of the water supply is a function which pertains, or should pertain, strictly to the medical profession, to the doctors whose job it is to prescribe medicine.
In other words, municipal authorities who put fluoride in the water should be prosecuted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for the illegal practice of medicine.
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- Written by: Louis Even
- Category: September
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I have no intention of setting down in detail or in chronological order, all of the events of the three weeks passed by Mrs. Côté-Mercier and myself in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Rather, I would like to sketch the cut-standing features of the voyage and set down the reflections which will, as it seems to me, be most interesting, informative and useful to the readers of The Union of Electors.
The chief reason for this trip was the obtaining of information, the establishment of personal contacts with our readers and our groups in the west, the studying of local conditions, thereby, better to be able to draw up the programs for the full-time workers whom we shall continue to send into the West.
Our trip as far as its objective was concerned, was a complete success. Frankly, we wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world...
What is the condition of our movement, the Union of Electors, in western Canada? Obviously it has not the same influence upon the surrounding population there as it has in Quebec or New Brunswick. But, out there, as here in the East, our papers, Vers Demain and the Union of Electors, are forming men who can stand on their feet and engage at any time, according to the demands of the times, in that activity which any patriotic and determined citizen would undertake.
The Social Credit philosophy, which stresses above all the primacy of the individual and the family in society is absorbed by those who read these papers regularly and it makes of them men and women who are, in the strict sense of the word, remarkable. It has been one of the great consolations of the movement's founders to find such men and women, solid as granite, even at the far ends of the land. They are the leaven which will raise up the people...
The Union of Electors has struck its roots firmly in the French-Canadian centers of the west. Its influence is coming to be felt more and more strongly in these areas. It is beginning to win over to our cause the English-speaking Canadians; they are swung over in the measure that the message of Social. Credit is presented to them. All that is really lacking to speed up the growth of the movement in the English speaking areas is a sufficient number of apostles who can carry the message to the peoples of these districts. The people are ripe and well disposed for the message. For this reason we are studying all possibilities in order that the Social Credit doctrine may be brought to them. And for this reason Vérs Demain will support fully its younger brother-paper, The Union of Electors.
***
As our readers know from previous issues of this paper, we were preceded into the west by a team of six full-time workers. Alphonse Pelletier went to Manitoba; Élie-Ange Fortin and Dollard Leclerc to Saskatchewan; Camille St-Cyr and Bernard Gaouette to Alberta, the first to the Peace River district 350 miles north-west of Edmonton, the second to the district of St. Paul some 160 miles north-west of Edmonton. Then, of course, there was the veteran, Louis Philippe Bouchard who went into British Columbia, which we did not personally visit on this first voyage out. These missionaries have done marvellous work. They have met with the warmest response from the people amongst whom they have worked, the latter subscribing in large numbers to our papers, taking our men in and feeding and lodging them and co-operating with them fully in preparing the meetings, assemblies, and congresses which we were to hold during the course of our trip...
These meetings were not all held on Sundays. Five out of seven took place on week days. The roads were not always in the best of condition. Nevertheless we were able to meet personally a goodly number of our most loyal readers. These when they parted company with us, pledged themselves to the work of taking subscriptions with more ardor and perseverance.
Obviously we have in the west as we have in the east, adversaries to Social Credit, especially among the politicians. These latter, because of the existence of a political party bearing the name Social Credit, probably thought we were there to form another political party and hoped to lure their followers away from them. Consequently they did their utmost to render our activities ineffectual. We had publicly announced, well beforehand, the dates and the places of the assemblies we intended to hold. In a number of localities our adversaries chose, or caused to be chosen, those very days on which to organize other attractions (picnics, bingos, baseball games, etc.) thus drawing the people away from our assemblies...
In spite of such harassing tactics, we were able to hold some very satisfactory congresses. There was, for example, the congress at Falher, in the Peace River district. There was a magnificent turn-out — 400 people who remained the entire day for all sessions. It was an enthusiastic gathering. The collection in the hall amounted to some $84.57.
We held one very informal evening gathering at Morinville just before going to Falher. The hall was full, which was remarkable because to heavy rain had turned the roads into a quagmire.
This was our first visit to our Crediters in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But two years previously we had made a trip into Manitoba. This year we were able to see the great progress our Crediters there had made. They are for the most part completely detached from the electioneering philosophy. A number, of them have taken their responsibilities seriously and are doing door-to-door work taking subscriptions, Shortly after our return to Montreal we began to receive subscriptions from them along with reports of home meetings, which they held, on their own, shortly after our departure. We had a similar experience with the Crediters living in northern Alberta.
We would like to thank our dear friends in the west for the warm welcome they gave us and for the great joy we have experienced in having moved and worked among them. These are the pioneers and the fighters who will be in the forefront of the Social Credit army which will battle in defence of liberty and the rights of the individual against centralization and statism, against the robbery of property by taxation, against rampant Socialism, against the infiltration of Communism.
We shall be back with them. We shall multiply our contacts with them, for both they and we benefit deeply from such contacts. We shall be speaking again and again of their provinces, of their work; for we are convinced that their activities will be ever wider and wider in their scope and influence. We are sure that they will make possible for our movement to penetrate ever more into their milieu, English as well as French.