In 1964 Tim Buck, leader of the Communist Party of Canada,
argued in Put Monopoly Under Control that since WW2
Canada was being integrated into the US economic orbit
in a manner prejudicial to Canadian workers.
According to Buck "integration"...
"Some of the consequences of "integration" are:
-It enables the monopolies to deform the economy and
obstruct its development, so much so that there has
been a decline of production per capita in most of the
past seven years.
-It enables the monopolies to maintain exorbitantly high
prices for the necessities of life, so much so that the
cost of living is now the highest ever while the tendency
for Canadian wages to be below the level in the <
U.S. is perpetuated.
-It undermines Canada's relative position in world
foreign trade and reduces the home market, which
could be enormously expanded.
-It imposes a crippling annual deficit in our trade with
the United States.
-It is one of the main reasons for the federal budget
deficits which are weakening the Canadian dollar and I
the national credit, and along with this goes high
military spending-the military side of integration '
with the U.S.A.
-It is making hundreds of thousands of Canadians and
their families victims of chronic mass unemployment
and creating depressed areas."
Buck concludes Chapter 3 of Put Monopoly Under Control
with the demand that the government invest in the domestic
economy by means of a massive program. Anticipating the
complaint, "But where will the money come from?" the Party
Leader recalls the monies and sacrifices offered up to
defeat Hitler in Woprld War 2:
We have everything necessary to expand industry and
to turn out more and more products in increasing variety:
the labor 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
industrial 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 he 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 indispensable elements in production are, labor
power, raw materials, machinery and equipment, and
transportation.
He explained that money or credit is only the
lubricating factor which facilitates the bringing 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 the substance
of his remarks.Experience proved that the governor was right.
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 to 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.
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