Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 11, 1966, Winnipeg, Manitoba Printed published sunday by the win pee free press company limited so cwlto.1 Street. Winnipeg Manitoba John Sifton president Shane Macka executive editor r. S. Publisher and vice president a Odate Vestern Peter Macij Stock Winnipeg monday july 11, 1966 Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion Equality of civil rights labor and the Law Ontario s promised study of injunctions in labor Dis Putes should be useful. At least it is Likely to remove much misunderstanding of court procedures in All the provinces. One might suppose from the speeches of some Union that the injunction was invented recently As an unfair weapon against labor. Actually it has been an essential instrument of the courts under Pur inherited British system of Justice for centuries and Long antedate organized labor. Its purpose is to Check an alleged breach of Law or contract and give the court time to consider the Case. An injunction can be granted speedily at the request of one party to a Legal dispute but Only for a very , a few Days at most when the other party can seek to demonstrate its innocence. Then if innocence is demonstrated the injunction is dissolved. If not Many injunctions against strikers have been so dissolved up to now it is because the strikers have not usually attempted to prove that they were acting legally. One might also suppose that the Law in Canada was designed to destroy the labor but its intention As it has evolved for 50 years or More is precisely the opposite. Only through the increasing Protection of the flaw has labor won its present powerful place in Canadian society. Labor therefore should be As much concerned As any social group to uphold the Law. If it can be breached with impunity no group will suffer More from its collapse. Most responsible labor leaders understand and support the Sanctity of the Law whether they agree with All its provisions or not knowing that the alternative is anarchy in which the working Man would be the first victim. But a few Union officials in British Columbia and Ontario have lately told their followers that the Law can be ignored where in their judgment it is unwise. This doctrine of illegality with its dangerous and inevitable repudiated by All except a Small minority of the labor movement. A majority however seems to believe that while the Law must be obeyed it is unjust As it stands in most provinces and should be changed. Every group and every individual has an undisputed right to advocate changes in any Law so Long As they Are made by constitutional Means. The Only proper question to be considered in the Ontario inquiry is whether the Law relating to injunctions is in fact unjust. Labor leaders who think it is presumably a full Opportunity to argue their Point and suggest a better Law. But it would be absurd for them and ultimately destructive of labor s rights to say that injunctions should never be used in an Industrial dispute. For this is simply to say that if a breach of the existing or any new Law occurs the courts cannot halt it and its resulting damage while the dispute is adjudicated. If the courts were thus immobilized employers As Well As. Workers could break the Law until after considerable delay a prosecution was launched and the Case tried. No sensible labor Leader would willingly expose his Union to these risks. Short of the impractical doctrine that injunctions must be abandoned altogether the labor movement As a whole argues that the Law permits them to be used unfairly. In British Columbia and Ontario certain hot Heads have even argued that the courts deliberately twist the Law in favor of management though no scintilla of evidence has been produced to support this charge. The truth is that Canadian judges enforce the Law impartially As they read it. They do not Rule on the Law s Wisdom that being solely the business of elected Legislatures. If they make Legal mistakes their rulings can be corrected on Appeal to higher courts. Impartially enforced does the Law treat labor unfairly that is the real Issue now agitating the unions and it is a perfectly legitimate Issue for consideration by parliament and the provincial Legislatures. But it has two sides. In nation wide industries under Federal jurisdiction and in local industries controlled by the provinces the Law Long ago gave the unions the Legal right to strike. It also gave management a corresponding right to resist a strike and keep its business operating if it could. Accordingly strikers were authorized to picket a struck Industry and dissuade any Man from in it so Long As dissuasion was conducted peacefully. In other words picketing a potent weapon could be used for education but not for int Mima Tion. To that end the Law though different in detail from province to province allowed picketing sufficient to demonstrate that a strike was under Way but not sufficient to prevent a worker entering a struck Plant if he chose to do so. Physical Means could not be used to Stop him working. Obviously unlimited mass picketing must involve phys ical restraint on the Man who decides to work. He cannot pass a solid Wall of picketers standing in his Way even if they do not touch him. Management and its willing workers could have no significant rights at All in a strike once the ban on such picketing is removed. Then every strike must close an Industry even when Many workers wish to continue working. Management must either Grant the demands of the strikers whatever they May be or go out of business unless the demands Are withdrawn. All Industry can be paralysed by the simple act of calling a sufficient series of strikes in the form of physical sieges. Yet this is the one sided and disruptive arrangement that labor leaders propose when they insist that there shall be no limit on picketing. Some of them go still further. By proposing that All injunctions be abolished they Are saying whether they realize it or not that the courts cannot even halt violence on a picket line until a prosecution is launched and a Case Triesti with All the Law s delay. The Ontario investigation will consider desirable changes in the Law governing the behaviour of pickets but to Legisla Ture in its senses will repeal All limits on picketing much less the right and duty of the courts to use injunctions in the enforcement of the Law. Any such change would not Only end All management s rights and the rights of the workers to work in a struck Plant. It would legalize the use of physical Force applied without violence but sure to produce violence in Many instances. If the injunction must remain the current controversy touches no More than the fringe of the Central problem which is the use of the strike itself. However it is governed by Law the strike has become an obsolete weapon where it threatens the welfare of society including the workers. Sooner or later in strikes of such wide dimensions a better method of settlement by a judicial process fair to manage ment labor and the Public will have to be devised in place of the and hoc vagrant settlements now indirectly imposed by governments without any known standards or rules More for political than for economic reasons. In All these considerations the primary concern must be the Public welfare Canada s Trade winds shift Ottawa this visit to can Ada of or. Dmitri poly Ansky and his party coming hard on the heels of the three j year wheat agreement with the j soviet Union has emphasized j a most important and Proba Bly lasting change in the pattern of our International trading relationships. More than in our history we Are looking West across the Pacific. In his. Conversations with or. Laing the minister of Northern affairs and on one occasion or. Poly Ansky indicated a Long term soviet interest in Canadian wheat supplies. This was not apparently the casual talk of a politician with a natural interest in winning friends and influencing people. Or. Polyansky impressed Cana Dian officials As a hard headed businessman and his interest in Canadian wheat was based upon thoroughly sober calculations of economic advantage. We canadians Are apparently not the Only people with freight rate problems. The increasingly Cost conscious russians also have them As anyone can determine from a map their distances Are about twice As great As ours. The russians who Are probably influenced also by their delicate relations communist China Are deter mined to develop arid Streng then their far Eastern areas. They Are building a new port on the Pacific overshadowing Vladivostok of which they have apparently no very High opinion. They Are also engaged in a Large scale expansion of their merchant Fleet. Twenty per Dent of soviet shipping is being dedicated to Pacific service. Whatever tile shortcomings of soviet agriculture there is not according to or. Polyan sky any Overall shortage of wheat in the user. The soviets Are currently exporting tons of Grain to their satellite and other Cus Tome s while importing tons from us. This double movement represents a net gain for them because it is too costly to Supply the far East from the Ukraine and Western regions via the trans siberian. By Maurice Western partly As a result of soviet freight costs we now have three big wheat customers on the Pacific rim Russia Japan and communist China. Obviously we have moved a Long gloomy. If the excessive sur pluses could be considered As temporary the situation while serious enough would be fairly but the expert testimony was that the old Atlantic Triangle diminishes in importance As Canada s Trade routes veer toward the Pacific. Way from the old pattern of the North Atlantic Triangle. It has become More of an Atlantic quadrilateral. There has been a massive and drama tic change As recently As 1959-60, our Only Large Pacific customer and a very reliable one was Japan. We sold no what to China or to the . The situation As shown in the annual report of the wheat Board was similar in 1958-59 when our russian sales at bushels were less than those to the Union of South a f r i c a. The great Market was Western Europe led As always in the past by Britain. We also had a great prob Lem of surplus disposal which was studied in 1959 by a Blue ribbon Canadian american committee. Its report was surpluses would continue in definitely and might Well grow larger in future. There is no mention in the report of markets in the Pacific. In 1963-64, however sales to the . Alone totalled bushels far More than we. Sold in the whole of Europe outside Russia. In that year As in its predecessor approximately bushels also went to Japan and China. Or Sharp has estimated sales to Russia during the present crop year at bushels and foresees a Market for the coming crop almost regard less of its it is a Case of the world making demands upon the Canadian. Wheat Economy unexampled in. Peacetime and certain to place Pur productive and transport capacity under considerable Strain. The effects on our West coast which faces the three great Pacific markets Are Plain y apparent in Vancouver tile Saskatchewan wheat Pool is building additional terminal capacity for Bushe 1 a it was planned to add another at Prince Rupert a Northern town with a Long next year history. The project is stalled at the moment because of unexpectedly High costs much of the town being built on Muskeg. But the Westward Trade thrust makes this development inevitable especially As Prince Rupert benefits from a rapidly expanding two Way freight move ment on the Northern line. British. Columbia appears to a visitor to be setting the Pace of the Canadian Boom. With Potash now emerging As a serious challenger to wheat the anticipated 1970 product is 2.5 million the West appears to have every thing in its favor assuming that costs can be kept in line and that National policies continue to be favourable to the development of resource industries serving world markets. Calming Rural fears by Tom Saunders what Are the arguments i for and against single Board control of All Public school education at the division level this is something that the committee set up by the department of education the Manitoba association of school trustees and the Mani Toba teachers society must Analyse in detail before it begins its Campaign this fall to inform the people of the province about the implications of Bill 16, the legislation designed to streamline school administration in Manitoba. A fear expressed in some quarters is that such centralization of administrative control will mean a loss of local autonomy. This is something Felt not Only by individual Small boards and trustees who May be reluctant to give up the Power they now have but by Many people who have become used to the system in their school District As it now operates and As it has oper ated for Many years past. Another fear is that if elementary education is placed on a division basis leading to the closing of Many Small schools Young children May have to be transported unconscionably Long distances to and from their classrooms. People who voice this fear invariably end up by quoting what is happening in some areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta where they say Chil Dren have to be transported 40 and 50 Miles to. School and they vow that if they can help it it won t happen but perhaps the greatest fear of All is the Cost Factor. For Many people in the Rural areas increasing education costs have already become a Burden and the government s rebate on property taxes has not allayed suspicions that matters will get worse before they get better. Division control of elementary education they believe will up costs considerably and they need More Assurance than they have so far received before they will be willing to believe otherwise. These fears of can be answered and must be answered convincingly if sin Gle Board control is Ever to come into being. It can be shown for example that under the new set up the loss of local autonomy would be More fancied thai real and there seems Little doubt that if District trustees could be persuaded to give a Lead in the matter they could do much to influence the people. As we shall see in a later article this is one area where some groundwork has already been done but much More will be necessary if this fall s Campaign is to be a Success. Similarly with the fear about Long distance transportation of Young children. Assurances could be Given that this will not happen in Manitoba that while some children May have to be transported greater distances than they Are now the distances would still be reasonable and bus routes would be so designed As to work minimum of hardship. It will be less easy however to Deal with the problem of costs. The financial bait that the government so far has dangled before the people has left Many still unconvinced. Perhaps the govern e t would be Tiest advised to admit at the outset that the new set up is bound to be costly and then do some fresh thinking As to How the costs Are to be met. Obviously the tax rebate even if it is upped. From its present is not the Complete answer. People want an easement of the school tax on property and they want some Assurance that it will be left at a definite level. If they have this Assurance they will be much less Likely to object to rising school costs. The most obvious Way to meet this impasse of course would be to implement the recommendation of the Mic Liener commission of a set Mill rate across the province the commission recommended 13 per with the balance made up from the provincial Treasury. Indeed it is a wonder that the government which set up the Michener commission Lias never acted on this recommendation. It is possible that the government May be Able to sell sin Leboard. Administration without taking this step but without it it. Has made its task much More difficult than it would otherwise be. These then Are the main objections to single Board control and some of the answers that May be Given to them. What of the arguments in favor of the new system these deserve special attention and will be the subject of a or. Wilson and Viet Nam Well deserved Seldom Are retirement honors so Well deserved As Are those bestowed on Edgar j. Thomas. Or. Thomas retired last monday at the age of 85, from St. Boniface magistrate s court he had served that court continuously for 42 years. Of itself or. Thomas re Cord of service is remarkable enough. But it. Is the reputation he achieved during these years that will follow him. And will set the Standard for those who succeed him in the court room. His was a reputation for scrupulous fairness. He had a passion for Justice but it was a concept of Justice tempered always with a profound even cheerful understanding of human nature Ami the human ten Dency to err. Or. Thomas has earned his retirement. The Community which he served so Well for so Long will wish him Many More years of Good health in which to enjoy his Long deferred Leisure arid especially years in which to write volumes of the Crisp but lilting verses which next to the court were always his great love and happiest recreation. To n d o n it does matter to president Johnson what the British say about Viet Nam. The British have no army there to pull out if they turn against his Viet Nam policy. The British econ omy is in such a mess that if or. Johnson wanted to he could break Sterling s spine with a flick of his Little Finger. What is at stake is Only the moral support of a weak country. Yet the president needs it. He needs it because what the British labor government decides still has an effect on the decisions of other people elsewhere. There Are a num be r of Middle of the Road governments that Are basically sympathetic to America but have r to fight against a current of anti american feel ing signer Moro s in Italy mrs Gandhi s in India or Pearson s in Canada Wilson washes his hands of Nam War some or All of them will Wash their hands too. In the political terms or. Johnson understands Best the British vote on Viet Nam pc a swing vote. Still More to the Point or. Johnson needs British support because if the British turn against the americans in Viet Nam they will also pretty soon turn against the policy of keeping a British army in the Indian Ocean. Britain s East of Suez policy is the other Side of the Coin to America s West of California policy. If the British lose Faith in what the americans Are trying to do in Viet Nam they will Start pulling out of their own half of the operation and the americans will be left alone in Asia. This is Why it is important i what president Johnson says when or. Wilson visits Washington later this month or. Wilson wobbled badly when he heard the news of the bomb ing of the Hanoi and Hai Phong Oil tanks. It was not the reaction of the labor party s by Brian Beedham left Wing that made him wobble. The left Wing by itself does not frighten him. It has no real Leader even after the resignation of or. Cousins from the Cabinet. At a Pinch or. Wilson can do without his left Wing votes. What made him wobble is the support the left Wing looks like getting on Viet Nam from a Good Many people in the Liberal Centre of British politics. These people in the Liberal Centre arc still with gritted Teeth supporting american policy in Viet Nam. But if they Are to go on supporting it they will want to be assured of two things. The first is that the Cost of the War is not going to be excessive. This Means above All the Cost in civilian casual ties despite the hysteria that greeted it. The first bombing of the Hanoi and Haiphong Oil dumps met this test Honora Bly. It was a precision Job it probably killed very few people outside the area of the legitimate military objectives that were being attacked. The other bombings that will follow in the new phase of the War must pass the same test. This summer old men in Britain and the widows of other men who would have been old Are remembering the enormous Battle that took place along the Somme 50 years ago. It was. The Somme that made the British believe in measuring the objectives of a War against the Cost of achieving those objectives. Beyond a certain Cost in lives they fee in their Bones that it is better to Compromise than to go on the other thing that people in tie Liberal Centre want to know is linked to this. They want to know that or. Needs o tap of our pleasant i think we be arrived Little resort birthdays Emma Cable rapid City Man. Born Ayton out july in Elizabeth Irvine Carse fort Garry Man. Bora Belfast Ireland july 11, 1879. Cjarles Godefa Carman Man. Born old Nel son. Man., Judy 11, 1881, Johnson has not Given up the idea of a negotiated settlement in favor of a purely military the new bombings do not prime minister Wil son will need presi Dent Johnson s Assur Ance Toat his terms for peace in South Viet hint Are. Not unconditional surrender. Prove that he has Given up the Hope of negotiations. There is Little substance in the argument that the violation of the Hanoi Haiphong s e t u a r y will make the North Viet namese even less willing to negotiate than they were before. It will certainly make them As mad As hornets but they were that already. And if the new round of bombings does make it harder for the North vietnamese to Send men and supplies to the South it is common sense to assume that they Are likelier to negotiate than they would have been if supplying the South had stayed easier and Cost them less. It is not the bombing itself that most worries people in Britain. It is the suspicion that parallel with his decision to extend the bombing or. John son has taken another unspoken decision that he himself will not negotiate. That would be a mistake. If the United states decided to fight on until it had won a total military Victory Over the guerrillas in the South in preference to admitting them at some stage to the negotiating table the result would be a very much longer War. It would mean very much heavier casualties american and vietnamese military and Civ Ilian. Above All it would conflict with what most people believe to be the Basic political reality of South Viet Nam. If the War has shown nothing else it has shown that the National liberation front has a genuine basis of support in the Countryside. This will have to be reflected in the Post War political Structure of South Viet Nam. The National liberation front will have to be Given a place in the final settlement. It will be a minority place because it represents a minor Ity. The Viet Cong will have to be fought until they accept that. It will have to be a place from which the communists cannot make another violent lunge for Power. It could be very much the sort of place that was allotted to the greek communists after the greek Cix in War. The greek communists were confined to opposition but they were Able to make their opinions Felt through a theoretically non communist party that was allowed to come into existence partly in order to provide them with a safety valve. Something like this is Neces sary in Viet. Nam too. Or. Johnson does not deny it he continues to maintain that he is fighting a limited War for limited objectives. But he must spell it out. It has to be made Clear that these limited objectives do not extend to killing and capturing every last Viet Cong. That vouch be a demand for unconditioned sur Render. The president should Tell or. Wilson that so far As America is concerned the door is still wide open to negotiations. Remembered words from song of the open Road by Watt Whitman now if a thousand perfect men were to appear a would not an aze me now if a thousand Beautiful Forns of women appear d it would not astonish me. Now i see the secret of the making of the Best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the Earth. Today s scripture for yet a Little while and the wicked shall not be. Psalm ;