PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU SPARRING FOR TIME

Mr. Eric Butler reports from Canada, where he is concluding an in-depth educational programme on Social Dynamics.

As this report is written, it appears that Prime Minister Trudeau is not going to have a June Federal Election after all. The dates he has set for two by-elections and his comments strongly suggest that Mr. Trudeau is sparring for time. The economy is still "sick" in many areas, but the overall position suggests that the moderate reversal of the harsh anti-inflation financial restrictions is now starting to have an effect. I find that businessmen in many areas report a slight improvement. But clearly there will have to be a vast improvement for Mr. Trudeau to feel confident that the polls will favour him.

He must get an improvement in the economic situation in Quebec if he is to head off the strong challenge of Mr. Real Caouette and his Social Credit Party. In an impressive performance on a recent nation-wide TV programme, Mr. Caouette predicted that his party will defeat three of Mr. Trudeau's Ministers in Quebec, and will increase its strength from 13 to at least 35. All party leaders, must, of course, adopt an optimistic attitude, so I take Mr. Caouette's predictions with the proverbial grain of salt. But he is obviously applying tremendous pressure on Mr. Trudeau in Quebec.

Mr. Trudeau is also faced with the problem of growing unrest in the ranks of his own Liberal Party. His view of the role of Parliament rankles with many of his private Liberal Members. He has made it clear that he believes that he and his Cabinet are the Government and that Parliament exists merely to offer advice. This is a far call from the traditional British concept of Parliament as a free, deliberative assembly. I would say that the Prime Minister's recent public performances have been improvement on his past efforts, and that he still possesses strong support amongst some sections of the Canadian people.

The large Keynesian-deficit budgets brought down by the Conservative Governments of Ontario and Alberta are not likely to make the task of the Federal Conservatives any easier. The mounting finance economic issues are going to be dominant ones in the next Canadian Federal Elections, whenever they are held. But there could be some "sleepers" in the situation, which could have devastating effects.

A former Member of the Lester Pearson Cabinet, Miss Judy La Marsh, has recently said, "I have serious doubts about what would happen in an election, I think they (the Liberals) could easily be defeated." She mentions the commuting of all death sentences in recent years as one, which is causing much feeling. Mr. Caouette has hit out hard on this question, stating that he stands "one hundred percent for the restoration of capital punishment."

Irrespective of when Mr. Trudeau decides on the next Canadian elections, the basic problem will remain of how can the electors have a meaningful say on real, not synthetic issues. The Electors' Association concept is the only effective answer. I was outlining this to a Social Dynamics School, suggesting that electors should insist that all candidates should be required to enter into a firm contract with their electors, before being elected. Everyone present liked the idea except one man. His brother is a Trudeau candidate.

THE CANADIAN RURAL CRISIS

Mr. Butler reports further.

The worried rancher came up to me after I had spoken for over an hour with the smell of the sale ring in my nostrils. "Yesterday a large number of us sat in our local hall listening to tax experts from Ottawa, lawyers and others attempting to explain to us what the new Federal tax legislation means. None of us can understand it, but what we can understand is that year-by-year we have to raise and feed more cattle in order to keep up with the problem of rising financial costs. You have made it clear that unless we can change financial policy, a number of us will simply not be here in a few years. I wish I could be at your school tonight, but I must get back as we are in the middle of calving. But I will try to make another school."

A study of the programmes initiated by the Federal Government at Ottawa since the publication of the Federal Task Force on Agriculture's report entitled, "Canadian Agriculture in the Seventies", clearly reveals that the underlying philosophy is one of drastically reducing the number of Canadian farmers. On page 9 it is frankly stated that the solution to the rural crisis lies in "the reduction in number of commercial farms". On page 10 we read, "Surpluses must be controlled...by reducing production..." Small farmers are to be dealt with first by "adjustment" and then by "development", all of which means that there are to be less farmers operating bigger units. More and more voices are being raised to urge primary producers to develop a new philosophy, to reject the concept of actually owning private property, and to agree that it should only be leased. This is a totalitarian concept, even if sweetened with nice-sounding terms.

Farmers in Canada are experiencing exactly the same problems being experienced by Australian farmers. This is not surprising when it is understood that behind the different party political labels the same Marxist-type finance economic policies are being imposed. Inflation has openly emerged now in all developed industrial nations as an inevitable result of Keynesian type economics. It is a disease, which is destroying the U.S.A. perhaps faster than any other nation. This is why the tensions in the U.S.A. are so great, tensions which one experiences as one moves from the American to the Canadian side of the border. But the tension is now building up in Canada and I have had to tell Canadians that if they think they are going to ease their tensions by replacing Mr. Trudeau with the Conservatives, they are in for some rude shocks.

During a three weeks programme in Alberta, Western Canada, Mr. Butler has been addressing meetings of farmers, ranchers and their wives, generally at sale yards, during the afternoons and then conducting four to five hour Social Dynamic Schools in the evenings. If we were to take his smearers seriously Mr. Butler is moving through the Canadian rural areas spreading his "poisonous anti-Semitic venom". But in fact he is pinpointing the fact that the rural crisis is but one of the manifestations of a crisis affecting the whole of society, and that constructive action must be taken to bring the electors' institutions under effective control in order to reverse disastrous policies of debt, taxation and inflation.

GOVERNMENT FIRMING ON RHODESIA INFORMATlON CENTRE HUBBUB

"The Federal Government has rejected the advice of its foreign affairs officials to close down the operations of the Rhodesia Information Centre in Sydney". - The Australian, April 11th.

It is pleasing, so far, to witness the Government's positive decision not to close the Rhodesia Information Centre. There will be howls of rage from the A.L.P. Left; the Left-oriented journalists who now infest the mass media; the wearisome, inevitable academics, with all their unctuous pseudo-logic. The tremendously able South African Ambassador to Australia, Mr. John Mills, has rejected outright the allegations that the South African Embassy is in any way connected with the activities of the "Centre" and this, also, had put a brake on any hasty Government action. We have observed Mr. John Mills "eating" on TV interviews, some puffed-up, Left-oriented, journalists, beset by hallucinations of their own importance. We offered our views on the motives behind the Rhodesia Information Centre in the ON TARGET last week. We can do no better now than re-print extracts of a letter to the Editor of The Age (Melb.) April 11th from Dr. Walter Henderson, President of the Federal Council of Australia-Rhodesia Associations.

… For the Australian Government to be in a position to hold lawfully and to make a lawful examination of the Rhodesian documents it would have to be in possession of them lawfully, that is to say, by obtaining them resulting from a search warrant issued by the proper legal authority, or under the powers granted by statute. Instead, the documents are in its possession as the result of a criminal act of breaking and entering and stealing, committed by private individuals. The Australian Government is not entitled to hold as against the owner those documents, or to examine them, or to take any action after such an illegal examination. The duty of the Government was to return the documents to the owner immediately it received them. If the Australian Government poses as the champion of law and order, then let it respect the law and act lawfully itself in all matters. The worst feature of the present case is not only that the Australian Government has condoned the crime committed, but is acting in association with the persons guilty of the crime, and also acting as a receiver of stolen goods.

These points, raised by Dr. Henderson, will need to be answered by our legislators at Canberra. The two newspapers come out of this badly indeed, and a great big searchlight should be beamed right on a few shadowy officers of the Africa Desk of the Department of Foreign Affairs. We well recall that Mr. Gordon Freeth, a former Foreign Minister, was undone by accepting the advice of some of the "experts" in his Ministry, who "advised" him to enter into a security pact for the Indian Ocean region with Russia. Now some more of these confounded "experts", if that is all they are, are "advising" Mr. Bowen to rebuff Rhodesia, and by inference South Africa - again to the great detriment and danger, of Australia.

RED CHINA IN UNITED NATIONS ALREADY A DANGER TO AUSTRALIA

"Chinese Communist diplomat, Tang Ming-Chao, was appointed as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations yesterday". - The Age Melbourne, April 7th.

The position of Under-Secretary-General in the United Nations Organization is one of the most influential there is. This office-bearer is in charge of the Trusteeship Department, and its "research" on colonial conditions; also, he is responsible for "assisting" visiting missions. The possibilities for stirring up "anti-colonial" feeling among primitive and backward peoples are endless, and with a hard-line Communist at the helm of the Trusteeship Department of the United Nations, this is what we must expect.

In connection with the above news, we have had a kind letter from one of our new subscribers who has once been a Commonwealth Public servant in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea for close to two and a half years. He says:-
As a relatively recent subscriber to your publication may I congratulate you on the quality and scope of your media. However, I feel that there is one aspect of the international situation to which insufficient publicity is being given by your organization, namely the independence issue in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. ....I am in regular contact with several friends in T.P.N.G., and according to their views things continue to deteriorate insofar as the several thousand Australians in the area are concerned - suffice it to state that the situation has now come to the stage where I am led to believe that in some areas Australians are licensed to carry pistols for the protection of their lives and property. However, I do know that there are a few thousand of my fellow countrymen worried sick about the situation to which I have alluded."

We can only fear that the integrity of Papua and New Guinea will be more seriously undermined now that a servant of Peking is sitting in the box seat at the U.N. That is unless the so-called servants of Australians, at Canberra, do the almost impossible, and develop sufficient backbone to maintain Australia's vital position to our immediate North in Papua and New Guinea.

BASIC FUND

ON TARGET BULLETIN

The Restraint of Political Power