The same issue of Workers Vanguard also carried a lengthy report on Fidel Castro's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Break the US Embargo:
Boost Trade With Cuba

When the American State Department clamped an embargo down on practically all goods going from the US to Cuba, Canada’s Prime Minister Diefenbaker made a declaration of independence to the effect that Canada has "no intention whatsoever of imposing any embargo on Canadian goods in Cuban trade." But this statement was strictly for the record.

Ottawa has made it clear that no export licenses will be granted for the shipment of goods of US origin to Cuba that Washington itself would not sanction. The Canadian government is backing up to the hilt American imperialism’s slashing attempt to cripple the Cuban economy by depriving it of any source of supply of replacement parts and essential materials that it needs to continue operation of its US-made machines in oil refineries, sugar mills, and other industries.

Previous State Department squeeze plays compelled Cuba to establish trade agreements with the USSR, China, Indonesia and the United Arabic Republic. But Canadian businessmen say, according to Financial Post, that these alliances "will not solve hundreds of urgent supply problems wrapped around US products and standards."

Then what about made-in-Canada substitutes for US goods that the Cuban government will seek to obtain? Financial Post frankly replies; "Few firms would be willing to deal with Cuba without the blessing of their US parents, as well as Canadian and US governments."

The Canadian factories most readily able to supply goods that the State Department has forbidden are in that half of Canadian industry that is owned by US corporations. A few years ago Canadian subsidiaries of US corporations were forbidden by American law to accept Chinese orders for trucks and aluminum, thus depriving thousands of Canadians of needed jobs. The Cuba ban is not being enforced under the Foreign Assets Control Act, but this could be quickly remedied. So far, the state department feels confident of enforcing its counter-revolutionary aims by pressuring US subsidiaries in Canada. It is aided in this by the utter subservience of the Diefenbaker government.

Canadian Westinghouse has stated it will do business in accordance with directions from Ottawa officials. Ford Motor Company of Canada says that whether they will supply Cuba with cars and parts depends on a forthright clearance from the federal government.

Even exporters whose goods in the past accounted for the bulk of Canadian-Cuban trade, which is not at all in the area of the embargoed hard-to-get goods, are feeling the pressure. One of Canada’s biggest traditional exporters to Cuba (the USSR has replaced Canadian newsprint in Cuba) is Canada Malting. According to the company’s export manager, Harry Shaver; "We have other markets beside Cuba, including the US. It would be imprudent for us to say anything which would antagonize other customers."

A Financial Post correspondent writes in the October 22 issue "Not one of the exporters I spoke with will ship to Cuba without cash on the barrel-head. Cuba’s dollar reserves stand at a mere 175 million dollars. The US embargo automatically wiped out her dollar supply, Castro, upon nationalizing all other banks, wisely refrained from nationalizing the Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia and the Royal Bank, but transferred 60 million dollars to each so that they could be used for transactions involving international exchange. The government has also rescinded nationalization of the Canadian Moore Business Forms that was swept up in the extensive nationalizations of American holdings.

According to the October 29 Financial Post, Manuel Stolik, Cuban charge d’affaires in Ottawa, said he had no word of any new orders placed in Canada since the US embargo.

The organized labor movement of Canada should officially take it upon itself to encourage the Cuban government to place orders with Canadian manufacturing concerns. They should demand no interference by foreign owners of Canadian plants equipped to handle Cuban orders and be prepared to take any moves necessary to fill such orders. They should demand that the Diefenbaker government interfere in no way with trade with Cuba.

The Canadian people have everything to gain. Cuban orders would mean jobs for thousands of Canadian workers who face a bleak winter this year. Besides, it is their duty to help the cause of the Cuban people in their struggle against American imperialism in any way they can. For the Cubans, as the Toronto Star’s George Bryant wrote from Habana Sept. 9; "are declaring their independence as the Americans did in 1776."

Contrary to the majority of Canadian press reports, and the latest twist of the New York Times, for the first time the people of Cuba are tasting freedom, reports the well-known editorial writer of the New York Times, Herbert L. Matthews, in the August issue of the Hispanic American Report.

"For the first time proper attention is being paid public health ... the peasants are getting a break for the first time ... for the first time there has been relatively complete honesty in government, civil service, the armed forces, and in industry so far as it is controlled."

Now, with the latest massive takeover of imperialist holdings, the Cuban people are moving to establish a planned economy, which the Canadian workers themselves must prepare to do.

B.C. Labor to Find Truth About Cuba

By R. W. Bullock

VANCOUVER—One of the most significant actions of the recently held convention of the BC Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) was the decision to send the top officers of that body for a first hand look at the Cuban revolution. The convention also urged all local unions to elect representatives to accompany federation officers and make it a mass delegation.

The question was raised as a suggestion by Federation Secretary Pat O’Neal when the report of the Committee on International Affairs was being considered. O’Neal pointed out that little information of a reliable character was available—that the vicious reports in the capitalist press were obviously slanted—that this social revolution demanded the closest attention and study by the Canadian labor movement—that the truth could only be brought to the Canadian workers through first hand reporting and contact.

The suggestion was referred back to the committee which, in due course, recommended favorably. The resolution received overwhelming and enthusiastic support; only a bare handful mouthed the brainwashed arguments derived from the capitalist press.

In the waning moments of the convention, under the order of unfinished business, delegate Fred McNeil of Local 507, ILWU, called attention to a report that the former head of the Cuban Federation of Labor, Mujal—a Batista henchman who fled from Cuba with his sadistic master—was now allegedly a paid consultant of George Meany, headman of the American AFL-CIO. That this was the source of most of the anti-Cuban propaganda circulated through trade union channels seemed to be an obvious conclusion and something should be done about it.

Angus Macphee, Local 708 Pulp and Sulphite Workers Union, immediately moved that the BC Federation initiate an investigation of this situation and, if substantiated, demand the necessary remedial action. The resolution carried.

Unionists across Canada should respond to the lead of the BC section and organized observation delegations to Cuba.