SOCITALISTE DU QUEBEC .
TORONTO -- Le Parti Socialiste du Quebec [PSQ] which held a two-stage founding convention attended by 150 delegates in November and December, reflects both the rising national consciousness of the French Canadian people and a class consciousness expressed both in the name and program of the organization, Its formation is a most significant development. With approximately one-third of Canadats population, and industrializing rapidly, Quebec is an area of sharp contradictions. While there has been no effec~ tive force for independent labour political action, Quebec has been the scene of the most militant and explosive. strike struggles in the country, - With the foundation of the PSQ, one of the contradictions, the absence of a left political grouping, sensitive to the national question, may be solved,.
The old Co-operative Commonwealth Federation [CCF] had a long record of outright hostility to Quebec nationalist sentiment. Various leaders: of the
New Democratic party [NDP], the new labor-based party coming from the CCF, % have attacked the PSQ, posing the main problem as the importance of a strong ~ central bi-national state. The relationship of the PSQ to the NDP was resolved at their orientation congress last July by an agreement to form a Ynational" (i.e., Quebec) party leaving the federal jurisdiction to a Quebec wing of the NDP. The debate on this question was reopened at the convention and this time resolved in a compromise resolution which stated that members of the PSQ have the right to belong to the NDP so long as that party pestricts itself to the federal field, and insofar as possible, they are to promote the fundamental positions of the PSQ within the NDP.
The convention made a considerable commitment to socialist policies by adopting such statements as the one which defined the capitalist structure of Canada as "a system the exclusive end of which is the realization of profits and in which economic decisions are left to the initiative of that minority of the citizens which possesses control of the means of production and distribution": and the unanimous agreement that the ultimate objective. of the PSQ was the nationalization of all major industries, both foreign-owned end domestic,
The December session adopted a revised draft manifesto which stated in part, “our ultimate objective is workers' control, that is, the management of all enterprises by those who work in them" -- amended subsequently to control by the "community" as well as the workers concerned. The com- . mittee on planning, in sharp contrast, partially adopted a document which is essentially a liberal reformist economic program, containing such demands as the encouragement of private industry in rural areas, presumably through tax concessions and subsidies; and massive injections of "social capital" -that cure-all prescribed by Galbraith for capitalism.
- The convention also adopted without debate a resolution proposing not the abolition but the reform of the present legislative council -- a nonelective upper house -- by urging the appointment of workers, employers, intellectuals, financiers and associations. The vast contradictions between these stands will obviously have to be resolved in the future,
Declaring itself above all opposed to the imposition of nuclear arms in Canada and their utilization by the Canadian army, the party accepted an amendment advocating immediate withdrawal from NATO although this was posed. simply on the grounds that it is a nuclear alliance, .
One of the biggest problems confronting the PSQ is the building of an organization in the labor movement. Due to the extreme conservatism of most Quebec trade-union leaders and their opposition to independent politi-~ cal action the labor party is being organized without the official cooperation of the trade~union apparatus. -
The convention, recognizing the problem, deleted the statement in the draft constitution forbidding the affiliation of labor federations, although there is little likelihood that the NDP-affiliated Quebec Federation of Labor will reverse its declared position of neutrality toward the PSQ in the immediate future. The English-speaking supporters of the NDP «=- the ‘Montreal New Left -+ have decided to affiliate to the PSQ. Thus if the NDP. and trade-union movement are to have any base in Quebec they must adopt
a more positive attitude toward the PSQ because almost all their Quebec supporters are in either the New Left or the PSQ.
While the PSQ has taken on a huge task, its founding alone, is a significant step along the road to socialism in Quebec and in Canada. —
CANADIAN CP LEADERS BACK MOSCOW AGAINST PEKING
TORONTO ~~ The