An open letter to the the candidates in the fourth of June provincial elections

Dear Candidates,

You are in the midst of your election campaign. If your sole purpose in undertaking this campaign is to win an election, then the interests of the people will be but little served in whatever you do. Your election will be a purely personal matter.

If, however, your aim is ultimately to gain for the people those things which are to their benefit and welfare and to which they have a right, then it is about time that you gave some tangible proof that such is the case.

You should know, dear candidates, that the primary concern of every individual is to gain his daily bread, that is, to lay hold of the ensemble of things which are necessary each day if he is to continue to live, or at least, to live decently. What each seeks is the assurance of having enough for today and for tomorrow, inasmuch as the country is able, physically, to provide such goods. It is the guarantee of bread as long as there will be enough wheat to furnish this bread; it is the guarantee of sufficient clothing as long as there is sufficient textiles to provide such clothing; it is the guarantee of sufficient lodging according to the needs of the family as long as their is in the country, the space for houses, and the materials and men to build such lodgings for each family. What each seeks is economic security based upon the tremendous actual and potential production of our modern productive system. And the citizen wants this security without having to submit to such regimentation as is consequent upon a collectivistic regime like Socialism or Communism.

Gentlemen, you are well aware that the producers of Canadian goods, employers and employees alike, whether in the field of agriculture, in mines, forests, on the seas in the factories and stores, are more than ready to give of their labor and their competence as long as such is needed, in order to maintain, and if necessary, to increase the flow of goods and services. You are also well aware that there is a great multitude of unemployed who would be only to happy to get back to work; that there is a vast number of commercial establishments working at only half their capacity (if they have not closed down completely) and all this simply because there are not sufficient buyers of goods and services.

You gentlemen are equally aware of the fact that most people would rush to buy considerably more than they are buying of these products and services, if only they had the means with which to pay for them.

Now, if you candidates are not too completely shut off from the world in an ivory tower just too comfortable, in a nice home with all the good things of life to care for what happens to others, especially others in misfortune, you know that there is a great number of families which simply cannot achieve that decent standard of living to which the abundant production of this country entitles them.

And there are probably a greater number living in actual distress than you think. Cases where the father and mother are broken-hearted and embittered at the sight of their children suffering actual malnutrition and feeling the pangs of hunger; going without sufficient clothing in the winter, suffering from anemia and a variety of other ills because they haven't sufficient food.

And you candidates know that the only thing which prevents the remedying of this shameful situation in regard to these poor people, is the lack of money in the family, and not a lack of products in stores or a lack of services.

There is one problem with which you are probably all very familiar, dear candidates. That is the problem facing municipalities, school commissions, hospitals, and public bodies of all sorts.

It is the same problem facing families. The problem of money.

You know very well and I am sure of this - that if municipalities undertake the necessary public works; that if school commissions put up the schools necessary for the education of our children; if corporations or the provinces build the number of hospitals necessary for the people, they will have to go into debt through borrowing and make it necessary for their taxpayers, through the interest rates, to pay for these goods produced, one and a half times over, twice over and three times over the original cost necessary to produce these works.

Surely you know that if contractors and builders cease building and lay off their workers it is only because they cannot get the necessary credit to pay for the materials and workers; which material and workers are available in abundance.

And if production of goods and services has not come to a complete halt it is because the purchaser has had to go into debt, have recourse to finance companies. Thus, to the original high cost of the goods he must add the fantastic interest rates of loan companies.

* * *

Since, dear candidates, you are not living on another planet, but here on earth, you know that the greatest problem today, the one which gives the greatest headaches to families and governments alike, is the problem of money.

Now, gentlemen, if you are not entirely ignorant, you know that modern money consists, essentially, of legalised figures engraved on metal or printed on pieces of paper, or set down in bank ledgers. And you surely must know that the increase or diminution of the volume of money, the expansion or restriction of credit, depends upon one thing alone the decisions made in the banking system.

The economic life, the production and distribution of goods, is not regulated and does not operate according to the needs of the people and the physical capacity of the production system to satisfy these needs. Our economic life goes forward or slows down or stagnates completely, depending upon the decisions made by those who control the floodgates of credit.

You must admit that this constitutes a veritable dictatorship over the daily lives of individuals and families; a veritable dictatorship over our public institutions and governing bodies, which, instead of rendering service and benefits to the people according to the advances of progress, must tax and tax again the people, despoiling them in order to meet the financial demands of this inflexible dictatorship.

You must admit that there exists a glaring contradiction between, on the one hand, the fact of a progress which should make life more secure, more serene and carefree, and on the other, the ever-increasing cares and worries which becloud the lives of a vast multitude, even of those who, having sufficient income today, can see this income dry up to nothing tomorrow through causes entirely beyond their control.

You must admit the contradiction between the ever-increasing facility with which goods are produced and the ever-increasing cost of these goods.

You must admit the contradiction between the continuous refinement of production techniques and the perfecting of machines so that more can be done with an ever-diminishing need for human intervention, and the regulations of the financial system which says that every individual must work if he would live.

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Have you stopped to consider seriously the plight of the father, who, let out of the factory where his hands are no longer needed, sees himself living off his unemployment insurance benefits (half his usual and necessary income); then sees his unemployment benefits finally halted; then goes into debt with the local merchant until the merchant is finally forced to stop giving him food; who sees himself forced to give up his home for non-payment of taxes; or if he is a tenant, faces the possibility of seeing his family on the street or lodged in some wretched shanty because he no longer has any money?

Good candidates, such cases are a great deal more frequent than you would imagine. And they are a great deal more torturing to those undergoing such hardships than you would imagine and right from the first week when these poor people are cut off from a source of revenue.

Such conditions, implacable and cruel are not a reflection of progress nor of a healthy economic system nor of a Christian civilization. They are the product of financial dictatorship, of the rationing of credit in the face of the vast possibilities for production and distribution.

They are the product of regulations, illogical and inhuman, which says that a man must be employed if he would live, even though his work may not be necessary in the slightest in order to maintain the production of all the goods and services needed.

This financial dictatorship, gentlemen, is the number 1 enemy of the people from whom you seek the mandate to represent them in the government. And as long as this enemy remains entrenched in its positions, the most sincere among you can do nothing other than lament your impotence in the face of its power before giving in to it and turning your back on all your good intentions, as so many have done before you capitulate and try get the most for themselves out of the election business as they are able.

If this dictatorship of money and credit leaves you completely indifferent, then your usefulness to the people is nil; they can only be betrayed and deceived once again if you succeed in getting their vote through whatever means you may employ in your electoral campaign.

And if you are concerned with this very real evil, how does it happen that it seems to be the very last thing to preoccupy you? It is not through political squabbling to get power or to hang on to it that you will arrive at a means of solving the one great problem of our times. Nor can it be solved by hurling about political mud, when the greatest piece of dirt is the enslavement of individuals, families, public corporations, governments even, to this money power, to this controller of credit, to the decisions of the banking system which are so in contradiction to reality.

Nor is there any solution to be found by playing around with changes in the taxation system. That would be like taking from Peter's plate to put in Paul's plate, when in effect, the cupboard is full of food. Nor is there any hope in "53 point" programs when there is not even one to proclaim that whatsoever is physically possible to meet public and private needs should also be made financially possible.

This point was openly and clearly pronounced by the Quebec Liberal party in 1956, but the party has undergone such changes and has been so ravaged since that year, that it admits, tacitly at least, that the controllers of credit have the right to impede production, to throw hundreds of thousands of individuals out of work, to drive a multitude of businesses into bankruptcy and thousands of families into distress or outright want.

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Candidates, I know very well that you are tempted, in order to turn your eyes from this picture and to squirm out from under these accusations, to answer me by saying: "Talk to the people in the Federal government; anything concerning banks, or the control of credit and money appertains, according to the Constitution, to the federal government. We can't do anything for you."

Well, gentlemen, if you feel that you can't do anything, or if you are not even prepared to attempt to do something, then for the good of the people take yourself out of sight of the people! Don't hide behind the Constitution when there are families going in want, in the face of goods begging for buyers; when there are unemployed who only wish to work to increase production even more.

In the face of a dictatorship which oppresses an entire people, it is an entire people which must rise up against it. And at the head of this rising must be those, all those, who pretend that they are seeking the welfare of the people, in every echelon of government, local, provincial or federal; in every situation, in all professions, in all associations.

You can do nothing, gentlemen? You cannot even raise your voices? You cannot denounce or demand?

Simple ordinary individuals, without any parliamentary titles or honors, receiving no payment from the people's taxes, do this all year long for five, ten, twenty years. The denounce the financial dictatorship. They demand that money be made to serve man instead of man being enslaved to money. They demand for each and everyone the right and the means to live. They demand for each human being, beginning with those here in Canada, a share in all the temporal goods, which share is their right by reason rather of the immense natural resources of the country and the tremendous progress made possible by the cultural inheritance handed down from generation to generation than by reason of the actual labour of those still necessary to production.

We have a right, candidates, to expect more than that from those who seek government posts. There are certain things which individuals, families and independent groups can accomplish themselves and they do not ask the municipal, provincial or federal governments to do these things for them. But there are obstacles which demand government action if they are to be eliminated. That is what we are expecting from our politicians: action!

Nor are we expecting Socialistic measures inspired by the financial difficulties in which families find themselves; but we expect measures which will do away with this financial incapacity by causing finance to adapt itself to the rythm and service of the immense physical possibilities which exist to meet all the normal needs of the entire population.

Is that your first concern, gentlemen? Has it been your principal preoccupation in the past? Is it so now? How can we recognize that it is?

The people are tired of the endless repetition of the same old promises. What they want now are acts, realisation, or at least serious and consistent and persevering efforts in the right direction. And the first thing that they want realized is access to the goods which their needs are clamoring for.

The mandate which you claim should be one of service, candidates! Those who emerge victorious from the election campaign should be prepared for self-sacrifice and not for the satisfaction of self-interests. If the end of the elections marks the end of the candidate's interest in the people, then obviously he has his own interests at heart rather than those of the people.

As for the candidate who is not successful if he returns and hides himself in his tent without bothering in the least for the welfare of the people, even though he may not be their elected representative in parliament, he shows that he was interested in only one thing - getting himself a fistful of power. So the election actually settles nothing of importance for the people's welfare. Everything yet remains to be done, and everyone is required to work, even those who are not elected.

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Your friends, good candidates, your organisers, your party, wish you success in the elections. But you will permit us, you will permit all those citizens who are enlightened and zealous for the common weal, to express the sincere wish that you demonstrate the spirit of disinterested and constant service in the interests of the people regardless of which way the elections may go.

Elected or not, you still have a mission, a mission which does not depend upon a cross made with a lead pencil next to your name on a piece of paper. That mission is to serve the people to whom you have offered yourself; to strive with all the means available to you to liberate that people from the cold, brutal dictatorship of finance.