LABOUR IN CANADA

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 142, 20 June 1927, Page 9

LABOUR IN CANADA

FREEDOM FROM POLITICS

THE AMERICAN METHOD

(From "The Past's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 16th May.

A persistent query by visitors to ; Canada from Great Britain and the other Dominions is: why has the Labour Party in Cana.da so few members—-not more than threo in a total of 245 members of the House of Representative's; at Ottawa, with proportionately small representation in the Provincial Parliament?

The reason is simple. The'majority of? trade unionists in Canada belong, to unions which are affiliated to international unions in the United States, which in turn are affiliated to tho American Federation of Labour, whoso constitution does not permit it to enter politics. Canadian unionists belong to these unions for the vast benefits they bestow, in tho matter of sick and accident pay, medical comforts, etc., besides the influence they wield in securing better pay and working conditions. Tho ideal of tho Canadian working man is to get something like the huge rates of pay of his fello>y unionists in the United States^and tho gap is being' steadily bridged ' without political action. i

The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, which annually presents Labour 's legislative programme to the Government at Ottawa, is designated as "the legislative mouthpiece of the internationally organised workers in Canada.". The influence and wealth of these great American unions may be judged from the fact that tho Trainmen's Brotherhood, one of the railway unions, pays its president £13,000 a year. Canadian working men get higher rates of pay than workers of Australia, New Zealand, or 'South Africa, and are: content with tho legislative benefits conceded them by tho two main parties ; in Parliament—tho Liberals arid Conservatives. Thero has been no strike of any kind in Canada for the past two years.