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by Skip Hambling as told to Ron Thompson of Canadian University Press

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(Skip Hambling has been a volunteer working with the Company of Young Canad- ians in community organizing in the CYC’s only project in the Maritimes. He is now an elected member of the gov- erning council of the com- pany. The story comes out of a discussion between him' and Thompson, after the meeting of the council in Ottawa at the height of the crisis begun by the administration of the city of Montreal, calling for an investigation of the com- pany’s activities in Quebec.

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The Company of You ng Canadians is in the prime minister’s pocket and that’s where it’s likely to stay.

The public, and that in— cludes the left in this coun- try, have been completely misinformed about what hap— pened, and is happening, in Montreal. Th e permanent council of the CYC‘ and the federal government have completely whitwashed the situation there.

may seem strange given the fact that there are separatists in the company and the PM is a federalist —it might seem it would be better for him to use this op- portunity to get rid of it.

What is necessary is to understand how the company fits into Trudeau’s particular philosophy of federalism.

A federal presence in Que~ bec is more important than anything else, especially in a r e a s not constitutionally federal, such as health, wel- fare and housing — areas in which CYC volunteers, doing community organizing c an ‘legitimately’ work.

Secondly, the PM Seems dedicated to as near a 50-50 split as he can achieve be- tween French and English Canada. The company is the first to come close to that.

Nearly fifty per 'cent of the company’s work is in Quebec. What we’se seen in the last year is an increase in funds, an increase in personnel, an increase in freedom to do what they want in the prov- ince.

That includes radicals in Quebec -— separatists. Radi- cals in English Canada are uptight because it drains re sources from What was going on in the rest of the country.

R adlca l 5

An important corrollary to what’s happening with the CYC in Quebec — radicals in white English Canada are leaving the company. They re leaving for two reasons: one, resources are being taken from them; two, they. are being harrassed by officials in the company.

UNIVERSITY OF PRINCE E‘DWARDISLAND

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Radicalism Smashed in English Canada *- Used in fluehee

In the process, what this accomplishes is: a split be- tween radicals in Quebec and in English Canada.

The only volunteers stay- ing on in English Canada are “social-worker” types —— on projects that are not radical, but as liberal as anyone could imagine.

An example ‘of the kind of harrassment that’s bringing this about would be the case of Jim Littleton, who has been continuously on the staff of the CYC longer than anyone else, and who has probably been more . closely identified with the left in English Canada than anyone else in the company, an (1 (this is important) who has personally been actively in- volved in opposition to Claude Vidal.

Vidal is the executive dir—.

ector of CYC, and has been

V for the last year.

Allen Clark, who had been director, threatened to resign a number of times during his term over government inter- vention in the» company, like the inveStigation into David Dapoe because of his involve— ment in anti-Vietnam work.

Rival left and right wing groups» had grown in the com- pany in Quebec. The right threatened at that time to publicly reveal during the election campaign there were separatists in the CY O in Quebec unless the govern- ment got rid of Martin Beli- veau, a separatist, and then Quebec head of the CYC.

When Gerald Pelletier'told Clark to fire Beliveau, Clark finally did resign and Beli- veau along with him.

Stewart Goo-dings was act-

ing director for six months 1 while they looked for a new '

director. When it became clear that Vidal was» the gov- ernment choice, people looked into his background.

They discovered Vidal was the last person we wanted in the company —— a profession- al bureaucrat — administrator —— formerly principal of l’Ecole des beauX-arts in Montreal, where a twoyear strike by students: won noth- ing from him. The teachers union was down on him too; he just wasn’t the man for the company.

So Littleton organized a protest against his appoint-

ment from within the CYC. ’

Volunteers sent letters and telegrams asking that Good- ings be appointed permanent director. And even after Vi- dal was appointed Jim made an attempt to talk Pelletier out of it.

It was over Vidal’s ap— ’

pointment that volunteers in the company came to Otta- wa from all over to protest the appointment and demand two years after the company had been. formed, that the permanent council be elected by the volunteers and the appointed provisional council be removed.

That was last December. It wasn’t until July that the 10 elected members of council were chosen by the volun- teers; even then, the govern- ment d e’ l a ye d appointing their 5 members to the coun- cil until October.

Vidal clean u p

In the meantime, Vidal had gone about his cleanup. He did it bureaucratically, al- ways claiming that he wasn’t making the » decisions, but was acting on. directions from the ‘i. n t e r i m’ provisional council.

To a degree that was true. Since the company was ad- mittedly pretty loose when

' Vidal came in and he had to

set his own ground rules, the council had been willing to let him do what he wanted. They were tired of the job, and many of them had al- ready retired.

He got rid of the oldest and most radical project in the company, the white project in North West Ontario; ef- fectively strangled the pro-

ject in Cape Breton and vir- .

tu‘ally eliminated Littleton. ‘

For Littleton, he invented a ‘secret meeting’ of the per- sonnel committee of the ’in— terim’ provisional c o u n1ci 1, which he said had decided to abolish Jim’s program depart- ment ——- responsible for plan- ning projects all over the company. V

When Jim went to the press with the story in July, he was suspended without even severance pay.

That decision was. later re- versed by th e permanent council at the beginning of October, but Vidal decided the council was. ‘unconstitu— tional’ and refusedl to allow Jim into the office or use the company phone.

Challenged by the council, he refused to obey — and they back down, saying Jim was reinstated but on “an enforced leave of abSence”: forbidden to work or speak to the press.

The act which formed the company says the council shall g o v e r n the company through the executive direc- tor,‘but through their actions

the council effectively admit- ted the relevance of Vidal’s position.

‘ Vidal defied the council and won '— the council effective- ly denied their own power to govern.

N. W. Ontario

What happened with the‘ project in Northwest Ontario is a whole story in itself. Similarly with Cape Breton project. But maybe they can be quickly described.

In Northwestern Ontario, the company had first work- ed among, the Indians. The plan from the start had been that eventually there would be Indians who could take

‘over the work in that area

and the whites would move into different work, splitting the project into two.

This was accomplished by the time Vidal came into of- fice. The Indians were work- ing, in community organizing, putting out an Indian lang- uage newspaper, and working with a mobile radio station that broadcast from different communities. '

The whites moved into other work they had already begun; organizing around the American plans to divert the arctic watershed into the Great Lakes to supply Ameri- can cities, and the planned

' Mid-Canada Corridor.

One of the volunteers on the project had submitted a

plan and budget which Vidal

told him were only a formal- ity to go to the provisional council. But three days be- fore the council Was to meet, Vidal wrote a letter to him, saying he had no confidence in his administrative ability and couldn’t endorse the plan.

Although the plan-s had been made and given tacit approval, and arrangements made to hire people, the de- cision of the council was that the Northwest Ontario pro- ject would be only the‘Indian project. Anything the whites

got would be leftovers from

the Indian project. .

rCape Breton

The Cape Breton project was on the surface no differ- ent from other projects in

community organizing. Their

first victory was a sewer for the town of Sydney Mines, after 20 years of raw sewage.

The difference Was , that the struggle for that sewer had been used as a way of showing people the com- munity that they could or- ganize and get what they wanted. The extension of it was, a project that was be- ginning to make links be tWeen the community and the radical local of the United Mine Workers. ‘»

This was over so benign a project as: clearing a piece of wasteland o w n e d by the owners, now the feder-

NOVEMBER ’21, 1969

al government. But there are clear dangers to the status quo in the maritimes when work is done making links between a community and a union ilocal, nicknamed the ‘red local’ because it had elected communists to the executive.

There are also dang ers

when a tenants’ association attempts to organize, not just

. on a local level, but for the

whole of Cape Breton. That’s en explosixe potential in an area where the amount of slum-landlordism, the age of the houses are so high.

The economic deprivation, the total severity'of the eco- nomic reality mean commun- ity organization in that area, which has a long history of militant working class strug-

gle, verges on basic economic

revolution.

The same kind of harrass- ment that hit the Northwest Ontario and Cape Breton pro- jects has not been the case in the more liberal projects in white English. Canada.

Paychecks coming on ce

three days late to the Calgary

project was a surprise that caused real irateness among the volunteers there. But the tenants’ association there is not as radical; the lateness was just a mistake.

There had bee-n no harass— ment of the free school pro- ' ject in Vancouver, nor in the BC. post-release c e n t e r, which does rehabilitation for Indians coming out of prison. This doesn’t mean such work shouldn’tbe done, only it isn’t really working for soci al change, and the CYC should not bedoin-g it.

In Ontario there a pro- ject working on growing food without soil . . . presumably it’s for social change: ‘If you grow food in the bathtub, you become independent of the society.’

Or there is the project in the Okanogan where an ar- tist was demonstrating how

I to work ‘for social change

through painting.’

In short, the projects in English, C an a d a among whites that 'do nothing, or are into something ‘wingy’,

' get support —— those that are

into anything radical are quashed.

Yet radicals, an d that means saparatists, in Que bec projects are not hassled —- that’s partly because we flagellate ourselves with lib- eral self-guilt . over “Canada’s special problem” —— nor are those with: Indian workers, for the same reason. '

Everything in Quebec has done no harm to the federal government.

The whole uproar is not unfunctional to the company because it’s functional to the PM. I:Ie’s got a lot of free advertising in Quebec for his to l cranc e of separatism: short of individual criminal activity. . . ‘