Trade & Aid

Canada's new Tory Prime Minister John Diefenbaker flew home from the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference in London last week, where he had persuaded the other delegates to start mapping ways to broaden trade within the Commonwealth. In Ottawa he announced a drastic Canadian proposal to carry out the Commonwealth trade speedup: a slash in imports from the U.S. of 15% ($625 million a year). Canada would make up the difference--"mainly capital goods"--from Britain instead. With Canada's wheat surplus ripening into his worst domestic worry, Diefenbaker also attacked U.S. wheat export "giveaways," which insist that importing countries guarantee "certain fixed market commitments for the future." He called the U.S. policy a "definite contravention" of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

In another gesture to Britain, Diefenbaker timed the next session of Parliament to coincide with Queen Elizabeth's autumn visit to Canada and the U.S. The Queen will open the session Oct. 14--the first time that a reigning monarch has opened a Parliament in Canada.

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