CANADA: Trade with the Enemy

With its overwhelming majority in Parliament, Canada's Liberal government can quickly smother discussion of any embarrassing subject. That seemed to be the Liberal strategy last week when the Tory opposition again raised the question of the Ming Sung Industrial Co. Flying the Canadian flag, Ming Sung's five ships sail regularly from Hong Kong and Macao to Communist China, despite Canada's support of the United Nations' strategic embargo against the Chinese Reds.

Major General George Pearkes, the Tories' military critic, read a telegram from the China Officers Guild at Hong Kong reporting that the Canadian-registered, Chinese-manned Ming Sung ships were loading war materials for Red China at Macao. Tory Leader George Drew demanded that the Canadian registry for the ships be withdrawn. Said Drew: "These ships . . . assist the enemy at a time when that enemy is sending its troops to fight our troops in Korea."

Liberals acknowledged that such valuable commodities as scrap iron and rubber tires for Red China were aboard the Ming Sung ships. But they excused the traffic as a minor affair, defended Ming Sung's Canadian registry as a protective device for Canadian investors and taxpayers, i.e., the banks who hold Ming Sung ship mortgages. Prime Minister St. Laurent flatly refused to withdraw the ships' Canadian charter. The Liberal majority, without a single defection from the ranks, voted down, 116 to 36, the Tory proposal to cancel the registry.