Paper Crackdown

Quebec's highhanded Premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis served an ultimatum on the pulp and paper companies in his province: either cut back newsprint prices for the Quebec press by Jan. 10 or face government controls. Last week, when the deadline passed, Duplessis made public a bill designed to harness Quebec's billion-dollar pulp and paper industry with some of the toughest controls ever imposed on Canadian business in peacetime.

Under the law, expected to pass almost automatically in the Duplessis-controlled legislature, the pulp and paper companies will be under the complete domination of a four-man government commission. Newsprint exports will not be affected (said Duplessis: "I don't care how much they charge outside Quebec"). But paper prices for Quebec newspapers will be rolled back immediately to the September 1955 level of $117-$119 a ton, where they stood before the last $4-a-ton increase. After that the board will set prices and quotas for deliveries to every Quebec publisher, and failure by the paper companies to obey can bring fines of up to $50,000, along with cancellation of licenses to cut timber in Quebec forests. There can be no appeal to the courts against a board ruling. And, as a final indignity, the Duplessis bill requires the paper industry to pay the salaries and expenses of the board.

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