Canada: ONTARIO: Flying West

Ontario’s Premier George Drew, who had made a quick manpower-shopping tour of England to ease his province’s labor shortage (TIME, May 26), solved his biggest problem of all last week. He found a way to get the British workers to Canada. Premier Drew contracted with Transocean Air Lines (headquarters: Oakland, Calif.) to fly 7,000 of them over at the rate of 80 a day in five chartered DC-4s, beginning in about a month.

The Toronto Globe & Mail called Drew’s plan “breathtaking,” went on to wave a Tory finger underneath the Dominion Government’s nose: “In a few short weeks the Ontario Government has cut its way through the morass of inertia and red tape that has surrounded the immigration problem of Ottawa for so long.”

Because they will come as regular immigrants at their own expense ($260), Ontario’s workers will be free to do what they like after they get to Toronto. But to make sure that as many as possible remain in Ontario, Minister of Planning and Development Dana Porter has been given the task of finding work for them. After an informal survey he reported “many openings in all categories.” This week Porter left for England with statistics on jobs to be had for the asking.