CPR ‘conning public’
with waterfront plans:

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The CPR is out to con the public
again, this time with its proposals
for the development of the Van-
couver waterfront between
Granville and Seymour. Through
its real estate arm, Marathon
Realty, it has asked city council to
rezone this area from industrial to
urban use so that it may.go ahead
with its projects. These include a
20-storey CPR hotel between
Burrard and Hornby, a 24-storey

dual-tower B.C. Tel structure

between Hornby and Howe and a
21-storey tower adjacent to its
present 32-storey Project 200
tower.

A joint planning study by the city

Victoria urged to take

action on housing crisis

A representative delegation of
trade union, pensioner and tenant
organizations, meeting with the
provincial cabinet on April 3,
presented facts which debunked
the claim of the big landlords that
the NDP government’s eight per
cent freeze on rents would wipe out
apartment and home construction
and create a housing scarcity.

The delegation included Len Guy"
of the B.C. Federation of Labor
with its 200,000. members, Syd

Thompson of the Vancouver Labor .

Council, Frank Wey, representing
50,000 members of the Federated
Legislative Council of Elderly
Citizens, and the organized tenants
movement of 3,000, represented by
Bruce Yorke.

In the brief presented to the
cabinet it was pointed out that the
housing shortage in B.C. existed
long before the NDP came to
power. It presented a table which
showed that ever since 1966 the
vacancy rates in the metro Van-
couver area have been ex-
ceptionally low, ‘even’, it un-
derscored, ‘‘when the scandalous
income tax shelter provisions
existed”? which was a special in-
centive to the big landlord and real
estate companies. 2

A table in the brief shows that the
vacancy rate in metro Vancouver
from 1966 through to 1969 was kept

just barely over one per cent — one
of the lowest in Canada.

The brief says: ‘It can be seen
that the year 1973 was not
qualitatively different from the
year 1969, or 1968 or 1967. Clearly
private industry is not interested in
the housing field unless it can
make super profits. It is not in the
interests of the large corporate
landlords to increase the supply.
They have a good thing going with
a tight market. Why would they
want to increase the supply and
thereby decrease the rents?

“Their policy is to leave the
rental field tight and put their
capital into expensive con-
dominiums, luxury suites, etc.
They have no social conscience.

“Tt is important, however, to
draw some distinctions. It is the
large corporate landlords who
dominate the scene. They are the
ones who have a semi-monopoly on
land. Block Brothers, for instance,
is said to control tens of thousands
of acres in the Greater Vancouver
area.

“The small landlord, more often
than not, is essentially a
middleman collecting rents from
tenants in order to pay usurious
interest rates for second mor-
tgages. In many cases the lenders
are the likes of Block Brothers,
who are both landlords and
moneylenders.”’

The brief said that “capital is
only interested in super profits”

. and that ‘“‘to expect the big
landlords to voluntarily increase
the housing stock is to expect
miracles. We therefore support the
steps the government is taking to
enter the housing market, though
frankly we are very concerned that
these steps are insufficient and
need to be drastically upgraded.”’

The brief presented the following
three point program calling on the
provincial government to tackle
the housing crisis in B.C.:

@ To encourage the setting up of
Municipal Housing Corporations
empowered to build and lease
premises now, and to break the
dependence on the so-called
“‘developer’’.

e Proceed to appoint the in-
vestigatory body promised by the
government to dig out the facts
behind the remortgaging scandal
that is forcing up housing prices
and rents. This body should hold
public hearings and representa-
tives of the tenants, pensioners and
trade unions should be appointed to
it.

© Call a Provincial Housing
Conference under government
Sponsorship, with invitations to all
people’s and housing
organizations. The government
should take the initiative instead of
leaving it to the real estate in-

of Vancouver and the federal
ministry of state for urban affairs
has proposed a number of design
directives for the development of

the waterfront between Main

Street and Stanley Park. These
include the provision of generous
park’space, the stepping back of
buildings from the water’s edge so
that the highest ones will be on
Hastings and Pender and then they
will gradually get lower as they
approach the waterfront so as not
to obstruct. the view.

The CPR is ignoring these

proposals in toto and proposes to
build its high buildings right on the
waterfront. Not content with

blotting out the view with its.

present Project 200 tower, it now

proposes three more such huge °

buildings. Can anyone justify B.C.
Tel having a huge dual tower office
building on the waterfront? It
could be located anywhere in the
Lower Mainland; after all it is just
another office building.

These CPR structures on the
waterfront will aggravate the
traffic problem in this over-
crowded section of the downtown
still more.

As for a park, the CPR doesn’t
propose to use any of its property
for such purposes. Instead it is
‘suggesting that three acres of the
waterfront be filled in for a park.

This, of course, would seriously cut |

down the harbor space available
for port-oriented facilities serving
ocean-going trade. But the CPR
couldn’t care less; it is today only
interested in real estate
development.

Incidentally this whole area of
the waterfront, worth tens of
millions of dollars, was given to the
CPR free as a gift by the federal
government about 10 years ago in
another one of those cozy little
deals whereby the CPR’s profits
are subsidized from the public
purse.

terests who intend to use the

housing conference. they are
calling to extract huge subsidies
and tax exemptions from the
government.

The B.C. Federation of Labor
and Vancouver Labor Council have
thrown their full support behind
action to tackle the housing crisis.
The labor council has voted a
Substantial sum of money to
promote the housing campaign.

- granted that all the cP R

~“oceangoing trade. Our *

We badly need a a
passenger terminal , Fe
waterfront and the logic4 Y
it is Pier B.C. (which is
the CPR from the Natio#
bors Board) but again’
refuses to build such 4)
Instead it proposes i
only one quarter of Piet
passenger facilities, and
rest for shops, resta e
vention centres and evel
front apartments.

Of course we may”

will cater only to the i,
people; they are stricly
rich. The ordinary ll

works for a wage or salary
excluded. “Sa

And here is one mor
how the CPR opera Z
extensive holdings 12
local merchant rent
of anold building from
$650.00 a month. The ©
boosted his rent to 9%, |
three floors! How §
profiteering?

City council’s
committee has hastene 3
motion asking council
waterfront from Main ©
Park from industrial if avi
that the CPR may go a 90
projects. I’ll certainly °P i
when it comes before on
views are that the ar ie
waterfront from Piel ®. dus!
Street should be kept for 10
and oriented faciliti€® 44

\e
M

. e :
a limited shoreline and iW ig

away piece by piece 10 °° 7g
aire Sou won’t be any st
for port facilities whic A
continually expanded 48
grows.
This does not exclud
mercial developments do
the waterfront. But fro
that this whole wal X
should be developed Wit),
serving the ordinary ze
just the wealthy and jude
tourists. This should in¢
covering at least half % ~~
I hope all citizen a
organizations will ,
views known to coun
question

TOM
McEWEN

his column is in the fight to make sure that the PT

reaches its $24,000 sustaining target. We were a bit late
in getting going this year, but with the willing help of a lot
of column boosters we’ll make it. We’ve been doing it for a
good many years now and ever since the inspiring days of
Ol Bill Bennett, never once has B.C. let us down. That in
itself is something to be proud of.

Throughout the years we’ve had deflation and inflation,
high wages and no wages, seasonal unemployment and
mass no-help-wanted. Ministerial dopes who boasted of
curing inflation with more unemployment or vice versa,
and ending up increasing both evils. The same ministerial
dopes who planned to ‘cure’ the jobless problem with
mass immigration of cheap labor from somewhere (their
latest proposal is from South Korea) and winding up
subsidizing new immigrants at the old resident taxpayer’s
expense. :

Yes, we’ve had all this and much more of the same, but
still we’ve managed to keep the PT right up front in the
firing line. We’ve had civic administrations (ex-mayor

_ NPA Bill Rathie) who ‘pledged’ to his admirers ‘“‘to wipe
that rag off the streets’’, and Socred maladministrations

whose telecommunications with heaven had the PT

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1074—PAGE 2

definitely headed in the opposite direction. Thanks to a
working class that was not so easily conned, the PT has
survived the petty threats of these profit brokers.

Two weeks ago the PT had a most timely .front-page
headline: ‘Send monopoly conspirators to jay A
brilliant idea, almost a stroke of genius. All such would
include food, clothing and Shelter, profiteers and grafters
the professional usurers and inflationists, the real estate
sharks, the whole monopoly tribe who steal from the

workers of the factory and farm alike, and whose only God
is profit and more profit.

And that timely headline gave birth to another new
thought, viz.; just how many readers and supporters of
this column there are who would make very efficient
wardens for just such a jugful of swindlers and other
profiteering riff-raff which a humane, decent and sane
society would never miss. :

A lot of these Establishment misfits who make a big
noise about the ‘‘sacredness”’ of work, the ‘‘idle’”’ worker,
and especially the young workers who “don’t want to
work” as a cover up for their own moral bankruptcy and
greed, would really get to know what work was on the
business end of a No. 10 shovel, under the tuition of a PT-
appointed warden. \

The root cause of their basic class fear of progressive
social change is not that they might be shot at Sunrise (a
needless fear under working class administration), but
that for the first time in their useless lives, they may be
put to some useful work!

e
And rest assured we have many grand od-ti W
tributors, who from long experience at the a all
monopoly robbers, are fully equipped W?
qualifications necessary for the post of warden;
to reform rather than punitive aims.

So, just in case the PT headline does.come
than we think, we'll accept tentative nominal”
with substantial contributions to the final¢
campaign! : ss 40

Needless to say the kept press of big businé else
agree with our point of view on this or anythiné
monopoly exploitation of man by man is cone ves
did we might have to take a good look at ours”
where we had gone wrong. une’s

That is the prime reason for the Pacific Tr inet
-.. to chart the course to a new social OF 4,
monopoly conspiracy and exploitation will be i of
past; to pinpoint the inherent evils of the prese? 4
every working man’s family, man, woman
victim today. ed jp

The mountainous piles of profits rake a
shamelessly announced by monopoly in its ann
bear grim evidence of this colossal thieverY: gs)
“legal and proper” by the political “running dob
business. | rupti!

It is to end this regime of universal graft, coF eds 4:
plain highway robbery that the PT asks and ne Hf:
$24,000 to complete a long overdue task. ¥%
urgently needed. jt

Mail to this column or to the PT direct, and ie
you can. :

true”
“a
jal ©