: families, this number makes up
" jess than one percent of the Canadian

_ FAIR HOUSING
RENTAL SERVICE

must be established a Fair
Rental Service in every muni-
, where every apartment that is
in private, public and publicly-
ized housing would be listed. The
would also register and be re-
‘to vacancies on a first-come,
) basis. Such a service is
to free choice in housing and
ces: extension of public regu-
of housing accommodation.
is widespread and growing
tion against families with
in rental accommodation. This
people hard. The greatest
ties face those who are just
ing out in life, and those elderly
the process of transition from
of life to another. In other
‘those persons and families who
elp the most are excluded from
tance in our society.

TE COMMERCIAL HOUS.-
y vs, PUBLIC HOUSING

of government-guaranteed
have been eased somewhat to
inancing of some recreation and

social service space — providing it is
built into high-rise apartment blocks.
But the government will not help fin-
ance separate community centres that
are to be shared between a public hous-
ing project and surrounding privately-
owned residences.

The removal of educational costs
from local property taxes of home
owners, and its assumption by higher
levels of governments, is something
that is long overdue.

Urban development depends upon
speculative private capital, which ac-
count for the planless character of our
urban centres and the numerous con-
tradictions and anomalies that appear.

The rapid rise in urban population
results in many other changes, Ex-
press transit arteries are being built at
a rapid rate. Commercial construction
is developing more rapidly than the
building of homes and apartments.
Often good homes are torn down to
make way for these developments.
There are now plans afoot for much
larger expropriation and demolition of
residential property. In certain metro-
politan areas, more housing units are
demolished than what is presently be-
ing built.

Naturally this situation affects all
citizens in every walk of life. People
with sufficient income to own their own
private home are often in a desperate
position to find a suitable one. Subur-

ban living results in urban sprawl and
costly transportation to and from work,
in addition to high costs of land, build-
ing and recreational facilities.

Private investment capital is looking
for new ways to get into the big mar-
ket for housing accommodation. To the
extent that big corporate interests can
induce governments to spend public
funds to subsidize land and other serv-
ices to make housing a lucrative invest-
ment for private speculators, to that
extent only will such capital move into
the housing field. Experience has shown
that the mere manipulation of interest
rates, besides making housing too ex-
pensive for both home owners and ten-
ants, does not constitute sufficient
incentive for the greedy private inves-
tors.

This is precisely where the Paul Hell-
yer Federal Task Force on Housing and
Urban Development comes to the
rescue.

DECENT HOMES—YES!
DREAM monet THE AIR—

The main theme of the Hellyer re-
port is to pretend that private home
ownership can be expanded to every
family with an annual income of $5,500.
This is to be achieved in from two to
five years. This miracle is to be achiev-

Decent housing is a government responsibility

ed by enticing private capital into the
housing field with all stops removed.
Not even public housing is to be allow-
ed to interfere with the realization of
this utopia of lucrative profits for cap-
italists out of a tight housing market.

Roughly here is how it will work:
Loans of up to $30,000 for as long as
40 years amortization at 9 and % per-
cent and up—the sky being the limit.
This, mind you, without any down pay-
ment. This would mean monthly pay-
ments of $236, plus taxes, plus utilities,
plus upkeep for total of $400 per
month, or more. The amount of inter-
est over 40 years will come to over
$80,000 on top of the original $30,000
investment loan. What kind of salary
would be required to amortize this
huge sum? What bank or financial in-
stitution will guarantee such a loan,
without initial equity? It is rather ob-
vious that this will become more of a
problem than a solution. In the mean-
time, the root cause of private exploi-
tation will march on and get bigger,
while the need for real action on public
housing under public ownership and
control will become more and more
urgent.

Which brings up back to where we
started, which is precisely that private
speculation and the drive for private
profits are the source not the solution
for the deepening housing crisis in Can-
ada, as everywhere, under capitalism.

By RALPH THOMPSON

Big Biz government is attemp-
ting to dilute or, if possible,
eliminate the right to strike,
labor’s big stick.

British Columbia can now
designate as “essential services”
any industry it wants to. An ad-
visory board, made up of Big
Biz and, sad to relate, ex-labor
leaders, will do the dirty work.

Ontario’s Rand Commission
report would give judges the
power to forbid strikes on the
same grounds, Even now the
judiciary shows which side of
the fence it stands on by issuing
injunctions to companies limit-
ing the number of pickets or
even outlawing strikes per se.

The exception that proves the
rule was Manitoba Judge Freed-
man who produced a report re-
commending that labor be given
a big say in the introduction of
automation. This was ignored by
Big Biz and its servile govern-
ments.

The Federal Woods report
would also set up a board with
the powers to forbid strikes in
so-called “essential services.”

Labor has always had to fight
to establish and maintain its
rights. That the Big Biz press
gives the false impression that
public opinion is against the
workers doesn’t mean they
can‘t still beat back the bosses’
offensive, especially if they get
the support of all anti-establish-
ment forces. It’s a rule of
thumb that the oppression of
labor heralds the oppression of
all opposition.

There are major changes tak-
ing place in Canada’s trade
union structure aimed at resist-
ing this major anti-labor offen-
sive launched by Big Biz:

@ The 26,000-members United
Packinghouse workers and
13,000 Amalgamated Meat Cut-
ters and Butchers merged into
the Canadian Food Workers’

Union. The goal is to unite all
Canadian food workers into one
union.

e Four railway running trades
unions have merged into the
United Transportation Union
with 40,000 members in Canada.
The Canadian Brotherhood of
Railway, Transport and General
Workers (35,000 members) is
talking merger with the Brother-
hood of Railway, Airline and
Steamship Clerks (18,000 mem-
bers). A still-distant goal is one
Canadian federation of transport
unions.

@ The merger of the Interna-
tional Union of Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers and the Steel-
workers International Union pro-
duced Canada’s biggest indus-
trial union, Big Steel with 120,-
000 members.

Big Steel’s involved locals met
Jan. 10 in Sudbury to work out
a common strategy against Inco,
Stelco, and Algoma Steel plants,
all up for contract renewals in
1969 which will be a real crunch
year for labor. More than 250,-
000 workers in Ontario alone are
potential strikers this year.

They are fighting to maintain
their living standards, battered
by higher taxes and prices. Is
this merely self-interest as the
notorious Liberal-Labor gang
would have us believe? The lat-
ter want Canadian unions to cut
their links with the U.S. while
U.S. monopolies dominate our
economy. The trade union re-
sponse: “Canadian autonomy for
international unions yes, isola-
tion from the U.S. labor move-
ment, no.”

Profits are up 15 percent in
1968. Unemployment, the high-
est in any industrialized coun-
try, is the worst in six years and
this hits the workers the hardest.
At the same time, employment
opportunities are abnormally
limited because of the disastrous
Big Biz economic policy of
exporting raw goods with low
labor content while importing
the higher-labor-content indus-
trial equipment — in effect, im-

porting the automation-technolo-
gical revolution in toto.

Union power? Financially,
Inco alone makes more profit
annually than the total of all the
dues of all of Canada’s industrial
and transportation workers, Poli-
tically, labor has an enormous
potential which will be realized
when the workers become con-
vinced that the Big Biz Western
system is not their bag.

Capitalism is showing a con-
siderable degree of tolerance in
dealing with radical intellectuals,
tolerance not evident in the
above-documented attack on
labor.

Why? Big Biz knows the
radicals are impotent without
the backing of labor. Intellec-
tuals end up taking part in the
machinery of exploitation and
brainwashing although they are
themselves exploited.

Students are being trained for
privileged jobs although they’re
not as privileged as they used to
be. Privileged in comparison
with the workers whose before-
deduction average industrial
wage hits $106.50 a week.

Workers won't follow student
leaders. The only radical per-
spective is to link up with en-
lightened workers and their
leaders in a labor-intellectual,
not an intellectual-labor alliance.

Which means the radicals
have to decide on an option to
the present system giving the
workers a better deal. The work-
ing man will not join any crusade
and is generally contemptuous
of the hung-up, mystical radicals
so publicized by the Big Biz
press and patronized by the
Establishment’s Company of
Young Canadians.

It’s going to be painstaking
because the workers are stub-
born and very hard to mobilize
for dubious causes such as the
radical transformation of society
within the same Big Biz frame-
work. The name of the game has
to be scientific materialism, not
psychological idealism.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 28, 1969—Page 7