BRITISH COLUMBIA

Harcourt backs

Unity in the Vancouver civic and provin-
cial electoral races reached a new plateau
Oct. 10 when outgoing mayor Mike Har-
court and mayoral candidate Harry Rankin
exchanged pledges of support.

Harcourt, the third-term mayor who had
been elected along with Rankin and other
Committee of Progressive Electors candi-
dates with the active backing of organized
labor, called COPE’s senior alderman “Mr.
Mayor-to-be” while pledging his support
for COPE candidates.

“Keeping the progressive majority on
council — that’s. what this election’s all
about,” Harcourt told a crowd of COPE
supporters at a pre-screening session airing
five soon to be released COPE television
advertisements.

Rankin, a 20-year veteran of Vancouver
city council, said COPE supporters are
working to ensure victory in Harcourt’s
candidacy for MLA in the Vancouver Cen-
tre riding. Harcourt is running along with
veteran New Democrat MLA Emery
Barnes in the two-seat riding.

“The key issue in this election is whether

Vancouver will be a city for (real estate)
developers or a city for its people,” Rankin,
flanked by other COPE council candidates,
asserted.

The aldermanic candidates, each of
whom said a few words to the supporters,
include incumbents Bruce Yorke, Bruce
Eriksen and Libby Davies along with
Carole Walker —a former Harcourt
running-mate — labor council secretary
Frank Kennedy, school board chair Pauline
Weinstein and End Legislated Poverty
leader Jean Swanson.

COPE has left three of the 10 council
seats open to its election partners, the Civic
Independents, a modern reform group
initially led by Harcourt. Its three candi-
dates include incumbent Bill Yee, along
with Van City credit union president David
Leviand University of B.C. faculty member
Sandra Bruneau.

The alliance for the 1986 civic race paral-
lels that struck in the past two elections,
whereby the Vancouver and District Labor
Council has endorsed, and provided finan-
cial backng for, a “unity slate” of reform

Unfair awards favor
big property owners

If you are a property owner you'll
know that assessment time is here
again. The B.C. Assessment Authority
has informed Vancouver city council of
some significant changes and problems
this year.

@ The market value of residential
properties has increased by some 5 to
10 per cent;

® Strata title properties have not
increased in value;

@ Residential rental apartments have
increased 5 to 20 per cent;

@ The value of most downtown
commercial properties has not changed,
although in specialized areas such as
Robson Street, Chinatown and South
Main land values have gone up as high
as 100 per cent.

@ The value of industrial properties
has shown little change.

There are, of course, exceptions to all
of the above general statements.

The assessed value of properties, on
which taxes are based, is supposed to be
the market value of the properties. In
the case of residential properties this is
relatively easy to establish because of
the large volume of sales. In the case of
commercial and industrial properties,
where sales are few, a different method
is used to determine their market value.

The method used consistently under-
estimates their real market value, with
the result that they do not pay their fair
share of taxes. A consequence is that
homeowners have to pay still more to
make up for this inequity.

Now this unfair system of assess-
ment is being made still more unfair.

Some hotels and office buildings in
the downtown area appealed their
assessment on the grounds their occu-
pancy level was low. In other words
they are stating that since their profita-
bility is down, their assessment and
taxes should go down.

This approach is being upheld by
various assessment appeal boards as
well as by the courts. What makes this
even more unfair is that the appeals
were launched when occupancy rates
were low, but the new low assessment
they seek would apply even during
Expo when occupancy rates were 100
per cent and when room rates had gone
up on an average of 70 per cent.

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 15, 1986

Some owners of strata-titled build-
ings that are rented are making a sim-
ilar case. (Suites in strata-titled buildings
are sold; in apartments they are rented.)
When a building is strata-titled its
market value increases by some 20 to 25
per cent as compared to when it was an
apartment building.

The owners of these strata-titled

“buildings are now claiming that these
are no different than apartment build-
ings and therefore the assessments
should be based not on the market
value of strata-titled buildings but on
their value as an income venture. This
approach has also been upheld by an
assessment appeal board and is now
going to the Supreme Court.

What we have here is a.concerted
effort by the owners of commercial
properties to change the whole system
of assessment. If they are successful it
would mean big tax breaks for them

that would result in increased taxes for
residential properties.

If these owners are successful in
court it could mean appeals could be
launched by hundreds of more owners
to the detriment of residential owners.

The provincial government, which is
responsible for the assessment laws and
which appoints the assessment appeal
boards, is doing nothing about these
cases. It supports lower taxes for big
business. If the cases go to the Supreme
Court of Canada this could take up to
five years.

What the provincial government
should do immediately is to review the
wording of the assessment laws to
make it absolutely clear that the
assessed value of properties will be
based on the market value and only the
market value, and that the profitability
of the property has nothing to do with
its assessed value.

VANCOUVER MAYOR MIKE HARCOURT (r) WITH COPE CANDIDATES...

maintaining council’s progressive majority top priority. of

candidates consisting of COPE and the
Civic Independents.

Formal endorsement of the COPE can-
didates will take place at the Oct. 21 labor
council meeting in the IWA hall in Van-
couver. Traditionally, the labor council cir-
culates a slate card bearing the names of the
COPE-Unity candidates.

Although the public profile of COPE and
the civic election has diminished somewhat
in recent weeks, with some COPE staff
volunteering their efforts for the provincial
race, the pace will pick up after Oct. 22 as
NDP and Communist Party workers head
back to the COPE campaign office at 108 E.
Broadway St.

Even with the provincial election taking
the spotlight, the itinerary of Rankin
released by the COPE office shows a busy
month of public addresses to trade unions,
community organizations and business
groups. s

Set for release are several television ads
featuring Rankin and several of the COPE
council candidates speaking on various

“aspects of the alliance’s policy. Most visu-

ally striking is one featuring a video gra-
phics display in which random pieces of a
puzzle form a picture of the council incum-
bents.

Memorial for Darshan Singh
hits fundamentalist terror

Members of Vancouver’s East Indian
community, the Communist Party, the
International Woodworkers and the
Committee of Progressive Electors pledged
their efforts to “strengthening the bonds of
friendship between the working people of
Canada and India” and their opposition to
the right-wing political terrorism that seeks
to separate the state of Punjab from India at
the memorial service of a prominent Indian
politician and former [WA organizer Sun-
day.

Darshan Singh Canadian, a former
Communist Party member of Parliament in

the Punjab and an organizer for the [WA

in British Columbia in the 1940s, was the
latest in a series of victims right-wing separ-
atists have claimed both in India and in
B.C. — but his life’s work will be carried
on, speakers at the memorial in Vancouv-
er’s IWA hall pledged.

“If he were alive today, he’d say, “here is
where your fight is on fundamentalism.
You carry it out here and I will be satis-
fied,’ ” COPE alderman Harry Rankin told
some 200 people who had come-to pay
tribute to Canadian, assassinated three
weeks ago in his native Punjab.

“We have got to produce a city that
allows for all people to work to prosper and
to not be divided by the kind of fundamen-
talism that finally took Darshan Singh
Canadian’s life,” Rankin, one of Canadi-
an’s several friends in attendance, asserted.

Canadian was killed for exposing “those

The voice-over on the ad stresses city |) yf
council’s practice of balancing the operating |
budget with the use of city financial reserves }
while preserving city jobs and services, in
opposition to the NPA Policy of service cuts
and layoffs. While the aspects of COPE’s
budget policies may seem “puzzling” to
voters, in the end the picture all “fits })
together,” the ad advises. |

Another features Rankin in one of his })
noted jogs around the Stanley Park seawall.
At the conclusion the alderman crosses a })
finish line under the “Harry Rankin for | g
mayor” banner.

Rankin at the session also introduced
COPE’s candidates for parks and an v
boards. While noting that many of COPE’s
candidates are working people who could
not nee the daytime event, he called those |
in attendance up to the front i
the Plaza 500 Hotel. ee a

Candidates for the nine-sea
board include eight COPE ae
Sadie Kuehn, Bill Darnell, John Church,
Carmela Allevato, Chris Allnutt, Phil Ran- i
kin, Gary Onstad and Charles Ungerleider,
along with newcomer Susan Dahlin. Parks
board candidates are incumbents Pat Wil.
S005 as Harris and Connie Fogal, with |

ike Chrunik, Tim Louis '
i , Joe Arnaud and”

who play into the hands of imperialist pow- ~
ers,” charged Soham Sangha of the Indo-
Canadian Friendship Association in linking
the Khalistan separatist movement with the —
effort of the CIA to destabilize India.

Ujjal Dosanjh, a prominent New Demo- —
crat who narrowly escaped death himself ~
two years ago in an attack in Vancouver,
recalled that former U.S. ambassador to the —
United Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, had
labelled India as an “enemy” of the U.S. and ©
Pakistan, the neighboring state which har-
bors members of the fundamentalist separa- —
tist movement, as a “friend.”

B.C. Communist Party leader Maurice
Rush, recalling that Canadian returned to —
India from Canada in 1948 following —
India’s independence from Britain “because —
he could not be happy knowing he was not
part of his people’s struggle,” said: “We —
demand that the Canadian government —
take strong action and put an end to (the ~
separatists’) campaign of fear and terror in ~
Canada.”

Also addressing the meeting were econ-
omist and former friend of Canadian’s,
Emil Bjaranson, Gurnam Singh of the East
Indian Workers Association, Chin Banerjee ~
of the Indian Peoples Association of North
America, Clay Perry of the [WA, Jarnail —
Singh Shandal of Sharomi Sikh Sewak Dal
and Indo-Canadian Women for Freedom
and Peace representative, Balbir Kaur
Dhanwant.

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