VANCOUVER —

Nov. 17

You may have had to have been
asleep not to notice, but in case there’s
anyone who’s forgotten, this Satur-
day is election day.

Nov. 17 is the day when voters
around the province trek to the polls
to elect what trade unionists and civic
progressives hope will be increased
majorities for progressive candidates
in municipalities around B.C.

In Vancouver, the Committee of
Progressive Electors has hundreds of
“E- Day” volunteers in the largest
campaign the labor-backed civic
organization has run — but hundreds
more are still needed, COPE officials
says.

Door-knocking and_ telephoning
the declared and potential supporters
of COPE and Mayor Mike Har-
court’s Civic Independents — both
on a unity slate supported by several
trade unions and the Vancouver and
District Labor Council — are. the
tasks.

“Experienced campaign workers
say that each election worker can
produce up to 50 additional votes —
and that’s the kind of arithmetic we
need to win this election,” said COPE
campaign manager Fred Wilson.

Following the day’s work, COPE’s
volunteers are invited to see in the
election returns at the victory celebra-
tion held at the Sheraton Plaza 500
hotel, corner of Cambie and East 12th
streets.

The number to phone is 875-9188.

Elect these
candidates

This is the unity slate put forward
by the Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors, in conjunction with the Civic
Independents and backed by the
Vancouver and District Labor Coun-
cil:

MAYOR
Mike Harcourt

COUNCIL
(COPE):
Libby Davies
Bruce Eriksen
Wes Knapp
Harry Rankin
Jean Swanson
Bruce Yorke

(Civic Independents):
Reva Dexter

Ron Johnson

Carol Walker

Bill Yee

SCHOOL BOARD
Carmela Allevatc
Chris Allnutt

John Church

Bill Darnell

Gary Onstad

Jim Quail

Phil Rankin
Charles Ungerleider
Pauline Weinstein

PARK BOARD
Joe Amaud
Mike Chrunik
Connie Fogal
Susan Harris
Tim Louis
Michael O’Neill
Pat Wilson

Continued from page 1
manager Fritz Bowers in a report to coun-
cil’s Nov. 6 meeting — a meeting at which
the aldermen from the Socred-backed NPA
were forced to repudiate Ritchie’s remarks.

But, even though aldermen Don Bellamy
and George Puil joined Mayor Mike Har-
court and the aldermen from the Commit-
tee of Progressive Electors (COPE) in
calling the proposed bill “appalling,”
recent revelation has linked the NPA — or
at least, its newer elements — with Ritchie’s
attempted bludgeoning of the city.

COPE has released a letter sent Oct.
30 — two days before the municipal affairs
minister’s announcement — from NPA
candidate Gordon Campbell to Al Weston
of the Champlain Heights strata corpora-
tion. The letter, on Campbell’s personalized
election stationery, proposes that the issue
of converting the corporation’s leasehold
status with the city to one of ownership of
the land be brought up at the corporation’s
next meeting.

“J am writing you because if elected
alderman this November 17 I would like to

immediately examine the conversion of °

Champlain Heights leasehold properties to
freehold situation,’ wrote Campbell, a

‘former realtor with Canadian Pacific’s

realty corporation, Marathon.

Saying that it is time the city re-examined
the “strategic” value of its land banking, the
NPA hopeful painted the proposed pur-
chase by the strata corporation of the city
land as a “win-win situation — where you
will win by having a free hold rather than
leasehold property and the city will win by
having some capital available for the acqui-
sition of strategically located land elsewhere
in the city.”

Not only was Campbell’s proposal suspi-
ciously akin to Ritchie’s subsequent
announcement — and hence at odds with
the sentiments expressed by the NPA
incumbents — but it’s based on questiona-

TER? Council hits Socred meddling
Tiere as riftin NPA ranks widens

BRUCE ERIKSEN

BRUCE YORKE

ble logic as well, Ald. Bruce Yorke of COPE
pointed out.

“It would seem that, judged on the past
performance of the fund, that it is far more
profitable and financially sound for the city
to retain and even increase its holdings,”
Yorke, an economist, told the Tribune.

“The NPA aldermen may condemn Rit-
chie’s gross interference in the city’s elec-
tions, but this letter suggests more than a
casual link between some of the NPA can-
didates’ proposals and Socred policies,”
said Yorke.

There are those who think Ritchie was |

tossing his NPA soulmates an anchor rather
than a life preserver with his intended legis-
lation. For while it united council in
unanimous condemnation of the move, it
also showed the divisions that plague the
right-wing civic alliance.

Certainly the move toward privatization
entailed in Campbell’s proposal is the soul
and essence of Socred philosophy and prac-
tice. But that policy has increasingly proved
to be a disaster on the provincial scene, and
while it may seem attractive to the realtors
and other business types among the NPA’s
up-and-coming, experienced incumbents
know that the fund has made Vancouver an
island of balanced budgets and sound credit
ratings within a sea of layoffs, service cut-

backs and unemployment resulting from
provincial “restraint”.

But debate on the issue during the council
meeting also brought out the long-standing
differences between COPE and the Har-
court forces, and the right-wing over how
the fund should be used.

Retiring NPA Ald. Warnett Kennedy
used the occasion to attack COPE and Har-
court for voting, during the past two annual
budgets, to transfer monies accruing from
the fund’s yearly interest to general.
revenues. Kennedy called the act, through
which the city has balanced the budget
while maintaining city workers’ jobs and the
services they provide with only a minimum |
tax increase in 1984, “raiding.”

That brought an angry retort from ie
COPE aldermen. Yorke, who called Rit-
chie’s announced legislation “tan unwar-
ranted and unacceptable interference into”
an election campaign,” pointed out that the
fund was established “to serve the city’s
public objectives” and that only the interest,
rather than the principal, had been appl
to the budget.

Yorke also reminded Puil of his carla
proposal to take $20 million from the fund
to pay for the construction of the new Cam
bie Street Bridge.

Ald. Bruce Eriksen came armed with an
analysis showing that a recent proposal by ~
NPA mayoral candidate Bill Vander Zalm
to trim the city’s staff by attrition would
result in the loss — based on an attrition
rate of five per cent — of 280 civic jobs. —

“It is more than coincidence that the
NPA voted in the spring of 1984 against
using the revenues from the property
endowment fund to balance the city budget.
the NPA policy would have resulted in the |
loss of 300 jobs,” he said.

“The use of the word ‘raid,’ cheapens the
debate,” said Harcourt, pointing out that
finance director Peter Leckie had told coun-
cil the use of property endowment fund
interest for the budget was a valid policy
decision. %

This has been a rather strange civic elec-
tion campaign, different from previous
campaigns in several respects.

This time all the right wing and big
business-backed civic organizations (the
Civic Non-Partisan Association and The
Electors Action Movement) are united in
one slate and are backed by the leaders of
all three right wing political parties: Social
Credit, the Conservatives and the Liber-
als.

The reform forces are together in a
unity slate, backed by the trade union
movement and community organizations,
with the Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors as its driving force and spark plug. So
we have more of a polarization between
the people-backed forces and the cor-
porate-backed forces than ever before.

The second new aspect of this civic elec-
tion campaign concerns election plat-
forms.

The NPA has no election platform. It
has no specific answers or even proposals
on any of the major issues facing city
voters.

Like Ronald Regan, it is relying on gen-
eralizations. It is advocating elimination of
the “confrontation that now exists with
the provincial government;” a “high level
task force” to study Expo 86; “speeding up
traffic and transit flows;” a re-assessment
of our “regulatory system” with a view to
“deregulation;” resolution of the problem
of “rapidly increaed densities” in an
“orderly fashion.” But in no case does it

City’s right-

spell out what it actually means or what it
proposes to do.

Ronald Reagan had the same type of
campaign in the United States. He was in
favor of the “American family,” the
“American heritage,’ and a “strong

America under God.” (The Reagan image
of God is, of course, that of a white Amer-
ican (not a Black or a Chicano,) 10 feet tall
and with a gun on each hip).

I was about to say that we won’t know
what the NPA-Socred-TEAM election
platform is until after the election — that

is, if any substantial number of them are
elected.

But that wouldn’t be quite accurate. We
know what Bill Vander Zalm and the
NPA stand for — more cutbacks, more
layoffs, more “restraint,” all at the expense
of working people and services to people.
And Vander Zalm wants to take us one
step further, to make city council just an
agency of the provincial government, with
city taxpayers paying the huge losses being
incurred by Expo 86 and ALRT.

COPE, in sharp contrast, has a very
clear and detailed platform revolving

wing has no platform ©

around the issues of jobs, economic
growth in the city, housing that peoplecan }
afford, maintenance of services to people i
without any layoff of civic staff, a school —
board that will fight hard to maintain lev-_ |
els of education now being eroded by the —
Social Credit government, and a parks |
board that will develop our parks to serve —
the needs of our own people and not just —
wealthy tourists. >
COPE will also see to it that Vancouver —
taxpayers are not stuck with the bills for
Expo 86 and the ALRT, the two most
mismanaged projects in the city’s history.
The third feature of this campaign is
that the NPA—Socred-TEAM slate is
relying entirely on TV and radio ads, plus
the efficient election machine of the
Socred and Conservative parties.
COPE on the other hand, is taking the
issues to the people by leaflets, in com-
munity meetings, in a telephone campaign
and in canvassing. Ours is a people’s gra
roots campaign involving people in dis- |
cussions and urging them to act to defend
their own interests against the Socred-
NPA attack.
I should add that this year’s COPE
campaign is by far the biggest in its h
tory. Well over a thousand people
actively involved in our campaign. ©
We expect not only to hold our own
to make some substantial gains. We a
fighting hard to get elected and we
fight equally hard after election to imp!
ment our election pledges.

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 14, 1984