British Columbia

Tourism doesn’t need
more of public’s money

Tourism Vancouver (the name of the
Greater Vancouver Convention and
Tourism Marketing Association) was
turned down when it asked city council
fora grant of $695,000. The vote was 7-4;
it failed because decisions involving the
expenditures of funds require a two-
thirds majority.

Opposing the grant were the three
Committee of Progressive Electors
aldermen — Libby Davies, Bruce Erik-
sen and I — and also Non Partisan
Association Ald. Jonathan Baker. Sup-
porting it were Mayor Gordon Camp-
bell, the five other NPA aldermen and
“independent” Carole Taylor.

COPE aldermen support tourism in
Vancouver. It brings a lot of business to
the city. It claims to provide over 31,000
jobs in tourism-related businesses.

The tourist industry in Vancouver is
very profitable for its owners because
room rates are high and the wages of
hotel workers are often disgracefully low,
close to the minimum wage.

It’s a booming industry. Last year was
a good year for tourism. Business here
was up despite the fact that it was down
in other major Canadian tourist markets.
Tourists spent 12.28 per cent more on
hotel/motel accommodations in 1989
than in 1988.

Precisely because of this, tourism is
well able to pay its own way. There is no
justification for its demand that the tax-
payers pay its advertising bills. We have
plenty of other industries in Vancouver
that don’t ask for subsidies to carry on.
Why should Tourism Vancouver be

singed out for special patronage?

ourism Vancouver is already well
funded. A two-per-cent tax on hotel
rooms brings in $4.8 million. The pro-
vincial government contributes $425,000,
the federal government $90,000, and the
Greater Vancouver regional district
$65,000. The organization’s budget is
$7.6 million, of which one-fifth — $1.5
million — is contributed by the private
sector.

Tourism Vancouver spends its money
on a wide variety of promotional activi-
ties including expensive one-page ads in
U.S. daily papers. In response to Van-
couver city council refusing to fund it
further, it closed down two tourist
information centres and is making it
appear as if the city is to blame.

Tourism Vancouver was given subsi-
dies by the city in the past to help it get on
its feet. Now with ample funds and a big
budget it can take care of its own needs.

In actual fact our city taxpayers
already finance tourism in many other
ways. Tens of millions of dollars are
spent every year on the upkeep of the
city — its streets, its water supply, its
sewers, Queen Elizabeth park, Stanley
park, neighbourhood parks, art gallery,

Zoo, aquarium, planetarium and so on.
These are all tourist attractions. Van-
couver is a clean, well-kept city, thanks
to this financial support from the tax-
payers.

Mayor Campbell is now loudly urging
tourism operators to pressure the three
COPE aldermen and Ald. Baker to
change their minds and restore funding
to Tourism Vancouver. His enthusiasm:
for subsidies to business is not out of

character. Unfortunately, he doesn’t
show the same enthusiasm when it
comes to ordinary people.

He’s not urging developers to stop
demolition or to build affordable hous-
ing, nor is he urging citizens to pressure
the provincial government to bring in
some form of rent review legislation to
stop unjustified rent increases.

4

Nuclear ships ban
‘must be consistent

The decision by Vancouver city council
to refuse permission to dock a Soviet
nuclear-powered grain carrying ship in the
city’s port is being hailed by observers.

Now, they say, the city and port authori-
ties should follow this with a ban on all
nuclear-powered vessels and those possibly
carrying nuclear weapons.

Vancouver Ald. Bruce Eriksen, and
physicist and engineer Fred Knelman, said
the city and port should be consistent in
banning all nuclear-capable ships, including
those of the U.S. Navy.

City council voted unanimously March 6
to refuse a request by Morflot Freightliners
to dock the nuclear powered grain carrier
Sevmorput in the harbour. In 1988 council
voted narrowly to declare the harbour a
nuclear-weapons-free zone.

Last Tuesday’s vote was symbolic, since
the Vancouver Port Corp., a federal Crown
corporation, earlier denied the vessel entry
to the port, which is in its jurisdiction. The
federal government does not recognize
Vancouver’s vote, however, and continues
to allow nuclear-capable and nuclear-
powered U.S. Navy warships to pay visits.

“Obviously the vote was correct, but
they’re pretty hypocritical when it comes to
nuclear warships,” commented Ald. Bruce
Eriksen of the Committee of Progressive
Electors.

COPE aldermen Eriksen, Libby Davies
and Harry Rankin voted against the Mor-
flot request, but several members of the
dominant Non-Partisan Association have
continued to reject calls for a ban on U.S.
warships, the presence of which has sparked
several at-sea protests by Greenpeace and
other peace organizations.

“Tt would have been really nice if the U.S.
government asked permission to bring
nuclear weapons into our port. We’ve never
had a note from them, but we did get a nice
letter from the Morflot people,” Eriksen
said.

Morflot had made its request to city
council before applying to Transport Can-
ada for permission, saying it wanted coun-
cil’s opinion on the proposed visits.

The U.S. Navy’s policy is to neither con-

Trustees should submit ‘needs’ budgets

By BETTY GRIFFIN
The introductions of referendums to
raise money for schools as announced by
the Vander Zalm government is worse
than watching a really lousy movie a
second time but in slow motion.
On the other hand, the last time they

forced such a dumb thing in 1969, it took -
only a couple of years before the storms it .

aroused resulted in the defeat of the
Socreds in 1972.

So what is the proposition this time?
After a great long convoluted mathemati-
cal process, the ministry decides how
much can be spent in total for schools.
Simply put, they add up all the costs in
B.C. for the past year — $2.416 billion —
and tack on “an economic adjustment” of
6.17 per cent.. That amount is divided
among the school districts and if it isn’t
enough: to meet the school boards’
budgets, too bad — hold a referendum.
Ask. people to vote themselves a tax
increase! Of the 38 referendums held dur-
ing the 1969-72 period, only six passed.

Screams of anguish have already been
heard from the fastest growing schools
distficts such as Surrey, Langley, Coqui-
tlam, Abbotsford and Richmond when
board were given the dollar figures they’d
be getting a few days ago, the lowest in the

Commentary

province. Vancouver is trying to figure out
how to stretch $2 million to cover the
$41.6 million in “legitimate requests” that
have come in for extra services.

Adding insult to injury, boards have to
submit their budgets (in effect final
budgets) to Victoria by March 30. But the
government won’t announce what its new
school-tax formula will be until the legisla-
ture opens in the second week of April.

“No one knows whether that new sys-
tem will eliminate residential property
taxes or simply adjust the existing sharing
ratio of school budgets that is paid by the
government and residents,” The Van-
couver Sun reported March 1.

“Board chairman Bill Brown (Van-
couver) said it’s impossible for the board
to decide whether to go to referendum if it
doesn’t. know what the residential -tax
situation is.

“But education ministry spokesman
Sam Lim said the ministry doesn’t want
the boards to know how much school tax
residents will be paying before referen-
dum. He said the ministry wants boards to

decide one extra items in their budgets
based on real need, not on what they think
taxpayers can stand to pay without rebel-
ling.” the paper reported.

Should a referendum pass, however, it’s
only good for that one year, and a board
would have to go to referendum the fol-
lowing year, with probably even more
money needed.

There’s an interesting time line develop-
ing in all this mess. On March 30, all
school board budgets must be in to Victo-
ria although it will be April or May before
there is the legislation necessary to legalize
referendums. I hope the NDP opposition
filibusters this on. The most important
thing right now is for boards, parents,
teachers and CUPE to stop the legislation
and for boards to submit budgets based on
the needs of their schools.

Should the legislation pass, boards will
have to advertise three weeks ahead of
having a referendum (suggested cost in
North Vancouver, $250,000). Obviously
that would put it in well into May. And,
isn’t that when the Zalm is supposed to
call an election? This scenario is more
interesting that the Mad Hatter’s tea
party.

Betty Griffin is a former teacher who
lives in North Vancouver.

2 ¢ Pacific Tribune, March 12, 1990

Visits of U.S. nuclear warships protested.

firm nor deny the presence of nuclear wea-
pons on board its vessels.

Fred Knelman took exception to the port
corporation’s distinction between nuclear
weapons and nuclear reactors in defending
its decision to continue allowing U.S. war-
ships to visit.

“One could never scientifically determine
which is safer,” said Knelman, a professor
who holds doctorates in physics and engi-
neering and has studied nuclear power for
the past 30 years.

No matter how slight the possibility of an
accident with nuclear weapons or reactors,
or the benefits derived from such vessels, the
potential damage in lives and material costs
make their presence in a city harbour an
“unacceptable risk,” he said.

“And neither the U.S. nor Soviet navies
will insure against a worst possible scena-
rio,”’ Knelman, author of books on nuclear
technology and the arms race, said. _

Knelman took issue with remarks by
NPA Ald. Philip Owen that the U.S. Navy
would be more competent to handle a
nuclear mishap that a civilian Soviet crew.

“People like Owen are confusing the
issue, particularly when the navy will not
allow us on board their vessels in the case of
an accident.”

He said the possibility of a rupture in the
wall around a reactor, a meltdown or a fire
engulfing nuclear weapons might be “low
probability, but not a zero probability.”

A nuclear explosion in such cases is
impossible, but a nuclear leak, particularly
of the plutonium oxide in warheads — the
“most dangerous radioactive isotope” — is
quite possible and could cause thousands of
cases of cancer and cost billions of dollars,
Knelman warned.

He also noted that “‘no visit by a nuclear
warship is innocent — they are on an
operational program 24 hours a day.

“City council ought to be consistent with
its positions.”

Peace groups have reported hundreds of
accidents involving nuclear vessels of the
U.S. Navy since the 1950s.

In a 1987 report commissioned by the

Canadian Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War, University of California biol-
ogy professor Dr. W. Jackson Davis
warned of the effects of nuclear accidents at
the Canadian Forces base at Esquimalt:
He wrote that a warhead accident could

create a radioactive cloud of plutonium- |

239, causing between 15 to 3,400 “latent
cancer fatalities” depending on how far the

cloud spread — possibly as far as Van- |

couver.

Regarding a reactor mishap, Davis said a —

100-megawatt naval propulsion reactor

could produce more than 1,500 latent
cancer fatalities and ‘tan equal number of |

casualties from severe genetic defects.

TRIBUNE PHOTO

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— DAN KEETON

Sian — aa igippmati ee