EXPRESS
LANE
$50 OR LESS

-

Sun's tears over landlord's —
plight phoney says Ald. Rankin

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Fulfilling its role as defender of
the Corporate Elite, the Vancouver

- Sun has once again come out in
support of the big real estate
developers and apartment owners
in their demand for thé abolition of
rent controls.

The incident triggering the
avalanche of tears by the Sun over
the plight of landlords was the
announcement by its old real
estate friend, Wall & Redekop, that
it was going out of the rental
housing market. ‘‘Renting no
longer makes a ‘satisfactory

profit,” the Sun lamented in its
editorial ““Tax Shelters, anyone?”
on August 25, adding that an

- apartment is a ‘“‘proven loser.’’ The
major reason for this, the Sun
declared, was ‘‘the 10 month old
rent freeze’ and it also blamed
rent controls for the current
housing shortage.

The Sun’s assertions are, as they
politely say nowadays, without
foundation in fact. Another way of
putting it would be to say they’rea
lot of crap.

I would be the last to deny that
there are some small landlords for
whom rent controls have created

some difficulties. But no big lan- |

dlords or real estate developers
have produced any evidence that

they are losing money. Their profit
picture shows just the opposite —
they’re still making money hand
over fist.

Rents aren’t frozen, as the Sun
claims, they are permitted to go up
10.6 per cent a year. New apart-
ments are exempted from rent
control for five years. The trouble
with the big finance and real estate
companies (which own most of the
apartments in the Vancouver
area) is that they are never
satisfied. When they make a profit
of 15 per cent on their investment,
they want 30, and when they make
30 per cent they want 60. There is
no. Such thing as a Satisfied real
estate developer.

And in no way can rent controls
be blamed for the housing shortage
in this province. Every city in
Canada has a housing shortage.
Ours in B.C. is compounded by the
great attraction that our city has
for people from all parts of Canada
including new immigrants. Long
before rent controls were imposed.
the real estate people and the
finance people went out of the
business of building moderate
priced rental accommodation.
They are building only high priced
apartments and high priced
condominiums because that’s
where they get the highest profits.

So the cause of. our housing
shortage is the failure of private
enterprise to build needed housing
plus the failure of governments at
all levels to take up the slack.

Rent controls, the Sun editors

claim, are “‘self-defeating, doing’

more harm than good.”

For whom, I would ask.

If rent controls are abolished ‘‘to:
help restore incentive to lan-
dlords’”’ as the Sun demands, rents
would immediately double. That
would make the Sun’s big business
associates very happy, but what
about the tenants? For them it
would mean even less money for
food and clothing. And if the
abolition of rent controls did result
in the building of more apart-
ments, the rents would be so high
that the ordinary citizen couldn’t
afford them anyway.

The state “‘can’t fill.the gap in
rental housing’’ the Sun says,
“private enterprise will do it if
anyone can.”’ And it concludes with
this gem of corporate arrogance,
“Like it or not our world must be
made safe for the Wall &
Redekops.”’ :

Unfortunately the world, at least
our Western world, is still safe for
the Wall & Redekops, the CPR,

B.C. Tel, General Motors, Interna- _

See RANKIN pg. 11

VI regional district
hits CP rail action

The Cowichan Valley Regional
District has decided to submit a
resolution to the upcoming con-
vention of the Union of B.C.
Municipalities expressing strong
disapproval of the Canadian

. Transport Commission’s decigion

to allow the CPR to withdraw
ticket agents from E & N stations
on Vancouver Island.

The CPR has also filed an ap-

. plication with the CTC seeking

permission to discontinue the
passenger’ service to Courtenay,
claiming that the rail trestles are
unsafe. Under the plan to: abolish
ticket agents from E & N stations,
CP rail has offered to set up a
customer service in Vancouver to
“look after’? passenger service on
Vancouver Island.

Blasting the CPR’s action,
members of the Cowichan Valley
Regional District suggested that
the CPR should use some of the
revenue it derives from land and
mineral grants to upgrade the E &
N line. ‘“Why don’t they spend part
of their revenue on repairing the

-bridges that are unsafe near

Parksville,”’ one said.

The motion to submit the
resolution to the UBCM parley was
made by Saltair director J. F.
Dobell, who said removal of the
ticket agents could be the thin end
of the wedge. “If we do not object
strongly, the CPR will gradually
erode the service until it’s gone.”
Representatives from _ other
centres which make up the

Cowichan Valley Regional District

proposed that if the E & N line is
uneconomical “‘why don’t we get to —

the root of the problem and take
the property back.”’

The CPR acquired the E & Nline |
from the Dunsmuir interests in —

mineral deposits, and invaluable |

real estate property from’ which |
the CPR has made hundreds of —

1908, along with the railway grant
of hundreds of thousands of square
miles for rich forest land, rich

millions of dollars.

Now the CPR wants to scuttle the |
especially its |
passenger service, while holding |
it has |

railway, and

on to the vast wealth

acquired from. the government's
grant.

B.C. HOUSING
MOST COSTLY

According ‘to a report released
last week by the Canadian Real

Estate Association, B.C. had the

highest-cost housing in Canada. |
highest —

Vancouver had _ the
average house price in the country.

The report said that both B.C.
and Ontario registered increases,

and that the average price of real —

estate rose in Canada by 9.3 per
cent during the first six months of
1975.

The average house price in
Vancouver was listed as $56,815.

Peace and stability now reign in the Mekong Delta of the Republic of
South Vietnam. Where only a few months ago the U.S. military was on
a rampage, now people are back at work, rebuilding their lives. Above, 4 —
fishing boat being brought ashore at the port of Rach Gia.

U.S. congressional bruhaha, better knew to many as
pecs marked the end of an era-in these United
States. Oh no, it didn’t mean that a highly monopolized
__ industrial-military ruling caste and all their assorted
- eriminal agencies had had a “change of heart.”’ Nothing
like that. It simply meant a change of tactics in the fine
art of murder, conspiracy, covering-up. To remain a
marauding killing wolf pack, meantime garb itself in
oversized ‘“‘sheep’s clothing’ to make killing and
aggression less obvious.

Its ““guidelines’’ before Watergate was basically that of -

“containing Communism’ by every foul and fascist
means possible. In the era since Watergate that is still its
“‘guideline,”’ but from a new and even more contemptible
stance. Watergate removed a criminal president, no less
violent, cruel and incredible than a whole raft of his
predecessors, making sure that his appointees would
grant him a ‘“‘pardon”’ well in advance, and making sure
also that this appointee would serve his monopoly co-
conspirators, thus earning for himself the sobriquet of an

“honest” man. A lot of Canadians are not unacquainted —

with such ‘“‘Honest Johns”’ (or Jerrys) as the case may be.

The style now gaining popularity is to ‘“‘deplore”’
violence, loudly and at every opportunity, while at the
same time never slackening in their efforts to instigate

“PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 5, 1975—Page 2

violence, then load the blame upon the working class! To
become the most ardent and loud advocates of “‘peace,”’
meantime conspiring day and night for its opposite —
war. Coexistence and detente, designed to bring millions
of peoples living in differing social systems together in
peace and friendship, is sneered at, ridiculed, sabotaged,
with a muted dependence upon atom bomb stockpiles,
nuclear bases and ‘“‘patriotic’’ hogwash, rather than
detente.

The exposure of CIA-FBI and other conspiratorial plots

surfaced at Watergate and John Q. Public became hip to’

what kind of an Establishment wants to rule the world by
“containing Communism.” He got a gutfull up to the gills.

_CIA assassination plots such as the one to eliminate

Cuba’s Fidel Castro, akin to the one which did eliminate
Salvadore Allendi and Chilean democracy;-of other plots
that did eliminate heads of state, among them some of
their own puppet setups, who could no longer, or refused
to carry out Washington’s containment policies. Boom,
they were ‘‘rubbed out” in the latest CIO-Al Capone
technique. In fact Al spent much less time “conspiring”

_ than did (and do) his more modern experts.

Having experienced the same problem as the fabled
Lady Macbeth, that of washing the blood Vietnamese and
other murders from their hands, in order to trick and
scare the hell out of the American people at one and the
same time, it now becomes fitting that these arch killers
should appear to tone down their lust for blood and
conquest, and don an ill-becoming garb of ‘‘sheep’s
clothing.” Super in everything, they-now must needs be
super-hypocrites.

Thus a Ford pontificates to a Brezhnev about ‘‘hands off
Portugal’”’ while his CIA minions and kindred mer-
cenaries and fascists spread counterrevolution and death

upon the Portuguese people — just recently free from a

quarter of a century of the fascist dictatorship of Salazar.
But say these Yankee canaile, with all the piety of a saint,
“‘we are all for the revolution!”’ In the diplomatic double
talk of a Kissinger, that means ‘‘we are all for burying the
revolution, just asin Chile . . . or as we would have liked to
do in Cuba.”

And the media, TV and press services, “their’s not to |

reason why, their’s but to open their mouths and lie,”
repeat or anticipate the hypocritical profundities of a

decadent ruling caste, to create and distribute confusion,

to make the blackest reaction sound ‘“‘objective,”’ to foster
fascism in the name of democracy and freedom and to
play its historic role as a “‘brass check’’ press in the
service of Big Business, and Big Business alone. :

If you missed or overlooked its reportage on Chilean
events, just listen in carefully to its reportage on Por-
tugal. It bears all the earmarks of the new era since
Watergate, with a special emphasis on the ‘‘containment
of communism.”

“We are. opposed to fascism, but we are not averse ‘to
fascism winning this time around!” That is the brass
check “guideline” today!

—_ TRIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3,

193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-8108
Business and Circulation Manager, FRED WILSON
Subscription Rate: Canada, $6.00 one year; $3.50 for six months;
North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $7.00
All other countries, $8.00 one year

Second class mail régistration number 1560 |