\

LOTTSA LUCK BABY.
YEAH, YOULL NEED IT,

Cont'd from pg. 1
annually since 1970 in Metropolitan
Vancouver.

“Just one year ago,’’ Thompson
said, ‘‘there were 2,866 applicants
on the waiting lists of the B.C.
Housing Management Commission
for low income rental housing. On
May 31 of this year there were 5,771
applicants — an increase of 103%.

“Our estimate indicates that by
the end of 1975 the Lower Mainland
will be upward of 70,000 units in
short supply.

“All this serves to demonstrate
that continued reliance on the
private sector to provide the basic
shelter needs of the growing Lower
Mainland population will only
produce a deepening crisis for

TEAM, NPA

A city council

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Our TEAM-NPA City Council is
getting ready to spend another big
chunk of taxpayer money on the
Granville Mall. The businessmen

DERA wins
board votes

Following up a_ successful
campaign in Downtown Com-
munity Resource Board elections
held earlier this month, the
Downtown Eastside Residents
Association also placed two of its
members in the key positions on
the board.

Libby Davies, community
organizer and treasurer for DERA,
was elected chairman of the
resource board while Chris Gray,
DERA member, was successful in
her bid for secretary.

Downtown East Side Residents
Association president Bruce
Eriksen was elected as_ the
delegate to the Vancouver
Resource Board, made up of
delegates from all local boards.

All but two of the 15 candidates
elected to the Downtown Com-
munity Resources Board were
members of DERA, a testament to
the community work carried out by
the organization since its inception
some two years ago.

there want some improvements,
and when they beckon, City
Council runs.

And don’t be misled by the
propaganda that the _ im-
provements are to help people —

~ by the installation of a few ben-
| ches, flower pots, covered bus

stops and more Christmas lights.
In terms of expenditures, these are
chicken feed — a few thousand
dollars. One big expenditure you
may not hear so much about is the
allocation of $2.7 million for a new
parking lot to benefit (according to
the report of the city manager), the
“patrons of fine restaurants” in
the Granville Mall.

By an ironic coincidence, the $2.7
million that our TEAM-NPA
business-oriented council proposes
to spend to help out the property
owners and merchants along
Granville is exactly the same
amount it turned down for housing
for the poor people of the downtown
eastside area. Council refused to
help these poor people who
desperately need housing (and if
the city had put in $2.7 million, the
federal government would have
brought the total up to $27 million),
yet it is quite willing to spend this
amount of your money and mine to
enhance the profits of business
interests.

The other big expenditure that
our TEAM-NPA aldermen and
ee

for the wealthy

mayor did not tell you about when
the Granville Mall was undertaken
was the great amount of extra
money required for _ police
protection.

It costs about $30,000 a year to’

keep a policeman on the beat. And
that’s not counting all the backup
to keep a policeman on the beat.
Nor does it include all the backup
services at the police station. Now
City Council wants to build a new
police sub-station at the Granville
Mall and to assign additional police
to patrol the area. Just assigning 25
more policemen to this area will
cost taxpayers $750,000 a year
(again not counting the backup
services.) This is just one more
way in which you and I subsidize
the big business interests in this
area of the city.

Voters have always been under
the impression (perhaps I should
say illusion) that City Council is
there to conduct the people’s
business. It would be more ac-
curate to say it is there to conduct
some people’s interests — those of
the wealthy.

STOP EVICTIONS

The Canadian Civil Liberties
Association in Toronto has asked
the Ontario government to draft
legislation to protect tenants from
eviction because of their activities
in tenants groups.

“\ Labor outlines housing |
|program at conference |

those on low and moderate in-
come.”’ :

The VLC’s proposals were met
with silence from the developers
who found an embarrassing
situation in their own failure to
respond with any definitive plan of
action.

That appraisal was shared by the
only tenant spokesman at the
conference, British Columbia
Tenant Organization president
Bruce Yorke. ‘‘It was quite clear,”
Yorke told the Tribune, ‘‘that apart
from the Vancouver Labor
Council, nobody had a plan.”

Yorke was critical of the poor
leadership from the provincial
government which he said reduced
the conference to a “‘talk fest.”
“‘There was no document produced
for the conference or during it,” he
said, ‘“‘there was no proposal for
action at all.”

He was also critical of the
composition of the conference
which in addition to himself had
only two delegates from the
Consumers Association of Canada
to represent consumers.

It was difficult to understand,
Yorke said, why the provincial
government would play such a low
profile in the conference leaving
itself open to attack from political
enemies. He pointed to the keynote
speech from the developers offered
by Alvin Narod, president of UDI.
‘‘He spoke for 20 minutes with a 12-
minute attack against rent con-
trols,’ Yorke explained, ‘and
there was not one word from the
government in defense of their own
policies.”’ :

Narod was followed from the
floor by Robert Gibson, head of.the
landlord’s organization on the B.C.
Rental Housing Council who
devoted his 10 minutes to a further
attack on rent controls.

Yorke himself followed Gibson
and turned around the landlord’s
statement that capital was staying

out of the rental market until more-

favorable terms could be wrought.

““Gibson ‘has placed it suc-
cinctly,’’ Yorke replied, ‘‘capital
has gone on a sit down strike and
won’t do anything unless ‘they get
more.’ The tenant leader then

‘ challenged the developer panel to

answer four questions on the role of
rent controls in the housing crisis.
“Why has the vacancy rate con-
sistently revolved around 1% since

‘vacancy rate is similar? And how |

ee

1966?” he asked. ‘“‘How do you |
explain the lack of new com
struction when it is exempt from
rent control? How do you explail |
that elsewhere in Canada where |
there are no rent controls the |

do you expect the people to believe |
that’ you will produce housing —!
according to your own law °
supply and demand it would reducé |
the rents? ;

“Tt was obvious that no questions
were answered,”’ Yorke said.

The municipal panel also lacked
a clear cut consensus as
solutions although delegates from
municipalities .all expressé
frustration with their difficult task
of coping with urban problems 0
an inadequate tax base.
polarization of municipalities
could be seen from the extreme
right wing position of Delta may! |
Tom Goode who stated bluntly “we |
don’t want Dunhill in Delta”’ to the |
more reasonable approach 0?
GVRD chairman Alan Kelly wh?
called on the provincial gover
ment to take a more forceful
position with the municipalities 19
cooperating on housing projects: |

“The fact that the process }§
started in involving peoples
organizations in the solution of the
housing crisis is significant,
Bruce Yorke says.

The key to continuing thal
process could be the VLC
proposal for the establishment of
an advisory committee to brine
concrete proposals before thé
housing department to lay thé |
basis for another housing co
ference early in 1976.

TOM
McEWEN

A nd the fields that gleam
Like a golden stream,
And the slaves that toil amain,
‘Are thine, are thine O master mine,
To the uttermost measure of gain!”’
Alf Budden, The Slave of the Farm

Finance minister John Turner must have had an inkling
of what Budden was writing about when he tabled his most
recent budget, which isn’t a budget at all, but a Bill of
Attainder against the Canadian people, with a very
special emphasis on those at the bottom of the social
totem pole.

Just imagine Ottawa as a gigantic bin for tax revenues,
into which will flow a greater part of this ‘‘golden stream”’
to provide new high-priced bureaucracies, to sustain new
salary hikes (by vote of course), all under a budgetary
pretense of cutting government costs by so many millions.
Thus the Turner budget fights inflation by boosting it
while barely mentioning it.

Mounting unemployment, the prime evil of capitalism,
is to be aided by a million-fold jobless and part-time
working class having to pay more for what little it gets in
return, while the young Canadian couple searching for a
home they can call their own (at outlandish mortgage
rates) can only find drastic cutbacks in the Turner

budget. When applied at provincial level and needs,

budget does ’without a second glance.

housing and jobs are equally as futile as the efforts of a
Glasgow Scotsman hunting for fleas in his slum abode;
now you think you’ve got it, now you’re damn sure you
haven’t. For the young couple which does manage to get a

roof over their heads at present inflationary ripoffs, their _

grandchildren will still be paying the usurer’s shot. That
much the budget assures! .

Not satisfied with the bare-faced robbery of the big oil
magnates by repeated price hikes per gallon on domestic
fuel, the Turner budget now provides for another 10 cent
tax per gallon, which will cost the average householder
another 70 to 100 dollars per year, with another oil tax
promised in a few months’ time. And re-conversion to
some fuel other than oil is uncertain as the Scotsman
catching fleas, since the timber barons now hog our wood
resources, our coal goes to Japan at cut rates, and our
Hydro and natural gas extras go to the U.S.A. Our.
working men and their families can freeze or go to hell, in
terms of the Turner budget. ;

And along with the hike in domestic fuel, comes another
increase equally as bad, at the gas pump. A 10-cent tax
per gallon on gas, with another five or more promised
soon. Poor old Lizzie, once considered to be a “‘luxury,”’
now broadly admitted to be a “necessity” getting to and
from work if you havea job, will become under the Turner
budget, something of a liability — thus the metamorphosis
of the automobile.

How the oil magnates must chortle and hug themselves
with glee at having the foresight to elect Establishments
that conform to their every demand; particularly their
demand that the burdens of taxation, poverty and want be
loaded onto the common people.:This the Turner Liberal

' his instructions to the Prussian police in 1933, ‘‘shoot fil st

Its drastic cutback in health services for the Canadia? |
people is on a par with its callous disregard for a millio? :
or more unemployed, and twice that number of homé 3
hunters looking for the house that just isn’t there: 2

Had Trudeau and company in their ardent desire to cul |
back on government spending, advised the financ® |
minister to make a substantial cutback on arms & |
penditures, on the billions that go for NATO, NORAD and |
all the other initialled sources of arms and war © |
penditures—the prime causes of inflation— somethi0e |
new and long overdue would have been added. m3

But capitalism, which relies on war, violence and.
profits as a solution to its built-in problems doesn’t wot |
that way. As the late Herman Goering stated cynically |

and inquire afterwards, and if you make mistakes, I W
protect you.” :

In response to complaints of car drivers who had bee?
clipped by the additional gas tax before the ink was
scarcely dry, Turner is reported to have replied, “Oh,
forgot to mention that.’ j

Some budget, some minister!

RIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—July 4, 1975—Pagé