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British Columbia

Progressives back ward

For the third time in 10 years, Vancouver
voters will vote in a plebiscite on a ward
system —a vote that civic progressives
approve, despite some reservations.

Jim Quail, president of the labour-
supported Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors, says the 20-year-old civic alliance of
trade unionists and community activists has
always worked for wards and will “strongly
campaign” for a ward system in the fall civic
race.

A “yes” vote on Nov. 19 means demo-
cracy in a city that since 1932 has elected the
mayor and council through an at-large sys-
tem that denies neighbourhoods area
representation — and which has meant
domination by the wealthier neighbour-
hoods backing the big-money campaign of
right-wing alliances, says Quail.

Jeff Hoskins, president of the Civic New
Democrats, says his organization in its var-
ious forms — previously, the Civic Inde-
pendents led by former mayor Mike
Harcourt — has always called for a ward
system. “But of course, we'd prefer a larger
number of wards and a larger council.”

Council unanimously backed a ward sys-
tem plebiscite at its regular meeting Sept. 13,
even though the COPE aldermen — Libby
Davies and Bruce Eriksen — consider the
plan offered to voters to be a poor one,
blending as it does diverse areas and tipping
the electoral balance in favour of the civic
right.

The plebiscite will ask two questions:
First, do voters support a ward system to
elect members of council and parks board
commissioners, one each in 10 wards, with
the mayor continuing to be elected at large?
Second, do voters support electing school
trustees in the same manner?

The posing of two questions — three
Separate questions were recommended by
the city’s electoral boundaries commission
— acknowledges that council and the
parks board, the latter consisting of seven
members, come under the Vancouver Char-
ter. The school board is governed by the
School Act and must apply, if a ward sys-
tem is approved for trustees, to the provin-
cial government to change its current
system of electing nine trustees at large.

Approval for the council and parks
board change was granted by the govern-
ment last year after the city petitioned for
charter amendments. But in doing so the
council, dominated by the right-wing, tradi-
tionally anti-wards Non-Partisan Associa-
tion, set a plebiscite that requires a
minimum 60 per cent approval by those
casting ballots.

That position echoes the sentiments of
Premier Bill Vander Zalm, who as munici-
pal affairs minister rejected a 57-per-cent
approval of wards in a 1982 plebiscite spon-
sored by Harcourt, his electoral slate and
COPE. Previously voters supported by
close to 52 per cent a ward system in 1978.
The province refused to abide by the voters’
1982 decision, while an NPA-dominated
council rejected the 1978 résults. _

When the issue of wards was aired in the
opening months of 1987, groups such as the
Area Representation Electors Alliance
opposed a third plebiscite, arguing that
voters had already made up their minds in
two previous votes, and that requiring a
60-per-cent majority was contrary to Cana-
da’s democratic traditions. AREA called
instead for an independent commission to
study a 12-ward system and to have in place
recommendations in time for the 1988 elec-
tion.

Former CQPE alderman Bruce Yorke
also hit the proposed plebiscite, calling
instead for a full evening session of council
to decide the question, with adequate
advance notice to all interested groups.

Mayor Gordon =Gampbell, who sup-
ported Vander Zalm’s successful bid for
leadership of the Social Credit party, has
claimed he is pro-wards.

2 e Pacific Tribune, September 21, 1988

“He’s set it up to look like he’s in favour
of wards, but I think he wants it defeated,”
Eriksen says.

Eriksen points out that it was Campbell
and the NPA who insisted on the 60-per-
cent majority. And he notes it was the right-
wingers on council who, in commissioning
the electoral boundaries hearings last Feb-
ruary, limited the commission to consider-
ing only 10-ward options.

The commission’s hearings were poorly
attended, an indication of the “‘no-choice”
feeling on the part of the community,
COPE says.

COPE, community representatives and
urban geographers have argued that a 12-
ward system would most accurately reflect
the natural boundaries of Vancouver’s tra-
ditional neighbourhoods. COPE favours a
report by University of B.C. professor
George Gray to the Eckhardt Commission
in 1979. (That commission, appointed by
NPA mayor Jack Volrich following the
rejected 1978 plebiscite vote, produced a
report that offered the discredited option of
a five-ward system based on provincial elec-
toral boundaries.)

When Harcourt and three COPE alder-
men were elected with a pro-wards position
in 1980, council appointed COPE alderman
Harry Rankin to chair hearings on a ward
system. At six meetings more than 80 per
cent of the interveners backed a 12-ward
system. .

What voters will decide on Nov. 19 is the
fourth of four 10-ward options considered
by the boundaries commission. In terms of
accurately representing Vancouver’s dis-
tinct communities, it is the poorest option,
Quail says.

A look at Ward 5, which Quail terms ‘“‘a
monstrosity,” shows an area reminiscent of

the old “strip ward” system overturned by.

voters in the 1930s. With 16th Avenue as its
northern boundary and the Fraser River to
the south, it weds slices of two different
neighbourhoods: Mount Pleasant and Fra-
serview. Ward 6 has similar boundaries.

Ward 4 has a western boundary that
pushes deep into the Fraserview area, which
gave the NPA a majority in the 1986 elec-
tion and which could turn the tide in Ward
4, the rest of which has traditionally
favoured COPE and other civic progres-
sives, in 1988. Other options studied by the
commission kept the ward within the sou-
theast neighbourhood known as Cham-
plain Heights.

COPE also challenges Campbell’s alleged
pro-wards stance by noting that the mayor
tried, unsuccessfully, to set the plebiscite in

an off-year, which would have ensured a

low voter turnout and possible defeat for
the ward system.

Despite the mayor’s alleged support, a
ward system is still opposed by most of the
traditionally anti-wards NPA. The NPA-
dominated Vancouver school board attacks
it on the grounds that the boundaries do not
reflect school catchment areas.

Hoskins calls that argument specious,
noting that catchment areas reflect school
administrative divisions which have nothing
to do with neighbourhoods. Vancouver
Technical Secondary School’s area, for
example, runs from Boundary Road in the
east to False Creek, cutting across several
neighbourhoods.

He notes that Ward 9 in the proposed
10-ward system has no high schools, a result
he says of a power-broker system that
ensured schools were placed in the more
affluent neighbourhoods. “Maybe if they
had local (ward) representation, they’d have
a high school,” he observes of the ward
which contains 43,330 people.

Commissioners on the totally NPA parks
board oppose a ward system for the board,
and have called for the parks question to be
separated from the council question.

Potential division lurks within NPA, with
some alderman — most notably long-

4
42,010

—)

Ward boundaries (including 1986 population figures) to go before Vancouver votels

in Nov. 19 plebiscite.
standing wards opponent George Puil —
promising to campaign strongly for a “no”
vote. But such divisions may be superficial,
with the supposed pro-ward stance adopted
by other NPA hopefuls highly suspect.
Eriksen says the current wards proposal,
faulty as it is, must be supported because if
approved it will finally give Vancouver resi-
dents the system they have already voted for

twice before.

“We can always change the boundati®
later,” he notes, adding that “boundati
(on the ballot) are not really the questio!
The ward system is for people, not polll!
cians.”

Despite some reservations, COPE is suf
porting the question “because it represef
an overall advance,” Quail says.

| Welfare

News last week that the government

plans to cut $50 from the cheques of
“some 20,000 GAIN recipients; and refuse

to continue covering their medical plan
payments, has been slammed as a callous
cost-cutting measure that hurts those
who have no job prospects in a low-
employment province.

“It’s taking money that could be used
to buy new clothes, get a haircut or go for
a job interview,” End Legislated Poverty
co-ordinator Jean Swanson charged.

The $50-cut — actually announced.
last April, when a demonstration com-
posed mainly of single parents protested
at the Social Credit government’s Rob-
son Square offices — comes through the
Social Service and Housing Ministry’s
redefinition of the “unemployable” clas-
sification.

Unemployable recipients get paid
medical benefits and $50 extra per
month. Some 40,000 British Columbians
have been classified as unable to seek
employment or hold a job, largely at the
discretion of government social workers.

The change which takes effect Nov. 1
requires unemployed persons to produce
a doctor’s slip stating they are perman-
ently or temporarily unable to procure
employment. The statement must list the
expected duration of the patient’s illness
and the length of treatment required.

The policy change was sent in a letter
to Lower Mainland recipients who were
told that “your income assistance will be
reduced. Unless you are a single parent,
your medical coverage will also be can-
celled.”

Social Services Minister Claude Rich-
mond subsequently made an attempt at
damage control, denouncing the notice
as insensitive and promising a new letter
would be drafted.

But whatever the wording, the fact
remains that approximately half of the
recipients currently considered unem-
ployable will lose $50 and paid medical
coverage by November, critics pointed
out,

“Your plan to reclassify up to 20,000

purposeful: harm: and’ revenge,” Rich- |
. mond was told in’a letter, © = 75>."

cuts hit

people from the ‘unemployable’ to the
‘employable’ category is a heartless act of

Kim Zander, former co-ordinator of
Vancouver’s unemployment action cen-
tre, accused the minister of trying to cut ©
costs after the government was found
guilty of discrimination by paying lower
rates to younger recipients. (The ministry
chopped $7 from the cheques of all
employable recipients after the B.C.
Supreme Court found that paying $25
less to those under 25 contravened the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)

Not only is the policy change “theart-
less” in denying recipients rates that are
already below poverty levels, but it con-
travenes the GAIN Act’s stated purpose
of “relieving poverty, neglect and suffer-
ing,” Zander said in quoting the Act.

“Creating employment should be the
focus of your ministry, and not the
increased abuse of people already in an
unfortunate position,” she wrote in a
Sept. 21 letter.

Zander said denial of medical cover-
age is the “thorny crown” of the cutback.

“Is the purpose of cutting more people
off of this service to force people to be ill
and unemployable before they can
receive medical attention again?” she
asked the minister.

Zander, a Communist Party candi-
date for the anticipated federal election,
said she will raise the issue of federal
responsibility for monitoring the funds it
earmarks for social assistance. Federal
transfers for social services, education |
and health are based on 50 per cent of |
estimated provincial expenditures, but |.
provinces are no longer required to
spend the money on the services for
which the funds are earmarked.

The policy exempts from the employ-
able classification single parents with one
child under seven months of age, or two
children under six years, and those with
disabled children — providing they have
a physician’s statement.

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