, “ee

Goh

GaAND VICE VERSAD |

CASES CHASING PRICES -.

S

FINANCE PLAN FOR RAPID TRANSIT

Parkwood tenant
appeal to council

Determined to clean up their
living conditions, the Parkwood
Terrace Tenants Association took
their case to Burnaby Municipal
Council last Monday. é

Led by their president Judy
Hockaday and vice-president Barb
Heffernan the Parkwood tenants
presented a brief to the council
outlining their problem and five
requests of Burnaby’s elected
officials.

The delegation to city hall
follows last week’s picketing action
at Lehndorf Properties Ltd.,
management for the apartment
complex in East Burnaby.

The Burnaby council gave the
tenants a receptive, although
generally non-committal, hearing
and assured the Parkwood
residents that council would take
some action.

The brief had asked council to
help arrange a meeting’ between
the tenant association and
management, to insist on strict

Terminal lands takeover urged

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The building of an improved
transit-oriented transportation
system is one of the better projects
in the plan for “The Livable
Region, 1976-1986,” advanced by
the Greater Vancouver Regional
District. It would include:

e Light rapid transit from
downtown Vancouver via a
subway to Cedar Cottage, then
on the B.C. Hydro Central Park
right-of-way to the new Burnaby
regional town centre, then to
New Westminster, then con-
tinuing along North Road to Port
Moody and on to the Coquitlam
regional town centre.

e North Shore passenger ferries.

e Suburban rail service, using
double-deck passenger trains
existing railroad track — along
the CPR from Vancouver to
Mission, for example.

e Fastbus service to all parts of
the region.

e Articulated streetcars or articu-

lated trollery buses (articulated

here means that ‘‘bend in the

middle’’) along heavy tran-
sportation corridors such as the

Broadway-Lougheed Highway

from UBC east to Brentwood, the

Hastings-Granville corridor

from North Burnaby to down-

town Vancouver to the South

Granville area.

These are good plans; they’be
been raised many times before.
The question is — when are we
going to get started on them and
how are they to be financed?

Some of these plans are already
being implemented by _ the
provincial government at no cost to
the municipalities or the region.
Among these are greatly improved
bus service and the first steps to
establish a ferry run across
Burrard Inlet. ¥

But experience in _ other
Canadian and American cities
shows that it takes at least 10 years
to build a good transit system, and

especially one that includes sub-
ways and rapid transit.

We've been talking about rapid
transit for at least 10 years now
and are still no further ahead. Isn’t
itabout time that the GVRD and its
affiliated municipalities got the
lead out and started building this
transit system? At the present rate
of inflation every year we delay,
means an additional cost of 10 to 15
per cent. We’ve had enough talking
and planning, now we need some
action.

The modern transit system
proposed by the GVRD will cost a
great deal — anywhere from one to

~ two billion dollars. How will it be

financed?

There is one way in which the
major portion of the cost could be
raised without any additional tax

burden on the citizens. Here’s
how:—

A modern transit system will
result in terminals being

established at frequent intervals

along the route. It i8 inevitable that

commercial facilities and apart-
ment complexes will also be built
at the terminals. This means that
land values will go up tremen-
dously. If land along the right of
way is rezoned for these terminals,
and given the rate of inflation in
land values that we have: at the
present, in 10 years, the lands at
these terminals could easily be
worth 10 and 20 times. what they
are today.

My proposal is that these lands
should be expropriated now by the
municipalities (or the regional
district) at their present value and
at their present zoning. They could
then be sold when the rapid transit
system is built and the proceeds
used to finance the transit system.

It would be a painless way to
raise the necessary finances and it
would do away with the speculation
and profiteering in land that will
result if we don’t take such action.

enforcement of fire and health
bylaws, to help finance an indoo!
recreational program, and for thé] ,
city to turn empty lots adjacent | g
the site into parkland. k

In addition to faulty toilet and r
plumbing facilities, broken wil},
dows, and play swings, the brié]
pointed to serious health and safely |
hazards in the complex.

“Tnadequate garbage facilities |
result in raw garbage lying aboul, —
the brief described, “‘railings ant
walkways are rickety — it is 4} 1
firetrap in our opinion.”’ .

“The premises are known 45} 1
Germ city by municipal bodies:
including the police. The comp!
is still insect infested. i

“Social conditions are not good |
There are many instances of al | >t
bitrary actions and attempts |p
dictate social and other conditions: |
Several instances of illegal ret}
increases have been discovered: | U
and some of these corrected, bul}
not all.’*

In asking the council to use thel! | |
offices to pressure management 10 | I
meet with the association, the} ¢
tenants noted a statement of thé} (
western Canada manager 9 | 9
Lehndorf quoted in the Vancouve! | ¢
Sun where he said, ‘‘We don’t nee?” :

I

any tenant association to tell
how to run our affairs.”’ &

“Mr. Splitt can be assured,” the
brief countered, ‘‘we don’t want 10
run their affairs, we simply want 2
Say in our living conditions.”

The tenants said that according -
to a survey they conducted moré |
than 50% of the adult residents at
Parkhill would be prepared 10} ;
volunteer their time to 4]
recreational program. There are} gs
more than 300 children living in thé } y
complex, and the association fear | p
a growth of delinquency from # | ¢
lack of purposeful activity fol | 5
children to partake in.

Although the council backed off t
from direct intervention in thé | 4
dispute they did promise 1 | p
pressure the Rentalsman’s offic® | }
to call a meeting between thé | y

parties and to send health and firé | p
inspectors to the complex. The | f
proposals for the funding of 4 | qj
recreational program and creatio! | f
of parkland adjacent to the | t
apartments would be considered: |
the council said.

eo

TOM
McEWEN

ig business in Canada backed by federal and provincial

governments, not to mention some municipal govern-
ments, is out to destroy the trade union movement. On
that score there is no longer room for any doubts or
speculations.

The long and concerted attack against the unions is now
centring upon a single objective: the weakening or
elimination of the hard-won institution of collective
bargaining, in the hope that the whole fabric of trade
union organization will be scattered like a deck of cards in
awindstorm.

It is not accidental or just a coincidence that of late, all
sorts of experts, pundits, government leaders, politicians,
common windbags or what have you, have been getting up
off their fannies and loudly denouncing the complexities,
obstructions, slowness and so on of collective bargaining.
“There must be a better way,” lament these hired hacks,
and the television and the hot line garbage collectors give
them full coverage.

In this concerted attack on collective bargaining,
federal postmaster general Bryce Mackasey, already
well on the way toward reducing the Canadian postal
service to a high-priced ‘“‘pony express’? system, and
Quebec premier Robert Bourassa have given the anti-
collective bargaining tub-thumpers a new gimmick. “In
all the strikes,” say these gentlemen, “‘it is only a small
minority at the top who hold out for protracted
negotiations, violence and worse. The great majority

SS Ss =
Ss

"PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 20, 1975—Page 2

involved in the strike want to work, to fulfil their public
responsibilities. So, let’s deal with the majority and
eliminate the minority.”

In Quebec, contractual relations on this majority basis
are already well under way with federal approval, which
means, if successful, an end to genuine collective
bargaining and trade unionism as working people know it;
the thin edge of the wedge for the corporate state con-
trolled union!

‘These illustrious ministers, along with their Tory,
Liberal, Socred and other colleagues of a like mind, make
a great hurrah about the public weal suffering because of
strike struggles, and their alleged duty to preserve

essential public services at all costs — even by the |

destruction of democratic custom and usage. They choose
to overlook the fact that the striking worker, his family,
dependents and friends are also an integral — and major
— part of the public that the bourgeois’ wrecking crews
would destroy.

There is another vital factor which your anti-collective
bargaining and union-wrecking spouters seem to forget or
ignore — the class struggle. Its evidence is everywhere:
unhampered riches, wealth and profit for the few, varying
degrees of poverty for the many. It doesn’t announce its
presence at the bargaining table, but it is there just the
same: the powerful monopoly magnate, owning the
means and machines of life with capitalist-oriented
governments at his beck and call. His adversary across
the bargaining table has absolutely nothing to sell except
his labor or brain power, selling it as the only commodity
he has. For the seller, a bare livelihood, even in the best of

times. But in this creative-labor or brain power, the

source — and the only source — of vast new profits and
riches to the buyer. And the worker or modern intellectual

at the collective bargaining table, unlike the trickster -

_ organization has brought them together and given them 4 | 4

politician, cannot vote himself a substantial hike in salary
to keep up with the times. He must fight for it, strike for ib
often die for it. i :

An ex-U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, once said
“God must have loved the working class, He niade 5?
many of them,” and the social scientist Karl Marx gav®
an objective to that when he write, “The working clas®
have one thing in common, and one only, their great a4
numbers. But this can only be brought to bear when a! | V

lead.’’

To crush trade unionism in the early years of this D
century, the monopolies and their ruling caste used thé
most extreme violence against all. working class
organization, in which prison and martyrdom by death
was acommon occurrence. Now of course the spouters for
anti-unionism piously deplore violence, as if it were 4 D
labor invention.

It is time labor awoke fully to what is afoot, and by if§ | ¢
Solidarity and strength, call a halt to these uni0? | 4
wreckers. Otherwise worse can, and will, undoubtedly — fh
follow. Otherwise a labor-hating Establishment may g¢! | y
the idea, that for them it is open season on all unions. tl

TRIBUNE |

1%

Editor - MAURICE RUSH nm
| G

it

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 a y
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