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© COPITALISM

City developers uneasy
over Habitat land plan |

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN
Some of the things being
proposed at Habitat are making
our developers and politicians very
uncomfortable. Especially the
demand that land speculation

Should be controlled by law. The

nerve of some of these people —
why they’re attacking the very
basis of our free enterprise
system!

It wouldn’t be so bad if only the
socialist countries, which do not
allow any kind of land speculation,
were to explain their views. Or

‘some of the developing countries

who also control land speculation.

But.the proposal is coming, of all
places, right from one of our own
western democracies, from Great
Britain itself.

There they have the quaint idea
that when land is increased in
value by government action (such
as rezoning, for example), most of
the increased value should go back

~ $38,000

“to the community which created
it”, and not:to the developers and
real estate sharks.

In fact in Britain they take back
80 percent of these unearned
profits.

And what happens when they do
this?

Why, the price of land goes down.

In the old dock area of London, .

for example, where land formerly
cost $172,000 an acre, it has now

. gone down to $34,000.

In the east Sussex area, as
another example, potential
housing land valued at $120,000 an
acre two years ago is now down to
an acre. Now the
municipality is buying up the land,

“servicing it and opening it. for

housing. :

This legislation was introduced
by the Labor government. The
Conservatives, strongly backed by
all the land speculators, have
promised to repeal it. After all,

Statement on general strike

CP supports lab

The Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Canada,
meeting in Toronto May 28-30, 1976,
greets the historic decision of the
Canadian Labor Congress to un-
dertake the organization of a
general strike in protest against
the wage control law — Bill C73 —
and for its immediate repeal.

The Communist Party supports
fully, and pledges solidarity with,
this struggle to defeat monopoly
and government policy of placing
the cost of capitalist crisis on the
backs of wage and salary earners.

The Communist Party condemns
the cynical and peevish statements
made by federal labor minister
John Munro, which tries to
denigrade the position of the
Canadian Labor Congress and the
trade union movement of this

TOM
McEWEN

‘hen an interval of some forty years or more slips by

and a new age has emerged, history often takes a
terrific beating. Non entities of the period being reviewed
are transformed into historians, experts and what now,
with the result that some tall tales, distortions and bare
faced falsehoods emerge. Much of it has little to do with
history, but a lot to do with bringing history into line with
official dictum, as befits a ruling caste ideology.

Generals writing their war memoirs either gild the lily:

or regard their then comrades as hair-brained nin-
compoops, criminals or worse, unfit to lead a platoon to a
garbage dump. Sometimes they venture to tell something
of the truth about war, and battles we had been
propagandized into believing were an outstanding epic,
turn out tobe a human butchery of the first order in which
- the massacre of hundreds if not thousands of human lives
was sacrificed for some brass-hat aggrandizement.

It is the same in the political field. Politicians, senators
and the like, who spend the greater portion of their lives
diddling farmers and workers alike, selling them a
phoney bill of goods on almost every count, resorting to
deceit and double-cross to gain their point, are now, in
their demise or ripe old age, touted as great statesmen,

_champions of the underdog and so on and so forth. They

country. By so doing, Munro has
damaged his own prestige and that
of his government in the eyes of
working men and women and of all
democratic-minded Canadians,
who see Munro’s attitude as
arrogant and provocative.

The Communist Party calls upon
all Canadians to support the
demand of organized labor for a
new and meaningful role in
economic- and social policy

making, for a curb on monopoly '

power and the expansion of the
scope of collective bargaining in
the interest of democracy and its
expansion in Canada.

The Communist Party sees this
as now within the realm of
realization through the means of
solidarity in militant and united
struggle against monopoly and

become the darlings of ersatz historians in order to ease
the conscience of their breed.

Perhaps, however, the historians of the Hungry Thir-
ties, the lads who were presumed to have lived through it,
who were there, top the list. Many of these ‘‘historians’’,
and so on, who arenow picked up by CBC and other public
media as doyens of the subject, were totally unheard of
during the era, or if heard from at all, were definitely
right-wing in their outlook and activity. In an era of mass
unemployment and destitution in cities, towns and
hamlet, they wouldn’t have been seen talking to a jobless
worker or a poverty-stricken farmer, Now of course that
period is sufficiently far enough behind us to wax eloquent
on the subject, and the further away they were from the
great ‘‘unwashed” at the time, the more “‘eloquent”’ they
are in their rhapsodies now.

The oldhistorians and a great many of the new have one
thing in common; they always strive to have their
distorted viewpoints on events and people of the times,
coincide with official dictum in order the powers-that-be
will have no twinge of conscience.

With the great Habitat conference now in full swing in
Vancouver, we are being treated to a new form of
projecting history. Take Mr. prime minister Pierre
Trudeau, without a doubt a master-ef demagogy, and
somewhat blurring his futures as he rolls his eyes towards
heaven. He told Habitat for instance that ‘“mankind would
have to change its life-style’’, “live dangerously’’, ‘“‘have
due regard for Third World or poorer countries.’’ Yet in.
the next breath we see Pierre Trudeau whooping it up for
billions of dollars in tanks, planes, and guns of every
description, because forsooth, ““NATO needs them”’.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 11, 1976—Page 2

government for the following
immediate and minimum ob-
jectives: :

_ 1. A policy of full employment;

2. Restoration of meaningful
collective bargaining;

3. Extension of the scope of
collective bargaining to include a
voice of labor in determination of
economic and social
technological change, investment
policy, safety, health, production,
the moving of plants, manpower
training and manpower planning;

4. An end to the arms race —
which, alongside monopoly
profiteering, distorts the economy
and feeds inflation. ;

The Communist Party sees the

policy, _

or’s action plan.

time is come when the working
class must enter into both political
and economic struggle for
democratic nationalization and
democratic planning based on
public ownership of the key sec-
tions of the economy, and, for a
democratic coalition government
which will implement such a
program.

We feel that this is the only way

to check the tendency to cor-~

poratism and bureaucracy, in-
cluding the booms and busts which
are typical of monopoly
capitalism, and to replace it with a
society free from periodic crisis,
poverty, unemployment and _in-
flation.

Central Committee,
Communist Party of Canada.

someday!

And Mr. Trudeau is equally adamant on the sal
Canadian nuclear reactors to countries like South Kore@
Argentina, and Turkey, with ‘‘adequate”’ assurances
they won’t go into the nuclear bomb business. As if th!
assurances of neo-fascist countries like South Korea
would make a damn bit of difference when the nucl
war fever hits the warmongers like an epidemi
Philosophizing on life styles means very little to tho
whose concept of power-through-strength is al
prevailing. But it might be unfair to characterize Trude?
as ahistorian, when hypocrite might be more fitting.

_ There are many fine, worthwhile and even noble ide@
being born at Habitat, but the greatest of these now and
the years to come will be peace. Peace to build humé
settlements, to live and prosper in them with the
dignity, security and independence of man. We are sti
bit away from that happy state, but we shall gain the g

~~ IRIBUNE:

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3,
193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-8108

Subscription Rate: Canada, $8.00 one year; $4.50 for six months

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what is the country coming to whel
you can’t even make a dishonesl
buck, or. should we say.a rapidlj}
declining pound?
The proposal that other weste
countries should follow this co
has made Canadian governmé
delegates to Habitat most ¥
comfortable. Understandably 80)
because in. Canada a few Bb
developers have cornered the bu
of vacant land in our cities. Thé
have an effective monopoly, 4
are. using that monopoly to ¢
tificially force up the price of lan}
Furthermore, there isn’t a city ®
any size in Canada today where the)
municipal council isn’t under Wie
thumb of the developers. Va
couver is no exception.
For years in Vancouver
Committee of Progressive
tors, and I as its representative !
Council, have campaigned to t
the profit out of land speculation
urging that we adopt the Bri
system. The NPA opposed it. So-dié)
TEAM. And so _ has_ ever
millionaire mayor that we ha
had. é
-But such a reform must come
we are to provide housing #
people at rents or prices they ¢
afford. a
I think that today more and mo
voters have come to realize
this is a reform we need. It will
an issue in this .year’s muni
election. There is a good possibilily
that if it is publicly debated an®
every party and candidate forcety)
to take a stand, we could just en®
up this year with a Council that W
put curbs on land profiteering a
get on with the business of buil
homes.

3
—

LABOR BACKS
MAY 1 HOLIDAY

A milestone for Canadian lab
was achieved at the recent C
convention when May. Day W
officially recognized as “labor
traditional holiday’’. Delegat
voted for a resolution calling
federal and provincial gov
ments to recognize May 1 as a leg
holiday.

po a ae en Na ey a

PACIFIC