PAUL BJARNASON BCA
aldermanic candidate in Burnaby.

MARGARET DEWEES
seeking Richmond council seat for
REAL.

Municipal elections Nov. 20

Progressives seek civic office

A number of progressive can-
didates, independents as well as
those put up by municipal groups,
had put their names forward this
week as nominations in all cities
and municipalities except Van-
couver closed Monday.

Nominations in Vancouver were
to close Wednesday by which time
the Committee of Progressive
Electors was expected to nominate
a full slate for council, school
board, and parks board.

In Burnaby where it now holds a
majority on council, the Burnaby
Citizens Association is fielding
candidates for all four aldermanic
seats as well as the three school
board seats. Incumbent alderman
Fred Randall heads the BCA slate
which also includes Paul Bjar-
nason, Lorne Bezubiak and Hazel
Simnet. Elsie Dean, Barry Jones
and June Williams are contesting
the school board seats.

Just across the boundary from
Burnaby in Coquitlam, the
Association of Coquitlam Electors
has nominated Len Bewley and
Duane Pritchett for council and
Bernice Gilmour for trustee. Three

are to be elected to council and two
to the school board.

Tenants’ rights advocate
Margaret Dewees and Dave
Lomas, vice-president of the In-
ternational Longshoremen’s Union
will be carrying the program for
the Richmond Electors Action
League (REAL) in their
municipality. Both have the
backing of the Vancouver and
District Labor Council which last

~week endorsed the REAL slate and

gave notice of motion for financial
support. ;

In the district of North Van-
couver, Ernie Crist, who garnered
a substantial number of votes in
previous campaigns, is again
seeking an'aldermanic seat, one of
three vacant in this election. In-
cumbent Dorothy Lynas, a well-
known figure on the district school
board, is seeking re-election as a
trustee.

On Vancouver Island, several
progressive candidates have put
their names forward in various
centres including Nanaimo,
Courtenay, Port Alberni, Campbell
River and Victoria.

BERT OGDEN
for Ward 3 seat in Nanaimo.

. Campaigning

In the city of Nanaimo, one of
only a few B.C. cities which elects
according to a ward system, eight
council seats in six wards are
vacant. Bert Ogden, a popular
labor candidate in previous
elections is contesting Ward 3,
while Joe Lychak is campaigning
in Ward 2 and Walter Tickson in
Ward 6. All three candidates have
the backing of the Nanaimo and
District Labor Council.

TEAM M policies ‘Irresponsible’

Guest columnist thiss week is
David Stone, a school board
candidate for the Committee of
Progressive Electors.

When the right hand. doesn’t
know what the left hand is doing
it’s a bad situation, but when. one
hand is Vancouver’s school board
and the other is city council’s
housing committee — it can be a
disaster.

And that’s exactly what’s hap-
pening in our city: the school board
and the housing committee are in
direct contradiction to each other,
one advocating housing and the
other discouraging it.

Shortly after the phase-out of
Cecil Rhodes School was an-
nounced, a committee of five
parents from the area met with
council’s housing committee. The
proliferation of ‘‘adults-only”’
housing in the Fairview-Mount
Pleasant area, which drives

families out of the neighborhood,’

led to the proposed closing of
Rhodes School due to lack of
students, so the parent committee
asked the housing committee to
find ways to increase the number
of children in the area. The housing

committee voted unanimously to

SS

DAVID STONE “bring
community planning back to the
community.”

study the situation with a view to
creating family housing, and to
report back in September.

But the school board, on July 19,
wrote to the planning department
asking that family housing be
discouraged at a site eight blocks

from Cecil Rhodes School! We
maintain that this attitude is a
flagrantly irresponsible one,
damaging to our children, our
teachers, our education system
and our city.

And it’s not happening just in the
Cecil Rhodes area, 1966 and 1975
records for 71 Vancouver. schools
show that enrolment has
decreased, often drastically, in all
but two schools. It’s true that
construction of annexes since 1966
and the decline in the birthrate
account for some of the decrease —
but a large part of it can be blamed
on TEAM council’s housing policy.

It is perfectly clear fhat the
TEAM-dominated school board
simply doesn’t care about the
survival of Cecil Rhodes School or
the quality of education provided
for the children attending it,
doesn’t care that the teachers and
staff will be thrown out of work —
and is actively conspiring with the
TEAM council to make the heart of
Vancouver into an adult-oriented,
childless, expensive executive city.

The*-school board has a
responsibility, an obligation, to
preserve our schools and ensure
the highest quality of education for

our children, now and in the future.

But the present school. board is
abandoning its commitment by not
protesting housing policies that
force families into the suburbs,
force teachers out of their
classrooms and leave school yards
empty.

What is the answer? How can the
decline of our schools be reversed?
The Committee of Progressive
Electors advocates bringing
community planning back to the
community through the establish-
ment of a ward system.

Zoning, the process of deciding
what kind of development should
take place where, will reflect the
needs and opinions of the com-
munity only if it begins at the
community level. Widely repre-
sentative ward zoning committees
would include members associated
with interest groups in the com-
munity. School trustees, elected in
the ward, would accept, as part of
their responsibility, active par-
ticipation in the zoning process, to
ensure. that family housing is
preserved and to guarantee that
our schools remain active, healthy
and well-attended, valuable assets
in our communities.

Farther up Island in Port
Alberni, three labor hopefuls —
Mark Ivezich, Henrik Put and
Ronald Rutter — are contesting the
three council seats in the city.
Ivezich is an incumbent. :

In Campbell River, the secretary
of the Campbell River, Courtenay
and District Labor Council, Nick
Chernoff, is seeking one of three

' aldermanic seats while in Cour-

tenay, Penny Christenson and B.C.
Government Employees Union
representative Richard von Fuchs”
are seeking two of the three council ;
seats. 4
At the other end of vancort
Island, in Victoria, Ann Tarasoff,
campaigning on a platform of low-
cost housing and an efficient low-
fare transit system, is seeking one
of three council seats up in the
election. Running with her in the
aldermanic race is- Larry Ryan,
secretary of the Victoria and
District Labor Council.

A number of other progressives
are nominated in districts, towns
and villages throughotit the
province including James Or-
merod, contesting a council seat in
White Rock and Dennis Rankin,
who is campaigning for one of
three seats open on Langley
council. Popular incumbent.
alderman Gilbert Popovich is also
seeking another term on council
for the village of Alert Bay.

Several referenda on questions
ranging from water fluoridation to
mill rate increases are also up in
municipal elections. Among the
more important issues on which
“yes’’ votes are urged are the five-
year plan for Vancouver and the
$23 million parks, library and road
improvements bylaw in Burnaby.

All centres except Vancouver, £0 _
to the polls on Saturday, November
20. Vancouver votes three days
earlier on Wednesday, November
17.

ANN TARASOFF .
candidate in Victoria.

“alderman

ore than one million workers hit the bricks on October

14to demonstrate their dissatisfaction and anger over
Trudeau’s phoney wage and price controls. The Canadian
Labor Congress and its affiliates gave the Liberal
government a bit of surprise by sticking to their guns on
October 14 and by their flat refusal to be intimidated and
call off their country-wide protest. Round No. 1 for Joe
Morris and the CLC and the thousands of Canadians who
participated.

What comes next as the follow-up to this mighty
demonstration of protest? To sit back on our laurels and
hope, like Micawber, that “‘something will turn up? . . . or
mobilize even greater numbers of working men and
women to convince Trudeau and his wage controllers that
the jig is up and it’s the political scrap heap for all of
them. Particularly since prices are permitted to soar
without governmental hindrance and a new crop of
merchandising millionaires has been created at the top of
the inflationary spiral.

There’s a lot of figuring being done these days,

primarily to confuse. Much, if not all of it is being done by
a class that would like to see the totals, especially in
unemployment figures or news of controversial labor-
management affairs, reduced to a minimum. A boss-class
press would then be able to orate at will, knowing that the
majority of the populace was partially, if not completely,
silenced.

That’s what happened on the Day of Protest. It was such
an outstanding demonstration for all labor that after a few
preliminary blurbs about “violence” on the picket lines,
the press folded up and gave the protest the silent treat-
ment. The word went out from the editorial offices:

~ remain deaf, dumb and blind to what is all important in

the majority of Canadian homes and give the rabble
trivia. They couldn’t avoid the crisis and the universal
hardships of the wage control scalping but the less said
about the whole thing, the better.

The profiteers of the nation have never had it so good
and controls have made it even better. Recent surveys of
the Canadian finance and business show indicate the rosy
profit picture and the steady growth of the multi-
monopoly complex. In actual fact, most of these powerful
profiteers come into. the category of what anti-inflation
curbs and labor’s Day of Protest was all about. But still

_ the Trudeau government chose to ignore it all with its

replies that “‘the government won’t be overawed by all of
this’’ and the decree that the wage and prices control
racket would remain.

Until October 14, organized labor in Canada had never

taken concerted action on such a mighty scale. A number —
of people — labor leaders included — argued that it
shouldn’t ever take such action, but the dawning of Oc-
tober 14 ended that argument for good. Now it is a
question of survival as a free and vital trade union
organization, able to decide and act for itself — or have
the Trudeau phalange and its Tory counterpart choose for

={t.

October 14 was not the end but only the beginning. The
Trudeau-AIB gang, at the bidding of its monopoly backers
has laid out the battle lines; wage controls will remain.
And this while prices for the ‘right to “‘life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness’’ continue to rise to astronomical
heights, surpassed only by profits.

The Day of Protest is past. But the protest that it em-
bodied will grow in the weeks and months to come.

Editor - MAURICE RUSH |

Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

Published weekly at Ford Bidg., 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,

All other countries, $10.00 one year
Second class mail registration number 1560

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 29, 1976—Page 2