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Citing a “‘‘lack of experience,”
NDP MLA Emery Barnes said that
he and the former NDP govern-
ment erred when it rewrote the
Landlord and Tenant Act in 1974
and again in 1975.

“In retrospect,’’ Barnes said,
tenants in hotels and rooming
houses should have been included
in the Act and the principle for
justification for rent increases
should have been. built into rent
controls.

Barnes’ statements were made
in his address to the annual
meeting of the Grandview Tenants’
Association, a component of the
Vancouver Tenants Council that
serves tenants in Vancouver’s
Grandview district.

The provincial government’s
decision to set the allowable rent
increase for 1977 at seven per cent
is ‘dictatorial,’ Barnes alleged,
and was taken without discussion

‘NDP erred in Tenant Act’— Roce

with tenant representatives or
even with members of the legisla-
ture. He said the seven per cent
increase is still higher than is
néeded for a fair return on in-
vestment.

“Housing should be a_ public
utility,’’ the MLA insisted, ‘‘but it
is being thrown on to the market as
an exploitable commodity.”’

Bruce Yorke of the Vancouver
Tenants Council agreed with
Barnes that the seven per cent
allowable increase is too high, but
warned that it is a “‘step towards
the phasing out of controls com-
pletely.”

Yorke pointed out to the GTA
meeting that less than 50 per cent
of rental units have applied to the
Rent Review Commission for legal
forms te-inform tenants of rent in-
creases. Under the Landlord and
Tenant Act all notices of rent in-
creases must be on proper forms

with one copy filed in the office of
the Commission. “If they were
legal increases,’’ Yorke said,
“then they would report the in-
crease to the Commission as they
are supposed to.”

In place of the annual percentage
rent increase that the present
system of rent controls ensures,
Yorke argued for the institution of
municipal rent review boards with
tenant representation.

The Grandview Tenants As-
sociation re-elected Doug Laalo
president and David Stone as vice-
president.

The GTA’s tenant advisory
service will continue at least for
another year. Tenant counsellor
Margaret DeWees is available
Monday through Friday at the
GTA office, 1720 Grant St., Van-
couver, 253-3575, to assist tenants
with problems.

‘Start right here —
on human rights’

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Recently the House of Commons,
with the support of all parties in-
cluding the NDP, passed a
resolution critical of the Soviet
Union for its treatment of so-called

dissidents. That action by
parliament was an act of pious
hypocrisy. For while our

politicians profess concern about
the human rights of a group of
people in another country, they
ignore the fact that right here at
home, human rights are denied not
to a small group, but to a big
section of the population.

Iam referring specifically to the
native peoples of Canada, the Inuit

(Eskimo), status Indians, non-
status Indians and Metis, who
number approximately one
million.

Thevast majority of these people
are denied even the limited human
rights possessed by most other
Canadians. Let me give a few
examples.

The majority of the native
peoples are denied the right to
work, the right to a job. Some 40
per cent are on welfare. Many of
these employed manage to secure
only seasonal work, and usually it
is unskilled work with ac-
compa nying low wages and lasting

‘less than five months a year.

Eighty per cent subsist on incomes
below. the poverty line.

The average life~span of the
native peoples is 34 years com-
pared to 72 for the rest of the
population. Infant mortality
among native peoples is four times
higher than the national average
and for babies up to two years it is
eight times higher. Over half of
Indian deaths are caused by
respiratory diseases and ac-
cidents, both of which are con-
trollable.

Where the native peoples of the
north once lived on wholesome
natural foods, now with their way
of life destroyed, their children are
more and more living on junk foods
with a consequent diet deficiency.

See RANKIN, pg. 12

Rankin boosts
Tribune drive

The Pacific Tribune has con
sistently provided in-depth
reporting on civic affairs in
Vancouver. This includes reports
on the activities of COPE, DERA |
and other civic groups — news that —
often meets with a blackout by the
business-owned media. :

In following this policy, the
Pacific Tribune has played no
small part in helping to develop the
kind of left-centre coalition of
progressive forces that citizens
need and which will one day have 4
majority at city hall. :

At this time when the Tribune 1S —
conducting its annual. financial
drive, this year for $50,000, -J
believe it deserves the support
from all who seek progressive
change in our civic administration.

—Harry Rankin

Do you have |
our new address? —

By MAURICE RUSH

o\ sae make pretty dull reading . . . stay away from

them as much as possible when you write.”’ That was
the advice George Drayton, the first editor of the B.C.
Workers News, gave me back in 1935 when I started my
apprenticeship in labor journalism. He had a_point, of
course, but sometimes statistics, or lack of them, can
make a very important point.

Take, for instance, the regular statistics we get served
up every few months by the departments in Ottawa and
Victoria about the number of days lost due to strike. Along
with the figures we are usually told how much production
was lost as a result of labor disputes, and also how much
income workers lost when they went on strike.

Both Ottawa and Victoria keep meticulous and detailed
statistics on these questions and serve them up in great
detail in order to drive home to the public how
“unreasonable” ‘‘unpatriotic’’ labor is. ‘“‘Labor is
irresponsible and just doesn’t care what happens to our
economy,” that’s the false message these statistics are
intended to convey.

But when it comes to statistics affecting other very
important matters both the federal and provincial
governments are much more retinent about giving them

out — or just doesn’t keep records on them for politically ,

motivated reasons. Any labor economist will tell you that
federal and provincial government statistics on many
important questions are totally inadequate. Often, as in
the case of the recent .Mac-Blo disclosures, Canadian
researchers have to go to U.S. sources to find out about
corporations operating in Canada.

Keeping statistics and records is a very politically-
inspired operation in which certain information is made
available, while other information, which should be
available, is either totally ignored or dished up to the
public in such general terms as to be virtually useless.

Take as an example, the figures released on unem-
ployment. We are given the official totals, broken down by
regions and age groups, and period of unemployment. But
why is it that nobody in either Ottawa or Victoria do the
same analytical job on these figures as they do on days
lost as a result of strikes? Why, for instance, don’t they

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 6,1977—Page 2

Statistics don’t tell us everything ee

tell us what production is lost as a result of one and a half
million kers being forced out of production and on to the
unemployment lists?

When youstop to think for a minute about the fantastic
waste of human resources and production involved in
Canada’s massive unemployment it boggles the mind.
The lost production must be dozens of times greater than.
the production lost due to strikes. But an analysis of this
problem doesn’t seem to concern out government
statistical departments. And for obvious reasons.

It’s not possible to blame labor for the fact that a million
and a half workers are laid off by their employers or are
denied jobs to put their productive abilities to use. That’s
the fault of the capitalist system, capitalist employers and
capitalist governments. We are constantly subjected to a
barrage of propaganda from employers and_ their
spokesmen on the need to produce more or suffer lowe
living standards.

How many times have you heard the cry, ‘‘Canada must
produce more or we will lose out on the world markets?”
— from the Employers Council, newspaper editorials,
government leaders, and others of that ilk? Yet no
statistics are available from any government source, that
we have been able to find, which analyzes the result of
massive unemployment on the economy. The official
attitude seems to be that the social and economic con-
sequences of unemployment should be swept under the
rug. Why dwell on something that can only embarrass the
powers that be, so just give out what information you have
to andleaveit at that. The federal government didn’t even |
keep figures on unemployment until the 1950’s when it
finally decided that it should start keeping an annual
summary. :

Another example of where an inadequate job is done for
deliberately political reasons is in the area of industrial
accidents and deaths. True, we get certain statistical
figures released annually. But there is no adequate job
done by either Ottawa or Victoria in providing in-depth
studies of the social and eco.omic consequences of the vast
loss of production as a result of deaths and accidents in
industry. In fact, there are many areas of industrial
diseases and hazards which take many lives and cause

es

thousands of disabilities, which governments still don’t
recognize at all. :

A recent editorial in Steel Labor, a publication of the
United Steel Workers of Amerina, noted that in the Second
World War more than 38,000 Canadians perished from

enemy action. ‘During three years, 1972-1974, there were _

3,907 Canadians killed in action on the job — more than 10
per cent of the total killed during the Second World War.”
But that figure does not include those who died from in-
dustrial disease about which no one knows the actual
death rate. It has been estimated that four s in Canada die
every day of the year from industrial accidents and
another six who succumb from work-related causes.

Itis also estimated by some trade union sources that the
straight-time loss of man hours from injury and death at
work is twice that caused by lockouts or strikes, and that
doesn’t include the time lost as a result of industrial
disease. 2%

Here again, the powers that be can’t blame the workers

for the massive slaughter and maiming of people in in- _

dustry, so why produce a body of statistics that will only
embarrass the employers. In fact, by playing down the
terrible toll industry takes, employers cover up the speed-
up and unsafe working conditions from which they profit.

Yes, statistics don’t make interesting reading, but the
ones we get, and the ones we don’t get, tell us a lot about
our society. f

“TRIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — FRED WILSON
Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186

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