"Criticism of NDP gov't

dominated UBCM parley

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The dominant theme at this
year’s convention of the Union of
B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) was
criticism of the NDP provincial
government. For a small noisy
group it was an opportunity to play
cheap, partisan politics against the
government. This was in sharp
contrast to the way these people
acted when the Social Credit
government was in power.

Then they willingly accepted the
demagogy of people like Gaglardi
and Campbell, despite the fact that
the government they represented
consistently disregarded the needs
of B.C.’s municipalities.

And it seemed to me that the
provincial government has not yet
learned the lessons of the NDP
defeat in the July federal elections
nor is it implementing its own
decision to take its case to the

people in a more forthright and

aggressive way.

We had 700 delegates at this
convention of aldermen, mayors
and regional government mem-
bers. They represented the form of
government in our society that is
closest to the people — municipal
councils. Premier Dave Barrett
should have been there to explain
the matter of that $100 million
over-run on welfare. So should
human resources minister Norm
Levi.

I know that they would have
faced an audience that in part at
least would have been vocally
hostile. But that is part of politics,
and the government’s credibility
and opinions on the courage of its
ministers were not enhanced when
the key people under criticism
chose to stay away and make long
distance explanations from Vic-
toria.

It left those of us who understand
the need for these expenditures on
welfare in a difficult position.
Personally I did point out to the
delegates that if we have an in-
flation factor of 10 per cent and it is

cutting into people’s incomes and

causing hardship, then it is twice
as bad as for people who are on
welfare. Often they have to pay as
much as 50 per cent of their
welfare cheque just for rent,
leaving little enough for food and
clothing. As far as I’m concerned
this extra $100 million was not
over-expenditure in relation to the
needs of people on welfare; it was
an over-run due, apparently, to
mistakes in budgeting.

The Community Resource
Boards also camein for a good deal
of criticism and discussion. The
delegates feared that this will
develop (no one really knows what
they take right now) into another
level of government with just one
more bureaucracy and an over-
lapping of services.

Human resources minister
Norm Levi should have been at the
convention to give authoritative
answers to some of the questions
that were troubling the delegates.

After a good fight from the floor
of the convention, we did defeat a
resolution which would have
banned all strikes. But a resolution
advocating that the provincial
labor minister have the power to
impose binding arbitration in labor
disputes involving firemen and
policemen was endorsed. I think
labor minister King should have

been there to deal with this issue. .

I’m opposed to compulsory
arbitration in principle and there’s
no way it can be made to work
because labor is just not going to
give up its basic democratic right
— the right to withdraw its labor.
But I did state to the delegates that
where compulsory arbitration is
imposed, as the government did in
the case of firemen recently, it
should at the same time provide for
reasonable compromises as it

I

| FOR THOSE WHO KILL ---

eS

certainly did not do in this case. -

One of the things I would like to
suggest to the provincial govern-
ment in a most emphatic way is
that they must communicate with
people, especially the grass roots
councils, villages, towns, cities and
regional districts across this
province. Not to do so would be
fatal to their cause.

EDITORIAL COMMENT | |
The furor over welfare costs.

By MAURICE RUSH |

The furor caused by Premier
Dave Barrett’s announcement of a
$100 million over-run on welfare
budgeting has some very distur-
bing overtones which sould not be
lost on progressive people who do
not want to see B.C.’s social
welfare program undermined.

There can be no defending the
sloppy budgeting for which
someone in the government is
responsible. Nor would it be just

' for the provincial government to

pass on the bill for a few million
dollars to the municipalities who

_ haveno sources or taxation powers

with which to meet the additional
costs.

The mistake was Victoria’s and
they should pay the municipal
share which amounts to about $5
million out of the province’s

abor has been presented with another “‘history”’ to its
fone this time published by the Ontario Federation of
Labor (OFL) and authored by one Morden Lazarus.

This book is entitled Trade Unions and the Working-
man in Canada With Years of Hard Labor, the latter in big.
block letters. From the identity of most of the thumb-nail
pictures scattered through its pages we would say offhand
that had many of them done a few years “hard labor”
while they lived, it would either have made much better
socialists and labor leaders out of them — or frightened
them more into pursuing the devious courses they chose.
Be that as it may, they are now preserved for ‘“‘posterity”’
as valiant champions of labor and socialism.

Of the author’s life-long hatred of communism or
anything he thought was communistic, there is little to say
that hasn’t already been repeated a million times by other
historians, some alleged to be ‘‘great’’, others of a lesser

stature.

The right-wing CCF’er or NDP’er when attempting to
compile a history is confronted with a dual problem; his
inherent anti-communist bias, plus the fallacy of

general revenues. Loading it on to
municipal taxpayers would be no
solution.

But some of the loudest voices
raised in condemning the NDP
government have strong political

overtones. Take as an example

Surrey mayor and leading Socred,

Bill. Vander Zalm who loudly

voiced his outrage that the public
will have to pay $100 million for
welfare costs over and above what

was budgeted. What Vander Zalm:

is Shooting at is not the over-run,
but the expenditure on social
welfare programs.

Where was his indignation a
couple of weeks ago when a brief .
issued from Victoria showed that
the people of B.C. will have to foot
a $300 million bill to complete the
dams on the Columbia to which we :

imagining that just because of hi
the ranks of right-wing social democracy, he

With this biased and distorte
the end result is more tha
“stubborn facts of history”’
fiction, or worse still, blacke
could otherwise be a very me
another history of which po

It has often been said for the benefit of st
others of a young

were committed by the Socred
government?

The fact that many of the critics
of the NDP government are
shooting at the social welfare
program, which is one of the better
things. done by this government,
was to be seen in editorials such as
that carried in the Province on
September 19. It charged that the
NDP government deliberately kept
out of the budget the sharp in-
crease in welfare costs, and con-
demned the increase in welfare
spending which goes for such
programs as Mincome, increases
in welfare payments, Pharmacare,
child day care, etc.

Perhaps the sharpest indication
of what some old line politicians
have in mind when they haul the
NDP over the coals for its mistake,

See WELFARE, pg.:11
See er ee

1973.

cent.

Profits
booming
The federal elections held in

July have not changed very
much. Two weeks ago Statistics
Canada announced another
Sharp rise in consumer prices
and unemployment across the
country. Now Ottawa has an-
nounced that after-tax profits of
industrial
Canada showed that profits
were 36.9 per cent higher for the

second quarter of 1974 com-
pared to the same period in

Companies producing pulp
and paper and petroleum
products had the greatest in-
creases which accounts for the
way prices for paper products,
newsprint
products have been climbing.

Resource industry profits
rose by 43.2 per cent and for
manufacturing 42.8 per. cent.

: ; disclosures. eral
_ Estimated profits for au Implications of the fer
industrial corporations totalle budget proposals made in M@i

$2.611 billion, an increase of $704
million over the total for the
second quarter of 1973. Metal
mining companies in Canada
showed profit gains of 37.1 per

West Premiers
meet in city |

ae

Industrial development
western Canada has been re the.
the top item on the agenda ie
forthcoming western Pe this
Conference which will be he me
year in Vancouver on Sept. othe!

The parley will bring Oe oe
Premier Ed Schreyer of Mami
Premier

Allan. Blakeney 4,
Saskatchewah, Prema ;
Lougheed of Alberta am |
Premier Dave Barrett. :
conference was held in Calg@
1973. ;
Other items placed on
agenda will include a repor fart
inquiry into pricing 9 5 wel
machinery and fertilizer, # i

as discussion of farm _ a
stabilization and farm credi ture
Another issue which. pees
prominently at the carol
meeting last year will be Be of

of freight rate anomalies 4%
forts to obtain transportation ©

corporations in

and. petroleum

2S

1974 on the province’s powers ™ 5g
natural resource field will als°™
matter of major concern. ye
Conference sessions W1 i and
place in the Hotel Vancouy
will not be open to the publl@

S political affiliation in

is “‘labor’’.

d approach and perspective
n often disastrous. Those
become reduced to mere
d out entirely. Hence what
ritorious work, just-becomes
sterity has in abundance.

udents and

er generation, that not nearly enough of
the history of labor has been written. This is i
true, but unfortunately the
Lazarus’ “‘Years of Hard Labor”.

There is much in this book th
of great value to students of labor. There are also wide
gaps and omissions where the se
author goes on to other events.

The great “free speech” struggles of the
before the Toronto free speech battles of the ’30’s, largely
led by the Communists, developed and w
cases, Ontario labor

ndeed very

gap will not be closed by OF L-
at is highly meritorious and
quence is broken and the
”80’s, 50 years

hich, in both
played a very prominent and decisive
role, are totally omitted. Undoubtedly in
Stirring events, th

both these

e author couldn’t extract any ‘“‘kudos”’
for the CCF nor the NDP. The earlier free speech ~
Struggles had a great deal to d
trade union organizations in Toronto and fur

And as for the Workers U
°30’s, the author disposes of
“obedient” tools of the Comm

0 with the early origins of

ther afield.

nity League (WUL) of the
these Commie liners” and
unist Party in a couple or so

: ing S :
. Stooges, within and outside the ranks of right-wing, to? |

i 0
- get smeared and slandered for the aggrandiseme? + fo!

nabs |
brief paragraphs. Even ‘‘Iron Heel’”’ Tory Bennett am jal |

: e
democracy, conceded a much greater importane’ eno!

vital fact of history. Even the brevity which tee y and |
permits the “‘Commie liners’’, both Communist pa: :
WUL, is not without its full quota: of historic ie ind
and patent falsehoods. Like others of his kind ctl
bourgeois-invented fables more convincing than fools
truth, emphasizing again the old saw, that ‘ one
knaves argue with history”’. With a truly great ht } fro?
its credit, one would have expected something bela out
the OFL, as undoubtedly a future generation 9
Canadians will. bi 5
In presuming to write history, Morden Lazarus ith |
kind should draw some lessons from the American",
Len De Caux, author of The Labor Radical and ie
This book is done in conformity with the objective
history. Communist and non-Communist alike ae
union organization are equally recorded. The one

other. The historian lists them for what they did, ne
what they said. His political affiliations, what ee ep
were, if any, did not permit the warping of his Jue s jac?
consequently he gave his readers historical facts 1 A
of right-wing NDP political pap. Nor did he atte™
impossible by dressing up widely-known labor ie
the garb of ‘‘men of principle’, ‘integrity’ and § g
which reduces so-called ‘‘history’”’ to mere propa ay
and cheap propaganda at that. : :

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