3 “How do you feel since you gave up smoking?” Four Seasons Hotel wants open season. on city’s coffers By ALD HARRY RANKIN There is no end to the subsidies and concessions demanded by. the promoters with whom City Council has already made over- generous deals. Take the case of Four Seasons Hotels Ltd. That’s the name of the company that presently holds the property at the entrance to Stanley Park, north of Georgia Street and next to the Bayshore Inn. This property has gone through many hands — Webb & Knapp, Harbour Developments, etc., each one intent on making a fast buck (I should say a few million fast bucks) before passing it along. Only last Christmas, City Council arranged for Four Seasons to get a water lot worth - one million dollars for exactly $1.00. The deal Council made with Four Seasons calls for the construction of a $20 million hotel and apartment complex in two stages. (Two stages usually _ means that the first stage may be built as originally stated while the second stage is just added on to make the scheme look grandiose to the public. ) Now Four Seasons want to: renege on the deal. Its represen- tatives were back at Council last week asking for more subsidies and concessions. It now seems that the promoters haven’t $21 million at all. In fact they don’t even seem to know just where they will get it. They hope to raise it on the money market. And they wanted Council to rezone the area for them before they submitted any detailed plans of just what they will build so that it would be easier for them to raise the money. This was a little too much even for the majority on this Council so a compromise was arranged. But that was only one of the demands made by Four Seasons. It asked to get out of the agreement to put up a performance bond of $200,000 guaranteeing that it would get the first phase finished in four years. Instead Council gave them an extension of time. Like true promoters, Four Seasons, while claiming intent to spend $20 million, doesn’t want to be tied down to this figure. Council has obliged by removing this clause from the agreement. And this still isn’t all. Four Seasons has an agreement with Marwest Hotel Company Ltd. (the owners of the Bayshore Inn) to the effect that Marwest must pay 50 percent of the cost of the work to be done on Denman Street to provide ac- .cess to both Four Seasons and the Bayshore Inn properties. The agreement .with City Council specifies that this work include filling in Denman Street, constructing a 42 foot pavement, curbs, gutters, sidewalk, street lighting, etc. The cost would be around $150,000: Four Seasons had the gall to ask Council to pay Marwest’s share of the costs and then collect from Marwest. Council didn’t accept that but it did promise to use its ‘‘best efforts’’ to collect from Marwest and turn the money over to Four Seasons. No businessman in his right mind would make the kind of deals that Council makes with promoters. It’s all ‘‘give’’ by Council and all ‘‘take’’ by the promoters. But Council plays Santa Claus to promoters all four seasons of the year. I need hardly add that I voted against giving any more MAY DAY ISSUE concessions to Four Seasons, : : although I was alone. I’m still ces Cae as old fashioned enough to believe musy tmpbrtant = fabor that aldermen were elected to Sisal ks snadbaasa you serve the needs of the ordinary perenne intothe hands Citizen, homeowners — and of peer aetna ane tenants, and not to fill the EES CLE EE pockets of speculators at the _expense of the city. — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 17, 1970-—Page 2 =! ! one cent cndupne -municipalities for Tenants launch campaign to halt runaway rents A co-ordinated province-wide campaign to get municipal councils to enact Rental Review Boards in order to provide additional protection to tenants was announced this week by the B.C. Tenants Organization. The group is asking for protection not afforded by the recently enacted Provincial Landlord and Tenant Act, (Bill 20). The special conference of executive members of the Tenants Organization held on Sunday also gave approval in principle for a brief to be presented’ to the Federal Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs re the White Paper on Taxation. The brief will maintain that the present taxation system promotes high rents, and will call for the elimination of the scandalous depreciation features. It will support the institution of a capital-gains tax, and will urge the federal government to institute some form of federal rent control. The Tenants group made a decision to make repre- sentations to the convention of B.C. Municipalities to get their endorsation for the right of tenants to be enumerated by the municipal election purposes, and for the right of tenants to vote on muni- cipal money by-laws. In a statement to the press outlining the program, Bruce Yorke, secretary of the organi- zation, said that the passage of Bill 20 gave tenants the right to organize on a large scale, where before they had little if any legal protection. ‘Tenants can be assured that the ability of the landlord to toss them out on the street if they organize to improve their condi- tions has been considerably lessened,” he said. Yorke said that the main effort of the tenants organization on the municipal level would be to get them to establish rental boards with the power to require justification of rent hikes, and to provide municipal regu- lations requiring that a notice to tenants to quit a premise must be for a specified cause. Yorke charged that the federal tax system promotes high rents through its failure to tax capital gains and for its scandalous depréciation features. Apart- ments are openly advertised in newspapers as ‘“‘tax shelters’’, and provide enormous tax benefits “to landlords and mortgage holders. “These benefits are greatly enhanced if the ownership of the apartments constantly change place at higher and_ higher McEwen banquet this Sunday The banquet to honor retiring editor Tom McEwen, being held at the Ukrainian Hall, 805 E. Pender St., this Sunday, April 19 at 5 p.m. will be highlighted by a cultural program featuring The Milestones and Mrs. Corey Tyler, well-known soprano, who will sing Scottish songs. A special tribute to McEwen’s life long work as Communist leader and labor editor will be made by Nigel Morgan, B.C. Communist leader. Maurice Rush, PT editor, will be master of ceremonies. » i; | enwed ‘eye al ei. ore prices’, he said. ‘“‘We support the elimination of the depre- ciation features and the insti- tution of a capital gains tax, and at the same time call for some form of federal rent control to protect tenants.” The Tenants Organization at its weekend meeting also adopted a call for a national con- ference of tenants groups in the very near future. They said they had been in touch with the Ontario tenants’ who indicated they were willing to host a national conference. organization : Pemars the Australian ‘‘warflies,’’ (longshoremen) have the right angle on how to slow down and ulti- mately stop the war in Vietnam, (or anywhere else for that matter) — speeding up the day when the boys come marching home — for good. Also speeding up the day when U.S. Imper- ialism and its mortgaged ‘‘allies’” will no longer be able to act as world policemen, sticking their noses into the internal affairs of others, where they are neither wanted nor invit- ed, and justifying their savagery and genocide under the Hitlerite pretext of saving the world from communism. — For a considerable length of time now the Australian warfies in Sydney have been tieing up the loading and unload- ing of the Australian National Line ship Jeparit, carrying arms and other military supplies to Vietnam. In declaring their ban of the Jeparit and other ship car- goes of a like nature, the warfies have demonstrated a large measure of success, so much so that recently the Australian Gorton government has been compelled to designate the Jeparit as an Aussie naval unit, henceforth to be worked only by armed services personnel, rather than by Waterside Workers Federation (warfies) and/or other union crewmen. To its ban on the shipment of arms and war supplies, the Sydney warfies have also stepped-up their demands for an end to the war in Vietnam, and an end to Australia’s compli- city with U.S. savagery and aggression against the Viet- namese people. To the Gorton government the warfies have made it clear that they are ready to unload the Jeparit or any other ship cargo from Vietnam, but no arms cargoes to, Vietnam. Meantime Australia’s new Minister of Labor, Mr. Sned- den, has been compelled to seek council with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and other influential labor bodies, as to what to do about union members of the Jeparit crewmen; members of Miscellaneous Workers Union, Boiler- makers, Watchmen or others, who refuse to go aboard the ship for repair, watchmen, or other duties. In Brisbane and other key Aussie centers 24-hour work ‘stoppages and other large - scale manifestations of solidar- ity with the Sydney waterside workers have taken place on numerous occasions. From Britian messages of solidarity from seamen, longshoremen, National Union of Minework- ers and from numerous other unions and Labor M.P.’s all pay tribute to the courageous action of the Aussie warfies. Also of vital importance to the fight for peace ‘‘down under’? was the offer from the Vietnamese National Liber- ation Front (NLF) to ‘cease fire on Australian troops’’ if Canberra would fix a withdrawal date. To illustrate the extent to which the warfies ban on arms shipments, and the NLF offer has had, the Austra- lian monopoly press as in Canada, which normally reserves all its class venom for warfies or other workers, is now edi- torializing strongly for an ‘‘early withdrawal of Austra- lian troops from Vietnam’’. Not along ago these same papers were weeping crocodile tears, because the direct action of the warfies and other unions were ‘‘depriving Australian troops in Vietnam of their beer.”’ There’s a lesson for all Canadians in the action of the Australian unions. It is scarcely likely that those Canadians who pocket some $300 million or more annually of blood money from the sale of arms to the U.S. to murder Viet namese men, women and children will heed the lesson. But the Canadian labor movement can — and soon, it is to be hoped, — will. , Clearly the struggle for peace in Vietnam is growing — but equally clear, it is still not growing fast enough to stop the bloody hand of a savage U.S. aggression and worse. : Without doubt a shot or two of Australian ‘‘warfie”’ inl _tiative in Canada would help a-lot.~How’s about it, Mate? }, HdtHg@9d Vgan-d50 si Gb 3: