_ |Vancouver overruled | Municipal autonomy sought)
by Socred minister | to protect civic democracy

We’ve got a new czar at Van-

couver city hall. But he doesn’t

‘live in Vancouver — his tempor-
ary residence is Victoria.

We didn’t invite him here. He
appointed himself! Thename of
this new czar of all the Vancou-
verites is William Vander Zalm.
His appointment as czar of
Vancouiver took place on July
21 at a meeting of the private
bills committee of the legislat-
ure, on which Social Credit has

Harry
Rankin

a majority. The committee was
considering a request from Van-
couver that our charter be
amended to permit us to set a
ward system to replace the pres-
ent antiquated election-at-large
system. A majority of Vancou-
ver voters by referendum called
for a ward system in the last two
civic elections.

The committee turned down
Vancouver’s request. Not only
that, it dutifully voted to en-
dorse a whole series of propos-
als made by municipal affairs
minister Vander Zalm just a few
weeks ago. These included:

@ Vancouver must hold an-
other referendum;

@ The wording of the refer-
€ndum must be personally de-
cided by Vander Zalm;

@ It must pass by a 60 per-
cent majority before the provin-
cial government will consider it;

@ The boundaries of the
wards, if they are ever establish-
ed, will be decided not by Van-
couver but by a commissioner,
whose appointment must be ap-
proved by Vander Zalm.

But the private bills commit-
tee didn’t stop there. It also
turned down a request from
Vancouver to give the city the
right to tax private commercial
firms located on crown prop-
erty, such as the National Har-
bors Board.

Furthermore, it turned down
a request by Vancouver that the
annual indemnity for parks

commissioners (which now
stands at the ridiculously low
figure of $2,000 a year) be in-
creased.

Finally, it decided that Van-
couver can borrow $32 million
to build a new Cambie St.
bridge to serve the new stadium
and B.C. Place, both of which
are being built by the provincial
government, without referring
it to a referendum of the voters.

This would mean a whopping

f

increase in taxes for all property
owners and the provincial
government, knowing that
voters will likely turn it down,
wants city council to go ahead
anyway and impose this new
debt on our citizens.

Social Credit was credited
with considerably less than 60
percent of the popular vote and

‘many Social Credit govern-

ments elected in previous years
had less than 50 percent. As for
Vander Zalm, he was elected
with only 25 percent of the vote.
For Vander Zalm and his
government now to demand
that Vancouver must have a 60
percent majority before it can
have a ward system is sheer
hypocrisy.

The decision to allow Van-
couver city Council to borrow
the immense sum of $32 million
without taking it to the voters
first by referendum makes a
mockery of Premier Bennett’s
whole restraint program.

What can we do about his
dictatorial action by Vander
Zalm? For one thing, we can
make sure that the NPA, which
is only an agency of the provin-
cial government, does not
secure a majority in the
November civic elections.

Secondly, if and when
premier Bennett calls an elec-
tion (and it may be sooner than
we think), we should make sure
that not one of the Vancouver
seats is won by his party.

The Social Credit government’s
recent refusal to amend Van-
couver’s charter to allow for a ward
system, chief among the city coun-
cil’s requests this summer, has
underscored the need for full
autonomy from provincial control
for Canadian municipalities.

That has been a long standing
demand from members of the
Federation of Canadian

“municipalities, who at their con-
vention in June reiterated the call
for municipal autonomy to be en-
shrined in the new Canadian con-
stitution.

Aldermen from Vancouver’s
Committee of Progressive Electors
hope to put that sentiment to the
test. COPE’s Bruce Eriksen will
move that a plebiscite be held on
the issue in this fall’s elections when
council reconvenes Aug. 10.

But provincial control over civic
affairs goes far beyond this sum-
mer’s ward system controversy.
Socred legislation has historically
thwarted the wishes, and interests,
of B.C.’s municipalities, and is
responsible for the current uproar
over business taxes, former alder-

man George McKnight charged in’ |

a brief to Port Alberni council last
month.

“People who want a ward
system, or things like demolition
control have to realize that current-
ly, the provincial government pulls
the strings,”’ said Eriksen, who has
also served notice of four motions
designed to improve Vancouver’s
desperate housing situation.

These motions are designed to
add teeth to by-laws governing the
demolition and maintenance of ex-
isting rental accommodation, and
would ensure that new
developments contain varying
precentages of non-profit housing.

The catch is that some of the
bylaw ammendments — assuming
these would pass by the right-wing
members of council who scuttled
earlier COPE attempts at demoli-
tion control early last year — will
require charter amendments from
the provincial government. Thus
the need, as COPE sees it, for
autonomy for Canadian
municipalities in the
“‘institutional,’’ ‘‘legislative’? and
‘financial and fiscal’? fields.

Eriksen’s motion defines institu-
tional autonomy as including ‘‘the

legal capacity to amend one’s own
charter of one’s own initiative,’’
while legislative autonomy would
involve ‘‘a defined area of law-
making authority, for
municipalities,’ both independent
of any provincial control.

The third demand, financial and
fiscal autonomy, seeks to establish

certain taxing authorities indepen-

dent of provincial governments,
and the inclusion of municipal
representation in future federat
provincial tax sharing agreements.

Eriksen’s motion seeks both a
plebiscite for Vancouver this fall,
and asks council to request other
Canadian municipalities hold
similar plebiscites, as a prelude to
an inter-governmental conference
the federal government is com-

mited to hold sometime before

April 17 next year.

Meanwhile, Port Alberni’s
George McKnight hit the provin-
cially imposed business tax, which
he said was the reason for high
taxes on commercial enterprises
and homes, in‘his brief to city coun-
cil in July.

The business tax, which has risen
sharply throughout the province
this year as civic governments
desparately try to.make up for
revenue losses due to provincial
funding cutbacks, is one of the
most inequitable and unfair
features of the Municipal Act,
McKnight argued.

McKnight pointed out that the
province’s largest industries, such
as the forestry giant MacMillan-
Bloedel, are exempted from
municipal taxation on machinery,
except for a maximum of one per-

cent of value.

This was due to amendments to
the Act by W.A.C. Bennett’s
Socreds in 1964. Section 427 also
allowed a maximum tax of 10 per-
cent on rental values of ‘‘real pro-
perty’’ — as distinct from the ‘‘per-
sonal property”’ classification for
industrial machinery — legislation
which is of chief importance to
smaller businesses in the commer-
cial sector.

“The 1964 Act also provided
that a city council could classify
businesses for purposes of this tax
and could levy different rates
within the maximum on different
classes of business. This meant that
in certain circumstances, the tax

could be levied at the maximum,
say 10 mills (one percent) on in-
dustrial machinery but at only three
or five percent on the rental values
of certain classifications of
business,”’ said McKnight in his
brief.

But this practice ended with |
amendments to Section 427 in |
1969: ‘“No longer could a couneil
apply different .rates to different |
classifications of business. All pro-
perties subject to the tax must now
by law be taxed at the same percen-
tage of the maximum.”

The Socred legislation exemp-
ting industrial machinery from all
but the paltry business tax saves
large corporations even greater
amounts than those enjoyed under
the beneficial ‘‘fixed assessments”
granted by many municipalities un-
til the revamping of the
Municipalities Act in 1964. Mean-
while, commercial businesses have
continued to pay taxes on land
values, improvements and rental
values — one of the major reasons
these enterprises shoulder an unfair
portion of the tax burden, said
McKnight.

McKnight charged that the
business tax legislation ‘‘is a pro-
vincial government-imposed limit
on municipal government, and it is
grossly unfair to the business com-
munity and the city as a whole. ©

“Tt then turns the wrath of the’
taxpayers onto the city councils.
The provincial government knows
taxpayers will not understand that
it is the provincial government that
is responsible for the whole sorry
mess.”’

McKnight, a woodworker and
delegate to the district labor coun-
cil, will be seeking re-election to
council next term. For many years
an alderman re-elected with in-
creasing majorities, he dropped out
of the aldermanic race to run for
mayor in the last election.

“For many years during my
tenure as a member of city council,
I carried on a fight to correct the
unfair business tax . . . I found lit-
tle, if any support from the
business community, but now, —
when they are feeling the pinch,
they are interested,’’ McKnight
said. 3

“T hope that all of them will
study the whole question and bring
pressure to bear where it belongs —
in Victoria.”’ a

H: came to Vancouver for a few weeks rest, but Bruce
Magnuson — former labor secretary of the Commun-
ist Party, who now heads the party’s work on senior citi-
zens — found time to attend a one-day seminar, sponsored
by the B.C. branch of the party,

People and Issues

on seniors in Surrey last

The next issue of Communist Viewpoint, due out in a
few weeks, will carry an article on pensions by Magnuson.
In the meantime, Bruce urges everyone to take up the gov-
ernment on its little publicized request for submissions,
and write the Pension Task Force, Parliament Buildings,

month. While there, he discovered a provincial govern-
ment document on revising the current pension plans that
he described as “‘diabolical, to say the least.”

Simply put, the provincial Pension Task Force’s “green
paper”’ entitled ‘‘Developing Pension Policy for the Fu-
ture,”’ calls for increased privatization of government
pension schemes. The document outlines two ideas for a
provincially based pension system including a ‘‘pension
and profit-sharing plan”’ and a “‘tax shelter Savings plan.”’

A quote from the report says it all: “Accordingly, as a
first priority, the government favors the improvement of
the retirement income system through a strengthening of
the private pension system.”

Such a scheme — not really surprising, coming from the
same Social Credit government that has spent so much
time since it was re-elected in 1975 undermining confidence
in the public auto insurance plan — is part and parcel of
the continuing attack on the universality of pension plans,
Magnuson said. Onesuch example, he noted, was the 1977
change to the Old Age Security plan. Once universal, pay-
ments are now pro-rated depending on the length of time
under 40 years one has lived in Canada.

In direct contrast is the Communist Party’s policy on
pensions, Magnuson said. Having undergone consider-

able revision in the last few years, it was adopted at the
party’s last (60th) national convention, and includes a call
for a basic Old Age Security rate of $600 per month, with
indexing to keep it well above the poverty level as deter-
mined by Statistics Canada. With the inclusion of Canada
Pension Plan payments, seniors should collect aminimum
of 75 percent of the average industrial wage. As well, the
current built-in discrimination against women will be end-
ed with a truly universal plan that emphasizes non-contri-
bution and phases out private schemes.
PACIFI

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Associate Editor — DAN KEETON
. Business and Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR

Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada $14 one year; $8 for six months.
All other countries, $15 one year.

Second class mail registration number 1560

Victoria V8V 4R5. And let them know just how popular
their attempts to further privatize pensions really are.
cd * * * oa
i t is undoubtedly a sign of the mushrooming sentiment
for peace and disarmament, as much as it is a comple-
ment to the technical and artistic brilliance-of the produc-
tion. But whatever the reason, Tamahnous Theatre’s anti-
war musical, Last Call: A Post-Nuclear Cabaret, is back
for another run at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre,
1895 Venables St., until Aug. 21.

Readers may recall that we gave the musical a highly fa-
vorable review when it premiered at the Centre last Febru-
ary.

A press release from Tamahnous notes that this is the fi-
nal time people in the Lower Mainland will be able to see
Last Call with its original cast, before the production em-
barks on a national tour this fall.

Perhaps the best way to see Last Call, if there are any
seats left, is to attend the Friday, Aug. 6 performance at
5:30 p.m. All benefits will go to the End the Arms Race
Committee, and tickets are only $6, a 30 percent reduction.
While seats were to be booked in advance before Aug. 3,
the Centre assures us that any remaining tickets will be
available at the door.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 6, 1982—Page 2