January 22, 1990
SO

Vol. 53, No. 2

B.C. rent hikes spark action

separatism,
perestroika:

two opposing
visions of
the future

By FRED WEIR

MOSCOW — “Crisis _manage-
ment” could well be the new buzz-
word in the Kremlin. After decades of
treating problems as something to be
“solved” by taking. the appropriate
decisions and corresponding mea-
sures, Soviet leaders are exhibiting a
much more subtle sense of process
and an awareness that such a vast,
complex and multi-national state as
the Soviet Union is always going to
be, in some ways, in transition.

In play right now are two funda-
mentally different, and mutually
opposed, visions of the future. On the
one hand there is Mikhail Gorba-
chev’s approach, which is to trans-
form the Soviet Union into a genuine
federation in which the development
of national rights complements the
growth of general democracy and
universal standards of human rights.
Gorbachev sees decentralization and
sovereignty as the flip side of a higher
level of integration and voluntary
solidarity.

Ranged against this are a host of
centrifugal forces, mostly of the
nationalist-exclusivist type. Released
by the open political contest which is
basic to perestroika, some of these
forces are now on the verge of reach-
ing for power. Last week Gorbachev
confronted two of them and made
two different decisions — choices
that will define the process over the
months and years to come.

In Lithuania, Gorbachev entered
forcefully into a political debate that
will not end soon. Yet to a far greater
extent than most people realize, he
succeeded in turning a spiralling con-
Stitutional crisis into an open, demo-
cratic — if no less acute — struggle
between the two competing visions.

see SEPARATISM page 9

Via Rail employees Dave Podolsky (I) and Hugh Rowe hold placards of their
union, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and General Workers,
against nose of the last train of The Canadian — the southern cross-
continental passenger service that has linked Canada for decades — to enter
the CN station in Vancouver, on Jan. 17. Next to the placards is the wreath that
management forbade employees from affixing on the marker at Craigellachie,
B.C., site of the famous Last Spike. A demonstration of angry citizens, trade
unionists and members of the Last Spike artists’ protest gathered at the station
to attack the Conservative government for cancelling the line, and other Via
routes, in the name of deficit reduction. ‘“Over a million Canadians have already
voiced their concern about the Mulroney government cutting this train, and
cutting the heart of Canada out of it,’ CBRT regional vice-president Robert
Storness-Bliss told the demonstrators. ‘‘But we've got a message for Brian
Mulroney: You’re not going to cut these trains, you're not going to destroy Via
Rail, because Canadians are not going to allow you to do that,” he declared.

A near-zero vacancy rate in British
Columbia’s major urban centres has
tenants organizing against unconscionable
rent hikes and demanding a provincial solu-
tion, such as rent review, the B.C. Tenants
Rights Coalition says.

Tenants are angry because the Socred
government has refused to take action to
prevent the victimization of low- and
middle-income renters being rendered
homeless by a combination of demolitions,
skyrocketing rent hikes and the closure of
low-cost alternatives like secondary suites,
the coalition reports.

“Generally speaking, people are fed up
with politicians, especially the mayor of
Vancouver, saying it’s not their jurisdic-
tion,” says John Shayler of the coalition’s
Tenants Rights Action Centre.

Shayler says the Vancouver-based centre
has received calls from cities-as far away as
Kamloops, Prince George and Nelson, ask-
ing for help in fighting rent increases of
20-60 per cent.

And while the centre’s resources are
limited, it is sending some staff to nearby
places like Squamish, where tenants face
rents hikes of 50 per cent.

Vancouver was among the first urban
centres to feel the squeeze, resulting from a
serious decline in affordable housing con-
struction and pressure on the market from
offshore and out-of-province real estate
speculators.

Tenants in traditionally stable and
somewhat upscale neighbourhoods like
Kerrisdale began organizing early last year
following a rash of evictions and demolition
of low-rent apartments for seniors and their
replacement by high-priced condominiums.

But city council, dominated by the pro-
developer Non-Partisan Association civic
alliance, has refused to do anything other
than make a few cosmetic moves that are
inadequate to meet the crisis, Shayler
charges.

“We say Vancouver city council hasn’t
tested all their powers. They’ve been politi-
cally tinkering to look like they’re doing
more.”

Some *200 tenants filled city council
chambers Dec. 19 following a major dem-
onstration at city hall organized by the
recently formed alliance, Community
Forum on Housing. “We told them, ‘This is
what’s going to be on your agenda today. If
you do not do anything, we’ll be back,”
Shayler relates.

Tenants want the city to search its charter
to impose a moratorium on demolitions
and establish a city rent review board,
things Mayor Gordon Campbell claims are
outside city jurisdiction (although council
successfully used the charter to prevent

_ mass rent hikes and evictions at a high-rent

building in Kerrisdale last fall).
see TENANTS page 2

Release of Panamanian detainess demanded