Members of the Vancouver
school board, which unanimously
adopted a $25,000 free lunch pro-
gram Monday, lashed out at the
province’s. Social Credit govern-
ment for refusing to join it in an
effort to feed the city’s most
impoverished students.

The board, dominated by the
right-wing coalition, the Non-
Partisan Association, also voted 9-
0 to make a joint application with
the city to the provincial and fed-
eral governments for funding
under the federal Canada Assist-
ance Plan of an expanded food
program.

(On Tuesday, board chair Ken
Denike was angrily denouncing a
further statement by Social Servi-
ces Minister Claude Richmond
that he was asking the Attorney-
General to determine if the board
was breaking the law by refusing to
send the ministry the names of
school children who are coming to
school hungry.)

The resolution, supported by
trustee Phil Rankin of the Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors, was
the result of months of effort by
concerned parents and came on the
heels of a school administrators’
report linking poor academic per-
formances with poverty.

Patricia Chauncey of the Child
Poverty Action Committee said
later that although the report of the
Vancouver Elementary School
Administrators’ Association empha-
sized alleged neglect by the parents
of impoverished children while
ignoring the neglect of the provin-
cial government, it was a welcome
document.

She told the board prior to
the vote that the child poverty
group supported the recom-
- mendations of the VSB’s hungry
see FUND page 2

«

B.C. gov t now target
as abortion law out

White hits deal

nes

Canadian Auto Workers president Bob White told a packed session of the
United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union convention in Vancouver Tuesday
that it was ‘‘not too late’ for Canadians to head off the free trade course set by
the Mulroney government. He also warned that the Mulroney-Reagan trade
pact was particularly dangerous because once implemented, it will force eco-
nomic and political changes that will be difficult to reverse. Story page 12.

SEAN GRIFFIN

TRIBUNE PHOTO —

February 3, 1988
40°

Vol. 51, No. 4
eas

Plans for the opening of a free-standing
abortion clinic in Vancouver leapt forward
this week as the Supreme Court of Canada
rejected the federal abortion law as uncon-
stitutional.

Jubilant pro-choice supporters at a rally
in Vancouver Thursday celebrated the long-
awaited ruling which overturned Section
251 of the Criminal Code and upheld the
appeal of Dr. Henry Morgentaler and his
co-defendants, Dr. Robert Scott and Dr.
Nikki Colodny, restoring their acquittal on
charges of conspiring to perform illegal
abortions.

“Jan. 28, 1988 is a day that will be forever
engraved in the minds of Canadian
women,” Norah Hutchinson of Concerned
Citizens of Choice on Abortion told a rally
and press conference at Vancouver’s Uni-
tarian Church called to mark the historic
court ruling.

“This decision reflects the opinion of the
majority of Canadians. Dr. Henry Morgen-
taler has been vindicated by the highest
court in the land. The pro-choice movement
is jubilant,” she declared to cheers and
applause from the crowd many of whom
wore pink armbands in celebration.

Editorial, page 4

Every speaker at the rally paid tribute to
Morgentaler and his 20-year battle to
change Canada’s abortion law. “Dr. Mor-
gentaler, we love you. The women of Can-
ada are indebted to you,” declared Pat
Brighouse, spokesperson for the B.C. Coali-
tion for Abortion Clinics.

But Brighouse warned that the fight was
far from over and that the next battle would
be with the provincial government which
had taken the stand, only hours after release
of the Supreme Court ruling, that payments
for abortion services would be restricted to
those performed in accordance with the
now overturned law.

Without B.C. Medical Plan funding for
clinic procedures, the opening of the clinic
will be more difficult but “we were prepared
for this possibility,” said Brighouse. The
B.C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics has
already launched a province-wide fund-
raising appeal that is likely to meet with a lot
of support as the Vander Zalm government
continues its anti-abortion campaign.

The Coalition in a statement Sunday said
legal challenges against the provincial
government’s refusal to fund abortions
unless approved by a hospital’s therapeutic
abortion committee will be launched in the
near future.

see CLINIC page 3