BRITISH COLUMBIA

East meets west as Soviet scientists join
their Canadian counterparts for discus-
sions ranging from the medical response
to nuclear war to the media’s coverage of
the arms race at the University of B.C.
campus this weekend.

Confirmed for the Friday-to-Sunday
conference sponsored by the B.C. Chapter
of the Physicians for Social Responsibilty,
Science for Peace and several other area
organizations are Sergei M. Plekhanov,
head of the USSR’s department of politi-
cal studies for the U.S. and Canada, and
academician Marat Vartanian.

Plekhanov is slated to lead the discus-
sion “A view from the Soviet Union,” part
of the broader topic on east-west relations
which begins at 10 a.m. Oct. 20 in the

university’s Instructional Resources Cen-
tre.

Other topics involving Soviet represen-
tatives include a “Soviet perspective” on
whether there can be a medical response to
a nuclear attack, and an “east-west dia-
logue” with representatives of Canada’s
external affairs department, among oth-
ers, at 10 a.m. Sunday.

The conference, entitled “Nuclear war:
the search for solutions” also features
prominent disarmament activists Michael
Pentz, a leader of the British Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament, and Eugene Car-
roll, Jr., retired U.S. admiral and deputy
director of the Centre for Defence Infor-
mation in Washington, D.C.

Richard Turco, the main author of the

Soviet scientists join panels at PSR meet

report “Nuclear Winter” that appeared in
Scientific American warning of the effects
on climate of a nuclear exchange, and
University of Toronto chemistry professor
and founding chairman of the Canadian
Pugwash Group, John Polanyi, will be
leading discussions.

Altogether, more than 30 sessions and
workshops grouped under seven major
categories are featured at the conference,
one of the most ambititious organized in
B.C. In March, 1983, some 800 partici-
pated in a PSR peace conference at UBC,
the largest peace conference in the pro-
vince.

Other conference sponsors are the Can-
adian Teachers Federation, the B.C.

Teachers Federation, and UBC’s centre
for continuing education.

Fees for the general public are $75, and
students, unemployed and seniors can
attend for $35.

Also on the peace circuit is the
renowned physician and disarmament
speaker, Dr. Helen Caldicott.

Caldicott, featured in the National Film
Board’s award-winning documentary If
You Love This Planet appears at UBC’s
War Memorial Gym Nov. 2, sponsored by
the Alma Mater Society and Students for
Peace and Mutual Disarmament.

Tickets, available at all VTC/CBO
outlets in Vancouver, cost $6, or $5 for
students and old-age pensioners.

Expo 86 could leave $558

Expo 86, the fair that was billed by Pre-
mier Bill Bennett in 1980 as “the celebration
that will leave a lasting legacy,” could, in
fact, leave the province’s taxpayers with a
staggering $558 million to pay, a group of
economists at the University of B.C. said in
a new study issued Oct. 10.

And the group which produced the
study, the University of B.C.-based B.C.
Economic Policy Institute, is standing
behind its work which has been dismissed as
“suspect” by Expo 86 chairman Jim Patti-
son.

The study, entitled “Expo 86: An Eco-
nomic Impact Analysis” emphasized that
even though the world’s fair will indeed
create jobs and generate economic activity,
the same amount of money put out for
reforestation, for example, would create
more jobs and “leave in place more poten-
tial benefits for the future.”

It was one of four discussion papers
issued by the Economic Policy Institute at a
press conference Oct. 10. The group is made
up of UBC economists who established the
institute following the Social Credit govern-
ment’s July 7, 1983 budget to challenge
what they have termed “the inadequate
facts and unsound theory” on which the
budget and other Socred policies rest.

Produced by Institute members Charles
Blackorby, Margaret Slade and Glen
donaldson, the Expo study examined the
eocnomic performance of other world’s
fairs held since 1962 and analyzed the esti-
mated revenues and expenditures to deter-
mined the real costs to the province.

“We evaluated Expo using three different
methods: as an undertaking to be compared
to historical antecedents, as a business
enterprise of the people of B.C. and as an
exercise in fiscal policy,” the study noted in
its summary.

“On all three counts, Expo performs
poorly.”

The authors also noted that international
expositions are “economically dangerous
propositions.”

They pointed to the various world’s fairs
held in North American cities since 1962,
only one of which — the 1962 Seattle
fair — did not lose money. Expo 67, the
world fair held in Montreal during Cana-
da’s centennial year, ended up costing the
province of Quebec $957 million. And the
most recent fair, Expo 84, currently under-

- way in New Orleans, is heading for “a

bigger disaster than was ever believed pos-
sible,” the authors stated, pointing out that
daily attendance is currently less than one-
half of what is necessary to break even.
Significantly, nearly all the fairs began
with modest budgets and modest predic-
tions of attendance, they said. But as costs
escalated, the attendance forecasts were
inflated to give the exposition the appear-
ance of solvency. In the end, the numbers
going through the gate were less than
expected and the costs were correspond-

ingly higher.

In that, Expo 86 is true to pattern. What
began as Transpo 86 with capital and oper-
ating costs of approximately $150 million
— at the time of the establishment of the
Crown corporation — has now become
the extravaganza of Expo 86 with an esti-
mated cost of more than $806 million.
Attendance forecasta have similarly grown,
with one government-commissioned study
predicting that 28 million people will pass
through the gates although Expo officials
have put their forecast at 15 million.

Whether that figure is ever realized is
questionable, the authors of the study
noted, pointing to the experience of past
fairs. But even if it is — and the figure they
used for their calculations, 14.6 million, was
fairly close — the cost of the fair to taxpay-
ers would be over half a billion dollars when
all the costs were taken into account.

The study noted that many of the real —

costs to the province have been hidden from
the public because they include the oppor-
tunity cost of the land (the amount that
could be expected if the land used for Expo
were Teleased or sold and the money put
into interest-bearing deposits), the addi-
tional costs of policing, improving roads
and highways as well as the cost of ‘“‘de-
commissioning” the land (removing the
buildings and preparing the area for alter-
nate use), which has proven in past fairs to
be particularly expensive.

The study’s authors were out of the coun-
try at the time of the release of their study.
But Robert Allan and Jonathan Kesselman,
themselves authors of Institute papers,
comment on their analysis.

Kesselman noted that a pre-release brief-
ing had been held with Expo 86 chairman
Jim Pattison at which the businessman
“acknowledged that other fairs had been
unmitigated financial disasters” and said
there was no reason to think that Expo
would not cost money.

Pattison later said that the study was sus-
pect, claiming that it did not take into
account some $230 million in taxation from
the fair.

None of the authors were available to
determine whether in fact taxation benefits
had been included. But the study itself did
state that estimates of total costs were, in
fact, conservative — indicating that the cost
to taxpayers could be higher.

And the much-vaunted side benefits
— that Expo would lead to an increase in
tourism and open the way to new
investment — are simply not likely, Allan
told reporters. —

“Investment decisions are based on care-
ful calculations of the costs and benefits,” he
said. “Giving investors a few passes to Expo
won’t convince them to invest their money
in British Columbia.”

Pattison said following the release of the
study that its findings were “suspect”’. After
reading it for only five minutes, he said he
noticed that some $230 million in projected
tax revenues were omitted. And he questi-

- - =——

EXPO SITE. . .a futuristic dome and a potential half-billion-dollar tab for taxpayers.

oned the $120-million price tag on the
“opportunity cost” of the land, arguing that
there was “no market” for the land.

But Pattison’s arguments aren’t valid,
Dr. Robert Evans, another Institute
member, told the Tribune in an interview.

“Tt’s quite correct that tax revenue wasn’t
included in the study — because it isn’t new
money coming into the province,” he said.

Evans explained that the authors set out
to analyze Expo from the perspective that it
was a business enterprise set up by the pro-
vince to sell itself as a product to the world.
From that standpoint, the benefits that were
counted included only “new” money com-
ing into the province from out-of-province
tourists or other countries, provinces and
corporations paying to construct pavilions
at the fair.

And from the same perspective, any taxes

would have to be considered “recycled” ©

money, he said.

Evans also queried the argument that the
land would not generate revenue — because
of the slump in the market — if Expo were
not using it.

“Are we to believe that if Expo wasn’t on
the land, that it would have no value?

“T find that pretty hard to believe,” he
said.

Evans said that the institute’s authors
would be prepared to sit down with Expo
any time to discuss any or all of the esti-
mates and figures used in the study.

“But we’re certainly standing behind the
report and its conclusions,” he said.

Still, the one thing that Expo has demon-
strated, according to the Economic Policy
Institute, is that the government, when it
decides to, can spend money to create jobs.

But they emphasized that there are a lot
of other, better ways to spend money that
will create more jobs and long term eco-
nomic growth.

That same point — that Social Credit
government spending decisions are not
based on economic efficiency — was
emphasized in another paper issued by the
Institute entitled “Should the B.C. govern-
ment pursue mini-effiency or social
efficiency?”

Author Johathan Kesselman analyzed
various government cutbacks and Socred
claims of creating more efficient, less costly
government and found they did not:stand
up.

The cost reductions realized by laying off
staff or cutting whole programs — even
apart from the social impact — may have
created a “mini-efficiency”, he noted, but
because the costs are simply passed on to
other areas, and even create new costs, the
government destroys any “social effi-
ciency.”

He cited as one of many examples the
closure of the province’s vehicle testing sta-
tions and the elimination of mandatory test-
ing. Although the closure may have resulted
in a reduced budget for the department, the
government costs will ultimately be far
higher overall as a result of more vehicle
accidents and consequently higher health
costs for accident victims.

“Tt does not take many paraplegics per
year to justify the cost of mandatory auto
inpections,” he said.

Another paper issued by Institute
member Murray Shaffer targeted “real
government waste”’, noting that the govern-
ment had spent anywhere from $100 to
$300 million more than it needed to on
construciton of the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir
transmission line to Vancouver Island
because it did not heed the advice of its own
energy commission and overestimated
power requirements.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 17, 1984e 3