~~ a! So, =~ SO Ge MS “SS - we Pare Sas at ae aah: ee =_- ee a 9 oS > lle eta IN ee hee ars A Civic leaders from all parts of ®province were urged this week Ke action on housing and employment as the Union of B.C. Unicipalities convention con- *ned in Vernon, B.C. mee call for action by B.C.’s tnicipalities came.from Alberni eo George McKnight, a Bloe, Operator at the MacMillan oe plant in Alberni, in a pon paper distributed to all “bates at the UBCM parley. intitle, “Housing and UrhaPovment-Major Problems of follows Government Today,”’ Sate we is the text of McKnight’s latement: The Prediction of employer 8 wkesmen that up to 10,000 : Workers are laid-off, or facing ‘*Yoff j i cay n B.C. in the coming weeks tivie Se for grave concern among Ministrer municipal ad- Be gons of this Province Dod ty cents of every dollar of indip tion originates directly or *ctly from this basic industry. €re are several basic causes for . Current market difficulties ther ber, and plywood. Among &M are: (1.) Unheard of price increases ‘ OUtthe €mployers have squeezed @ in qe atest profits ever seen in Ndustry, “terest Impossible mortgage in- Ove, terest rates, 11.5% and Dossipgr ec tically eliminating the sa ollity of all but the highest ; (3) orkers building a home. Ments 8X policies of the Govern- Materials on all building : Plus 5% provincial sales LBERNI ALDERMAN URGES ACTION Jobs, housing major civic issues tax, which adds up to about 17% when you apply tax on tax. (4.) HIgh cost of building lots, prices for which have been pushed up to the very limit by developers and speculators and further aggravated by the policies of the municipal governments. The employers and many government spokesmen all speak piously about the ‘‘market dif- ficulties’ as being responsible for the present crisis. These “market difficulties” do not relate to the actual need of the people for housing. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians, living in houses which are unfit for oc- cupation. And in addition, many thousands of others who are inadequately housed and very badly need a decent place to live in. In every city in Canada, even Port Alberni, people are living in run-down unfit houses with no possibility to improve their cir- cumstances. It is not a market situation reflecting too many houses, or the need for houses, it is a market situation reflecting the fact that millions of Canadians and a far greater number of Americans cannot afford a decent place to live. And this number includes many thdusands of woodworkers who produce the building material but cannot afford to buy it. In the face of this situation what can the Canadian government do to solve this contradiction? — which is on the one hand, millions of Canadians living in inadaquate and even indecent housing, and on the Y ‘vhenia Miroshnichenko Coloratura Soprano OPERA STARS Performed on five continents Soloists KIEV OPERA & BALLET THEATRE Ukraine, USSR VANCOUVER Dmytro Hnatiuk Baritone CONCERT — Sunday, November 10 — 8 P.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE Admission: $7.50 — $6.50 — $5.50 TICKETS: THE BAY BOX OFFICES DOWNTOWN-—RICHMOND—SURREY — LOUGHEED ; AND CHAMPLAIN MALL PHONE RESERVATIONS —681-3351 CHARGE TO YOUR BAY CHARGE ACCOUNT— | Open Daily 10-5:30 VICTORIA Tuesday November 5 8:00 p.m. McPHERSON PLAYHOUSE tickets ph. 385-0427 VERNON Sunday November 3 — 2:00 p.m. RECREATIONAL COMPLEX tickets ph. 545-1361 other hand, layoffs and market crisis in the lumber industry — our basic supplier of building material. The Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments should recognize housing, good housing as a basic right of every Canadian and undertake to guarantee this right to all our people by adopting a program of action which would accomplish this in the next 10 years. In short, make this a national priority and undertake all the measures necessary to ac- complish this objective. Z The first thing which comes to mind is that such a program would cost a lot of money; yes, it would. There is no doubt of that. But let us recall these facts. In 1939, when Canada, after 10 years of depression found it necessary to go to war, the government raised the necessary money by an act of parliament which was passed in 20 minutes. Billions were raised, shipyards, factories, all sorts of industries, army camps, aeroplanes, airports etc., etc. were built in a matter of months. There was no shortage of money; unemployment disap- peared; hundreds of thousands were in uniform, and the rest went to work. It Was a National Emergency! @ Hundreds of thousands are unemployed; there are slums in every city which need to be torn down and replaced; hundreds of thousands of children have no decent house to live in; senior citizens live in deplorable con- ‘ditions because they cannot afford decent housing even if it was Labor hits attack on pay gains Answering claims made by finance minister John Turner during a recent speech in Van- couver that wage increases con- tribute to ‘‘rapid inflation”, B.C. labor leaders said last weekend that Turner is out of touch with realities. George Johnston, president of the B.C. Federation of Labor, said. “Wage rates have nothing to do with interest rates, or land speculation, or the increasing prices for food products, which are the major causes of inflation. And certainly profits have not been in any way restrained by em- ployers.” Turned has currently been on a national speaking tour indicating that the government is planning stronger action to deal with in- flation at the next session. In- dications from Turner’s speech is that the government will adopt some of the Tory thinking on in- flation and direct its main fire against the standards of living of working people. Asked what he thought of Tur- ner’s remarks, Johnston said, “‘It implies in itself that one of the major factors in inflation are wages. We think we have the right to continue to get an ever im- proving standard of living and a right to maintain that through cost- of-living clauses that maintain our position and don’t erode it.” Vancouver labor council president Syd Thompson and head of IWA local 217, said ‘‘people like Turner are totally out of touch with the realities of inflation and have See LABOR HITS, pg. 12 Ald. George McKnight, who this week took the fight for action on housing and unemployment to the floor of the UBCM convention in Vernon. available; people’s health and living standards decline because of unemployment and disgraceful housing conditions all over the country. And in the face of all this, the Federal government increases interest rates to ‘cool down the economy!”’ This situation is a disgrace; a national disaster; and yes, a “National Emergency”’, as much so as any war situtation for those who are unemployed and inadaquately housed. What can we do about it? The Federal government needs to seize the initiative to launch the greatest housing program the country has ever seen. We should immediately declare an emergency situation in housing; enact the necessary legislation to raise the money for a “crash program” of 350 to 500 thousand living units per year for the next ten years; cooperate with the provinces to build senior citizen’s housing and low rental housing on a massive scale. Cooperate with the municipalities to tear down the slums and replace them with modern housing with all the amenities needed for the people. Meet this National Emergency in housing with a national program of action to meet the needs of the people for housing now! There is no aspect of the economy which generates em- r ployment to the level that housing generates from planners and ar- chitects to carpenters and plum- bers, from manufacturers of plumbing material to cement and furniture, appliances and furnaces to glass and electric wire, all branches of the economy. Woodworkers.and all the various trades in the construction industry, workers in manufacturing plants; municipal and provincial statesmen — we should all unite to see to it that government action is taken now! 2 Parliament meets at the end of September. It is time for the parliament of Canada to act, and to act decisively just as it did in 1939. Food, clothing and shelter are the three most basic needs of the people. Housing in our country cannot be adequately provided on the basis of the so-called “private enterprise” methods of the past. The developers, the promoters, the speculators, the mortgage com- panies have pushed the cost of housing beyond the ability of the majority of Canadians to pay. But the country as a whole can meet the need by national action. All we need is the will to act. We have the material, we have the people, we have the money as was proven during the war. Let’s start now: o Reduce expenditure for arms by $1,000 million a year. This would build 40,000-25,000 living units per year for a start. The employment so generated would return millions in taxation, to build thousands more homes. 0 Reform the tax structure to increase taxation on the rick and lower it on the poor. This could raise another billion a year which would duplicate the above. In this way the process would very quickly snowball and housing construction slum clerance and increased employment would rapidly regenerate the whole country, renew our sense of national purpose, improve the living standards and well being of our people and prove that with government leadership, rising employment, improving living standards, our people’s whole lives would take on new meaning, our jobs would be more secure and our whole country and it’s people would be the benefactors. eA KEEP REPEATING THAT TO THE “WAGES ARE TO BLAME FOR PUBLIC/ oe