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Volrich playing games
with Olympic figures

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

So now mayor Jack Volrich and
his NPA City council want Van-
couver to host the 1988 Winter
Olympics.

Last March mayor Volrich set up
a committee to prepare a feasibility
study on the project. The commit-
tee, of course, brought in the kind
of glowing report that the mayor
wanted. ;

It says that the total cost of the
Winter Games if staged here would
be $87,300,000 of which
$13,300,000 would be ‘‘cash recov-
ery’? leaving a net cost of
$70,000,000. Then the committee
goes on to report that revenues
(television receipts, ticket sales, fed-

eral government grants etc.) would:

come to (you guessed it) exactly
$70,000,000. Not content with this
neat figure, it goes on to say that we
“could well realize a profit.”’

... As far as I can see, all of this is
pure conjecture. The job of this
committee is to ‘‘sell’’ the project to
the public and that is just what the
committee and city council are do-
ing. My conjecture that the Winter
Games could cost twice as much
and the revenues be half as much
is just as valid as theirs.

After saying that the games will
break even and that there won’t be
any deficit, the committee hedges
its optimism with these words about
what it will cost Vancouver. ‘“‘We

recommend that the city of Van-
couver’s financial commitment to
the Games, should our bids be ac-
cepted, be limited to an amount
that is directly related to positive
advantages that accrue specifically
to the city in terms of housing

and/or and cultural
facilities.”’

Can council tell us just exactly
what the hell this doubletalk
means?

If this committee is able to put
such a precise figure on the capital
and operating costs of the Games,
on the ‘‘cash recovery’’ and on
“‘revenues’’ why is it so vague on
what it will cost Vancouver? Will it
be $5 million, $10 million, $50
million?

Let me just mention a few of the
facts that the committee, and city
council too, failed to mention:

@ The whole purpose of bring-
ing the Winter Games here is to
make a handsome profit for the
hotel and motel industry, the con-
tractors who will put up the facili-
ties, and the owners of the facilities
in the Garabaldi area where some of
the games would be staged.

@ Bringing a huge number of
athletes and tourists here will inevit-
ably result in a price increase of just
about everything people buy.

@ In all likelihood Vancouver
will be saddled with a big debt.

I am not against the 1988 Winter
Olympic Games being staged here. I
just want to make sure that (a) we
go into it with our eyes open and
dispense with all the horse dropp-
ings, and (b) that we don’t end up
subsidizing these games out of our
tax dollars while the merchants and
promoters pocket the profits.

Therefore my stand is: Don’t br-
ing the games here until we have an
iron-clad agreement with both the
provincial and federal governments
that they will guarantee the entire
cost and cover any and all deficits.

sports

New centre hailed as major
advance for Natives in B.C.

By JANICE HARRIS

The relocation of the Vancouver
Indian Centre from its present Kit-
silano site to the eastside of the city
is being hailed as a major break-
through for the Native community
in B.C.

The new centre at 1607 East
Hastings St. will spread over half a
city block and offer ambitious new
programming designed to reach out
into the city’s Native population.
For both its size and programming,
it will be the- first of its kind in
Canada.

However the struggle to trans-
form the financial promises of the
municipal, provincial and federal
governments into firm commit-
ments for the new Centre is not over
yet, says Debbie Mearns, president
of the Indian Centre.

Still to be confirmed is whether
the new Tory secretary of state will
stand by the promises of the former
government to share the costs of
purchasing the new centre and ren-
ovating it.

Riding on the federal grant of
$250,000 are a matching grant from
the provincial government which
came through last week, and a
$300,000 commitment from the city
of Vancouver. Proceeds from the

sale of the Kitsilano ee Centre
at Third Ave. and Vine St. and pri-
vate donations will bring the total
cost of the project to over $1
million. :

The Vancouver Indian Centre
provides services to Native residents
and to newcomers to the city, and

Wayne Clark, administrator of the
Centre, says the new location. is
“ideal=*

A recent study shows t h at be-
tween 23,000 and 36,000 Native In-
dians live in Vancouver, Clark told
the Tribune, ‘‘and the vast majority
liveinthe Victoria-Commerical
Drive Core.”’

Clark pointed to right wing gov-
ernments like the Lyon government
in Manitoba where ‘“‘the govern-
ment deals with the Native question
by increasing the police force and
withdrawing social services’ as a
chief reason for the influx of Native
Indians to Vancouver. ‘‘Indians are
pouring into this city from the
prairie provinces because of the in-
ability of those governments to deal
with their problems,’’ he said.

There is real need -in Vancouver
to prevent a further deterioration of
social and economic conditions for
the growing Native Indian popula-
tion, a problem the city acknowl-.

edges is overwhelming it.

Mearns and Clark are noe
that the new indian Centre will
the way in meeting some of the Pp
blems faced by Indian resident
providing job creation projects:
self-help programs with a br
range of programming.

The new Centre will include @
taurant and a commercial arts alll
crafts outlet, a day care cently
gymnasium, meeting centre, healll
clinic, and administration office
Programming will include re¢
tional and sports activities, a drop"
in program, crisis intervention ant!
emergency services, welfare admit
istration and job creation PIG}
grams.

One of the exciting new progf
to. operate out of the centre will
housing program in conjuncid
with the federal Central Hou
and Mortgage Corporation to Pp)
chase and renovate existing ho
in the area for Native tenants.

The Indian Centre Housing ©?
poration also wants to purchase all®
renovate the 125-room New Woll® y
Hotel, located directly behind
new Centre, to provide acc
modation for both permanent
dents and transient Natives who
rive in the city.

<>

Citizens’ group for rapid transit formed

Hydro ‘planned’ cutbacks

Continued from page 1
test still another round of service
cutbacks by B.C. Hydro and to de-
mand a meeting with the provincial
government to seek an adequate
subsidy to improve the-transit
system.

Rankin’s*motion to ‘‘strongly
protest’’ the July 20 bus cutbacks,
which will see the elimination of 42
bus trips daily on key Lower
Mainland routes, rallied the
Amalgamated Transit Union, stu-
dent organizations from SFU and
UBC, the Status of Women, Rape
Relief, SPEC, the Communist Par-
ty,.the NDP, the East Indian
Welfare Association, and
Downtown Eastside Residents,
COPE and other eeuinupity
groups behind it.

Only NPA alderman Doug Little
opposed Rankin’s motion, but the
motion itself, similar to ones
adopted in the past by city council,

was never really in question. ‘‘What
I fear,’’ Rankin told council, ‘“‘is
that you will simply pay lip service
to the resolution again and nothing
will be done.’

Vancouver is the key to winning
an improved transit system in
Greater Vancouver, Rankin em-
phasized, calling on the council to
take the lead in getting senior
government support for rapid tran-
sit and an improved bus system.

Monday the Socred government
introduced legislation to establish
the ‘‘Metropolitan Transit
Operating Corporation”’ which will
take over responsibility of running
the bus system from B.C. Hydro
under the Urban Transit Authority.

The pending takeover makes the
present cuts even more unnecessary,
Rankin said, blasting the new cor-
poration as ‘‘just a third level of
bureaucracy we will have to deal
with.’’ The whole Urban Transit

wo months ago, when the Communist Party

discovered the intricate network of electronic
spying equipment hidden in its Toronto offices
— an incident noted earlier in these columns —
the official response was largely predictable: the
RCMP hid behind a curtain of silence; Bell Tele-
phone, whose equipment was used, denied that
it had anything to do with the bugging; and the
McDonald Commission, after taking a cursory
look at things lapsed into indifference.

But not the Metropolitan Toronto Police.
Their letter to the CP June 25 would suggest that
the wiretapping equipment wasn’t for bugging at
all — and that those who installed it were, like
Richard Nixon at Watergate, ‘‘just there to fix
the plumbing.”’

‘With an astounding disregard for credibility,
the letter said that the police were ‘‘satisfied . . .
there is no evidence, at this time, to indicate that
any of the devices found on the premises were
being used for the illegal interception of private
communications.”’

Just as incredibly, it added that the police had
found no evidence of a ‘‘break and enter.’’

CP general secretary William Kashtan, in an
interview with CBC charged that the Toronto
police investigation was a ‘‘whitewash”’ intend-
ed to protect those who were responsible for
planting the bugs in the first place. He added
that the party would continue to press for the
McDonald Commission to dae a full probe of
the incident.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 13, 1979—Page 2

vu

Perhaps the ultimate irony was put on the af-
fair during the Toronto police investigation. Po-
lice officers seized all the bugging equipment
that had been uncovered and have since refused
to return it to the CP. Their reason? Possession
of illegal wiretapping equipment is a violation of
the Criminal Code, they say.

* * *

hen we reported last week the tragic death in

Greece of Joyce Andres, we noted that she
had contributed her considerable organizing
talents to the National Union of Students for
which she worked as a field organizer. And now,
we understand, NUS is establishing a scholar-
ship in her honor.

Fittingly, the scholarship which is to be given
annually, will be for women activists in the stud-
ent movement across the country. NUS has.al-
ready begun the establishment of a scholarship
fund although an address to which contributions
can be sent was not yet available.

We will keep readers informed when more de-
tails are known.
* * *

W e have a note from Olive Padgham telling us
that her sister-in-law Margaret Padgham, a
supporter of the Tribune for most of her 72
years, passed away last month. Although a pro-
longed illness had kept her from active work for
some time, she continued to contribute to the fi-

‘nancial drive and had made a donation in the
1979 campaign.

In earlier years, both she and her husband
Percy had been active in community organiza-
tions and both were honored by the Colling-
wood Community Association for their work on
behalf of that organization.

* * *

| t was with some trepidation that we tried to
identify the photos of the Finnish Festival by
describing them over the phone to one of the or-

ganizers, but when we had finished talking to _

Sylvia Lowe just before our June 29 issue, we
were confident that we had everything straight.

But it seems we were wrong after all.

As soon as Sylvia got the paper she phoned to
tell us that the photo — on page 10 of that issue
— showed the Thunder Bay choir, not, as the
caption stated, the Sudbury choir. And the con-
ductor, she told us, was Armas Kivinen.

We did identify the other photo — showing
the Finnish-American dance group from Seattle
— correctly as well as the accordionist accom-
panying the choir. But here again, we have to
admit somewhat sheepishly that we misspelled
his name. For the record, it is Leo Niemi.

Our apologies for the errors. And our thanks
to photographer Joe Yoshida who gave us access
to his negatives even before he had seen them
himself.

bus cutbacks and Hydro’s confi

Authority is ‘‘a total sell out,” ™
said, and Vancouver mayor J
Volrich and alderman Mike H
court are in ‘‘a conflict of interé
for sitting on the UTA Board © 0
Directors.

Harcourt also joined in the atta™’
on Volrich for his conflict of i
terest as UTA chairman, but do¢ 4
ed an explanation for his own 10"
on the UTA board. ‘‘The Hy@

- bosses told the transit operators

keep losses at the 1977 level of ?
million’? Harcourt said, expla
the cutbacks, ‘‘and that has meal
an effective cutback of bet week
and 15 percent per year.’
Amalgamated Transit eo
spokesman Les Hutton told cou? )

g

i

~that the 42 bus trips about tO |

eliminated are additional to 23
hour trips cut back in 1977, snd
1978 fare increase which also cul!”
to ridership. The cuts in rider
are ‘‘well planned’? Hutton ché
ed, ‘‘We told you two yeals -
that the cuts were only the tip of ®
iceberg, we are now seeing mor
and more of it.’

“The battle against freew%,
needs to be won all over agai
COPE’s Bruce Yorke said, cit”
the city’s recent moves to inct@
parking in downtown VancoU
build the Multiplex at PNE,
propose a ting road for the
End, and the province’s co
ment to the Annacis Island cro

of the Fraser River.
Communist Party spokes!
Miguel Figueroa charged that

<=,

tationist stance in negotiations ©
the ATU, which voted 87 pé
for possible strike action Tu
evening, have both been oe
the provincial cabinet ‘“‘to dO’
dirty work now and keep
cabinet and the UTA’s hands
in the process.’

Also last week, representat!
from community gf
throughout the Lower Mainl
met in the West End to *
Citizens for Rapid Transit, a ©
tion pledged to pressuring gov’ us
ments for improvements in the
sit system and for a quick st
an LRT system for Vancouver.
formation of the new organiZ4
was announced by its pro
chairperson Carol Walker TU