pip ylbibinsilsaabiannar bth

VANCOUVER

Decision
to reject
donations
political

The management of B.C. Place
refused to allow citizens who come to
hear evangelist Billy Graham on Oct.

. 14 and succeeding days to bring with
them some 50,000 cans of food to help
Vancouver's food bank for the
unemployed and destitute.

Under public pressure, the B.C.
Place managers have changed their
position. But their initial refusal still
raises some questions.

It was a political decision and it was
made not only by the management of
B:C. Place, but also by the Scored
government which exercises tight con-
trol over the stadium. It was a callous,
heartless decision. There was abso-
lutely no justification for refusing this
huge and generous’ contribution of
food.

I believe it is the responsibility of
government to look after all people
who are unemployed and destitute.
That is supposed to be the case now.
But the fact is that Ottawa has gradu-
ally been amending the unemployed
regulations to cut off more and more
people. And Grace McCarthy, the

Harry
Rankin

minister of (in)human resources has
been cutting welfare rates and cutting
off some entirely.

The result is that we have literally
thousands of people in the Lower
Mainland who have no money and no
food (many of them also have no
place to sleep) and who depend
entirely on a weekly bag of groceries
from the food bank to keep them
alive. Their needs have been partially
met by donations of food from citi-
zens and firms.

The provincial government, having
refused many of them enough money
to live on, and refused many of them,
any money at all, now refuses to even
let others donate to the food bank to
help out these people. One can only
surmise that the reason must be to
make these people so desperate that
they will be willing to work for any
wage and under any conditions. This
is Bill Bennett’s New Reality.

There may be an altogether differ-
ent reason why Billy Graham is being
given the cold shoulder by the Social
Credit government. You see, Billy
Graham has made a couple of trips to
the Soviet Union bringing a message
of peace and evangelism. I don’t
know if he made any converts to his
brand of evangelism but he did find a
very responsive audience whenever he
spoke of the need for world peace.
These visits incurred the anger of the
CIA and the Reagan administration.
The corporate-owned media is begin-
ning to view him with suspicion. The
Social Credit government, which is
closely aligned with Reagan’s right-
wing philosophy, has been quick to
react to Billy Graham the same way.

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 17, 1984

By DAN KEETON

It’s a well-oiled and well-heeled political
machine backing Vancouver’s civic Socreds
and their fellow-travellers in this year’s city
elections. And, with the possible exception
of the parachuted mayoral hopeful and
hated ex-cabinet minister Bill Vander Zalm,
the Civic Non-Partisan Association (NPA)

and its allies from The Electors Action

Movement (TEAM) are fielding a fairly
strong slate of candidates for city council.

~ In time-tested fashion, Vancouver’s right
wing — still stinging from their defeat at
the polls in 1982, when four aldermen from
the Committee of Progressive Electors,
Mayor Mike Harcourt and his running
mate Bill Yee captured six of the 11 seats on
council — has closed ranks.

In 1984, there will be no right-wing spoil-
ers, such as the short-lived Tax Relief
Action Committee (TRAC), led by tax con-
sultant David Ingram, which in 1982 took
votes from the NPA. And this year the NPA
has left two council seats open for TEAM
incumbents May Brown and Marguerite
Ford, making common cause with the rem-
nants of the once-mighty centre-right civic
group.

But there are also deep divisions within
the city’s monied forces this time around.
The alliance they are financing is in many
ways a unity of desperation.

“Their alliance is very tenuous — it’s a
defensive alliance, formed for the sole pur-
pose of getting rid of us,” says COPE
incumbent Ald. Bruce Yorke.

Relations among members of the Socred-
leaning Downtown Vancouver Association
(DVA), whose ex-president, Philip Owen, is
onthe NPA slate, have been rocky since the
advent of B.C. Place. The Socred megapro-
ject has the potential, with its plan for sev-
eral huge towers of office space along the
north shore of False Creek, to undermine
the economic base of the DVA’s merchant
members in the adjacent downtown core.

“There’s been a serious attempt to paper
over those differences and keep a common
front for this election — but those serious
differences remain,” noted Yorke.

More serious perhaps for Vancouver’s
right-wing civic forces is the mayoral candi-
dacy of Vander Zalm, the former minister
of human resources and education whose
record of severe financial and service cut-
backs and attacks on teachers and trustees
undermines attempts to portray him as a
“moderate” leading an alliance that desper-
ately wants to occupy, at least in image, the
middle ground.

It is known that Vander Zalm’s candi-
dacy does not please George Puil, the NPA
alderman considered the most astute of his
colleagues and who would have contested
the mayor’s chair himself, had not Harcourt
decided to seek a third term. Both Puil, who
reportedly attempted to talk the Surrey ex-
mayor and gardener out of running, and
NPA populist Ald. Don Bellamy, were not-
ably absent, as were other NPA officials,
when Vander Zalm announced his candi-
dacy in a Richmond botanical garden.

Ironically, that garden — called Bota
Fantasy Gardens — itself increased the
Socred’s image as a carpetbagger and
opportunist, following Vancouver Sun
columnist Pete McMartin’s revelation that
Vander Zalm owned the gardens. McMar-
tin in his “‘Cityside” column explained that
the reason Vander Zalm was no longer writ-
ing his weekly gardening column for the
Sun was due to the daily’s refusal to print a
piece plugging the Bota Gardens, written
after Vander Zalm had purchased the prop-

erty.

The would-be mayor also carries bag-
gage from his union-bashing days, which he
recently displayed publicly. Addressing
an audience of New Westminster business-
men, Vander Zalm called for the banning of
unions in firms with fewer than 50

eg +

red-baiting.””

employees, an end to secondary picketing
and changes to labor law to make unions
“more democratic.”

Such sentiments, for which Vander Zalm
is infamous, are bound to be an embar-
rassment to the NPA which, while hardly a
friend of working people, has sought in the
last few elections to present itself as a ““mod-
erating” presence among business, govern-
ment and labor. If Vander Zalm continues
on such a course, it will once again force
Puil, who in 1982 had to refute then-NPA
mayoral candidate Jonathan Baker’s call to
cut 500 city jobs, to take issue with his own
mayoral candidate.

A potential split is also developing over
the referendum on cruise misile testing, with
the announcement by TEAM incumbent
May Brown on a Cable 10 program
recently, that she’ll support the yes vote.
The referendum, introduced by a motion
from COPE, asks citizens if they support
council urging the federal government to
cancel the agreement allowing the U.S. mil-
itary to test the first-strike weapon over
northern Canada.

Brown’s support, which reverses her ear-
lier vote in council against the referendum,

reflects a policy change of the B.C. branch
of the federal Liberals, for whom Brown
was campaign manager in the federal elec-
tion. It’s highly unlikely anyone in the NPA,
which has voted against most of council’s
peace initiatives, will support the referen-
dum.

But it would be a mistake to underesti-
mate the civic right-wing’s determination
— with more than a little help from the
province’s Socred machine — to unite in
spite of division against the growing popu-
larity of Vancouver’s progressives. Even
Premier Bill Bennett managed to express
support for Vander Zalm’s candidacy, in
spite of the ex-minister’s desertion of the
party when it seemed headed for defeat in
the 1983 election, and in spite of the know-
ledge that Vander Zalm hopes to replace
Bennett in the premier’s chair.

If Bennett’s endorsement signalled that
the Socred electoral machine would be in
full force for the Vancouver elections, the
NPA’s candidates for council are walking
advertisements for the economic forces
arraigned against the progressive civic slate.
NPA campaign organizer and aldermanic
contender Gordon Campbell, formerly
with TEAM as executive assistant to former
mayor Art Phillips, is an executive with
Marathon Realty, the real estate arm of
Canadian Pacific. Brian Calder, a former
alderman under both the TEAM and NPA
banners, is also in the real estate field.

“This is not an ordinary civic election,”
says COPE Ald. Libby Davies, “The
Socred apparatus is now in gear. To them,

ALDERMEN LIBBY DAVIES, BRUCE ERIKSE

N...“NPA lacks issues, so they'll try

Vancouver is both a symbol and a reality in

proving the lie behind the Socreds’ so called
‘restraint’ ”.

“We could have lost 300 city jobs in the —

last (city) budget. Th NPA and TEAM were

desperate to make those cuts in the name of |

‘restraint,’ but we proved, just as we did in
1983, that we could keep our people work-
ing, keep city services and balance the
budget,” agreed COPE Ald. Bruce Eriksen.

“The fact is, we’ve lived up to our prom-
ises. We’ve made no big mistakes, so the
NPA-TEAM coalition doesn’t really have

any issues in this election. So they'll try to

fight it out on images — to portray us as
‘leftist’ and as standing in the way of devel-
opment,” said Eriksen.

The right-wing organization can also be
expected, following Vander Zalm’s remarks
on the Webster show two weeks ago, to
engage in a red-baiting campaign. Just how
intense this will be may be garnered from
the fact that one of the NPA’s council can-
didates is David Levy, a former CBC cor-
respondent in Moscow known for his anti-
Soviet views through articles in the local
press and appearances before city council.

Analysis

~ Levy’s presence is to give weight to the ©

NPA campaign against council’s numerous
peace and international friendship initia-

tives, and to link that process with “the

left.”

“I think people are fed up with red-
baiting,’ Davies responded. “I believe
people will vote on the cruise referendum as
they did on the 1982 plebiscite mandating
the government to negotiate world disar-
mament. That 80-per cent vote cut across
party lines and political beliefs, and to call it
a creature of the left is absurd.”

The NPA right forces may also be in
trouble attempting to float a campaign
based on its megaprojects. For while the
developments supported by council’s
progressives — low income and co-op
housing projects — have flourished, B.C.
Place, Expo and even the ALRT transit
project, are in deep trouble with cost over-
runs and cancelled projects.

With those problems, Vancouver’s right
wing still has strong financial backing and
the use of the Socred machine. It’s likely
also to get the best help in the form of
organizational skill from some of the execu-
tives in major corporations.

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Well-heeled, but divided right —
facing unity slate in ‘84 race

But COPE has a strong slate of council _

candidates in incumbents Eriksen, Davies,

Yorke and Harry Rankin, joined by Solid- _ |

arity’s Jean Swanson and school trustee
Wes Knapp. And with the backing of
unprecedented numbers of community
groups, NDP constituency organizations
and trade unions, COPE and the alliance in
which it participates may well be the rock
on which the NPA-TEAM ship founders,