a 3 ee GREATER VANCOUVER Ald. Harry Rankin, senior council member for the Committee of Progressive Elec- tors, signs nomination papers in the city clerk Bob Henry's office Oct. 16, while other candidates for Vancouver city council, park board and school board look on. _ That the NPA should nominate former Social Credit cabinet minister Bill Vander Zalm as its mayoralty candidate is not surprising. The NPA has become the civic wing of the Social Credit party and the Social Credit cabinet in Victoria. Vander Zalm’s nomination is a direct intervention by the Social Credit cabinet into Vancouver civic politics. The Social Credit government wants desperately to secure a majority on Van- couver city council. The present labor- backed majority is a thorn in its side. In Vancouver we have managed to avoid any layoffs or any cuts in services to people and we’ve done this despite the fact that our sources of revenue are frac- tional compared to those of the provin- cial government. This gives the lie to the whole Social Credit program of layoffs and cutbacks, proving that they are not necessary at all. Furthermore COPE has taken the stand that housing on B.C. Place should include affordable housing for families, hot just high-priced apartments for wealthy executives. The government does not favor this stand. We opposed the ALRT because it is . costing several hundred million dollars more than would a conventional surface transit system. (The full cost of ALRT when it is revealed, will probably be another scandal.) For all of these reasons the provincial cabinet wants to oust the present labor- backed majority on city council and replace it with the Social Credit clones in the NPA. It’s already clear that the whole Social Credit election machine, and all the money that goes with it, will be placed at the disposal of the NPA. Or to put it more accurately, the Social Credit election machine will take over the NPA. The NPA no doubt considers all this a plus for its campaign, but there are some minuses too. Vander Zalm is not a strong candi- Socred machine in full force for Vander Zalm date. He is no intellectual giant. He’ would be nothing, but for the way the media has picked up and popularized his remarks. He has no political stability — having moved from the Liberals to Social Credit and now having endorsed the federal Conservatives. Politics is merely musical chairs to him — he goes wherever he has the best chance of fulfilling his personal ambitions. Vander Zalm shoots from the lip, and his mindless and often insulting remarks reveal his political prejudices and bigo- tries, and have always resulted in arous- ing divisions and hatred. When he was minister of (in)human resources he revealed only contempt for the poor. When he was minister of edu- cation he revealed his ignorance about education. When he was minister of municipal affairs he tried to use it to_ build a kingdom, with himself as king, by trying to take away all the planning and zoning powers of municipal council and placing them into his own hands. He also turned down the request of Vancouver city council and a majority of its voters to establish a ward system in Vancouver. Yet this man who has fought against the best interests of Vancouver all the time that he was in cabinet, now is asking Vancouver voters to elect him and make city council a captive of the Social Credit cabinet. He doesn’t lack gall, that’s for sure. COPE is today mounting the biggest campaign in its history, and the response it is receiving everywhere is the biggest » also in its history. Vancouver voters real- ize that if the NPA under Vander Zalm is elected, we will get the same thing that Bill Bennett has been giving the people of our province for these past 18 months — cutbacks, lay-offs, increased taxes and profiteering megaprojects for the big corportions. COPE believes that our taxes and other revenues can be used to create more jobs by building up industry in Vancouver, rather than invested in tour- ist oriented megaprojects that will only leave us with big debts. That’s why this effort by Vander Zalm and the Socreds to capture city council must be cut off at the pass by Vancouver voters. 2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 24, 1984 Candidates sign up Progressive tax reform is. needed, COPE tells Curtis The Committee of ce Electors has pressed the provincial government to grant “three autonomies” to Vancouver and other municiplaities that would allow progressive tax reform based on the ability to pay. COPE candidates for city council Jean Swanson, Wes Knapp and Ald. Bruce Yorke said Oct. 15 that Vancouver is hit hard not only by revenue loss because of the Social Credit government’s cutbacks in~ public spending, but also because it is forced to pick up the tab for desperately needed social services the government has abandoned. The COPE candidates made their appeal for tax reform in a brief to Finance Minister Hugh Curtis’ public hearing on taxation and economic development. The candidates also charged that much of the province’s economic malaise is wor- sened by Socred industrial strategy, includ- ing a continued reliance on raw material extraction and real estate, and megaprojects such as the Northéast coal deal and Expo 86 which, they said, create only a few tempor- ary or low-paid jobs. ‘ COPE said the “consultative process” Curtis’ hearings supposedly represent comes “years late.” The labor-backed civic alliance argued in its brief that cuts in revenue-sharing grants, which have seen the province’s contribution to Vancouver decline from $31 million in 1982 to $16 million this year, and the ALRT rapid transit project have placed additional burdens on the city’s taxpayers. Taxation has been a constant source of frustration to COPE aldermen, who have been forced to vote for the least odious alternative when it comes to setting the city’s taxes. Through the tax system, imposed by Victoria, councils may either place the burden of taxation on industrial or residential properties, but not to the degree Vancouver’s progressive majority would like. Changes to the system last year allowed for a variable mill rate between the different classes of property — residential, commer- cial and industrial — which partially ans- wered a long-standing concern of B.C.’s municipalities. But the civic tax system remains “regres- sive,” Yorke told the Tribune. “It’s regressive because the big house owner in Shaughnessy pays the same rate as someone who owns a small bungalow. Even our income tax system works better than that,” he said. As it is now, municipal governments are creations of the province through the Municipalities Act, or, in the case of the largest city, through the Vancouver Char- ter. But at its 1983 convention the Union of B.C. Municipalities demanded the civic cen- tre be granted what it called the “three autonomies.” That position, for which COPE has been arguing for several years, involves law- making autonomy, financial autonomy which includes direct taxing powers, and “institutional” autonomy, through which cities would be free to set their own charters. The three autonomies, the COPE brief contended, would allow the city to: @ Receive a percentage of income, liquor and gas taxes collected in Vancouver; @ Negotiate a revenue-sharing agree- ment with Victoria; @ Negotiate a transit financing formula, eliminating the current hydro surcharges ‘and the possibility that property taxes could be increased by the Socreds to pay for the provincially-imposed ALRT. “Without being given the right to run our own tax system, we’ll be forced to continue to rely on property as the main stay of city resources,” said Yorke. Greater Vancouver suffers under a 14.2- per cent unemployment rate, as of March this year, with the number of jobless rising by 6,000 between January and April, plac- ing the total number at more than 83,000 welfare and Unemployment Insurance — recipients, the brief noted. Wages have been eroded as well, the COPE candidates charged, noting that between March, 1983 and March, 1984, the average spending power of Vancouver resi- dents dropped four per cent. The public sector cuts, said COPE, increase the economic problems of Van- couver, which must now foot the bill for vital social services axed by Victoria, such the food bank and tenant advocacy services, the brief pointed out. The COPE candidates added that the ~ $1-billion debt arising from the Advanced Light Rapid Transit project “frightens us- enormously, as it has implications for dras- tically increasing property taxes. “Similarly, we are astonished to learn that Expo 86 will lose more than $500 mil- _ lion (based on the recent analysis from the B.C. Economic Policy Institute) and leave us with practically nothing when the fair concludes. The potential harm to Vancouy- er’s economy of these two projects provides a devastating backdrop to your hearings on economic development.” ACE fights contracting-out Maintaining civic workers’ jobs, supply- ing grants for community organizations, and local control over education are some of the key policies to be carried by council and school board candidates for the Asso- ciation of Coquitlam Electors (ACE) this fall. ACE, with three candidates for council and one school board contender will be seeking the endorsement of the New West- minster and District Labor Council, as well as that of the Vancouver and District Labor Council. A key plank in the ACE platform will be the jobs of civic workers, said ACE council candidate Eunice Parker. “The right-wingers on council have con- sistently voted to contract out civic work, with the result that the outside workforce has been reduced by one third,” Parker, who missed election last year by only 28 votes, said. Two years ago Parker and ACE, with other community organizations and indi- viduals, joined with the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 386 in fighting council’s move to contract out the munici- pality’s residential garbage collection. Des- pite several large rallies and demonstrations against the move, the Coquitlam council subsequently handed the contract to Haul- away disposal, owned by the notorious anti-union Len Rempel. Since then council has contracted out the container garbage business to Haulaway, ‘and continues to grant many outside build- ing and maintenance jobs to private con- - tractors. Parker, an office worker with the Trade Union Research Bureau, is seeking a one- year term on the seat left vacant by ACE alderman Gloria Levi, who resigned last week. Also running for council seats are Doug Schop, a member of the Typographi- cal Union Local 226 and Elsie Manley- Casimir, an office worker and CUPE member. ACE has two incumbent school trustees, one of whom, Louella Hollington is up for re-election. Trustee Lorna Morford is ACE campaign manager. ACE calls for a return of local control over education “with adequate planning and staffing,” and increased provincial grants, and stresses the need for planning over development, said Morford.