“Is this what Trudeau meant when he said we must all share in carrying

the burden of inflation?”

Last Saturday’s civic elections
resulted in a number. of
progressive candidates being
elected while others made strong
showings in their bids for office.

In Port Alberni,
Alderman George McKnight was
returned to council for another two

_ years as he topped the polls in the

Island community. McKnight, a
member of the IWA, has been a
consistent opponent of big-business
and developer interests during his
years on council. Another pro-
labor incumbent, Walter Behn was
re-elected as he captured the third
council seat. -

Burnaby municipal council will
see a number of new faces as
candidates of the Burnaby
Citizen’s Association were elected
to three of the five available

aldermanic seats and BCA mayor,

Tom Constable was returned with
a margin of nearly 3,000 votes.
Constable is a former business
agent of the IBEW and he will be
joined on council. by incumbent
Gerry Ast and newcomers Doug
Drummond and Fred Randall.

False inflation fighter

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Alderman Jack Volrich ap-
pears to be starting his mayoralty
election campaign early, a year
ahead of time in fact. At least
that’s one interpretation that can

be placed on his announcement to -

the press on November 5 that he
would be proposing a freeze on city
hiring and services to Council’s
finance committee, of which he is
chairman.

Usually if an alderman has some
proposal for a committee of which
he is a member, he brings that
proposal to the committee for
discussion. But apparently
alderman Volrich wanted some
advance publicity as a self-styled
inflation-fighter. In politics that’s
called grandstanding.

In point of fact, however,
alderman Volrich’s proposals for a
freeze on further hiring, the
dismissal of all temporary staff, no
further expansion of services to
citizens, outright rejection of all
applications for grants from social
service agencies, etc., have

nothing to do with inflation at all.
They are simply an attempt to use
the smoke-screen of inflation to cut
services to citizens.

Alderman Volrich voices the
demands of the far right on
Council, the developers and big
business interests. Services to
citizens have always been their
target — they want Council funds
used to finance business un-
dertakings such as the Granville
Mall, Gastown, and so on.

As for inflation, its basic cause
lies in the control of our economy
by a handful of big corporations,
multi-national corporations, which
increase prices by means of
monopoly control and price-fixing
arrangements. Their policy is to
charge all the traffic can bear.
They have not been restrained in
any way by Prime Minister
Trudeau’s so-called wage-price
control program or even by
Premier -Barrett’s price freeze
because in neither case is there
any agency to enforce price con-

Se

trols. Only wages are being con-
trolled. Beet.

If inflation is to be tackled, we
need legislation to first of all im-
pose price controls and roll-back
prices, and, secondly, strict en-
forcement with heavy fines and jail
sentences for violators.

Furthermore, for alderman
Volrich to propose that the wages
and salaries of municipal em-
ployees be kept within the guide
lines imposed by Ottawa and that
there be no increases in pay next
year for aldermen and the mayor
is just some more political grand-
standing. The mayor is getting too
much, already, thanks to a motion
last year by alderman Volrich. And
municipal employees last year
signed a two year agreement that
does not expire until the end of
1976.

We need some economies at City
Hall alright, but not at the expense
of services to citizens. We need
economies in wasteful ex-
penditures that benefit only a

See INFLATION, pg. 11

popular

| Progressive candidates
score civic vote gains

Randall is a business agent for the
Operating Engineers Union.

The Burnaby vote is seen as a
firm rejection to plans to farming
out more municipal work to
private contractors. The BCA
solidly opposed such a move and
won wide support from the labor
movement for their position.

In Coquitlam, Eunice Parker
easily won a seat on the school
board. Parker was first elected to
the school board three years ago,
and was subsequently re-elected
before suffering a narrow defeat at
the polls last year. She had been
supported by the New Westminster
and District Labor council and had
actively campaigned against right-
wing efforts to cut back in
education spending and in favor
of a new education financing
formula which would lift the
burden of school funding from local
homeowners. .

Ernie Crist, former business
manager of the Tribune, narrowly
missed election to the North
Vancouver District council as he
finished less than 500 votes behind

the third and final successful
* aldermanic candidate. Crist had

held on to the third spot most of the
night until the final polls reported.

His campaign focused primarily
on the need for a rational approach
to planning in the North Shore
community, and had demanded
that developers be responsible for
paying all costs of their develop-
ments, not only the direct costs.
Another major point in his
program was the call for the
elimination of the school tax.

In other areas, labor candidates
met with mixed success. The New
Westminster Labor Council backed
slate in Surrey was successful in
electing but one candidate, Bill
Fomich, who finished a solid third.

The other candidates, Wilf Lennox, °

Frank Izzard, Joe Leclair, and
Raymond Cox all fell short of
election, though they did increase
their vote totals.

Former Trail: mayor, F.E.
DeVito narrowly missed election
as an alderman and came within
120 votes of returning to council,
and in Richmond tenants’ leader
Margaret DeWees was defeated,
largely because of a lack of unity
among the progressive forces
within the municipality.

=

SSO

GEORGE McKNIGHT, re-elected
at the top of the poll for aldermai
in Port Alberni. _

SS oe

EUNICE PARKER, re-elected
school trustee in Coquitlam.

ERNIE CRIST, in his second bid
for alderman in the district of
North Vancouver was a_ close

runner-up for election.

he accepted custom is as old and threadbare as
capitalism itself, in fact much older as Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels so well illustrated in their introduction
to the Communist Manifesto of 1848.
“Where is the party in opposition that has not been
_ decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where
the opposition that has not hurled back the branding
reproach of Communism, against the more advanced
_ Opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary
_ adversaries?”’
: Following his unheralded announcement of a provincial
_ election on December 11, 1975, which, among other things,
caught a conglomerate reactionary gang-up of Socred,
Liberal and Tory opportunists with their political pants
down, Premier Barrett stated that this would probably be
_ the “dirtiest” election campaign in B.C. history. In this
the premier was ‘right on’ target.
Already the anti-NDP gang-up dirt has begun to “‘hit the
_ fan” in ever-increasing volume, and with little concern for
the credibility of the electorate. The first load of garbage
this Socred gang-up will attempt to heave into their
election campaign, in fact they have already got it going,
will be “‘socialism versus non-socialism,’’ ‘“‘socialism

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 21, 1975—Page 2

versus free-enterprise,”’ or better still, the NDP. govern-
ment gravitating towards ‘‘Russian communism versus
our free-way-of-life,”’ ad nauseum. Already an NDP-MLA
defector from Saanich has helped launch this lying non-
sense, which merely shows that the NDP should be more
careful in the selection of candidates. They need not be
“socialists” but at least they should be tolerably honest.

This anti-socialist and anti-labor gibberish is designed
to take the minds of the electorate off the 20 years or more
of Social Credit bungling, arrogance, sell-outs and virtual
dictatorship, and vote for more of the same. This time
with an assortment of Liberal, Tory and similar op-

portunists with one aim in mind, what’s good for a
monopoly plunderbund in B.C. is good for them! And to

this opportunist political riff-raff, Socredia looks like the
“best bet” for the moment. Hence the gang-up by a
political brothel which aims to turn the clock back and
subordinate B.C. and its people to the unhindered and
unchallenged rule of monopoly, a la the Bennett ‘“cult’”!

“Time for a change,” bleated the Liberal and Tory tub-
thumpers just before the last election, just to emphasize
their disapproval of Socredia. Now they’ve gone to bed
with it, and what comes out of this ‘“‘union” will look like a
spewed up dog’s breakfast.

We will not waste time and space in this column trying
to list all the good things and all the bad things the NDP
Barrett government has done for labor and. the people
since it took over with a big majority a little over three
years ago. Suffice it to say that it has done a lot of both.
Some very good things on behalf of the common people,
plus too many very bad things in the interests of monopoly

and its political gang-up “‘trinity.”’

In this ‘‘democracy of ours, which reflects all the
sickness of Tory and Liberal opportunist scramble for a
place at the public trough, the old line parties with
monopoly’s millions behind them, with their pull and
“bull’’, are a coercion rather than a choice. Hence their
slogan (socialism, meaning the NDP) or free enterprise
meaning monopoly, is a complete misnomer. With the
NDP we haven’t had “‘socialism’’ but some progressive
and forward-looking legislation, but we have had, and
going on many years, one hell of a gutful of ‘‘free en-
terprise’’, as the prices, profits and exhorbitant salaries
of all such “free enterprisers”’ will affirm. 4

On and after December 11, there is a remedy available
for stiffening up the NDP’s “socialist”? spine — the
election of a goodly number of Communist candidates to
the new Legislature; a hefty sprinkling of political yeast in
an NDP dough that tends to fall flat at the most opportune
time. An imperative need which would give the politician
yodellers of ‘free enterprise’ really something to wail.
about.

Editor - MAURICE RUSH :
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