Developers should
not reap bonanza

Should speculators, advocated that land assembly
developers and real estate around an LRT system should
sharks be allowed to make be undertaken by municipal
millions in unearned profits by authorities and that any money
buyinguplandonthelight rapid made from this assembly should
transit route (LRT) and holding be used to help finance public
it for ransom? transit. Ten years ago in my

It’s already being done. The pamphlet ‘‘Beat the Traffic
Vancouver Sun reported that Rush” I proposed the follow-
last May a local car dealer ing:
bought a chunk of land at the “When a rapid transit route
corer of Terminal and Main — the Kingsway Corridor, for
for $3 million and within nine example — is definitely agreed
days sold it for $4.9 million to upon, the Transit Authority

Harry

Rankin

should require substantial sec-
tions of land along the route,
especially in the vicinity of the
transit stations. This land is
bound to increase greatly in
value due to the new attrac-
tiveness added to it by the rapid
transit system corridor and the
rezoning upward that would be
necessary. When the transit cor-
ridor is completed the Transit
Authority could develop this
land or. sell it to private
developers. Millions of dollars
in revenue could be raised in this

another developer-speculator.
The LRT plans to establish a
transit station in the area and
land values are booming as a
result.

I’m sure the same thing is
happening or will be happening
all along the Light Rapid Tran-
sit route. Wherever a transit sta-
tion will be built, land values will
boom because that is where new
shopping centres, apartments
and so on will goup. Whoever is
in the know stands to make a
fortune. way.”?

These are unearned, windfall I have also long advocated
profits. The speculators. do that an added value tax (some
_ nothing to earn them or create call it a benefiter tax), should be
them. Land values are up levied on unearned profits of
because a publicly-owned pro- this kind, on the grounds that
ject, the LRT, is going through _ society and the public created
the area. these new values and should
‘I, and COPE too, Have long’ - therefore share in the benefits.

LOWER MAINLAND

Labor backs cost
for 50,000 cards

The two lower mainland labor
councils as well as the Vancouver-
New Westminster Building Trades
Council will be underwriting the
cost of 50,000 poll cards for Bur-
naby Citizens Association, an ac-
tion that could be of critical impor-
tance in the Nov. 21 election.

Delegates to the Vancouver and
District Labor Council voted Tues-
day to contribute $2,000 to cam-
paigns by labor-endorsed can-
didates, a major portion of which
will go to the BCA. The total cost
of the card is estimated to be
around $4,500.

Council secretary Paddy Neale
said that the cards, with the BCA
slate of candidates, would be sent
out to some 50,000 homes in Bur-
naby, in a blanket mailing similar
to that undertaken by the labor

couver last year on ,behalf of the
Committee of Progressive Elec-
tors.

The mailing to Vancouver
households was considered of key
importance in the election in which
COPE won three aldermanic seats,
five school board seats and two
seats on parks board.

The BCA is running a full slate
of candidates with journalist Lee
Rankin heading the list as the
mayoral candidate.

Running for council are: Paul
Bjarnason, Derek Corrigan, Elsie
Dean, Doug Drummond, Gayle
Gavin, Tom Lalonde, John
Motiuk and Gordon Smith. Seek-
ing school board seats are: Anne
Bailey, Frank Boden, Linda
Chobotuck, Barry Jones, Maurits
Mann, Anne Smith and Pamela
Turner.

council in the civic elections in Van-

No criticism allowed

Surrey residents were somewhat
amazed last week to learn that
mayor Don Ross, facing a lively
challenge from labor-endorsed
Steve Gidora, has elevated Social
Credit cabinet decisions to the level
of the ten commandments.

This emerged from discussion in
council last week of an amended
bylaw governing land cost charges
levied against developers. —

- The original bylaw approved by.

council increased the charges on
lots zoned for single family dwell-

- ings to’$6,100. But municipal af-

fairs minister Bill Vander Zalm
prevailed on the inspector of
municipalities to reduce the figure
to $5,330.

Some councillors were not
disposed to accept the revised

figure without protest, charging it
would cost Surrey taxpayers $1.2 ©
million. =

Defending the amended bylaw,
mayor Ross contended, “‘It’s not
council’s prerogative to question
the actions of the provincial
cabinet.”’

He got a stinging rejoinder from —
Gidora in all-candidate. meetings
this week.

“Council has a right and a
responsibility to protect municipal
democracy against all provincial

‘attempts to override’ and ‘restrict

it,’’ declared Gidora. “‘If Vander
Zalm wants to favor the developers
at taxpayers’ expense, we should
protest his decision, not try to stifle
the protest of those who oppose
ites

L ast year, economist Dave Fairey appealed Shell Oil Company’s
assessment as being-too low before the Court of Revision in
Burnaby. But Fairey was late in getting to the hearing and the court
decided not to proceed with his appeal: Itdid decide, however, to lower

staff, figures, it’ Subsequently transpired, containing a serious
miscalculation.

Burnaby council apparently did not challenge the lowered assess-
ment. But it did circulate an inter-office memo asserting that Fairey’s

Fairey had cost the taxpayers $8,000 was repeated by Ald. Gerry Ast
earlier this year and more recently by Ald. Bill Lewarne, a candidate
for the mayor’s chair being vacated by James Mercier.

Last week, Fairey appeared before council. He wanted an end to the
false statements and an apology from those making them. He got a ver-
bal apology from Mercier, Ast.and Lewarne — but he is insisting on a
written apology from council; In the meantime, Shell Oil is still costing
the taxpayers money.

* * *

ould be-said-of W. A. (Bill) Pritchard that his political life

be close to his son Arthur, after the tragic death of his only daughter.
He made a commitment not to engage in any political activity in the
U:S., but his political caréer already was in ruins, destroyed like The

m.

For two decades his name was frequently in the headlines as one of
the country’s leading socialists: In June, 1919, RCMP arrested him in
Calgary on his way back to Vancouver from Winnipeg where, as an ex-
| ecutive member of Vancouver Trades and Labor Council, he had been

working with the strike committee. Subsequently he was one of five
sentenced toa year in jail on charges of seditious conspiracy arising out
of the Winnipeg General Strike. He conducted his own defence and his
speech to the jury when published ran to 216 pages.

In 1928 he was elected to Burnaby council and in 1931 he won the
reeveship. During his second term of office, with more than half the
issue to meet relief costs. The bond issue had been floated on the
strength of provincial promises to contribute to relief costs, but the
Tolmie Conservative government failed to keep the promise. With
typical cynicism it forced the municipality into administration for hav-
ing diverted the bond funds.

the company’s assessment on the strength of figures compiled by its

appeal was responsible for the reduction. And the allegation that:

A tthough-he was 94 when he-died in Los Angeles on Oct. 24, it .
endéd more than 40 years ago. That was when he left for California to ©

Commonwealth of which he was publisher and editor on the shoals of ©

municipality’s population on relief, he dipped into funds from a bond:

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

On formation of the CCF, Pritchard emerged as publisher of The
Commonwealth and as the differences between the right, headed by
Rev. Robert Connell, the provincial leader, and the centre and left
widened, he threw the paper’s support behind the right. The control
shares vested in the CCF provincial executive were held in escrow and it
was ina vain attempt to obtain their release that the staff struck in 1935.
Shorn of CCF support, the paper lingered a few months and died.

The differences widened into an open split. In the 1937 provincial
election, Connell’s Social Constructives ran candidates in opposition
to the CCF and were routed everywhere. Pritchard’s last bid for
political office was in Vancouver East where he and Jack Price, later to
become the NPA’s first token labor alderman in Vancouver, were
buried under the landslide majorities won by Harold Winch and Dr.
Lyle Telford for the CCF.

After he retired from his work as a baker, Pritchard’s visits to Van-
couver became less frequent. He did receive two official invitations,
however, to Winnipeg and Burnaby, of both of which he was made a
freeman. But he was living on his past.

* * * .
hile Vancouver citizens were demonstrating their displeasure
outside the Four Seasons Hotel the other day, inside the hotel
some of the men who helped to murder democracy in Chile were extoll-

” ing the attractions of investment there to Canadian businessmen un-

troubled by scruples about the company they were keeping.

From Javier Vial, Banco de Chile president and as sinister a figure in
Pinochet’s Chile as Juan March who bankrolled Franco in Spain, they
heard about the untrammeled opportunities for foreign corporations,
particularly in mining — Falconbridge has a $500 million development
under consideration and Inco, Norandaz.nd Rio Algom are actively ex-
ploring prospects.

For them theNorth-South disparity in wealth is not a dialogue, buta
monologue. The fascist-military junta strips workers of all union
rights, crushes opposition through ‘‘disappearances’’ and torture, and
Chilean workers are paid starvation wages to enable foreign corpora-
tions to exploit the resources the Allende government restored to the

people.
Supported by Canadian banks and corporations, the rich grow

richer and more and more people are ground into poverty. Vial should
know. Hecontrols about a quarter of the country’s largest companies.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOV. 6, 1981—Page 2

Council
gets sins

_washed_

The sins of past district councils,
compounded by the incumbents,
are haunting North Vancouver
aldermen. In this instance, the sis
literally have been washed aways
swept into the harbor by the ralir
paging waters of Lynn Creek which
gouged out a section of the Premie
Street landfill during last week's
torrential rainfall.

Aldermen are haunted, not S°
much by the garbage strewn along
the creek as by irate Westlynl
residents who have bande
together to demand that the dump
be closed.

The Premier Street landfill, no’
towering 50 metres above the
creek, is a monument to munici
stupidity, past and present. Not fat
upstream is Lynn Canyon, adver

_ tised around the world by the pro

vincial government as a beauly
spot.
And downstream, erected 0?
what once was the creek’s fl
basin, is the garbage dump used by
the three north shoré
municipalities, aswarm with crows
and seagulls which carry the gal
bage far and wide and a breeding
ground for rats. At the lower end,
playing fields and tennis court
have been built on landscaped fil
from which methane gas seeps:
Eventually the area is to become #
golf course — as aldermen havé
been saying for 20 years.

In face of geologists’ warnings
that an earth tremor could causé
the unstable mass to collapse into

‘the creek; aldermen decided nol

long ago to expand the lan

‘upstream, presumably on thé

premise that having devastated
part of the creek they might as well
destroy the rest. Already bulldozers
have levelled wooded areas on thé
east bank for a larger garbage
wasteland.

When the creek cut into thé
dump last weekend it proved to bé :
the natural disaster that brought!
residents into action to end thé:
man-made disaster inflicted of

them by a council more concerne®

for developers than the environ
ment.

They have formed a committe
for which Rhoda Clemiss is thé
spokesman with aldermanic cal
didate Betty Griffin as a membels

_ gathered hundreds of signatures oP

a petition and been busy by phoné
and letter demanding interventio?
by the provincial waste manag
ment branch, federal fisheries and :
environment departments, mal”
shalling their case to present t0
council.

a
More contest

e.6.h6©°8 e
civic office

‘Candidates in two municipal
ties, Langley District and Salmo!
Arm, were not included in thé
Tribune’s roundup last week of 1a
bor-endorsed and progressive call’
didates contesting council and
school board seats in the Nov. 2!
municipal elections.

In Langley District, Da?
Williams is contesting a two-ye#
term on council with the endors®
ment of New Westminster Labo!
Council. j

In Salmon Arm, Reg Walters #
an aldermanic candidate and Ro!
Anderson is seeking election as 4

trustee for Shuswap School Distri@
89. ;

oie,