KARL ZUKER

EDWARD LEONG

COPE fields strong
Parks Board team

For Parks Board, the Committee of Progressive Electors
(COPE) has fielded a team of active community workers.

Donald ‘‘Dusty’’ Greenwell is
widely known and respected as a
tireless worker for the Hastings
Community Centre and Cassiar
Ratepayers Association in
Vancouver’s east end.

Edward ‘‘Ed’’ Leong, though
still a young man, has put much
time and effort as a member of
the Point Grey Community
Association into the fight to ob-
tain the concrete Jericho
hangars as a community centre
for the neighborhood.

Sid Shelton is well-known in
Grandview for his work in the

old Grandview Ratepayers

Association and the Commu-
nity Centre Association, of
which he is currently president.

Karl Zuker has won a sterling
reputation by his work for the
Cassiar Ratepayers Associa-
tion in the fight for new Brighton

Park and against the Charles
Street freeway.

These four, by their grass
roots participation in civic
betterment, demonstrate their
willingness to continue the
tough plodding work that is en-
tailed in improving this great
city.

Recognizing the degenerating
economic situation, members
of COPE have given these candi-
dates a program with the accent

on wage payments to publicize ©

and fight for reinstitution of the
Winter Works Program and
completion of the Stanley Park
seawall, both with federal
financing.

_More community centres and
improvement of. the older cen-
tres are other items in the plat-
form that will put men and wo-
men back to work in the near fu
ture.

‘Tie rent increases fo rise

in cost of living’

DOROTHY LYNAS, popular North
Vancouver District school
trustee, who is completing -her
12th year on school board,
-announced she is a candidate for
re-election on Dec. 12 S

PACIFIC TRIBUNE_=FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1970—PAGE 2
ESOKI—-ONEF KE AIIMIVOH YAGIEA— IMUTIAT DAIAY

— Yorke

Bruce Yorke, aldermanic
candidate for COPE and one of
the original organizers of the
Tenants Council in Vancouver,
said last week that elected
COPE aldermen would enact a
city bylaw to prevent exhorbi-
tant rent increases.

He said they would move to
add to the regulations of the Van-
couver Grievance Board bylaw
a section that would require any
proposed rent incrase be not
more than the percentage
increase in the Vancouver cost-
of-living index in the previous 12
month period.

‘“‘Under the provincial
Landlord and Tenant Act rents
can only be increased once in a
year, but at present there is no
limitation on the amount of the
increase,’’ Yorke said at an
election meeting in Roberts
School. .: eye? paAniisatc ete

Cf % Kem yOl t
&i PIUNLSIO

ar I

Turn out to vote

You can change city council Dec. 9

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The turn out of voters in Van-
couver civic elections is low.
More than half of eligible voters
do not go to the polls. In 1968 only
44 percent of voters exercised
their franchise.

Why is it that so many people
don’t bother to vote?

It isn’t that: they’re satisfied
with things as they are. Most
people have complaints about
how the city is run and also some
ideas about what should be done.
But it seems that many have a
‘‘what’s the use’’ feeling about
voting. They’re not convinced
that their vote can or will change
anything. i

Nothing could be further from
the truth.

City Council makes important
decisions every week affecting
the lives and welfare of Van-
couver citizens. The kind of
decisions it makes depend upon
who is on Council and who is
exerting the most pressure on
Council.

The trouble with the decisions
Council makes today is that they
tend to favor only a small
segment of the citizens— special
interests such as promoters, real
estate firms, big corporations.
The needs of the ordinary citizen
are ignored.

But it needn’t remain that
way.

Homeowners and small
businesses pay excessive taxes
today and they go up every year.
That’s because big commercial
and industrial properties in
most cases are assessed at only
a fraction of their real value and
also because their assessments
in most cases haven’t gone up for
10 years. Council has gone along
with this practice.

This situation can be changed
and homeowners can change it.
After all, they comprise almost
half the voting population while
big business interests number
only a handful. Homeowners
and small businessmen can
have their taxes reduced if they
will turn out to vote and give
their support to candidates
pledged to compel big business
to pay its fair share of taxes.

Or take the housing shortage
and high rents. City Council
could quickly change this
situation too if it wished. Under
the National Housing Act,
Council could build 2500 low
rental housing units annually at
no cost of the city. (The entire
cost would be borne by the
federal and provincial govern-
ments on a 72-25 basis).
Furthermore, rents in these
units could be kept down to $50 to
$100 a month. Also Council could
enact by-laws limiting rent
increases.

Then why isn’t this done?

The answer again is that
Council is dominated by real
estate interests who want the
housing shortage to continue.
Even our millionaire mayor has
his money invested in /apart
ments.

Tenants now comprise over 54
percent of Vancouver voters. If
they turn out to vote and if they
vote for candidates pledged to
do something about the housing
shortage and rents, they could
decisively change the compo-
sition of Council.

Or take the undeniable fact
that the East End is the
neglected area of our city. This
where wechaveithe:greatest :

BOI09T SOE DASIeL Fano

housing shortage, the highest
rents, the slums, the least parks,
the most poorly equipped schools
and so on. :

This isn’t unrelated to the fact
that (a) only one parks board
member lives in the east end, (b)
no school board members live
there and (c) I am the only

alderman who lives in the East
End. ;
The situation could be changed
if East End voters would go to
the polls and vote for candidates
who are pledged to the ward
system (which would guarantee
representation to each area of

See RANKIN, pg. 11

M’ only source of ‘information’ in this summary is

the local commercial press, so if we have erred in
our conclusions, the reader will know who to blame. But for
once I think the daily blahs were right.

The event was the doings of the Social Credit provincial
convention, held over a week ago in the Bayshore Inn in
Vancouver. Scanning a list of the ‘‘resolutions’’ coming up for
debate, one couldn’t avoid the impression that here was surely
a flashback to the witch hunt sessions of the “godfearing”’
fathers of Salem, Massachusetts during the years 1691-92, when
some 32 unfortunate women were burned at the stake for
alleged ‘‘witch craft,’’ that and other more horrible medieval
forms of “‘punishment”’ by death. '

It is also of interest to note that not until the year 1957 was
this Massachusetts statute providing for the ‘‘purging of
devils” from Massachusetts femininity annuled. We suspect
that Socredia in convention in the year 1970 would have
rejected annulment — for “security? reasons, since these
Socred ‘“‘holy men’’ are whizbangs on and for security.

Generally however, it would appear that this aggregation
of ‘‘pious”’ politicians and their Socred followers invoked their
occult powers of damnation upon everything and everybody
who doesn’t conform to the Socred version of the ‘“‘Sermon on
the Mount.”

All strikes and strikers should be outlawed and tossed into
outer darkness. All hippie and non-hippie ‘‘deadbeats, bums,
etc., etc,’ should be shorn of their hirsute locks and also cast
out to find the non-existent job. The very mention of revolution
and revolutionaries raised the heat of the delegate body to Hell
fire temperature, hot and sizzling. Reading between the lines
so to speak, one could almost sense the smell of hair burning
from this Massa —er, B.C. Socred ‘‘holier-than-thou’’ bull
session. :

Naturally the “‘prosperity” accruing to Beautiful British
Columbia from massive giveaways to big U.S. and home-
spawned monopolies, were likened to “manna from heaven” (a
Socred heaven that is), into which the unbeliever was cajoled
or enticed to enter—or stay damned for evermore for his or her
unbelieving. ;

And that old sinner John Barleycorn came in for a lot of
unrewarding and unkind remarks, despite the fact that the B.C.
Liquor Control Board (LCB), a lucrative Socred government
monopoly, derives an enormous profit from slaking the gullets
of dry British Columbians to the tune of $90 million net or over
annually.

The highlight of the affair, you guessed it, as the press
headline said, the ‘‘Cheering Socreds thump for Bibles.” With
their High Priest claiming a direct hotline ‘‘plug-in with God,”
especially during election time, what else could you expect?
But this Socred “‘religion’’ is unique, since it is held to be a real
“answer”? to Communism. So, let’s get back to the ‘‘old-time
religion’ with Bible reading, the Ten Commandments and
sundry other scriptural teachings in school so as to consolidate
our young British Columbians against the ‘‘spectre of.
Communism,”’ a la Bennett version. It may be noted en
passant, that the Socred hierarchy who constitute the
government of B.C., and have for the past 18% years,
consistently blown holes in two of the ten commandments
almost every waking hour. -

“Thous shalt not kill’, but WAC and his cohorts give
wholehearted approval, and publicly too, to U.S. aggression
and genocide in Vietnam and latterly in Cambodia.

And “Thou shalt not steal’’, but on behalf of Big Business
monopoly, WAC and his Socred cohorts have literally stolen
one half or more of B.C. and given it to these lumber, coal, gas,
oil and similar tycoons. f

It would therefore seem that a little bible reading,
interspersed with some elementary studies in honesty and the
ethics of fair dealing, would not come amiss in Socred circles,
and especially in the inner circles of the Holy of Holies itself.

It wouldn’t do much for Communism one way or another,
but it might take some of the ‘‘hallelujah’’ out of these witch
hunters and help them see themselves as their neighbors see
them. It might also enlighten them that the age of the witch
hunter has passed. - ts

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