ALD. RANKIN CHARGES

Price-fixing boosts bee

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The cost of living is rising
faster than anyone expected a
year ago. In April alone it went
up 1.3 percent. That amounts to a
rate of 15.6 percent a year. The
price of beef jumped 70 percent
in the last five months.

Why this sudden increase? Can
anything be done about it? More
and more people are coming to
me and asking what should be
done.

Let’s consider the price of beef
— the worst offender.

Spokesmen for the meat packing
industry claim beef price
increases were caused by heavy

The figures do not bear out
these assertions.

A federal live stock official has
just revealed that American
purchases of Canadian beef are
today 40 percent less than they
were a year ago.

Secondly, approximately the
same number of cattle are being
processed in Canadian packing
plants today as a year ago.

The same federal official says
that the price of beef is going up
because Canadian beef consump-
tion per capita is rising and
therefore the demand is greater.

But since January 1 of this
year, the price of beef on the hoof

waist

American buying and a drop in

in Calgary has only gone up 10¢ a
cattle production in Canada.

pound. How does this justify an

EDITORIAL

It runs in the family

bviously beset by grandiose illusions that he will be the

next premier of British Columbia, Dr. Pat McGeer,
provincial leader of the Liberal Party latches on to any and
every issue where he thinks a vote is to be garnered.

Seemingly unaware that the charisma of Trudeaumania has
badly wilted in recent times, B.C.’s Liberal Horatio barges in
with his opportunist political nostrums, regardless of the
realities of life. :

This week Liberal McGeer attempted to speak at a rally on
prices— protesting housewives and others at the Kelly-Douglas
(Burnaby) wholesale food distributors. The ‘learned doktor’’
aimed to impress the ‘‘meat-in’’ audience with some moth-
eaten ideas that high prices were the direct result of high
wages, rather than monopoly price gouging.

According to the.formula McGeer tried to get off his chest,
every. time a strike or lockout occurs, the cost-of-living zooms
upwards. The consumer rally at Kelly-Douglas didn’t buy the
McGeer rhapsody nohow and the Doc had to cut it short!

Prior to, during, and since the butchers and retail clerks have
been locked out by the six big monopoly chain stores, the latter
have been singing the McGeer tune fortissimo through the daily
media of full-page press propaganda advertisements on what
the butcher’s strike and clerks lockout will meari to the
consumer in higher meat prices.

But these big monopoly chains are deathly silent on the
spiral of meat prices long before the present dispute ever broke
open. That’s a point McGeer and his Liberal cohorts fail to
mention— or do anything about, in Ottawa or locally.

McGeer, of course, has ‘‘plans’’ for settling ‘‘labor-
management” disputes, but mainly labor. At the moment he is
promoting a dud which he has christened BOLD, that is a
“Board of Labor Development’’, which would ‘‘investigate’’
the labor-management field, and of course come up with some
“real solutions’’, disdaining the fact that labor is already filled
up to the gills with all such unwarranted and impudent inter-
ference in its internal affairs. But McGeer hopes to gain some
political yardage by his new soap-opera BOLD.

Another of the McGeer vote-catching charisma is beamed
to the general area and issue of pollution, and which as a devout
advocate of Liberal ‘‘achievements’’, the Doc should have some
elementary inside knowledge of and with. Particularly since
pollution per se is a many-sided product of modern capitalist
society.

Just last week McGeer announced to all and sundry (via
Canadian Press) that the ‘‘Greater Victoria area is the second
largest cesspool in B.C.”’ This startling statement ommitted to
inform curious readers just where the “‘first’” was.

With the Victoria “‘cesspool”’ off his chest, McGeer went on to
elaborate what would be done if ‘‘his leadership’’ was at the
helm of things, be it pollution, prices, or just pure unadulter-
ated political piffle.

-increase_~ of
Vancouver?

Furthermore, the price of beef
in Toronto today is about the
same as it was here five months
ago.

Not only that— the price of live
hogs is considerably higher than
beef — $35 per cwt. compared to
$25-@¥et the price of pork on the
retail market is lower than the
price of beef!

This whole unsavory situation
has all the earmarks of price
fixing, of an arrangement by the
meat packing industry and the
chain and department stores to
gouge the public as much as they

70 percent in

can. The additional profits must |

amount to many millions. :

But behind all the profiteering
and price fixing is another
Sinister. motive and that is to
blame all the price increases on
the meat cutters and retail clerks
in the big chain stores. That’s-
why the chain stores have locked
out their employees and have big
signs on their windows warning
the public that to grant wage
demands would cost millions of
dollars in higher food prices.

The fact is, however, that no
wage increases have yet beer

granted and already the price of -

beef is up 70 percent. If all the
wage demands of the
meatcutters were met 100
percent, it would still not cause
even a one cent per Ib. increase
in the price of beef.

The federal government has
the power and authority to step in
and quickly end this price fixing
and profiteering by applying the
Combines Act. Yet it isn’t
moving. The provincial govern-
ment too is silent. At the same
time Prime Minister Trudeau is
trying to impose wage guide lines
on labor which would limit wage
increases to 6.5 percent. But he is
not imposing any limits on prices
or profits. The result is that
inflation is being encouraged
rather than controlled.

We in Vancouver have more
reason than anyone for
demanding that “Ottawa and
Victoria take some action to curb
price fixing and profiteering in
the necessities of life. In the
meantime labor has no alter-
native but to demand wage
increases. Something must be
done too for those on fixed
incomes, particularly
pensioners, whose living
standards are now being drasti-
cally cut by rising prices.

, all the advantages

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ices

NAL) \ | Vig

ae

Socreds stall tenant act,
charges Burnaby alderman

Alderman James Dailly, chairman of- the - Burnaby.
housing committee has accused the Socred government of st
tenant’s legislation, and has called for Burnaby council to
Rental Accommodation Appeals Board now. In a special colu
week he also called on Burnaby tenants to organize and prese?
views to the council’s housing committee.

Referring to the proposed bill
sent out by Victoria to municipal
councils and landlord and tenants
associations, Ald. Dailly says:

“The draft bill won’t be dealt
with by the legislature before its
“next session which will probably
be next January,
election is held before then and
the government defeated. But
there is no guarantee even that it
will come up at the next session.
In my opinion the government is
simply stalling.

“It is reluctant to amend the
antiquated Landlords and
Tenants Act of B.C. which gives
to the
landlords. There is no reason at
all why this act could not have
been amended at the last session.

Sess es

Pacific Tribune

‘West Coast edition, Canadian Tribune
Editor—TOM McEWEN. Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH

Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No: 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,
" Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.

Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $2.75 for six months.
North and South America and Commonwealth countries, $6.00 one year.
All other countries, $7.00 one year. ay

Second class mail registration number 1560,

? fetete' : ete
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 6, 1969—Page 2

Ree P%

unless an.

alling on
set up 2
mn ths
t thei!

“Furthermore,
affairs minister Dan Camp 0
conveniently forgot to info is
municipal councils that hae
no legal obstacle preve? ab
them from establishing pr
appeal boards right now, W! regis
waiting for provincial
lation.

“I believe Burnaby ©0U a
should set up a Rental Ac
modation Appeals Boa wee

e € F
that the by-law shoul spolishing

(among other things) aie

nei!

tenant’s possessions for f
rent; ending the right ©
landlord to demand a dep?
cover possible damage, wi
infringing on their legal
collect damages cause ce}
vandalism or negliger
landlords should not be per™! in
to lock out tenants by chang h
the locks on their premises:
obligation of the landlord t
the premises in a good sta
repair fit for habitation.

“T believe something shoul
also be done about the refus@ Ke
many apartment owners (0 "
families with sillier Y 1S
shame that people shoul .
penalized in this la for raisiné |
a family. fee

“Landlords have establish
organizations to defend a :
interests. I trust that Burné e
tenants will follow the examP
of Vancouver tenants au
establish their own organizall?
too. id
“Tenants and landlords sn d
present their views to Counc!
Housing Committee whe? ft
considers the provincial d¥@

\

bill to set up Rental Accom
‘modationGrievance Boards: *"—

steal

councils