MUNICIPALITIES

Vancouver city council and citizen
groups are presently engaged in a discus-
sion of what is called the
Coreplan. It isa plan for the development
and redevelopment of the city’s core.
This area is defined as the downtown, the
West End, False Creek, central Broad-
way, and the inner city neighborhoods of
Strathcona, Grandview-Woodlands,
Mount Pleasant and Kitsilano. Involved
in the plan are such matters as office
space, employment growth, transporta-
tion, B.C. Place and the Advanced Light
Rapid Transit system (ALRT).

The city’s planners predict that office
space in the downtown area will triple by
the end of the century, causing employ-
ment in this field to also grow. They
predict that this will cause the demand for
housing to grow and place a strain on our

transportation. And they ask’ questions
such as: Should core employment be
limited or deflected to suburban areas?
Should the housing supply in the city’s
core be increased? Should transportation
facilities be upgraded.

Those are all legitimate questions but
the answers recommended by the plan-
ners fall considerably short of what is re-
quired. In my opinion the two central
. issues that must be dealt with are (1) the

: provision of an adequate supply of

| moderately-priced housing in the city,
and (2) a substantial upgrading of our
public transportation system.

I believe also that increasing office and
commercial space in the downtown will
only exacerbate traffic and transporta-
tion problems if the increasing number of
people who work there have to live in the
suburbs and commute to work. The plans

Coreplan projections
ignore bus cutbacks

of B.C. Place for a massive increase of of-
fice and commercial space and a limited
amount of housing will only aggravate
these problems.

One of the best briefs presented to city
council so far was that by Des Turner of
the Citizens for Rapid Transit. He
pointed out that we already have crisis in
transportation with oversaturation of
traffic arteries and with Lions Gate
Bridge already five per cent over normal
breakdown volume.

His brief also points out that the plan-
ner’s acceptance of employment growth
in the city’s core is unrealistic because it
rests on public transit growth predictions
that have no basis in fact. The planners
predict a “*50 percent increase in available
downtown destined transit,’’ when, in
fact, regular bus service has been cut and

will be cut further. No plans exist to in-
crease Seabus service as ALRT comes in-
to service. Plans are to cut bus service and
ALRT has no park and ride facilities
along its route and is running into serious
financial problems. (With the latest over-
run the cost has gone up to $1 billion, and
will reach $3 billion with interest charges
over the period of amortization; the cost
per kilometre is 14 times that of conven-
tional systems now being built in
Portland and Sacramento.)

The Citizens for Rapid Transit recom-
mends that controls be immediately plac-
ed on core employment growth, more
housing be built in the city, office space in
B.C. Place be kept to a minimum and the
city concentrate on improving public
transit, not freeways for automobiles.

These recommendations make sense to
me.

Labor’s hopefuls hold
ground in elections

Labor-backed and progressive candidates
held their own in municipal elections across
B.C. Saturday, with incumbents losing seats
in some areas but making significant gains
elsewhere in a vote characterized by a low
turnout of the eligible electorate.

A mere 20 per cent of the voters con-
stituted the average turnout at polls for elec-
tions that some observers say were over-
shadowed by the events around the Solidari-
ty fightback against the Socred
government’s legislation.

The most stunning upset took place in
Burnaby, where school board candidates for
the Burnaby Citizens Association swept out
incumbents aligned with the Socred-leaning
Burnaby Voters Association. BCA incum-
bent Barry Jones was joined by newcomers

‘Stewart McLean, Anne Bailey, Susan

Reimer and Sara Carroll to capture five of
the school board’s seven seats.

On council, incumbent BCA Ald. Doug
Drummond was joined by Lee Rankin.

No new faces from the labor-backed slate
were added to Coquitlam council or school
board, to which incumbents Aid. Gloria
Levi and school trustee Lorna Morford of
the Association of Coquitlam Electors were
handily re-elected. But aldermanic hopeful
Eunice Parker closed the gap between non-
election and a council seat, coming in at just
61 votes short. ACE school~ candidate
Michael Manley-Casimir missed by just 29
votes, and both he and Parker have re-
quested recounts.

In Delta, incumbent aldermen Beth
Johnson, Norm Lortie and Karl Moser held
their seats, while on school board,
newcomer Gwen Burnett was elected.

In Maple Ridge, Bill Hartley was elected
to a first term as alderman, while labor’s
Irene Leeson was successful in her bid for
trustee in Pitt Meadows.

-Incumbents Wes Janzen and Joe Francis
were re-elected as New Westminster
aldermen, while on school board, in-

cumbents Anita Hagen and Mike Ewen were ,

joined by new trustee Bob Osterman.

In North Vancouver city and district, four
of the five school board incumbents who
banded together in the anti-cutbacks coali-

:

tion, Citizens Association for Responsible
Education — Roy Dungey, Margaret
Jessup, Philip Joe and Verna Smelovsky —
defeated bids to unseat them from pro-
government candidates.

In Port Coquitlam, labor’s candidate
Mike Farnsworth was successful in his bid
for a council seat.

Incumbent aldermen Gregory Halsey-
Brandt, Robert McMath and Ernest
Novakowski retained their council seats in
Richmond, but Ald. Harold Steves lost in he
bid for re-election. :

On Vancouver Island, incumbent shcool
trustee in Courtenay, Wayne Bradley, held
his seat in a four-way race despite a well-
oiled Socred machine and an intensive press
campaign waged against him by the local
press for his prominent activities in the |
Solidarity fightback.

In Ladysmith, Alex Stuart took a seat on”
council while Nanaimo district incumbent |
Frank Murphy was re-elected for another
term on.the board of directors. ;

Labor council secretary Len Nelson was
unseated as alderman in Port Alberni, while
first-time candidate Dave Crosby, running
on a strong platform for civic-owned secon-
dary industry, was unsuccessful but cap-
tured 25 per cent of the vote.

Incumbent trustee Darlene Watts came in
at the top of the polls, but her incumbent col-
league in the battle against Socred education
cutbacks, Rosemary Buchanan, was
defeated.

In Prince Rupert, mayoral hopeful Dan
Miller, a member of the United Fishermen
and Allied Workers Union, was unsuc-
cessful in his mayoral bid, as was former
mayor Buddy De Vito in his try for another
term — after several years’ absence — aS
mayor in Trail. :
' The results of the disarmament referen- |
dum held in more than 20 municipalities
were not available in their entirity at press
time. But the peace vote carried handily in |
the Lower Mainland communities of Bur-
naby, Coquitlam, Delta, Mission, New
Westminster, North Vancouver city, Port
Coquitlam and Richmond, and in Port
Alice.

[I was perhaps inevitable, given the huge grass-roots
movement which has developed to counter the
Socred’s budget and legislation after these were handed
down July 7. After all, the province’s right-wing planners

of economic “‘restraint’’ needed something to counter the.

event of Operation Solidarity and the Solidarity Coalition,
movements which united British Columbians — including
those who voted Socred in the last election — against the
massive attack on human and trade union rights mounted
by the provincial government.

Fortunately (from Bill Bennett’s perspective) the Silent
Majority Committee is charging to the rescue.

The “majority” appears to be — judging by the

~ literature they send to anyone who expresses interest — a
collection of individuals who maintain a telephone
number (answered well past office hours) and a post office
box on West Broadway Street in Vancouver. Their stated

goal is to gather signatures on a petition to be presented to

the Legislature, informing the House that the undersigned
“tagree with the principle of government restraint.’’

A cursory glance at the literature accompanying the
petition might suggest the group is simply launching a
conservative-minded appeal to those who support what
they call “the principle of restraint.”” The group claims,
“‘We are not trying to defend the Socred government for
the way they are implementing restraint measures. We are
not attacking the Solidarity Coalition for their beliefs.’’

Belying this claim are the Vancouver Sun’s ultra-right
commentator, Les Bewley, and Fraser Institute director
Michael Walker, the economist from the Milton Friedman
school of thinking who advised the Socreds prior to the
budget. For to justify its support for cutbacks to social ser-
vices and attacks on democratic rights, the Silent Majority
includes reproductions of a Bewley article and Walker
commentary in its package. It comes as no surprise that in
his article, Bewley urges right-to-work legislation, while
Walker suggests the government fire all government
workers who strike.

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PEOPLE AND ISSUE

The group has also received ample air time and backing
from the infamous Doug Collins on his open-line radio
talk show.

If the petition — which, according to the literature, can
be “easily run off on your photocopier’? — sounds
suspiciously familiar to the campaign mounted by the
Solidarity movement before the recent job actions, we
have the acknowledgement of Silent Majority spokesman
Keith Frew that Solidarity ‘‘definitely prodded it.”’

We certainly don’t wish the so-called ‘‘majority’’ any
success in their campaign. But with the breadth of the fight
back movement against the Socred bills, it is doubtful the

Silent Majority’s effort will receive the majority — unless

it is a majority of corporations — for which it is aiming.
* * *

t’s not often that we get such high level confirmation

of our facts — but in the case of a report we carried in
our Nov. 2 issue, the confirmation came — albeit begrudg-
ingly and belatedly — from the U.S, State Department
itself.

After U.S. Admiral Wesley McDonald had charged
that well over a thousand ‘‘well-trained Cuban profes-
sionals’’ were on Grenada ‘‘impersonating construction
workers’” — and after Reagan himself had made the
ludicrous charge that the invasion was just in time to head
off a ‘‘Cuban occupation” — the State Department ad-

_Mitted Nov. 6 that the figure we published of a total of 784

Cubans was “‘just about right.”

Three days later on Nov. 9, the U.S. military on
Grenada got around to reclassifying the Cuban prisoners
as workers and acknowledging that less than 100 of them
were actually combatants.

Actually, the New York Times ran a full page story by
Stuart Taylor Jr. which systematically went through what

Taylor referred to as ‘‘deliberate distortions and knowing-
ly false statements of fact’? and countered them with
documented facts.

Among the many charges he refuted:

@ The U.S. had claimed secret documents revealed
plans for the deployment of 4,341 Cuban reservists on
Grenada. In fact, the documents revealed only references
to 4,341 Grenadian troops who were to be assisted by 27
Cuban military advisors.

@ Reagan had claimed the airport was closed, which

raised the need for U.S. forces to help get Americans out. —

In fact, said Taylor, four charter flights left Grenada that
very day and both Cuba and Grenada had already given
the U.S. assurances that U.S. citizens were free to leave the
island or remain. -

Significantly, although the Globe and Mail did pick up
excerpts from the story, neither of the other two major
dailies did. Yet both had reported in some detail the
original charges by the Reagan administration.

* *
ail service being what it is — not to mention the
pace of events over the past three weeks — the
press release we received this week from the B.C. Young
New Democrats was somewhat dated by the time it crossed
the desk. But its contents bear stating for the record.

In contrast with the silence of the provincial NDP on the
escalating public sector strike, an emergency meeting of
the Provincial Council of the B.C. YND expressed its
“support for Operation Solidarity’s program of job action
to fight the Socred government’s legislative measures. The
council also encouraged the NDP provincial caucus to take
a more high profile role in the fight,’’ it added. ;

“The Socreds are destroying the notion of democratic

concensus the release quoted B.C. YND president |

Lawrence Kootnikoff as saying. ‘‘People have to speak
out now. And as the elected opposition, the NDP caucus

has to make its voice heard. We don’t feel they have been

doing this enough.” ae

On that point, we’re sure their opinions are shared by |

thousands of people across the province.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 23, 1983—Page 2