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“Let’s have a game of Cops and Democratic Convention
ECCLES in Morning Star.

EDITORIAL

The ‘Just Society’?

rime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s ‘‘Just Society’ is
beginning to take shape, the pieces falling into place
_ like a crude jigsaw puzzle. ;

Last week he announced termination of the 10-year old
federal aid to municipal winter work programs. There was
little or nothing to indicate that the Prime Minister had even
hinted to the financially hard-pressed municipalities that such
a measure was even contemplated. The knife just came down
with a bang, much after the technique of a guillotine. This
measure, says the prime minister, will be part of our
“financial belt tightening program’’;

It sure will. With well on to half a million-Canadian workers
already jobless} to say nothing of tens of thousands of students
for whom a temporary summer job was largely non-existent,
the terminating of federal aid to municipal winter work
projects, will add thousands of wage earners and family bread-
winners to an already large jobless army.

What it will do to hard-pressed municipal governments,
already with their backs to the wall financially, is not hard to
guess; primarily because Of both federal and provincial
disregard for their respective urgent and pressing needs,
particularly in such areas as education, construction, health
services, ete.

Mr. Trudeau doesn’t ‘‘believe” in winter works programs
just to “make work’, so he clamps down on municipal grass-
roots winter work financing. His long-range program for his
“Just Society’, as yet barely on the drafting board, obviously
does’nt take into account how, what or where additional tens
of thousands of workers and their families are to subsist
meantime.. Millionaire swingers scarcely ever do when away
from the public glamor;

B.C. Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Campbell has stated
that the prime minister’s announcement has placed many B.C.
municipalities “in jeopardy’’, probably the under-statement of
the year, while Vancouver Mayor Tom Campbell figures the
Trudeau winter works program guillotine will throw an
estimated 400 civic workers on the jobless scrapheap alone, to
say nothing of important construction projects which will be
drastically affected.

Many mayors, reeveS and other municipal officials
throughout B.C. have already yoiced strong Opposition to
Trudeau’s announcement, knowing too well the grave
economic consequences it will have on their respective
communities — not only in badly needed municipal projects
cancelled out, but in the grave economic hardships it will place
upon their local people . . . and the municipal tax load already
at the breaking point;

A government that moves to eliminate gainful employment
and needed construction projects and condemn those so
affected to subsist on temporary jobless insurance payment
or a “welfare” subsistence level, is not planning for a ‘“‘Just

Trudeau’s ‘‘Just Society’ becomes more readily discernable
with his finale to winter work programs. For the hard-pressed
municipalities and their wage earning communities it will fall
far short of ‘just’. But for the captains of industry and
finance, very ‘‘Just”’ indeed.

‘es

Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH

Editor—TOM McEWEN iar ie
Published weekly at Ford Bidg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,
Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 6, 1986 Page 2

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but, —

A ‘deaf ear’,

lt’s a landlord’s council

BY ALD. HARRY RANKIN

7000 UBC students must find
rooms or suites off campus this
month. Although university
opens next week, many of them
had no success and the situation
is becoming desperate.

Representatives of the: Alma
Mater Society appeared before
Council last week to ask that the
ban be lifted on so-called ‘‘illegal
Suites’’. But Council gave them
- the cold shoulder. In doing so it
responded to the pressure of big
apartment owners and real
estate interests who want the
housing shortage to continue so
that rents and housing costs may
be kept high.

In Burnaby, on the other hand,
where Simon Fraser University
Students face a similar housing
Shortage, municipal council
eased regulations concerning
single family dwellings. As a
result 9000 extra housing units
are expected .to become
available. This will benefit not
only students but all low income
groups.

The sons and daughters of the
wealthy attending UBC have no
housing problems, of course, nor
any other financial problems for
that matter. If they live away
from home it is in high priced

apartments. They suffer no
hardships; their future is

assured.

But what of the students of low
income families? What of the
girls who worked for $1.00 or
$1.50 an hour all summer? What
of the young men who were able
to find work only part of the
time? Are they to be denied the
right to attend university just

because they can’t afford to pay
high rents?,*

For young married couples,
particularly if they have
children, the problem is
particularly difficult.

City Council’s refusal to lift
the ban on illegal suites in the
light of these circumstances was
both callous and cruel.

Council’s refusal is one more
proof that we are up against a
heartless Establishment whose
control over City Hall must be
challenged if people’s needs are
to receive priority.

* eK

Prime Minister Trudeau’s
action last week in axing the
winter works program. will
cancel hundreds of municipal
-improvements across the
country and thousands of jobs.

For Vancouver it could mean
dropping of important sewer,
sidewalk and_ park
improvements, the lay-off of 25-
50 regular employees and up to
400 temporary employees.

Under the terms of the winter
works program, Ottawa paid
half of the payroll costs of
approved projects, with the
province also making a
contribution, in some _ cases.
Ottawa contributed $500,000 to
Vancouver’s $3 million winter
works program this past year.

The prime minister claims
that his action was necessary ‘‘to
maintain the greatest possible
restraint with respect to
expenditures by all levels of
-government’’.

' worthwhile recalling at this

_ in Council demanding that the
_ prime minister reconsider his il]

That proposition is
questionable in itself because I
think we need greater
expenditures, not less, for
housing, education and other
needs of the people. But if
federal expenditures are to be
reduced, why pick on those that
create jobs and municipal
improvements?

Why not cut subsidies to the
CPR, or the huge tax
concessions to oil and mining
companies? Or why not cut down
on the many wasteful and
useless expenditures involved in
the $1.4 billion spent annually on
defence to keep up American-
dictatedcommitments in NATO
and NORAD?

Prime Minister Trudeau’s
cancellation of the winter works
program is class legislation
designed to make one class bear
all the burdens. The drive for
economies in government is to
be at the expense of the people
while the wealthy will go
untouched. His action will be a
great disappointment to many
who expected his policies to be
different from those of his
predecessors. It may be

point that our prime minister is
a millionaire in his own right, all
his ties are with big corporations
and his Montreal constituency is
one of the wealthiest in Canada.

I intend to introduce a motion

advised action in killing the
winter works program.
Unemployment is higher than a
year ago and municipalities are
hard pressed for funds. This is no
time for cut-backs in community
projects.

Cont. from Pg. 1

payment on a $20,000 mortgage
is $1800 a year, whereas the 1949
interest on a $10,000 mortgage
was only $500. This is an increase

_ Of 230% compared to the D.B.S.
assertion of 45%.

' (For those who may be curious
about the technical details of
such a monstrous inaccuracy, we
offer the following speculation.
If in keeping with its cherished
principle of pricing a ‘fixed
basket of goods’’ D.B.S. chose,
say, 100 homes, and has surveyed
the same 100 houses every year,
they would find in 1968, that
many of the homes they started
with were still covered by the
Same 5% mortgage that was in
effect in 1949. But in the
meantime, most of the principal
would have been paid off,
thereby reducing the interest to
a fraction of its original amount.
This greatly reduced intarest is
presumably averaged with the
much higher interest being paid
on homes that have been sold
with new mortgages. This is a
plausible explanation of how
D.B.S. arrives at its implausible
figure, but it
completely unacceptable as a
way of estimating what people in
like circumstances actually have
to pay.) |

Sthtin aig!

is of course.

Cost-of-living

But.even if the index itself
were unexceptionable, it still
would not give -a true picture.
For the fact is that the index
disregards one of the high and
constantly rising elements of the
cost of living, namely the income
tax. And we have to bear in mind
that the income tax is so
désigned that even if the tax
rates remain unchanged, every
wage increase brings with it a

more than proportional increase
in taxes.

Consider the married man who
earned $2000 in 1949 and $4000 in
1968. On the face of it, the
implication is that, since the
increase in consumer prices
(according to D.B.S.) is 50%, his
cost of living went up to $3000.
Since he now has $4000 to spend,

he is supposed to be one third
better off.

Alas, the facts are otherwise,
In 1949, he had no income tax to
pay. Today he pays roughly $300
in basic income tax, $80 in Old
Age Security Tax and $71 in
Canada Pension Plan tax. Thus
his actual take home pay is only
about $3550, and the net gain

over his presumed $3000 cost of .

living is only about 18 percent
instead of 33 percent. Even that
small gain could easily have
been wiped out by the difference
_ between his actual cost of

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housing and the mythical cost
included in the Consumer Price
Index.

Yet, we in Canada are
constantly subjected to
propaganda about our rising
standard of living and exhorted
to refrain from demanding wage
increases in order not to rock the
boat. Productivity is said’ (also
by D.B.S.) to be rising at 4
percent a year, and somehow
one is supposed to believe that he:
will get the benefit of higher
productivity without wage
increases. Just how, js
something of a mystery.

The fact is, of course, that the
average worker does live better
today than in the past. But it is a
moot point how much of the
improvement is due to higher
wages and how much to the fact
that many more wives today are
working and bringing home a
secondincome. — .

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