British Columbia 1

Realtors’boom no boon | Massive mobilization |
for most city residents | necessary to stop

The premier and the mayor, the
developers and the real estate people are
all telling us that we should be happy
about the way Vancouver is growing.
There’s a boom on, they say, and we
should be jumping for joy.

Not all the people of Vancouver
would agree with that. What is happen-
ing in Kerrisdale is one example. There
more than 500 citizens, most of them
seniors, crowded into the community
centre on Sunday, Feb. 26, to voice their
worries and anger over. the way. their
community is being developed. They’re
facing the total disintegration of their
neighbourhood.

Until now many of them have been
living in three-storey walk-up apart-
ments. It was decent affordable housing.
Many of them lived there for decades.
But now they are about to lose this affor-
dable housing; their apartment buildings

We should have an anti-demolition
bylaw to prohibit the destruction of any
kind of affordable housing that is still in
good shape.

The Landlord and Tenant Act, which
the provincial government repealed,
should be brought back. We badly need
rent controls which would limit rent
increases to the actual increases in costs
that landlords face due to increases in
interest rates, or the cost of renovations.
In other words, rent increases must be
justified. No landlord should be allowed
to exploit the current housing shortage
by charging all that the market can'bear.

Zoning restrictions to prevent three-
storey walk-ups being replaced by
expensive high rises should also be
looked at by city council, although
developers may find a way to get around
this.

But even such measures are not

anti-choice attack

By HILDA L. THOMAS
On March 6, 102 people were give three-

month suspended jail sentences after being
found guilty of criminal contempt in the
B.C. Supreme Court. :

In handing down the sentence, Justice

Josiah Wood made it clear to the defend-
ants that any further blockading of Eve-
rywoman’s Health Centre, Vancouver first
free standing abortion clinics, would meet
with a swift reaction from the court.

On the following day, three of the

defendants were arrested for blockading the
doors of the clinic. They were subsequently
sentenced to three months in prison.

Who are these zealots who claim to be

“saving babies” in response to a “higher
law” by harassing and intimidating the staff

of Everywoman’s Health Centre and
attempting to prevent women from exercis-
ing their right to make decisions about their
own reproductive lives? _

Many of them come from fundamentalist
or Catholic congregations in the Fraser Val-
ley or the Interior of British Columbia.
They are a mixed group of men and women
convinced of their right to impose their own
narrow religious beliefs on all women.

Behind them is a well-organized and
wealthy U.S.-based organization calling _
itself “Operation Rescue.” Backed by the
Catholic church and by right-wing evange-
lists like Jerry Falwell, this group made
headlines last summer when it mounted the
“Seige of Atlanta,” a massive campaign -

are to be torn down to make way for
expensive high rises. :

Where will they go? They don’t know.
They do know that if they manage to
find new accommodation, the rent will

enough. We are simply short, terribly
short, of affordable housing in Van-
couver. That being the case, why
shouldn’t Ottawa and Victoria make
some money available to build afforda-
ble housing — for the people who need
it the most?

One type of such affordable housing
could be larger houses in single family
neighbourhoods that could accommo-
date say up to eight elderly people.
Elderly people are quiet people, they
don’t drive much, they don’t create prob-
lems or stresses and it would be great for
them to live in a family neighbourhood.

gf BOS # ES
HILDA THOMAS
In Canada, too, the right to choice is _
under attack. The Supreme Court decision
of January, 1988 overturned Section 251 of —
the Criminal Code, the law which restricted —
abortion to accredited hospitals under
approval from a therapeutic abortion
committee. This made free standing clinics _

be much, much higher, in some cases
double what they are paying now. The
vacancy rate is almost zero and many
landlords are capitalizing on this, charg-
ing all the traffic will bear.

And Kerrisdale isn’t the only place this
is happening. Many other communities
are going through the same kind of
“boom.” The boom is unreal in many
ways, boosted by an infusion of offshore
capital coupled with the shenanigans of
home-grown real estate sharks. Taxes
are Zooming too.

Apartment construction is a big part
of the boom. But almost none of it is
affordable housing. It’s being con-
structed for people with money, the kind
of money that most of our citizens don’t
have. ,

The problem is not new. We’ve had it
several times before. The solutions are
there too for all to see. But so far

If the two senior levels of government
would put up the money, the city could
supply the sites for such affordable hous-
ing. A large infusion of capital for social
non-profit housing is just what is needed
right now to alleviate the present desper-
ate shortage.

I know the developers are strongly
opposed to this. They want to maintain a
housing shortage so they can continue to
charge excessively high rents.

A proposal was also made at the Ker-
risdale meeting that the province should
bring in legislation to end the ownership
of land by non-residents. It’s simply out-
rageous that offshore foreign predatory
capital should be allowed to buy up land
and housing just for speculative pur-
poses, meanwhile driving up rents and
housing costs.

- Finally I think we should have a
“speculators tax” that would take away a

aimed at shutting down every abortion facil-
ity in the city and making Atlanta, Georgia,
the first “abortion-free” city in the U.S.

While Operation Rescue (renamed Rescue

Canada in Vancouver) makes a great effort
to portray itself in the media as a peaceful
protest movement engaging in civil disobe-
dience for a noble purpose in the great tradi-
tion of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the
reality is somewhat different.

Clinics all over the USS. have been

invaded, equipment destroyed, and build-

ings fire bombed by anti-abortion bigots in

what is becoming a massive nationwide

campaign of intimidation. With George

Bush, a committed “pro-lifer” (that appar-

ently means full support for human beings.
right up to the moment of birth, but not a

minute after) in the White House, abortion

rights are now under severe threat.

The Roe versus Wade decision which

legal and paved the way for the opening on

Nov. 4, 1988, of Everywoman’s Health ©

Centre, a non-profit community based
clinic.

However, the Supreme Court did not —

give women the right to abortion. Access to _
abortion is still severely limited in many —
provinces. In B.C., our own pious premier _

and his equally sanctimonious health minis-

ter tried to remove abortion as an insured —
service from the Medical Services Plan —

(without success), and the Socred govern-

ment has adamantly refused to fund Every- —
woman’s Health Centre, the only facility _
which provides full counselling, screening —
for sexually transmitted diseases, and birth —
control counselling as a part ofits abortion —

service.
Now the Canadian Law Reform Com-

mission has recommended that there be ges- |

tational limits placed on abortion. Their

proposals may be given even greater weight _
after March 9 when the Supreme Court —
hands down its decision in the Borowski _
case. The court is widely expected to pro-_
pose that Parliament enact laws to protect _
the rights of the fetus.
There have never been gestational limits _
on abortion in Canadian law, nor is there _
any need for them. Fewer than one percent _
of all abortions are performed after the _
22nd week, and then only for urgent medi-
cal reasons. But the message seems to be
that women are not to be trusted to make
decisions about their own reproductive
lives. The rights of women are to be “‘bal-

gave U.S. women the right to abortion in
1973 was seriously eroded by the Hyde
amendment which denied Medicaid to poor
women Seeking abortion. Now the U.S.
Supreme Court, packed with Reagan
appointees, is reviewing a Missouri anti-
abortion law which could return abortion
to state jurisdiction, making it illegal in most
parts of the country.

‘Manufacturers heed own advice’ — ELP

large slice of the profits being made in
house speculation today and put it into
the public treasury to build affordable
housing.

These are some of the solutions that
COPE aldermen will raise in city council.
We'need action today, not just talk and
promises by politicians. ;

government won’t implement them for
fear of antagonizing their real estate and
developer friends.

Committee of Progressive Electors
alderman Libby Davies and I both spoke
at the Kerrisdale meeting and presented
COPE’s program for dealing with this

Corporate lobby groups promoting
cuts to social programs are evidently
thinking up “sneaky ways” to get the pub-
lic to accept them, End Legislated Poverty

The umbrella anti-poverty organization
in B.C. said recent statements by the Can-
adian Manufacturers Association are
aimed at chopping benefits for seniors,
middle-income earners and families living
in poverty.

“If the manufacturers were really con-
cerned about benefits going to those in
greatest need, they would apply the same

principle to tax breaks,” said ELP spokes-
person Jean Swanson.

' “The CMA should urge government to
give up the $500,000 capital gains exemp-
tion that benefits the wealthy. They should
call the end of tax loopholes that force
average Canadians to help finance corpo-

rate giants who buy up more companies

and slash employment,” Swanson said.
She charged that the CMA has a double

. Standard in calling for benefits to be

limited to the extremely poor while prom-
oting continued tax breaks for the wealthy
and corporations.

CMA president Laurent Thibault said
recently that the free trade deal made cuts
to social programs and implementation of
the controversial national sales tax “more
urgent.” He wrote federal Finance Minis-
ter Michael Wilson urging the government
to cut social spending to reduce the $29-
billion deficit.

Swanson said:.“‘We fear that the power-
ful corporate lobby groups are all working
together to think up sneaky ways to get the
public to accept cuts to programs that
Canadians cherish. We must expose their
motives before it’s too late.”

anced” against the “rights” of the unborn.
It will take a massive mobilization of the

pro-choice majority to turn back the well- —

organized and well-funded anti-choice reac-
tion. In 1943, Hitler made abortion of an

Aryan woman a crime punishable by death. —

The links between racism, sexism, fascism,

are no less clear today.

1

We call on all supporters of a woman’s —

right to choose to defend EveryWoman’s

Health Centre and the B.C. Coalition for —

Abortion clinics in its campaign: no new
law on abortion; full funding for the clinic.

Hilda Thomas is a spokesperson for the —
B.C. Coalition for Abortion Clinics.

2 « Pacific Tribune, March 13, 1989