“Let them eat statistics!”’ COPE parley sets sights to be civic alternative A program to “‘halt the upsurge of the right wing NPA and expose TEAM as an agency of the developers and big business,” coupled with campaigns to establish COPE as the recognized alternative to both TEAM and the NPA emerged as the main policy aims of the Committee of Progressive Electors after their annual meeting last Saturday. A large turnout of COPE members crowded into the hall at the Downtown Eastside Residents Association headquarters to hear COPE alderman Harry Rankin give an assessment of the new city council and to adopt a plan of work for 1975. A special feature of the annual meeting was an address TEAM council takes beating at Langara public hearing ByALD. HARRY RANKIN Our TEAM City Council took a real shellacking at the public hearing on Langara which took place in City Hall February 20. The issue was what to do about 66.5 acres of land, (Langara Golf _ Course), bought from the CPR in 1973 for $4.5 million. Should it all be left as a golf course, or should part of it be used for housing? And if part of it is to be used for housing, what kind of housing? Some time ago Council decided that 20 acres of the acquired land would be sold for housing to recoup the $4.5 million spent to purchase the property. It was further agreed that the city would redesign. the golf course, maintaining it at 18 holes. A citizen’s committee was appointed to suggest how best all this could be accomplished. But instead of abiding by its terms of reference, the so-called Citizen’s Committee, dominated by conservative minded NPA types, insisted that the whole golf course should be retained. _ In the public hearing on February 20 those who favored retaining the whole area as a golf course were in the large majority. Our NPA aldermen supported this position for purely op- portunistic reasons, to curry favor with the voters at the meeting. I pointed out that while the NPA was in office in City Hall, it had done away with three golf courses for the benefit of developers — Hastings Park, Quilchena and Shaughnessy. The only submission at the hearing in favor of using the 20 acres for housing was by com- munity planner, Sol Jackson, speaking for the Committee of Progressive Electors. His con- tention was that this area of the city was not suffering for lack of green space, but that there was a desperate need for more housing in the city. : I took the position that we needed a particular type of housing. I opposed the 20 acres (actually it would be 15 acres because the YMCA wants two acres and the provincial government three) being used for market housing. That could only mean the building of individual homes or con- dominiums where the rents or payments would be $600 to $800 a month. People who can afford that type of housing can look for it in the market place; there is no shortage of housing for the well-to-do. I insisted that the 15 acres be used for co-operative and senior citizen housing, at prices that would place it within the reach of the average citizen. Alderman Warnett Kennedy, the ideological spokesman for the NPA . on council, opposed any and all co- operative and senior citizen housing in the area. When he argued that you can’t solve Van- couver’s housing problem in Langara, I pointed out that the NPA took the same attitude to this type of housing no matter where it came up — False Creek, Cham- plain Heights, University En- dowment Lands, and that what the NPA was really saying was — don’t build housing for senior citizens or lower or middle income ‘groups anywhere. -When he ‘claimed that bringing in senior citizens and co-op housing would result in great social equalities into the area, my answer was that he was trying to perpetuate social snobbery and maintain this area exclusively for one sector of the population. TEAM was caught right in th middle, waffling this way and that, not knowing what to do. My motion to rezone for senior citizen and co-op housing lost’7 to 3 with Aldermen Mazari and Cowie also voting in favor. See LANGARA, pg. 11 } from Syd Thompson, president of the Vancouver Labor Council. “We have to keep COPE in the public eye through year-round continuous public activity,” said Ben Swankey as he delivered the plan of work. “Our potential candidates must engage in con- tinuous activity so that they become well known to the voters as the champions of the needs of the people.”’ That aim was reflected in a reorganization of COPE to establish six standing political committees. The six committees including an education committee, a parks board committee, and four “council committees’’ dealing with finances, community services, housing and planning, shadows the structure of Vancouver’s civic government. “Members of these committees should attend every school board, _parks board, city council and committee meeting and act as watchdogs and critics of their performances,” Swankey said. “If this policy is successful we will develop a large group of experts on civic affairs ‘who will know as “ much or more about civic politics as the elected officials they will oppose in the next election.” In addition the program of work called for continued efforts to achieve unity with-the NDP, the trade union movement and other community groups with the ob- jective of one joint slate of can- didates for the ’76 elections. In his analysis of the new ALD. HARRY RANKIN Chris Shelton as secretary and council, Rankin said that new possibilities were opening up to COPE owing to some basic weaknesses of the council group. Discounting aldermen Bird and Sweeney as merely filling seats, he | pointed out Warnett Kennedy and | Helen Boyce as the NPA’S strongest voices. The TEAM | group, Rankin said, ‘“‘more than ever lacks cohesion and direction.” Rankin said that the new council: was ‘‘spending foolishly” to the extent that there is a shortfall of $12 to $13 million in the city’s budget. “‘TEAM’s. answer is to attack the provincial government | and get the money from them,”’ he said, “‘but this provincial govern- ment has given us more money | than any other government. In fact | they have been quite generous.” Rankin noted that the provincial’ government takeover of social services and the provincial courts | _ had provided a bonus of $10 million |- for the city last year, but the | money had been squandered on projects like the Granville Mall | and the Orpheum Theatre. Syd Thompson told the meeting | that the VLC wants the provincial | government to call a conference on | housing. He said the conference | should bring in the ‘top people from Ottawa, the municipal politicians and the labor movement.’’ Thompson said that the VLC. will work closely with Alderman Rankin in preparing for such a conference. Speaking to the relations bet- ween COPE and the NDP Thomp- son stressed that ‘‘there is no room for two groups representing working people. Without co- operation neither will be suc- cessful.” Thompson pledged the “good offices of the VLC to both COPE and the NDP to do whatever | WeCAN ie 2* The annual meeting re-elected president Bruce Yorke, elected Irene Cavaliero as first vice- | president, Frank Kennedy as second vice-president, Ben Margolese as third vice-president, | Joan Rankin as treasurer. Elected _ tothe general executive board were Bruce Eriksen, Ewen Sheard, Mike Wallach, Fred Lowther, Bet | Swankey, Jim Cork, Helen O’Shaughnessy, Dave Manning; | Dave. Stone, Roy Cooper, Irene | Foufks and Rosemary Rankin. Ne wonder a lot of British MP’s jeered last week when ‘Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced in the House that a $632,000 wage hike for the Queen had been suc- cessfully negotiated. ‘‘The increase was necessary” quoth Harold, ‘“‘to maintain the standards of the royal household!”’ We have no doubt that MP Willie Hamilton who _ specializes on the high cost of royalty in Britain, where veritable economic ruin faces the vast majority of the people, also gave out with a sour grin; a grin prompted by wonderment as to just why and how a Queen could not scrimp along on an annual salary of $2.3 million a year — without this additional bite on the public purse. There are millions of homes in Britain as in Canada where the standards of the household have long been substandard — the result of low wages, minimum pen- sions, meagre welfare payments and all the rest of it. Many thousands with no income at all. For a great number of these households the standard is ‘‘root, hog or die,” but for the “divine right” of royal handouts, that’s something else. In chorus with the ironic jeers of British MP’s one can well imagine the volume of choice ‘billingsgate’ that poured from millions of these off-standard homes, as the PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1975—Page 2 good housewife headed for the local pawnbroker to hock the remainder of the family ‘theirlooms”’ for the price of a pound of beans or a peck of powdered stale eggs, all to “maintain the standards of the royal household.” Fresh from his labors on behalf of the Queen’s wage © hike, the prime minister takes off on a visit to Moscow for a chat with Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev. Part of their talks could well have gone something like this: “Brezh old scout, the situation is becoming alarming. What with runaway inflation, skyrocketing prices, millions of unemployed, a staggering arms budget, an old Empire on its last legs, plus a continuously busted royalty, what can I of the party (the Labor party that is) do? ‘ “And Brezh old boy, just between ourselves, this royalty bit is getting me down. There’s no end to it. Why, every time a pair of these royal bunnies get together, a new lord, duke, baroness or what have you, comes along, which means an additional drain on the national budget. “Tt is quite clear from the sneers and jeers of our back- — benchers that big wage hikes and handouts are not the answer. And blast it all, Brezh, I’m losing votes in this royal wage dickering. I almost long for the days when crowned heads in Europe were dropping off like second mortgages. What would you suggest? “Well, it’s a long story, Tovarish Harold, so I’ll spare you the details on what happened to Rasputin and a few of his royal following. As you may know, during and after our Revolution whole boatloads of these royal gentry shipped out to London, Berlin, Paris, New York and other centres. There, once their royal loot had run out, they went to work — that is, such work as these royal idlers could readily adapt themselves to; taxi drivers, cocktail mixers, shoe-shiners, barbers, gigolos and police agents. | And of course royal ladies of doubtful virtue. “For a time all this provided something of a thrill; to have your shoes shined by a real ‘Grand Duke;’’ your aching back massaged by a ‘‘Baroness’’ of the Czar’S | court; to be taxied around London or Paris by an ex- | baron. But the novelty soon wore off-and this old and | discarded royalty got rid of their courtly trappings and — titles for something more in keeping with their new, _ professions. i “Tovarish Harold, our Soviets are strong believers in! the sanctity of honest labor. Just think how much better off you could be if you provided useful creative work for 4 couple of million jobless workers, including your high- | priced royal household. But let’s talk about other matters such as detente, excessive war budgets, your inflation problems and related issues.” _ ; Since the Soviet Union, as indeed the whole socialist — world, is not bedevilled with the evils of inflation, mass unemployment, royal handouts or other similar evils, (this despite the fact that our politicians, and common ~ apologists invariably tell us that “‘inflation is a world problem’’) indicates that we have still a long way to g0° before we catch up with socialism. It is bad enough to remain the million-fold victims of 4 monopoly ripoff with no end in sight, but it is infinitely worse to preserve and defend a royal household which — exercises its ‘‘divine right’”’ to exploit at will ... to per- petuate a form of regal cannibalism. With Willie Hamilton MP and millions of Britishers w® . say — it’s time the expensive and useless farce was ended. | The people have enough troubles as it is!