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BRITISH COLUMBIA

Feb. 20 budget demands
renewed people’s action

The Feb. 20 budget of the provincial
government imposed a $2-million cut in
grants to the city of Vancouver. To keep
up with inflation (the 1983 rate was 5.8
per cent) the grant should have been
increased by $1 million. So the real cut
amounts to 10 per cent.

This will create real problems for the
city when it comes to balancing our own
budget. What the provincial government
is trying to do is force us to follow its
example and institute cuts in staff and
services.

In this policy it has the support of both
the NPA and TEAM aldermen who
have been pressing city council to follow
this course. Only the opposition of the
labor-backed majority on council has
prevented them from getting away with
this.

The Feb. 20 budget directly affects the
city in another way. The cuts in social
services imposed by the provincial
government in every field, and its refusal
to finance groups that do necessary
social service jobs in our communities,
has resulted in these groups now pressur-
ing the city for grants. They have
nowhere else to turn. Every citizen of
Vancouver, just like every citizen of this
province, will be directly affected by the
Feb. 20 budget.

Those who are working will have their
income tax increased by eight per cent.
Thousands on welfare will have their
grants cut or they will be cut off com-
pletely. Education grants will be cut
further denying young people the right to
go to college, university or a trade school.
The number of provincial government
employees will be cut by another 11 per
cent.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is being
done to create jobs for the 200,000
unemployed in the province. In the view
of the government we have no unem-
ployment problem. The word “unem-
ployment” wasn’t even mentioned once
in the 15,000-word budget speech of
Finance Minister Hugh Curtis.

Business interests, on the other hand,
are being given all sorts of concessions.
Government businesses are being privat-
ized, which is another way of saying they

are being sold at fire-sale prices to
government supporters. The budget
provided for generous property tax cuts
for business. Under the process of what
the government calls “deregulation,” the
big forest companies will in effect be able
to do their own scaling and set their own
stumpage fees.

And the finance minister promised
that, after going through the charade of
another royal commission, further cuts
in taxes will be made available to big.
corporations. Contracting-out of govern-
ment services only means the taxpayers
pay more.

This isn’t a restraint budget. That term
isn’t only a misnomer, it’s political
deception. What the government is
doing is taking still more money out of
the pockets of working people, and cutting
still more services to working people so it
will have money to provide further sub-
sidies to big business. The $470-million

Rankin

grant to B.C. Rail is just another subsidy
to the Japanese and Canadian corpora-
tions involve in the northeast coal export
project.

In bringing down this budget, the pro-
vincial government has in effect thumbed
its nose at the people of B.C. It is telling
us: “We don’t give a damn what you do;
we’re the government, we’re here to serve
big business and there’s nothing you can
do about it.”

It took a strike and the threat of a
general strike to compel the government
to back off on bills 2 and 3 last
November. If the government persists in
its course, and I see no evidence to the
contrary, we will again head down the
same road we were on last November.
Only this time whatever action is taken,
I’m sure, won’t be called off by any pri-
vate meeting in Kelowna. The people
who take the action will decide when it is
time to call it off.

Gov'tcuts pave way
for private schools

Private schools are rushing into fill the
void left by government cutbacks which are
devastating public education with layoffs
and school closures.

In at least one case —in North
Vancouver — the private school has more
than a passing relationship with the Socred
government instituting those cuts.

And in Vancouver, the right wing which
holds a slim majority on the school board is
drawing the wrath of parents over the clo-
sure of a neighborhood school, which it is
considering leasing to a private school
chain.

The issue of school closures and the rise
of the private school — either through the
expansion of existing privately-owned edu-
cation institutions, or the more recent phe-
nomenon which has seen upper income
parents form new associations — may be
key election issues this fall.

Private schools are the upper income
earners’ way out of the deteriorating public
education system. The Socreds’ Feb: 20
budget has seen the worst yet attack on
public education, with a $61-million cut by
the Ministry of Education that has seen
hundreds of teachers laid off, and dozens of
classes and courses curtailed in mid term.

Meanwhile, Victoria forked -over the
latest in a series of generous increases to the
private schools budget, raising the figure 8. 1
per cent for a total of $23.4 million for the
upcoming year.

It isn’t a lot of money by public school
standards, but the hike has drawn protests
from public educators and parents, who
have objected to taxpayers’ funding the pri-
vate sector ever since the government’s first
grant in 1978.

The private school encroachment on the
public domain has come to light in two
Lower Mainland districts. The more public-
ized case involves the North Shore Inde-
pendent School Society, a parent-sponsored
organization with 70 per cent of its mem-
bership inf wealthy West Vancouver.

If the new society seems grass-roots in
nature, it should be noted that its president
is P. Nicholas Greer, senior vice-president
of the Jim Pattison. group.

The society has pressed both the West
Vancouver and North Vancouver school
boards to lease properties made available by’

school closures. It initially offered the West
Vancouver board $1 to lease one of its “sur
plus” schools for the first year of operation.

The board turned the offer down, buts
currently considering a second offer from
the society.

But the society’s real target is North Vat
couver’s Hamilton junior secondary school.
They offered the board up to $100,000 4
year to lease the property, but were turned
down in a 4-2 vote last month. ;

The North Vancouver board reasoned it
could make more money for the financially
strapped district by selling off former mail
tenance and administrative buildings and
property, and moving those functions into
the vacated Hamilton school. The money
from the sale of the properties is estimated
to yield between $150,000 and $240,000 0
interest yearly. ‘

But the questions, as far as the society IS
concerned, is far from resolved. Society
members packed the galleries at the board's
meeting Feb. 28, and during the following
open question period, attacked board
chairman Roy Dungey for the board’s ref
usal to lease the Hamilton school.

The society has friends in right wing trus-
tees Ross Regan and Marjorie Goodman
(the latter a fundraiser for Socred MLA
Jack Davis) who want the board to recon-
sider the question at a future meeting. __

“But I don’t see us changing our posk
tion,” said North Vancouver trustee
Dorothy Lynas, who pointed out the dec
sion not to lease came from a special com-
mittee of the board struck to examine the
question.

In Vancouver, Gary Onstad, COPE can-
didate in the Mar. 14 school board byelec
tions, has warned six schools are slated for
closure and reports the board’s NPA major
ity has held “secret negotiations” with the
Montessori private school chain over the
possible lease of Tyee public school.

The international school is no stranger t0
Vancouver, having operated out of the old
Lloyd George elementary for the past five
years. But the issue is contentious because
parents in the district don’t want the Tyee
school closed, said School Consultative
Committee chair Chris Taulu. |

The committee, a composite body of th
district parent representatives which advises”
the board on policy, had not been consulted
over the Tyee closure, said Taulu.

Transition House closure must be fought

The following statement, abridged by the
Tribune, was sent by Women Against the
Budget, a Solidarity Coalition member.

A valuable service to Vancouver
women is being threatened. The Social
Credit government intends to privatize
Vancouver Transition House, a refuge for
battered women and their children.
Already the house has been put out to
tender and the government plans to turn it
over to private hands as early as the end of
March.

The abuse of women by their partners is
a serious social problem that is only
beginning to receive public recognition.
Wife battering is a social crime, shocking
in its nature and in its proportions.

In its 10 years of operation, Vancouver
Transition House has represented escape’
to many women and their children living
in intolerable situations. At Transition
House they find shelter, moral support,
and protection from potentially vengeful
spouses. Providing information on every-
thing from child custody and assault
charges to public housing and job hunting,
the staff at Transition House help the bat-
tered woman build a new life for herself.

Yet even this service is not enough. In

1983, Transition House had to turn away
1,200 women and their children because
there just wasn’t enough space.

The Social Credit government’s privati-
zation scheme means that even more
women will remain trapped in battering
relationships.

McCarthy has argued that similar servi-
ces are operated by the: private sector
throughout the rest of the province and it
should work in Vancouver as well. But
one must consider that the private sector
to which she’s referring involves
community-based organizations that have
built a funding and administrative base
slowly over time.

In this period of funding constraints,
can community groups afford to assume
the responsibility of Transition House?
Will some of Transition House’s services
be cut, spaces deleted, salaries reduced, or
workers laid off in order to maintain the
facility?

Transition houses elsewhere in the pro-
vince are already in economic trouble. The
Fort Nelson Emergency Centre for
Women and Children has just closed
down.

It appears that it would suit the

facility to a profit-seeking organization.
But that doesn’t make sense either. There
is no profit, in battered women. If they
could afford to escape their battering rela-
tionships they wouldn’t need Transition
House.

We have to do something to save Tran-
sition House from the folly of the Socred’s
ideological tunnel vision. And yes, it is a
union issue. Whether we realize it or not,
we all know someone who is battered. She
may even be a co-worker. Certainly, the
BCGEU members who staff the Van-
couver Transition House are our union
sisters. As we discovered last fall during
the fightback organized by Solidarity Coa-
lition, the union movement is a powerful
voice. It’s time once again to speak out for
social justice.

Here’s what we can do:

@ Write a letter to the Hon. Grace
McCarthy, Minister of Human Resources,
at the Parliament Buildings in Victoria,
and request her to continue direct
government funding to Transition House;

@ Come to International Women’s
Day parade and rally Saturday, Mar. 10,
11 a.m., to demonstrate our solidarity with
Transition House;

BATTERED WOMEN
~ ARE NOT A

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

SUPPORT
Vancouver Transition House

.
Leaflet seeks support to save house. :
|

@ Donate money to the Women
Against the Budget Transition campaign.
We meet Mar. 15 and every alternate
Thursday at the First United Church,
Gore and Hastings. :

2 e PACIFIG TRIBUNE, MARCH 7, 1984

government’s purpose better to sell the