The residents of East Van-
couver, and particularly those
living near Commercial Drive,
don’t want an ugly elevated light
rapid transit line going down
Commercial Drive. They’ve
made this clear to the provincial
government time and again. But
municipal affairs minister Bill
Vander Zalm just won’t listen.

I should qualify that state-
ment — he won’t listen to the
people that the transit system is
supposed to serve. But he’s ob-

viously listening to someone
. else, and I suspect very much
BX. that the people he’s listening to
are certain contractors and cer-
tain developers who have an in

Harry

Rankin

with the provincial government.

In an attempt to soften public
anger and indignation, the
ALRT 1986 Committee (that’s
Vander Zalm’s baby) is putting
out a slick little propaganda
publication called Update
which is being distributed at
public expense to all residents.
This public relations job is
strictly an exercise in pe
deception.

Now everybody knows, and
all literature on the subject has
always stated, that ALRT
stands for Automated Light
Rapid Transit. But Vander
Zalm’s propagandists have now
changed this to Advanced Light
Rapid Transit.

The publication devotes four
pages to telling the public that
we have only three options for
discussion — whether to have
an elevated light rapid transit
line go down the centre of Com-
mercial Drive, or down its east
side or down its west side. The
fourth option, which the public
wants, namely a tunnel under
Commercial Drive, is relegated
to a small note on the last page
— one sentence long, stating
that Vancouver city council is
making a feasibility and cost
study of a tunnel under Sas
mercial Drive.

Right from the beginning
Vander Zalm’s committee has
ignored and dismissed the idea
of a tunnel as too costly, as if it

having made a study of the cost.
Their position has been: ‘‘Let us
go ahead, don’t confuse us with
the facts!”’

The only way I can describe
the way the provincial govern-
ment is going ahead with the
ALRT line is as one hell of a
mess.

First of all, they are saddling
us with an automated line when
the GVRD and the citizens want
a conventional type that is safe
and proven. >

Second, citizens want a rapid
transit line at street level or
underground, not one mounted:
on huge concrete piles high up in

were gold plated, without even .

Gov't pulling fast
one on ALRT line

the air.

Third, the line the govern-
ment is now building, or plans
to build, will be far more costly
than a conventional type.

Fourth, the whole adminis-
trative structure is one big mish-
mash with the GVRD relegated
to arubber stamp implementing
Vander Zalm’s policies with no
authority or power of its own.
Everything is under the control
of Vander Zalm’s appointed
Urban Transportation Author-
ity (UTA). The only sensible
way to build a light rapid transit
line in the Lower Mainland
would be to allow the GVRD to
set up its own transportation au-

thority and run the whole thing
and give citizens what they
want.

It seems to me that the only

people who will benefit from the -
_ way the ALRT line is now being

built will be wealthy friends of
the government. We already
have one good example. A cer-
tain used car dealer in Vancou-
ver bought a piece of land at the
corner of Terminal and Main
earlier this year for: $3 million
and sold it a week later for $4.9
million.

So the ALRT authorities
have to go to the speculator who
now owns it and pay him an in-
flated price because that is
where they’re putting an ALRT
station. The city of Vancouver
has some land right across the
street that is every bit as good for
an ALRT station but Vander
Zalm’s boys would rather give
the profit to a private developer.

What should be done, of
course, is to put a freeze on all
property adjacent to the ALRT
line, assemble it under public
ownership and then use the pro-
ceeds when it is sold to help pay
for the ALRT line. But if that
were done, then the friends of
the government wouldn’t be
able to make millions speculat-
ing, would they?

City council has called a pub-

lic meeting to discuss the Com-.

mercial Drive ALRT line for

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m. at”

Giadstone High School, 4105
Gladstone. Those wishing to ad-
dress the meeting can sign up
with the meeting chairman.
There the various options will be
discussed, and whether Vander
Zalm likes it or not the tunnel
will be one of the options up for
discussion. I hope the citizens of
the area turn up in full force and
let the government again know
what they want and also let it
know that any other course
means political suicide.

They just need to look over.
their shoulder to see what hap-
pened in Manitoba on Nov. 17
to a government that wasn’t lis-
tening to the people.

TRIBUNE PHOTOS —SEAN GRIFFIN

“hotel.” Moments’ latér,” they’ ‘were
joined by several hundred ‘more

yeMCOUVER :

The sidewalk outside the Social Credit convention hotel bristled with placards condemning Grace Mc-
Carthy's welfare policies as some 500 people, representing a number of organizations, demonstrated -

Saturday.

Protest hits welfare cuts

The annual Social Credit con-
vention was the target of a
demonstration for the second day
in a row Saturday as more than 500
people converged on the Hyatt
Regency Hotel to demand that the
government rescind its cuts in
welfare payments and cutbacks to
community colleges. :

As the Socred delegates returned
after lunch, more than 100 sup- -
porters of the Downtown Eastside
Residents Association, many of
them brought by a bus donated by
the Amalgamated Transit Union,
thronged the street outside the

who had marched froma mass ral- schools.

ly held earlier at St. Andrews-
Wesley United Church, some four
blocks away.

The demonstrators gathered in a
small park adjacent to the conven-
tion hotel where placards declar-
ing: ‘Stop McCarthy’s war on
welfare mothers’? gave a clear
message to convention delegates.

At the rally earlier, organized by
the broadly-based Welfare Rights
Coalition, representatives of
several organizations, including the
B.C. Association of Social
Workers and the B.C. Federation

-PAULINE WEINSTEIN. . ..

policies,-every day

of Labor condemned the welfare
cuts as actions of ‘‘a government
which builds monuments to itself
on one hand while breaking down
families on the other.’’

Majorie Martin, representing
the B.C. Association of Social. -
Workers, told the rally that the ex-
ecutive board of the BCASW,
which represents 1,400 social
workers throughout the province,
had met just the night before and
had given “‘unanimous approval to
the rally and to the demand for a
rollback of the welfare cutbacks.

““We are here today,” she said, —
“to give a message to Bennett and ~
to the Social Cerdit government: —
we will never accept the new
welfare policy.”’

B.C. Federation of Labor |
legislative director David Rice urg-
ed the audience to look upon the
rally as part of a two-stage process.
“You have to fight the govern: —
ment’s policies,’’ he said, ‘‘but then
you have to vote the bastards out of —
office.”’

_ There was resounding applaus¢
for Vancouver School Board

chairperson Pauline Weinstein

who..took..Grace. McCarthy’s ar-

roganesanc threw it right back at
er

In a lengthy letter responding to
VSB protest against the welfare
cuts, McCarthy had sarcastically
suggested that since ‘‘October has
come and gone without riots,’’ ob-
viously “‘GAIN recipients have not —
been affected by the changes.”’

“McCarthy also suggested that :
it was none of our business,” —
Weinstein said. ‘‘But she doesn’t
see the kids. We see them every day
in our schools — the kids who
come to school hungry or without
the proper clothes to wear.

“And with the new policy, it will
get worse.”’

we
see the victims of McCarthy’s

in.-the

n its submission to the Royal Commission on

| Newspapers last January, the B.C. Federation

of Labor commented ‘“‘. . . the agenda of senior

management and newspaper owners is not represen-

’ tative of the interests of working people, thus certain

editorial bias exists.’’” Had the Federation then seen

the Vancouver Sun’s issue of Nov. 23 — the first

since the CLC demonstration in Ottawa — that

restrained comment might well have become a
scathing attack, .

The lone story the Sun ran in its home edition said
next to nothing of the size of the demonstration, the
speakers or the message it delivered. Instead it began

-_with this incredible lead paragraph: “Amid the tens
of thousands of placard-waving, slogan-chanting
persons who converged Saturday on Parliament Hill
to protest interest rates were small groups of the
bored, the cold and the tired.

The story continued that way through another 18
cynical paragraphs.

And although the protests were the largest ever in
Canadian history to be staged on Parliament Hill,
the Sun carried no photo. It did run a front-page
photo of another demonstration in another city,
Belfast, thousands of miles away from Ottawa. Init,
right-wing extremist Ian Paisley was addressing a
‘*general strike’’ of 7.000 Belfast workers.

That, for the management of the Sun, took
precedence over the largest ever demonstration at
the Canadian capital.

And there is another revealing comparison: a
month ago, more than 10,000 workers marched in
Belfast to protest the Thatcher government’s

his Grandview-Woodlands nursing home. Now
-almost blind and unable to read, his greatest
- pleasure is listening to the radio and his friends plan

——

suc ieee es ea

economic policies and the devastating impact they

were having on people in Northern Ireland. Of that |

protest, the Sun carried not a word.
* * *

ext Tuesday, Dec. 1, Julius Stelp will celebrate :
his 100th birthday, quietly with a few friends in

to present him with a short wave set capable of br-
inging in overseas broadcasts, so that he can range
the world and follow its events as in his youth he
ranged Europe and helped to shape the momentous
events that shook the world in the Russian revolu-
tions of 1905 and 1917.

Although he will be receiving the customary
greetings from the Queen and Prime Minister Pierre | ~
Trudeau, undoubtedly he will find them ironic and
it’s certain, if the RCMP cares to draw it to their at-
tention, that they would regard his life as a founding
member of the Communist Party of Canada as hav-
ing been misspent.

Be that as it may, Julius combines a natural
modesty with a worker’s fierce pride in his lifetime’s
accomplishments, and it only takes the sound of a
familiar voice for his memories to come flooding
back as though 60 years were yesterday. So, on
behalf of all Tribune readers, happy birthday,
Julius. We'll have more to say meee you in our |
Christmas issue. =}

DAIRY SD

: Be ats 2 SU gear -NOV. 27, 1981— —