re ae An important feature of this year’s Vancouver civic election campaign is that the breakthrough hoped for by the reform movement may materialize on the parks board and school board. -That is a fact which hasn’t escaped the Committee of Pro- gressive Electors (COPE) which is fielding its strongest slate ever for both. In the parks board race, COPE is counting on the impressive credentials of its seven parks board candidates, and on a fron- tal political attack on the NPA to carry two or three of its can- didates to victory. The best chances go with COPE’s parks committee chairperson Pat Wilson, who polled over 19,000 votes in her first effort two years ago, and with COPE vice-president Libby Davies, previously an aldermanic candidate. But also strong contenders are David Stone, who polled more than 17,000 votes in 1978, and Doug Laalo and Peter Marcus, both previous parks board can- didates. Newcomers to the slate are lawyer Don Jang and Baker’s Union secretary Hugh Comber, who accepted a COPE nomina- tion after this year’s battle with the parks board over the awar- ding of a local bakery contract to a Seattle firm. ‘Parks board politics are im- portant. But most working peo- ple don’t havea sense of how their interests are at stake in what the parks board does, in the same way that they understand how they are affected by city council’s decisions,’’ Wilson explained. “That is changing, however, partly because of the efforts of COPE over the years to demonstrate the partisan nature of the parks board. The NPA has totally dominated the parks board and they have run the parks system basically to serve upper middle class neighbourhoods, Vancouver's Put People First campaign and as an adjunct to the tourist in- dustry. Whole areas of the city have been neglected. For years, while COPE talked azbout the importance of parks board politics, NPA and TEAM used the parks board as a stepping stone to city council. George Puil, Helen Boyce and May Brown are a few of the many former board members who moved up to coun- cil. COPE candidates like Dusty Greenwell and Syd Shelton were well based on the east side of the - city, but they were disadvantaged with a much smaller base vote for COPE, and without a strong overall slate. This year, COPE is in- vesting more time, money and quality candidates ‘to the parks race. But the old problem of rais- ing the awareness of working class voters about parks issues re- mains. The overall parks vote still lags behind the votes cast for city council, and the NPA parks board slate generally can count on a higher percentage of east side votes than can the NPA alder- manic candidates. In one Hastings East poll in 1978, for ex- ample, the five elected NPA parks commissioners took 21 per- cent of the vote, while the five elected NPA aldermen could only . get 18 percent. In a Cedar Cottage poll, the NPA parks commis- sioners took 23 percent, as oppos- ed to 17 percent for the aldermen. Awakening the east side is crucial to the COPE candidates. Wilson, who finished 7,000 votes short of election in 1978, cleanly beat the NPA’s Doug Mowat, who filled the last spot on the board, in almost every east end poll. ‘‘I would win east side polls by about 100 votes or so, but he would beat me by three times that in Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale,” she said. ‘‘We have to win our strongholds by as much as they. win theirs.” The COPE campaign will focus on pulling out the east side and inner city vote, but the parks board slate thinks it can raise its vote in almost every part of the ci- ty with a head-on attack on NPA policy. ' Akey issue is user fees in parks and recreation facilities. The NPA last year raised fees in swim- ming pools and ice rinks and slap- ped new fees-on outdoor pools and on some tennis courts. Pro- tests from senior citizens stopped fee hikes at pitch and putt golf courses. COPE is demanding the removal of the fees for outdoor pools and the elimination of all fees for children and seniors. COPE is also attacking the budget of the parks board which, _it says, “‘sacri ices 144 local parks for three or four regional parks like Van Dusen Gardens, which are in fact show places for the provincial tourist industry.”’ Labor has a stake in the parks board! The over $400,000 per year that goes into Van Dusen is out of line, when playing fields are without drainage and maintenance and when local parks are without children’s play areas and fitness circuits. Those hard points are winning favorable response on the west side of the city as well, said Wilson. Door to door canvassing key to COPE's election strategy The COPE campaign head- quarters on Commercial Drive is each day acquiring more of the hustle and bustle of an election campaign. Campaign manager Atiba Saunders and a crew of volunteers are manning phones and typing lists. On the walls, _ three huge calendars list the grow- ing number of engagements for the 26 COPE candidates. But perhaps the most impor- tant element in COPE’s most am- bitious campaign is hardly visible in the busy office. At the rear of the headquarters a map of the city is blocked off in colored pastels, and beside it is an envelope for messages to the person who has taken on the large responsibility of organizing COPE’s first ever door-to-door canvas. COPE executive member David Lane is the person in charge of the canvas and he needs ~ aminimum of 150 people to carry it off. About 100 are signed up to date; the rest are needed right - now. The canvas is scheduled to begin October 18. “The canvas is decisive to our campaign strategy,’’ said Lane. “Our candidates with the best . chance of election need to pick up between 5,000 and 10,000 votes to break through. Those votes are there in the areas of the city where - we are strong. The aim of the can- vas is to make sure that they materialize on election day.”’ Lane and a committee of COPE members made a detailed study of the 1978 election results. and picked 30 polls in the city where mayoralty candidate Bruck Yorke did well and where COPE aldermanic candidates finished in the top ten. Those polls were also where the voter turnout was ‘‘terrible’? — bet- ween 15 and 30 percent, while the NPA’s strong polls on the west side of-the city have a voter tur- nout of about 50 percent. One of the most important new features of this election is that 38,000 new voters are registered since two years ago. Almost all are tenants and most are concen- trated on the east side, precisely in the areas where COPE will be go- ing door-to-door. COPE’s concentration polls are located in the Downtown Eastside, where one poll has an amazing increase of 700 voters, Strathcona, Kiwassa, Hastings, Sunrise, Grandview Woodlands, Fairview, Mt. Pleasant, False Creek, Kitsilano and a part of Cedar Cottage. That ‘‘inner core”’ of the city will be canvassed, while an adja- cent band stretching from Point Grey to South Vancouver will be distributed door-to-door by COPE members. Most of the rest of the city will receive COPE literature through a postal drop. COPE’s campaign workers will be decentralized into nine zones, each headed by a zone cap- tain. They will be armed with COPE’s main leaflet, printed this week in 125,000 copies. About 45,000 of those will go door-to- door in the distribution and can- vas, another 5,000 or more to plant gate distributions at major work sites in the city, and the rest to a postal drop. ‘*We need people who will give us any amount of time,’’ said Lane. ‘“‘It could be one or two evenings, Saturday afternoons, or a couple of evenings each week until election day.” More canvassers are urgently needed. It is a simple operation including just a knock on a door, _ a brief statement and delivery of the leaflet. There is no discussion, _ forms or call back in the plans. COPE members and sup- porters can sign up for the canvas, . to help out in the office, or to scrutineer on election day, by call- ing the COPE office at 253-6381. More details will also be available at COPE’s election workers’ par- ty this Saturday. Vander Zalm’s lip the monkey wrench in LRT Once again the provincial government has thrown a monkey wrench into the plans of the Greater Vancouver Regional District (G.V.R.D.) to establish a light rapid transit system in the area. - This time it is municipal affairs Minister Bill Vander Zalm telling the Kerrisdale Courier that the railway tracks in the Arbutus rail corridor will be torn up. The G.V.R.D. had planned to use this corridor for a light rapid transit system from Vancouver to Richmond and south. Vander Zalm says he wants to turn this 90’ wide strip into a linear park stret- ching from Marpole to False Creek Edmonton has had a light rapid transit system for two years. Calgary is building one right now. — But in the Vancouver area we'll never get one if the provincial ~ government continues to use its powers to sabotage it in every possible way. First the provincial government ‘’pressured the G. V.R.D. into taking over the operation of the bus system from B.C. Hydro, which was another way of forcing it to take over the huge annual deficit involved. When the G.V.R.D. proposed a new bridgeto carry light rapid tran- sit over the Fraser near the Patullo Bridge, the provincial government went ahead and announced plans . for a different kind of bridge in the Annacis Island area. When the G.V.R.D. came out with a plan for a comprehensive light rapid transit system, based on a study that cost almost half a million dollars, Vander Zalm an- nounced that he didn’t agree; he wants a monorail system to serve Project 86 and is forcing the G.V.R.D. DON son an a plans. . As fast as the G.V.R.D. comes up with light rapid transit plans, Vander Zalm shoots them down, shooting from the lip as usual. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCT. 17, 1980—Page 2 The revelation this week that Premier Bill Bennett intends to dump the government’s remain- ing shares in the B.C. Resources Investment Corporation — in the hopes of flying above the flak that he is getting from the BCRIC- Kaiser deal — shows just how crass he is in tying the province and its resources to his own political fortunes and those of the scandal-ridden Social Credit government. Readers will remember, of course, the brief history of RCRIC: how Bennett took a suc- cessful Crown corporation created by the previous NDP government and turned it over to private hands with a ‘‘free share’’ plan. In fact, he made it a clever election ploy and the share plan was heralded as an opportunity for people ‘‘to see how free enter- prise works.’’ Since then, BCRIC has taken the $487 million it raised through share sales and intends to borrow as much again to buy the outstan- ding shares of Kaiser Resources — but in a deal so raw that even financial analysts have queried it and the Ontario Securities Com- mission felt compelled to make significant changes to it before considering approval. And the shares — still stands. original deal — $55 for Kaiser. PEOPLE AND ISSUES With the scandal over the deal now assuming major political proportions, Bennett wants to dump the government’s shares, hoping by that to give credence to his claim that Victoria has nothing to do with the whole rot- tern business. But no one could — or should — buy that. Bennett was fully ap- ‘prised of the BCRIC-Kaiser deal and his government, as the- original owner and still the major shareholder in BCRIC, could move in immediately and stop it. That has been our position throughout. Victoria should halt the BCRIC purchase of Kaiser and, far from unloading the outstanding shares in BCRIC, should act immediately to return — the corporation to public owner- ship. We have to note some small truth in Bennett’s claims, however. BCRIC is indeed a “lesson in how free enterprise works’’ — with the Kaiser deal . providing a perveulagy. graphic Se: * * * need — as articles elsewhere in this issue attest —it is the need to | step up action for disarmament. The events scheduled for the end of next week under the joint spon- sorship of the United Nations Association and the Coalition for World Disarmament are 4 modest contribution to that ob- jective and will mark UN World Disarmament Week Oct. 19-25. _ Dr. William Epstein, an inter- | nationally known expert on disar- mament issues, will open the events Friday, Oct. 24 with a le~- ture on “Canada and the nuclear arms race’’ at 7:30 p.m. in the Robson Square Theatre in Van- couver. Slated to go all day Saturday, | Oct. 25 is a disarmament festival with dance and theatre and an ad- dress at 3:30 p.m. by Ingrid Lehmann, political affairs officer for the disarmament committee of the UN and an assistant to | secretary-general Kurt | Waldheim. Pied Pear and Tom Hawken, the Greek Dancers, the ~~ Kobzar Dancers and the Gujurati Society as well as the children’s theatre Green Thumb Players are * ‘among the various entertainers kr ever there was an imperative — } scheduled.