SEE TE ROE BATS LIE NPA Blocks Rankin initiative City seers for action on housing © Harry Rankin appealed to Vancouver city council to take action to meet the city’ s housing Crisis Tuesday evening, but the right wing NPA block once again used its majority to vote down Rankin’s call for immediate ac- tion. _ After similar appeals from 15 citizen delegations lasting late into the evening, Rankin moved that the city commit itself to financing land acquisition for 600 units of non-profit housing in 1980. Much more is needed, Rankin Said, but the 600 units, also recommended by the city plann- ing department, was a ‘‘com- Promise’? which he hoped VME LIS NP LIED rere { | i | i ie would garner a majority vote. But with allegations from the city’s finance director and from the NPA that the motion con- stituted a ‘‘blank cheque”’ for a housing program, the NPA voted to defer consideration of it until an actual sum is propos- ed. The deferral was, however, widely recognized as notice that the NPA majority would vote- down the housing program. The debate on housing cen- tred around Dr. Ann McAfee’s ‘‘Affordable Housing Study”’ prepared for the city’s planning department last March. The report was a detailed survey of the housing crisis which noted 40,000 city, households with eed 5 © CHANGE VOTE. COMMUNIST “housing problems,’” 11,200 households living in inferior or overcrowded housing, and over 24,000 households paying more than 40 percent of their income on housing. The report recommended that the city act to facilitate the building of non-profit housing by making land available, but it recommended against the city building housing directly. Communist Party Greater Vancouver chairman and federal candidate for Van- couver East Fred Wilson told council that the proposal was an ‘fessentially middle class ap- proach to a working class pro- blem.’’ Co-op housing can have TRIBUNE PHOTO — FRED WILSON Communist Party leader Bill Kashtan met a neivage of questions about Afghanistan head on at a press conference last Thursday in Vancouver. Kashtan was in Vancouver to address a meeting of CP cam- Paign workers. He will be back in B.C. on a public speaking tour Feb. 2-4. : CP leader launches election campaign some benefit and should be en- couraged, he said, but only government action can meet the housing needs of most people. Wilson pointed out that the city has a non-profit housing corporation in existence, on paper, and that it also owns 500 acres of land in the city which could be used for development or swapped, and a_ planning department already staffed ade- quately to plan and develop housing projects. Financing is available from the _ federal government’s Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation at two percent, but CMHC return- ed a large portion of its available mortgage assistance funds in 1979 because it was not claimed. If the city was interested in buiding affordable housing it could put two and_ three bedroom townhouses on_ the market for just over $150 per month rents, and new three bedroom homes for about $180 per month rents, Wilson said. ‘Affordable housing is possi- ble, providing we take the usury, speculation, and excess profits out of it,’’ he urged. ‘*‘And provided government will ach. Committee of Progressive Electors president Bruce Yorke and Downtown Eastside See HOUSING page 7 NFU urges gov’ SASKATOON — The Na- tional Farmers Union last week called on the federal govern- ment to “‘pursue an indepen- dent policy’? and reject grain sales sanctions against the Soviet Union. In a telegram Jan. 9, NFU president James Mayne urged the government ‘‘to pursue an independent foreign policy posi- tion respecting USSR grain trade relations.’”’ He added: ‘‘We regard grain sales sanctions proposed by the U.S. as inappropriate in the cur- rent circumstances.” The telegram was sent to Clark, transport minister Don Kashtan warns of ‘return to cold war’ The Liberal, Tories and New Democrats ‘‘have all turned to policies of cold war’’ in respon- ding to the recent events in Afghanistan, Communist Party leader William Kashtan told a packed press conference in Van- couver last week. Kashtan, on a cross-Canada tour to launch the party’s federal election campaign, was particularly critical of the Clark government for ‘‘jumping to at- tention’’ when the U.S. called for a trade embargo’ of the Soviet Union. “Where are Canadian in- terests represented if we stop selling wheat to the Soviet Union?’’ he asked, referring to recent reports that Clark’s of- fice was considering following the U.S. lead in cutting off wheat sales. ‘‘What about the farmers — and the longshoremen?”’ “More important, what OTTAWA — The federal department of agriculture an- nounced Jan. 3 that food prices across Canada had in- creased by 13.5 percent in one year. The cost of food for a family of four was estimated at $62.01 per week in Dec. The- Retail Council of Canada estimated Dec. 28 that the cost of food will leap by another 11.5 to 13 percent this [year ; Prices, profits soar at year end Among the reasons. behind the Council’s grim prediction is the cost of packaging and the added ‘‘tax’’ of advertising expenditures. Food is not the only price offender. Transportation costs are up, mainly because of in- creased energy costs. Feb. 1 the cost of natural gas will jump seven percent. While price increases make life more and more difficult for Canadian families, the financial pages of major daily newspapers proclaim the good news from the U.S.: ‘‘War scare piles up profit in some stocks’? (Jan.8) Five days earlier Statistics Canada an-- nounced that industrial cor- porations in Canada had after tax profits during the third quarter of 1979 of $4.7 billion, up 36.7 percent over the same period a year before. y, about an independent foreign policy for Canada?’ he asked. Kashtan noted that the U.S. administration ‘‘isn’t concerned with the people of Afghanistan — it is only concerned with pull- ing itself out of a crisis now that it is no longer the world’s banker or the world policeman. “When the U.S. was in similar crises before, it started the Korean war and later the Vietnam war. “Now it may use Afghanistan as the pretext,’’ he warned, em- phasizing that Ss policymakers ‘‘want to create a situation that will legalize an escalated arms race or even start a war.”’ The Communist leader stress- ed that there was ‘‘no Soviet in- cursion into Afghanistan but rather Soviet assistance based on a Soviet-Afghan oe sign- ed in 1978. See RYAN pace 7 No grain embargo Mazankowski, external affairs minister Flora MacDonald, Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau and New- Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent. It was a rebuff to statements by prime minister Clark who said last week that the govern- ment was considering grain See NFU page 7 @ VIETNAM: China’s ex- pansionist strategy ‘against Vietnam is de- tailed by Tribune re- porter Tom Morris in a second feature article based on an extensive tour of Vietnam and Kampuchea, pages 5, 6. @ LABOR: Jack Phillips examines the precedent setting decision which ruled the strike of Sas- katchewan government employees illegal, page 8 aes De ee ee ee ee