tn FAME Yous
Se

=e

McMartin Sun column
is long on Socred hype
but short on the facts

Vancouver Sun columnist Pete
McMartin’s article (Jan. 15, 1986),
titled “Macho Works for Vancouver
City Council,” was not only a mali-

| cious attack on city council, it was an

unabashed defence of the Social Credit
government in its dealings with city
council. To think that this article did
not have the blessing of the editors of
the Sun would be naive indeed. When
they pull the leash, McMartin jumps
and wags his tail.

McMartin started off with the rather
stupid and all-embracing remark that
“never has a council acted more rudely
to other governments. Yet never has a
council benefited more from the gifts

_ these other governments bestow.” This

set the tone for the utterly fallacious
statements that followed.

First he mentioned the “bargain
basement deal” the Socreds offered
Vancouver in the construction of a new
Cambie Street bridge. What he didn’t
point out was:

@ The “bargain basement deal” was
actually a form of blackmail, a prop-
osal that the province would pay half
the cost only if city council allowed it to
increase the density of B.C. Place to a
point higher than in the West End. This
council turned it down. No council

genuinely concerned with a livable

Vancouver could do otherwise.

@ The need for a new bridge was
created by the provincial government
through the construction of a new sta-
dium and B.C. Place, and to handle the

tourist traffic generated by Expo 86.
- Considering the millions of dollars it

has been throwing around with Expo, it
could easily have set aside enough

_ funds to pay for the bridge. Instead the

citizens of Vancouver had to fork over
$60 million, with the province contri-
buting only $10 million. It was a good

example of the kind of “gifts” the Social
Credit government “‘bestows” on Van-

couver. -

Next McMartin declared that city
council advanced an “unending string
of complaints on design, park space
and densities” regarding B.C. Place and
then followed this up with another
stupid remark to the effect that council
“preferred the railway yard that was
there before.”

Even McMartin, who es
doesn’t consider it necessary to think or

| do any research before he pours out his

diarrhea of unsubstantiated allega-
tions, should know that city council’s
concern was that the north shore of
False Creek should have some afforda-
ble housing and some park space for
citizens, and be limited to a reasonable
density. The Social Credit cabinet and
the greedy developers it represents

wanted to turn B.C. Place into an area

of high density office towers and hotels
and expensive executive suites. They
wanted to plant another Hong Kong in
the middle of Vancouver.

To dismiss city council’s strong
objections to this type of development
as a series of “ill-considered com-

_ plaints” is ludicrous in the extreme.

McMartin cited Expo 86, the trade
and convention centre and ALRT as
other examples of city council’s alleged
intransigence and Socred generosity.
Here again he disregarded all the facts.

The position of the Committee of
Progressive Electors aldermen on Expo

86 was, and is, that we want some pro-

tection for Vancouver citizens against
the high rents and high prices (food,
restaurant meals, clothes, parking,
hotel rates, and so on) that inevitably
follow expositions of this kind. We also
didn’t want Vancouver and other B.C.
citizens saddled with a huge debt — a
debt now estimated at $311 million but
which could be two or three times that
amount — after Expo is over.

The experience of other cities shows
that after the Expos are long gone, the
high prices and debts remain. These
kinds of “gifts” we don’t need from the
Socred government.

As for the trade and convention cen-
tre, this was a white elephant right from
the beginning that the Socreds tried to
unload on Vancouver city council. Its
cost, first estimated by the Socreds to be
$25 million, jumped to over $50 million
and then finally Ottawa had to take it
over and build it at a cost of $150 mil-
lion.

Lhe Socred cabinet wanted Van-
couver to take it over after Expo and
absorb the annual deficit, estimated at
millions of dollars. City council turned
down Social Credit demands that we
share the cost of the centre and pay its
operating losses. COPE’s position is
that the business corporations that
benefit from this centre should foot the
bill.

As for the ALRT, city council,
backed by the majority of citizens of
Vancouver, wanted a conventional
street-level rapid transit system that
could have been built at less than half

Harry

bes

Rankin

the cost. The Socreds wanted an expen-
sive show-piece for Expo that would at
the same time provide lucrative con-
tracts for its corporate business friends.

Finally McMartin claimed that Van-

couver should be thankful that the
ALRT was built because it will greatly
increase the value of city-owned lands
in the vicinity of the ALRT, and he
followed up this statement with the
absurd remark that “the SkyTrain is
going to make Vancouver wealthier
than it has ever been in its history.”
McMartin’s praise for Social Credit has
reached the point of hallucinations.

It’s not Vancouver or its citizens who
will become wealthy because of ALRT
land values. It will be the big developers
who already own or who bought up
land in advance in the vicinity of ALRT
Stations. They will make millions.
(Metrotown in Burnaby is a good
example.) Furthermore, because of the
high construction costs of the ALRT,
fares will be high and the debt incurred
will hang over us for decades.

What McMartin and the Vancouver
Sun apparently want is a city council
that will be just a rubber stamp for the
Socred cabinet. My position on council
and that of the other COPE aldermen is
that we were elected to look after the
interests of Vancouver citizens, not
those of the Social Credit government.
We will continue to defend these inter-
ests against all attacks of the govern-
ment despite the drivellings of McMartin
and his corporate media masters.

e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 22, 1986

Resisting cuts has

wide hacking: forum)

Vancouver’s future school trustees will
inherit a system strained to the limit with
burgeoning class pdpulations, unclean
buildings, overworked teachers and support
staff and declining morale.

Such was the picture that emerged from
the testimony of teachers, principals, stu-
dents and others in the education commun-
ity at a special “public forum” hosted by the
Committee of Progressive Electors Jan. 16.

But a recent teachers’ survey also showed
those who win will have backing of a strong
majority of Vancouver residents if the
school board decides to take on the provin-
cial government over education cutbacks.

Barrie MacFadden, vice-president of the
Vancouver Elementary School Teachers
Association, told the nine COPE school
board candidates hosting the forum that
more than 60 per cent of Vancouverites
polled think the province is a poor manager
of the public school system.

In demanding, as did others addressing
the forum, a return of local autonomy to
school boards, the VESTA representative
provided strong ammunition for the candi-
dates seeking to reinstate the COPE major-
ity to the board in the upcoming Jan. 30
byelection.

The candidates, five of whom were trus-
tees when Education Minister Jack Hein-
rich fired the Vancouver board last May,
listened as forum participants told of the
problems they’ve faced since the introduc-
tion of government “restraint.”

“Before Christmas, I don’t recall ever
seeing a staff and student body so tired,”
said Norm Ornes, principal of Vancouver
Technical School.

Relating the increased work load to pro-
vincial cutbacks, Ornes told the forum Van
Tech teachers had little time to mark papers
properly — “you're talking of 42 hours of
marking a week”’ — and said teachers were
“fed up, because we can’t give the time we
should to the kids.”

Kerrisdale Elementary school principal
Dick Durante described his school as
“filthy” due to maintenance cutbacks and
warned that the public school system is “in
jeopardy because of (government) negati-
vism.”

With other speakers, Durante said he
was “unalterably opposed” to fundraising
ventures to make up financial shortfalls.

“J see it as a form of indirect taxation,” he
told the COPE candidates.

Monica Simonense, chair of the Parents’
District Consultative Committee (which
advises the board of school affairs) said she
considered fundraising schemes “totally
obscene.”

Durante also said the smallest class size in
the 1984-85 school year was larger than the

most populated class in 1981 at Kerrisdale.

Teacher Pat Miller spoke of teaching a
class of 31 grade one students, which
includes two special needs children. She said
while she had taught larger classes in the
past, “today’s parents expect more out of
the education system.”

Colleague Jeannette Stark noted the
elimination of ground supervision staff
means teachers must put in an average 55
minutes ground supervision per week:
“Things in a way have gone back to (the
conditions of) 1958.”

“Teachers are more and more upset
about increased class sizes. You'll be hear-
ing alot more from them in the future,” said
Vancouver Secondary School Teachers
Association president Mike Gregory.

If the COPE trustees are victorious in
re-establishing a majority on the board,
they’ll have the backing of the majority of
the public when they enact their election

pledges to fight for an end to cut-backs and

the return to local financial and decision- -
making autonomy, according to the
VESTA survey.

The survey, carried out Marktrend Mar-
keting Research for VESTA last fall, found
more than 60 per cent of the respondents’
thought the provincial government was
“not managing our school system well,”
MacFadden reported.

Further, close to 30 per cent of the polled ~
residents consider the government is man-
aging education “‘very poorly,” he said.

The survey found less than 30 per cent
think the government is doing a good job,
and only five per cent think the education
ministry is doing a “very good” job.

_Dr. Norman Robinson, the forme
school trustee who carried out public hear
ings at VESTA’s request into the firing of
the school board last fall, also reported
results from survey findings.

The education professor told the COPE.
candidates ia survey carried out by himse
and students recently found that those with
children in the public school system, and
those with pre-school age children were
“the most frightened” of Socred educanonl
policies.

He said that Chinese and Indo-Canadian
parents also oppose government cutbacks,
because “they see the public education sys-
tem as bound up with their aspirations.”

But surprisingly, the survey also found
many without school-age children — most
notably younger adults anticipating families
— were also concerned about education
cuts, he said. 4

Those who supported government poli- —
cies the strongest tended to be parents with -
children in private schools, Robinson
noted. ;

Robinson also hit the Socreds’ “‘almost |
sinister” action in returning residential
property taxation to local boards without
returning the authority to tax industrial and
commercial properties: “It’s anachronistic
to expect property owners to bear the brunt
of the cost of education,” he said.

x

Canada-USSR >
officers elected |

A packed meeting of the Canada-USSR
Association Jan. 5 unanimously endorsed a
slate of executive officers and called on the
organization’s Canadian Council to work
with the executive and end the undemo-
cratic trusteeship imposed last year.

More than 120 people turned up at the
meeting to elect four table officers and nine
executive members-at-large. Elected were:
president, Dr. Allan Inglis; vice-president,
Rod Doran; secretary-treasurer, Mike
O’Neill; and recording secretary, Alice Per-
son. The executive is made up of Da
Bratko, Claude Crosby, Albert Detmar
Alberto Hewlett, John Niechoda, Bert
Ogden, Alice Robson, Eric Waugh anc
Pauline Wishinski.

The meeting unanimously backed a resi
lution urging the Canadian Council, which
was meeting in Toronto Jan. 18 and 19,

re-establish relations with the Vancouvel
organization. The council had imposed
trusteeship on the Vancouver organiza
although it gave no reason for the actio’

The Jan. 5 meeting also issued a call f
meeting of all B.C. branches of the Cana
USSR Association. It has been set for Fe’
2, 11 a.m. in the Hastings Community Cer
tre, 3096 E. Hastings St. in Vancouver.

§ aoe ee