From Tenants Rights

Slum landlords profit
from violating the law

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The city of Vancouver isn’t
making headway in its prosecution
of slum landlords for violation of
city health laws.

The city’s health department has

been investigating old rooming
houses and hotels. Our health in-
spectors have spent hundreds of
hours gathering information on
such matters as_ pest-ridden
premises (lice, bedbugs,
cockroaches); dirty mattresses,
bedding and towels; water drip-
ping into rooms; insufficient hot
water; lack of heat; lack of hand
basins; filthy furnishings and so
on. ?
To gather such evidence is one
thing. To have the offenders tried
and convicted is another, and to
have them cease their violations
after conviction is. still another.

What is happening is that trials
are being endlessly delayed, the
city prosecutor appears reluctant
to prosecute, the fines handed
down on conviction are small, and
the slum landlords keep on doing
what they have been doing all the
time — just ignoring city health
regulations.

Let me give you a few examples
taken from the report of the City

Manager dated September 19, on
the subject of, ‘“Lodging House By-
Law Prosecutions,’’ to Council’s
Standing Committee on Housing
Environment. Since January 1975
our health inspectors have sub-
mitted evidence to the city
prosecutor against 10 rooming
houses.

It takes months before charges
are laid by the prosecutor and
many more months before a trial is
finally held. The delays, post-
ponements and adjournments are
endless. Four of these 10 cases
have not yet reached the trial
stage. Sometimes the accused
doesn’t bother to show up, nor to
have a lawyer to represent him. In
some cases when bench warrants
are issued for the arrest of the
accused they are not enforced. In
one instance the city prosecutor
stated that the “police do not wish
to carry out the arrest order.”

In another instance the charge
was ‘‘withdrawn by the prosecutor
due to a meeting between the
lawyer of the accused and the
prosecutor.”’ In this particular
case the owner was operating the
rooming house without a permit to
do so and is still continuing to
operate without a permit.

COMMUNIST PARTY SAYS:

Land use key to housing crisis

The housing crisis cannot be
effectively tackled in Canada
without coming to grips with the

issue of ownership and use of land-

says a statement released last
week by the Central Executive
Committee of the Communist
Party. The statement says:

The issue of ownership and use of
the land has become an important
part of the anti-monopoly struggle
and the struggle for Canadian
independence.

Two interrelated phenomena are
evident today. First, the increasing
concentration of land in the hands
of monopoly and the land
speculators which in turn has led to
prohibitive increases in the cost of
housing.

Secondly, the increasing foreign

ownership of land, either through
foreign corporations or absentee
ownership.

In either case land which should
be the priceless heritage of the
Canadian people, to be held in
perpetuity and developed in the
interests of Canada and her people,
is like industry and natural
resources, being taken over by
both Canadian and _ USS.
monopolies.

These are dangerous phenomena
which must be combatted by the
labor and democratic movement,
indeed by all true patriots.

It is with this in mind that the
Communist Party of Canada
proposes the following measures:

a) Concentration of land
ownership, be it by Canadian

monopoly or multinational cor-

porations, should be prohibited
through appropriate legislation;

b) Urban land should be placed
under municipal ownership, and
should be made available on long
term leases for publicly controlled
housing developments.

c) Land presently held by’

‘speculators should be expropriated
ata price based on the real value of
the land determined by a Board
established for that purpose;

d) Appropriate legislation
should be adopted by federal,
provincial and municipal govern-

ments prohibiting the sale of land’

to foreign firms or absentee
owners. Such firms or owners to be
able to use land on a lease basis
only.

Aware of the ever-growing op-
position to foreign ownership of

land in Canada, the Supreme Court
has ruled that Prince Edward
Island legislation limiting foreign
ownership of land is constitutional.

However, it is not enough to limit
foreign ownership. It must be
prohibited.

The housing crisis cannot be
effectively tackled without coming
to grips with ownership of land. To
undertake housing construction as
a public utility requires that urban
land be publicly owned.

Take the land out of the hands of
the corporations and of the
speculators! __

Ownership of development land
for multiple housing purposes, like

ownership of all aspects of the
‘economy,

must be under the
sovereign and dembcratic control
of the Canadian people!

In another case the accused
landlord was fined for refusing 1
allow an inspector into the| —
premises, continued to refuse and
was fined again, and now continues

See LANDLORDS, pg. 11

Hydro head |
tours USSR ||

DAVID CASS-BEGGS

David Cass-Beggs, B.C: |
Hydro chairman, is in the Soviet | |
Union for a two-week technical | |
visit to study Soviet develop: | |
ments in the energy field and ;
their application to B.C. He will i
visit the High Temperature |}
Institute of the Academy of
Sciences in Moscow where
important advances are being
made in the field of magnetohy-
drodynamics (MHD).

MHD is a method of
generating electric power from
fuel without using the in-
termediary of steam turbines oF
rotating machines. The power is
generated directly in a stream
of very hot gas as it passes at
high speed between the poles of
powerful electromagnets. Up t0
twice the amount of electrical
power can be obtained from 4
given amount of fuel.by MHD
compared with steam an
turbine generators. ;

Cass-Beggs said before |}
leaving he hoped to be able (0 | |
assess the significance of Soviet |
developments for B.C. i].
development of electric powe!
generation from coal.

a

A few short months ago when U.S. imperialism was busy
removing its army wreckage and other debris from the
territory of South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and points
east under a peace agreement it didn’t approve of, but
was compelled to accept in lieu of an ignominious and
total defeat, it went into the predicting business.

To put it mildly, these political weather cocks of U.S.

imperialism, with their various puppet governments on ,

the run, predicted a terrible and appalling blood bath
when the Communists took over in Saigon and other
liberated areas. A blood bath far in excess of any ever
accomplished by the fabled Torquemada, Gengis Khan or
the Pentagon itself, they suggested. Even the unfortunate
schizophrenic locked up in the security area of an insane
asylum couldn’t have topped U.S. imperialism in the dire
prediction business — nor gone more haywire.

The prime objective of this hysteria-laden prediction
was twofold: to scare hell out of millions in America,
South Vietnam and other areas where U.S. imperialism
had been compelled to vacate, and to provide a backdrop
to cover up its final crime against the people of Southeast
Asia, a cover up staged in the name _ of
“humanitarianism!”’

This final crime has hardly a parallel in the long history
of mankind. To seek to destroy a country and people by
naked aggression, then shanghai scores of hundreds of

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 3, 1975—Page 2

babies and children, torn from a parent and homeland for
“asylum” in America or elsewhere. To airlift or ship
countless thousands of Vietnamese. to the U.S. or
territories of another people under U.S. domination, all on
the pretext of saving these Vietnamese or other nationals
from a predicted Communist “blood bath” that must
“inevitably” follow when the Communists took over in
South Vietnam, Cambodia or elsewhere.

“There’s nothing to fear-except fear itself,’ Franklin
Delano Roosevelt once remarked. The predicters of U.S.
imperialism stood this truism on its head, broadcast its
criminal fears like an evil plague, instructed a powerful
news media to pull out all the stops, and bear down heavy
on the humanitarian pedal. Nor was our own Canadian
monopoly press behind in this hysteria-laden finale of U.S.
imperialism in Vietnam. The press picture of president
Gerry Ford holding a kidnapped child (one of many
hundreds) in the guise of humanitarianism or our own
immigration minister Andras sympathizing with a
general Quang, is enough to make a-healthy dog vomit.
Both should be returned to their homeland, one to grow up
in the environments of peace, culture and brotherhood,
the other to face his judges — the Vietnamese people.

There is no blood bath in Saigon or South Vietnam. They
have had their blood bath, 30 years of it. First imperial
Japan, then imperial France, then imperial America with
Canada reaping huge profits on the side. Now there is
peace, order and good government, plus the vision of a
reunited and rebuilt Vietnam, made more desirable and
sacred by the immortal memory of Ho Chi Minh.

Of course the U.S. is not alone in its Communist “‘blood
bath” hallucinations. There are adherents in many
countries and in many callings. :

Recently a good Roman Catholic priest, a Father
Raymond de Jaegar has surfaced, contending that ‘‘80,000

have already been liquidated by the Provisional
Revolutionary Government” and that at least “tw? |
million or more’ will have to be snuffed out pronto, a& |
cording to this holy man. Since the good father is allege® |
to-be endowed with the great occult power of ‘“‘seeiM6 |
things,” and noted the same mass “‘liquidations’’ in the |,
Russian and later Chinese revolutions, the “gradual |
elimination of everyone who can’t be fitted into the party a
line’ naturally follows. 4

No doubt such news from such a source will be lik® |
manna from heaven to the predicters of U.S. imperialis™: |

“The chicken dreams of millet,’ wrote Lenin 1? |
reference to those who would (if they could) “‘turn pack |
the clock.” Their predicted “blood baths’ are from th
same reactionary inspiration.

And yet, there’s just no saying how far the fear of feat
can take one. Only this week a venerable Pope is reporte® —
to have stated, apropos the forthcoming Italian election>:
that “if the Communists win I will move to take UP
residence in Jerusalem.”’ Another one to commiseraté —
with the Zionists . . . until the Communists of Israel a
genuine peace also ‘‘take over.”’

Editor - MAURICE RUSH
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