Wednesday, February 22, 1984

Newsstand Price 40°

Vol. 47, No. 7

RIBUNE

Ir $527 million cut to services

Trades keep

up campaign

against gov't
non-union
contractors

OTO — Dd

NE P

TRIB

a a a

Building Trades and hospital workers rallied casita Vancouver General Hospital’ s Centennial Pavilion Feb. 16 to protest the hospital
board's anti-union stance and its support for non union contracts. (Story page 12.)

*

launched by
AFL meet §

—page 11—

AFL PRESIDENT
DAVE WERLIN

NEW BUDGET ‘MORE
DEVASTATING THAN
JULY 7 CUTBACKS

The Socred government brought down
its long-awaited budget Monday afternoon
and if it was not accompanied by a barrage
of legislation, as the infamous July 7, 1983
budget, it was no less brutal in its attack on
people.

This time the government set out to com-
plete by fiscal means the legislative program
begun last year but held up by the massive
protest.

B.C. Federation of Labor president Art
Kube denounced the budget as “economic
suicide,” charging that the Socreds were
“continuing their philosophic crusade at the
expense of the poor and other victims of the
recession.”

And in an interview from Victoria where
he was monitoring the budget address,

~Communist Party organizational secretary —

Fred Wilson warned that the government
“has gone much further than last year in the
extent of its cutbacks — and they, in turn,
will have a far more devastating effect.”

The budget figures demonstrate the
government’s economic thrust. For the first
time in the province’s history, the amount
the government plans to spend for 1984-85
represents an absolute reduction — of $57
million — from the previous year’s budget.

But in terms of actual government oper-
ating expenditures — as opposed to such
items as debt servicing — the reduction is
far more devastating. It is down $527 mil-
lion from 1983-84.

That reduction has been translated into
massive cutbacks in virtually every ministry:

@ Education — down $61 million;

@ Human Resources — down $26
million;

@ Lands, Parks and Housing — down
$26 million;

®@ Highways — down $33.8 million;

© Transit — down $11 million.

The cuts will result in grants to universi-
ties and colleges being reduced, grants for
student aid eliminated and replaced entirely
by loans and legal aid cut a further $1.7
million from its already reduced budget.

Only in the Ministry of Health did the
government budget for an increase — of
$51 million — but that amount will be
more than met by a new health tax which
will be based on an eight per cent surcharge
on personal income tax.

The new tax has been imposed to replace
hospital user fees which will be proscribed
under the new federal Canada Health Act.

Finance Minister Hugh Curtis told the
legislature that the estimated loss in revenue
to the province as a result of abolishing user
fees would be $43 million. But he also esti-
mated that the new tax would generate $97
million in 1984 — it isto be phased in at
four per cent beginning in July — and $166
million for the first full year it is in place.

see SOLIDARITY page 12