Vander Zalm policies condemned

New government regulations
affecting welfare payments and
eligibility came under attack from
all sides this week and human
resources minister Bill Vander
Zalm was accused of “playing
cheap politics” and “‘pandering to
the rednecks in our society.”’

Bruce Eriksen, president of the

Downtown Eastside Residents
Association made the comments in
response to last week’s an-
nouncement by Vander Zalm that
the provincial government was
going to ‘“‘get tough in order to end
welfare abuse.”
’ Eriksen said that most of his
organization’s 1,800 members
received some form of social
assistance, and that welfare fraud
simply .does not exist on a wide
scale.

The new regulations. will
designate residents of certain
remote areas of the province as
being ineligible for welfare
payments and will introduce an
assets test for those applying for
Mincome benefits. The in-
troduction of an assets test for
Mincome applicants. is in direct
opposition to one of the main
promises made by the Socreds
during the December 11 election

campaign.
Vander Zalm also said that
existing regulations limiting

welfare payments to those waiting
for unemployment insurance
benefits to two weeks, and
disqualification from _ social

assistance of those who quit their
jobs or refuse’ employment would
be ‘‘emphasized.”’

Nigel Morgan, provincial leader
of the Communist Party of Canada,
Zalm’s new
“the most

called Vander

regulations vicious,

Bruce Eriksen
. . Welfare fraud a myth

Bill Vander Zalm

. redneck policies

—Schell photo
callous, all-out assault on the
established rights of senior
citizens, the unemployed, and
thousands of underprivileged in
need in the history of B.C.” He said
that Vander Zalm was not getting
at any of the province’s problems
with his new regulations which will
only curtail services, and that
instead of cutting back on services,
the government should ‘‘tap the
province’s rich natural resources
and accommodate the growing and

legitimate demands of the
majority of the people.”’

In announcing the changes in
regulations, Vander Zalm ad-
mitted that he had no idea of the
number of people that would be
affected by the changes but in-
dicated that his department would
be hiring more “investigators” to
check on welfare recipients. That
suggestion was dismissed as being
useless by DERA president
Eriksen.

“ach investigator will have to
catch 15 to 20 people defrauding
welfare every day to simply pay
their own wages,” Eriksen said.
“There simply are not that many
people abusing welfare to justify
the expense.’

He said that he was earpriced
that Vander Zalm would be
thinking of denying welfare to the
unemployed. ‘‘The press is telling
us daily that unemployment is at
its highest rate in 40 years. What’s
the logic in telling them to go out
and get jobs that don’t exist?’ he
asked.

The latest figures released by
Statistics Canada show 108,000
people in British Columbia were
without jobs in February of this
year.

Eriksen said that the result of

Vander Zalm’s policy of denying
welfare to people in remote areas
would be to force them into the
cities and compound the already
existing social problems. there.
“We'll have our streets full of
young people who’ve been chased
out of everywhere else. What will
happen to them? He’s left them
with no alternative other than to
steal so they can eat.

‘This is going to make our work
much more difficult to clean up
skid road. Ultimately, I think that
he’s trying to drive people out of
the province.”

Libby Davies, chairman of the
Downtown Community Resources
Board, in an open letter to Vander
Zalm, said that it was ‘‘cheap
sensationalism to single out
welfare recipients and cut back
social services that serve the
people who need them the most;
who are least able to defend
themselves.”

She challenged Vander Zalm to
produce some evidence to back up
his claims of welfare abuse, and
said that he was conning the public
into believing that he was
“weeding out the freeloaders that
are costing so much money.”
Davis said that the total saving
from all of his paring would

probably be somewhat less than
“0.1 per cent of the government
budget.”

Davies called Vander Zalm’s
attacks a smokescreen to divert
attention away from the real issues
facing the province,
unemployment and held his actions.
up as “‘the perfect example of your
government’s petty- minded
politics.”

Another low-income group rep
resentative, Joan Morelli of the}
Federated Anti-Poverty Group,
noted that Vander Zalm_ has
managed to attack every poor
group in the province, including
welfare recipients, the unem-
ployed, single parents, and the
handicapped. She said that she was
particularly concerned about the
definition of a ‘remote area” and
feared that it could be expanded to
include any area which the
minister wished.

Morelli said that all. of Vander
Zalm’s statements seem to be
made off the top of his head, and
that he has no evidence to back up
any of his claims. ‘‘But even more
disturbing than that is the fact that
he will say one thing and do
another, with no guarantees at all.

“What can you really say about)

the man?” she asked.

ee

‘Vindictive actions against poor’

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Human resources minister
Vander Zalm charged the other
day that up to $80 million a year is
taken fraudulently in welfare. He
admitted that he had “‘nothing to
back up” this statement, but that
didn’t stop him from making it.

He further stated that 20 to 39 per
cent of the people on welfare in
Surrey, Burnaby and Vancouver
are receiving welfare fraudulently,
again admitting that he didn’t
know ‘“‘if these figures are right.”

We are conditioned to Social
Credit cabinet ministers making
exaggerated statements for
political purposes. But these
statements of Vander Zalm’s are
so far from the facts that they can’t
even be dignified with the term
“exaggeration.”” They are just
plain false. And when you consider
that they are directed against the
poorest segment of ourcommunity,
they are downright scurrilous.

Single persons receive $160 a
month or just under $2,000 a year
on welfare.

If Vander © zany

statement were true, 40,000 of them
could be receiving welfare
fraudulently. That’s more than the
total of single people on welfare!

A single mother with three
children gets $370 a month, or just
under $4,500 a year. If Vander
Zalm’s statement were true, 18,000
of them could be fraudulently
drawing welfare. That’s more than
the total of single mothers with
children on welfare!

That some people are
fraudulently drawing welfare is
undoubtedly true. It could be as
high as five per cent. I don’t
imagine that’s any higher than
fraud in the business community,
or among cabinet ministers for
that matter. ;

What Vander Zalm is doing,
however, is casting a slur on all
people on welfare, making them all
suspect. And he’s got his own
squad of snoopers (“my people in
the investigation field,’ he calls
them) to pry into the personal lives
of everyone unfortunate enough to
= on elfen

Harry Rankin...
what about corporate welfare?

As chairman of the Vancouver

Resource Board, which ad-
ministers $80 million a year in
various kinds of social services,

including welfare, my position has _

always been that anyone
fraudulently receiving welfare
must be dealt with as the laW
requires. But I have never allowed

a witch hunt to be carried oul)

prying into the personal lives of
people who are already in enough

misery without having snoopers| ~

breathing down their necks.
Vander Zalm’s statement about

the $80 million is on a par with one}
. he made in Nanaimo on February

11 to the effect that 10,000 ‘‘dead”
people were making use of

Pharmacare. He didn’t present}

any facts to back up_ that
preposterous statement either. If

including) -

constituted a slur on all people}

using Pharmacare.
And now Vander Zalm has als!

announced that new means tests)
will be devised for people applying) —
for welfare or mincome. You cal;| —

of course, define a handicapped
person legally in such a way thal
about 75 per cent of those noW

receiving grants could be cut off.)
Refusing mincome to couples that} >

may have assets of $2,500 is being}
See VINDICTIVE page 11
es

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isery likes company.”’ As though to clinch that hoary
maxim, world imperialism, and especially its U.S.
segment is becoming excessively miserable. First, it is
deliberately heating the cold war again. Its press
fulminations on anti-Sovietism are spreading again.
Everything from the re-election of Leonid Brezhnev as
general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, to bad harvests, the ‘‘failure of the five-year plan,”
the “plight” of the Jews, and Solzhenitsyn is retrieved
from the mothballs to serve again. Peaceful coexistence is
still acceptable with some major qualifications but
detente has definitely become a bad word in U.S. top
circles.
All of this is quite normal for those ruling circles if we
consider the jackpot that-U.S. imperialism is in, what with
a collapse in its economy nearing the proportions of the

1929 crash and perhaps worse; with president Ford and.

others of his kind “‘predicting’’ that the depression is over
and prosperity “‘just around the corner.’’ With the crisis
affecting capitalism around the world, one doesn’t have to
be clairvoyant to see mounting disaster ahead.
Politically, too, the effects of this slump can be seen in

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 19) 1976—Page 2

the Scat, moral breakdown in U.S. and world im-
perialism. Watergate was only a small symptom of the
whole sorry mess. Every imperialist country is beset with
scandal, political and other, among its ruling circles.
Even in Canada, we can’t escape from this sort of
behavior, as witness the latest events in the inner sanctum
in Ottawa. Thescads of defections from the Tories and the
Liberals to the Socreds is just more evidence of the break-
down in the stability of public affairs.

If the heat of public criticism gets too warm for these
sleight-of-hand artists to bear, they just blame the other
fellow — invariably the socialist world and first and
foremost — the Soviet Union.

Turn over all the dirt that can be dug up and provide
initiatives for inventing more. No canard or hint of
scandal is too trivial or unbelievable not to be used, and as
the campaign of anti-Sovietism develops, so do fhe trained
seals of the media multiply — and rave.

To reach such production is more difficult than in the
past but not insurmountable so long as free enterprise and
the profit motive remain. It just requires a little more
subtlety, a little more cunning in shaping the “‘big lie,”’
especially since the ‘‘rabble’’ has become a bit more
sophisticated in this changing age.

Moreover, while the U.S. and other powers-that- be seek
to relegate their own racist policies, their massive
unemployment, their wholesale neglect of the health and
social needs of the people to the background, they rarely
ever mention these subjects in relation to socialist lands
except to paint a distorted picture with gross
misrepresentation as their common aim.

“A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Com:
munism,”’ wrote Marx and Engels back in 1848. But today

it is no longer a spectre, but a growing reality. The|

pioneering Soviet Union together with a whole galaxy of |
socialist states in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America |
have one common aim — their devotion to peace and the
policies of peaceful coexistence. They all agree that ther@
are better ways of finding solutions for humanity’s dif
ferences other than blowing one another to hell and gone:
That is the imperialist “solution” whether it be long;
costly and bloody world wars, national or religious wars |
or brush fire skirmishes. 4
This fact of life is what disturbs the imperialist rulers nd

end. So they organize their war pacts, invent their cold |
war slanders, oppress their peoples with monstrous wa! |
budgets and issue hypocritical ultimatums. In short they |
need that “‘unity of misery’ which makes a hopless cas@
look “hopeful.”

‘TRIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH |

Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

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