VANCOUVER

The right of Vancouverites and citizens
of other municipalities to determine the
level of social and public services through
their local councils is threatened by Bill 7,
one of the lesser known of the 26 anti-
people bills before the legislature.

Bill 7 would allow the provincial
cabinet, by regulation, to limit the
amount of revenue a council can obtain
through property tax.

Since this tax is the major source of
revenue for all municipal councils (40 per
cent in the case of Vancouver), any
limitation on it is essentially a limitation
on the total revenue available to a
municipality.

By law, municipalities must balance
their budgets. Hence, a limitation on the
property tax revenue can only mean cuts
in services, regardless of the wishes of the
municipality’s citizens.

Bill 7 is thus the intended mechanism
wherby cuts will be forced on
municipalities. This in turn will trigger
Bill 3, the universally condemned legisla-
tion which rides roughshod over workers’
rights in the event of layoffs.

In the 1982 Vancouver civic elections
the main issue was a reduction in services
involving layoffs of up to 500 civic
employees. The citizens of Vancouver
supported a majority of those candidates
opposed to such a counter-productive
policy.

That progressive council voted to
maintain services at the current level.
Taxes have not been raised, and the
budget was balanced by an appropriate
use of current income from the city’s pro-
perty endowment fund.

The citizens of Vancouver have shown
in many ways that they are for a policy of
maintaining services with no layoffs. On
July 23, 35,000 marched and rallied
against the Socred cutbacks. Last
Wednesday 45,000 gathered in Empire
Stadium to demonstrate their support for
the maintenance of services.

Bill 7 is a “‘dirty tricks” bill, because its
overall anti-people feature is masked by
the fact that it allows municipal govern-
ments to tax different classes of property

Socred ‘reform’ bill
to chop city budgets

at different rates, a potentially pro-
gressive reform long called for by all
municipalities.

But this ‘‘reform’’ is emasculated since
Victoria can impose limits on the in-
dividual rates, and can in fact determine
different rates for different.
municipalities.

No doubt Victoria intends to play
politics with this provision. The Socreds
will come down particularly hard on
political foes such as the city of Van-
couver, while allowing freedom of action
for those councils that are pliant with the
provincial government’s wishes. :

The four COPE members on Van-
couver council — Harry Rankin, Bruce
Yorke, Bruce Eriksen and Libby Davies
— are very much aware of Victoria’s
plans to reduce even further the limited

Bruce
Yorke

“autonomy” given to Vancouver city
council.

But we are confident that once again
Vancouver citizens will work to defeat
Victoria’s diktat, whether in the form of
the 26 draconian bills or rubber-stamping
of Victoria’s edicts by right-wing
aldermen and councils.

The 26 bills before the legislature must
be withdrawn. Vancouver city council
voted 8-2 for this demand, and it will like-
ly become a major issue in the 1984 civic
elections.

The powerful coalition of citizens
groups and the labor movement that is
developing around this demand can not
only force the withdrawal of these bills,
but can also force the withdrawal from
the civic scene of the municipal politicians

which support that legislation.

‘Bill 3 attacks civic ©
democracy’ — Eriksen

Bill 3, one of the more notorious pieces of
Socred budget legislation that attacks long-
standing workers’ rights and violates collec-
tive agreements, also undermines: civic
democracy and erodes whatever autonomy
municipal govenments currently enjoy, a
Vancouver city alderman has warned.

Bruce Eriksen, of the labor-backed Com-
mittee of Progressive Electors, told a press
conference last Friday that premier bill Ben-
nett’s Compensation Satbilization Program
has already robbed the city’s unionized
workers of their collective bargainning

- rights. Now, Bill 3 attacks the salaries and

jobs of the city’s senior staff, he said.
Ericksen and fellow COPE alderman

~ Bruce Yorke (who outlines the ramifications

of another Socred bill in an adjoining guest
column) said the bill gives city council un-
wanted layoff and wage rollback powers —
and, they promised, COPE aldermen are
committed to voting according to their man-
date, rather than following provincial
government dictates.

Senior staff salaries, which range from a
high of $93,724 for the city manager down to
$59,796, were frozen by the previous Socred
government, pending a review which has yet
to take place. But now, those’ salaries could
be rolled back by government order, and
council members fined as much as $2,000 for
refusing to carry out such orders.

Eriksen said the COPE aldermen “‘protest

strongly this further encroachment into thé
democratic rights of public employees an
elected officials. This section of Bill 3 is not
warranted and will have harmful conse
quences for employees, the city and the
public. . .the attempt to centralize authority
in the provincial cabinet and to dictate the
actions of municipal councils 3$
undemocratic because it disenfranchises the
voters who elected a civic government 10
govern.”

In demanding the withdrawal of Bill 3,
Eriksen said that despite provincial secretary
James Chabot’s proposed amendments 10
the bill, ‘public sector employers will retail
the right to dismiss employees without
respect to seniority and without just cause
All that is required is for the province
cancel the program or provide insufficient
budget funds. > z

“These are powers that we, as aldermen,
feel the city of Vancouver, as a public secto!
employer, neither needs nor wants,” he
asserted.

Because of the “(COPE members (of
council) will not respect these undemocrati
dictates and erosion of the Vancouver
Charter which forms the basis of our elec
tion and mandate to act in the interests ©
Vancouver’s electorate. . .we shall vote 2
council to carry out our responsibilities th
our citizens regardless of the consequences; —
he said.

CP sets public actions

As protest against the Socred budget and
accompanying legislation. mushrooms
across the province, B.C.’s Communists
have launched several independent actions
aimed at garnering support for the mass
movement.

More than 35,000 copies of an attractive,
three-color leaflet entitled ‘Unite to scrap the
Socred budget,’’ have been cirulated around
the province, 20,000 of these at the Opera-
pe Solidarity rally at Empire Stadium Aug.
10.

In the leaflet the B.C. executive of the

Communist Party identifies the class nature
of the Socred budget, and calls for a unified

response and campaign of escalating
pressure to force the Socreds to withdraw the
legislation. The leaflet also presents a “peo”
ple’s budget’? which includes the restoratio#
of social services, legislation to

layoffs and the nationalization of key
resources under democratic control.

The Communist Party has also beet —
organizing public meetings around the pro-
vince. To date meetings in Vancouvels
Salmon Arm and Campbell River have bee?
held, and more gatherings are planned.

Coming up is a ‘‘Beat the Budget”’ dinn@
scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Rus
sian Hall, 600 Campbell Avenue in Val
couver. .

docked in Vancouver last week held
more than a passing interest for Cana-
dians. She was the Tim Buck, named for
the man who for more than 30 years was
general secretary and national leader of the
Communist Party of Canada and in his
time earned a love and respect among
working people equalled by few others in
the country’s history.

Republic and launched at Rostock in
April, the 162-metre Tim Buck is a bulk
carrier and container ship, designed with
her reinforced hull for navigating through
ice on the Soviet northern sea route across
the top of Europe and Asia. Her arrival in
Vancouver to take on a grain cargo com-
pleted another leg of her maiden voyage
from Murmansk across the Atlantic to
Cuba, then to Argentina and around Cape
Horn up the Pacific Coast. She left Van-
couver last weekend on the final leg across
the North Pacific.

People’s Co-op Bookstore; who presented
the crew with a dozen copies of Oscar
Ryan’s biography, Tim Buck: A Cons-
cience for Canada, and a copy of his own
new book, already sold out, Soviet Fron-
tiers of Tomorrow, autographed and in-
scribed to Tim Buck’s memory.

trim new Soviet freighter which

Built in the German Democratic

Among those who went aboard in Van-
couver, was Hal Griffin, chairman of the

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

- gnd while on the theme of books, it is
‘PApertinent here to note that the
People’s Co-operative Bookstore has
successfully completed the move from its
long-time location on West Pender Street
to its new store at 1391 Commercial Drive.
There were times when store manager
Linda Chobotuck ‘thought we’d never be
able to do it. Anything like this always
takes twice as long as you expected, plus a
day.’’ But with the help of some members
of the bookshop’s board of directors and
other volunteers, the store — with several
new stock items and a bright, new interior
— managed to meet its deadline and open
for business on Aug. 2.

Of course, there’s never any rest for pro-
gressives, even in the summer, as any
organizer of the Bennett budget protests
knows. There is still stock to put on the
shelves, anda new sign to be painted,
whenever Chobotuck can find the time to
apply her artistic talents to that task. And
Chobotuck and assistant manager Ray
Viaud are busy compiling stock and getting
ready to set up the store’s regular USSR
booth at the Pacific National Exhibition,
which begins Saturday.

For that job the store needs volunteers,
both for the move to the PNE grounds and
to help staff the booth. To donate some
much-needed time, to order stock, or
simply to phone up and wish them success,
dial the new number — 253-6442.

HAL GRIFFIN, LINDA CHOBOTUCK ., . board chairman and store manager at new

location of People’s Co-op Bookstore.

Editor: SEAN GRIFFIN

Second class mail registration number 1560

Assistant Editor: DAN KEETON
Business and Circulation Manager: PAT O’CONNOR

Published weekly at Suite 101 - 1416 Commercial Drive,
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186

Subscription Rate: Canada $14 one year; $8 for six months.
All other countries: $15 one year.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 19, 1983—Page 2