‘I'm with you’ Pearse
tells forest giants

The province's forestry giants
were assured last week that the
recommendations of the Pearse
royal commission would inno way
weaken or undermine the grip
these monopolies have over the
forest industry.

This assurance came from
commissioner Peter Pearse in a
speech at the Men’s Canadian Club
in Vancouver, attended by many
senior executives of the coast
forest companies.

Denying newspaper headlines
which interpreted his report as
suggesting that bigness is bad,
Pearse said, ‘On the contrary, my
report recognizes that much of the
strength of the forest industry now
rests in the large companies, and
this strength should be built upon.”

business audience that while his
proposals favored more timber
being made available to smaller

firms, “they would not leave larger
corporations at any _ disad-
vantage.”

The big firms, Pearse said, ‘‘will
continue to hold most of the private
timber land and nearly all of the
high quality crown timber under
old licences with their favorable
royalty arrangements.”

This. assurance by Pearse
confirms the charge made in a
recent Tribune article that the
Pearse Report leaves control of
crown forests in the hands of a few
big monopolies. It would ap-
parently make only small changes
in the direction of diverting a few
crumbs to the small companies

Housing report openly
favors big developers

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN
Now we havestill another report

on housing! This one was prepared

by the Joint Committee on Housing
for the minister of municipal af-
fairs and housing. The twelve
member committee was appointed
by the Minister, the Honorable
Hugh Curtis, and consisted of three
Social Credit MLA’s, four officials
of the Union of B.C. municipalities
and five other bureaucrats. The
committee chairman was Sam
Bawif, MLA.

The ostensible purpose of the
committee was to enquire into “‘the
problems affecting the delivery of
housing in British Columbia.” But
if we are to judge from its report,
the real purpose of the committee
was to enquire into how to make
things easier and better (and
therefore more profitable) for the
developers.

The real problem facing the
ordinary citizen who depends on a
wage or Salary-is not that there is
no housing available, it’s the fact
that what is available is beyond his
income. Housing is just too damn
high priced. That applies equally to
rental housing, to condominium
and to private residential
dwellings.

You would think, therefore, that
the committee would take up this
question and try and come up with
some ways to make housing more
affordable. Not this committee! It
saw its task as finding ways and

means to facilitate the access of —

developers to land and develop-
ment permits.

To this end the committee first of
all found “‘no evidence”’ to suggest
that ‘‘land supply and price were
being controlled through private
land monopolies.”’ Apparently the
committee has never heard of such
developers as, Block Brothers, Nu-
West Development Corporation,
the CPR’s Marathon Realty,
Dawson Development, Imperial
Construetion, Intercontinental
Construction, Cadallac
Development Corporation, or
Western Realty just to mention a
few.

It apparently hasn’t heard that,
according to the 1972 Dennis
Report prepared for Central
Mortgage and Housing, six leading
developers control 6,900 acres in
the Vancouver area. It also hasn’ t.
apparently heard that, according”
to the GVRD’s Housing Report,
1973, some ten to fifteen percent of
undeveloped land inthe Metro area
is held by six companies.

So perhaps the committee is
telling the truth when it states it
“found no evidence.” What it
should have added, however, is
that it refused to look for any and
studiously avoided looking at what

~

FRED WILSON

Announce staff changes |

The Tribune editorial board
announced this week that Mike
Gidora, circulation and business
manager during the past year, will
be leaving early in January for
Toronto to take over the duties of
general secretary of the Young
Communist League. He was
elected to the post by the YCL
general council on Nov. 28.

His duties at the Tribune will be
assumed by Fred Wilson, former
manager at the paper until he left
for Toronto last year to take over

evidence was already available
and public knowledge.

Having ‘‘found’’ that the
developers are not to blame in any
way, the committee ther

proceeded to look for the culprit
And here's what it found co!
cerning the causes of the housi g
shortage:

e Rent controls “have distorted
the marketplace” and so ‘“‘the
should be a definite timetable for
phasing out rent controls.”

e The developer must face a
‘public hearing ‘‘which frequentl:
is stacked against him.’’ Therefore
objectors must be allowed

See HOUSING, pg. 15

i

MIKE GIDORA

and will be back in Vancouver the
first week in January.

Both Gidora and Wilson are well
known to the readers of the paper
who are aware of their outstanding
abilities and the contributions they
have made to improving the
content and circulation of the
paper. Z

The editorial board wishes Mike
every success in the new important
post he is assuming. At the same
time we extenda warm welcome to
Fred and look forward to the im-
portant contribution we are sure he

Pearse pointed out to his big

By MAURICE RUSH ~
“W e took the humbug out of Christmas . . .’’ says the .
advertisment of one of Vancouver’s leading
department stores as it competes with the other big chain
stores for a larger part of the profit of the Christmas
trade. “Humbug” is the best word for that claim.

Humbug remains as much a part of the holiday season
as it ever was. How can it be otherwise under a social
system where making profit and getting rich (or richer) is
the yardstick of success: when the prime goal of the big
retail monopolies is to see which one can show the
greatest profit for its shareholders?

Perhaps the prime example of modern-day humbug is
the massive multi-billion dollar advertising campaign at
Christmas time aimed at separating people from their
money and seducing people into buying things they don’t
need or really want.

Humbug is a good old 18th century slang word generally
associated with the writings of Charles Dickens. He used
it to good advantage against those who would use the
spirit of peace and goodwill of the holiday season for
hypocritical ends.

Websters New World Dictionary defines humbug as
meaning to cheat or deceive; sham; hoax; misleading;
dishonest: empty talk; a spirit of trickery; deception.
What better words to describe the capitalist system — a
social system to which all these adjectives apply.

Where else in all the history of mankind can you find a
social system so built on dishonesty, deception, trickery
and sham? How else could a small handful of the very rich
have accumulated the great wealth they have but at the -
expense of the very many?

Whereelsein human history is it possible to find a social
system in which ‘“‘man’s inhumanity to man” has been
appliedonsucha vast scale as under the capitalist system
with its depressions, wars, racism, poverty and human
suffering?

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DECEMBER 17, 1976—Page 2

who are fighting for survival.

Humbug is still

Take as an example f sew the campaign by the
daily newspapers at Christmas-time about the poor, the
aged, the hungry, the homeless and the sick, which so
nauseatingly fills their columns. Certainly, the suffering
is there. But it’s there all year round, not only at Christ-
mas. Once the holiday season is over the big capitalist
newspapers file away their tear-jerking stories in their
morgues for another year and forget the poor, the aged,
the hungry, the homeless and sick. During eleven months
of the year the big business media is more concerned with
supporting those individuals and political movements in
our society which grow rich from the suffering of the
unemployed, the poor, the homeless and needy.

Take another example of humbug: the action of the
Socred government and its car insurance policy. Right
now premier Bennett is acting as if he is Santa Claus
handing out Christmas presents to B.C.’s car owners.
Actually what he is doing is practising ‘“‘a sham, a
deception, a trick, a hoax”’ on the public.

To begin with, ICBC overcharged its customers at the
beginning of the year by more than $50 million, which is
the surplus for the year’s operation. It took those millions

’ out of the pockets of the people at a time when it was badly

needed to spur the economy. The government used that
money all year round, and now embarrassed by the huge
surplus, it considers it politically expedient to act as a
generous benefactor and return some of it to the public in
the form of rebates in 1977.

Humbug is the order of the day for our governments in:

Victoria and Ottawa. Take the humbug that workers are
responsible for high prices and hence ought to have their
wages cut. Both the Liberal government and Socreds base
their policies on this outright deception, which seeks to
punish the poor for the ills of the economic system.

One Socred cabinet member — the minister of
agriculture — found it difficult to defend this bit of humbug
on a TV program recently when he was asked that if

the YCL’s general secretary post,

art of

_ fixing by the big monopolies was the explanation. Rathe!

Subscription Rate: Canada, $8.00 one year; $4.50 for six mona

will make to the work of the paper.

/workers’ wages are responsible for high prices how did he
explain that a can of B.C. salmon sold for less in eastern
Canada than it does in B.C.? He wasn’t able to explain it
because he couldn’t bring himself to admit that price

than the truth, feed the public more humbug, that’s their
motto. : :

Another bit of humbug was the statement by MacMillan
Bloedel’s latest import, president C. Calvert Knudsen.
Defending MB’s pre-Christmas layoffs, Knudsen said tha
everything would be alright if only the workers woul
produce more and accept lower wages.

B.C.’s forest workers are already among the mo
productive in the world. If they accept this humbug the:
will only add tothe surplus lumber supply MB claims
responsible for the layoffs, and, with less money in the:
pockets, fewer will be able to afford a decent home made
from B.C. lumber.

So MB’s plan won’t solve the problem. What it will do i
give the company a few extra millions in profit to invest
abroad where it can make bigger profits from exploiti
foreign workers.

Here’s wishing everyone the very best for the holiday
season — except the purveyors of humbug. They’r
already doing pretty good.

~ IRIBUNE

Editor - MAURICE RUSH |
Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN
Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA

Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3,
193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-8108 —

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