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Hospital cuts
unjustified

Earlier this month I spent six days in an
acute care ward in the Vancouver General
Hospital. That experience reinforced a
few ideas I’ve had about our whole
medical care system for some time. We
have a good acute care system; with skill-
ed doctors, sophisticated equipment and
competent and efficient nurses and staff
(of course both the quality of care and ac-
cessibility have been adversely affected by
recent cuts and layoffs).

Where our health system falls down is
in its inability to provide treatment for '
cases which areno longer acute but where
experienced care is still needed. I saw peo-
ple occupying hospital beds that were cer-
tainly not acute cases but they needed
help and there was no other place for
them to go. So they land up in our
hospitals, taking up the time of our most
highly trained people and occupying beds
that could be better used and when ade-
quate care could really be given them if
we had enough intermediate and extend-
ed care facilities.

A lot of money is being spent on health
care but it’s not always being spent wise-
ly. Contracting out diagnostic services to
private labs when they could be done at

Harry /

Rankin &

one-half to one-seventh of the cost is but
one example of the wasteful use of public
funds.

In our health system the left hand often
doesn’t know what the right hand is do-
ing. Inthe Lower Mainland, for example,
the Greater Vancouver Regional District
finances the building of hospitals, but the
provincial government takes care of their
Operating expenses. What we need is an
integrated system.

. Of course there is absolutely no
justification for the cuts made in health
services by the provincial government. It
can’t plead poverty when it uses the
money so saved to subsidize projects like
the Northeast coal export, B.C. Place and
Expo ’87.

As long as the provincial government
follows its present policy of looking at
health care from only one standpoint —
how to cut costs — the only result will bea
steady drop in the level and quality of ser-
vice for our citizens. A proper policy
would be one in which the objective is to
provide every citizen in need with the level
of health services he or she needs, and
then devising ways and means to provide
them in the most efficient and economical
manner, with the added proviso that
health care must be a top priority at all
times.

Tenants scored a victory Feb. 24 when Van-
couver city council adopted an amendment to a
zoning and development bylaw that will make it
harder for developers to make profits through the
demolition of affordable housing. :

The new bylaw, initiated by the four aldermen
from the Committee of Progressive Electors and
supported by mayor Mike Harcourt and indepen-
dent alderman Bill Yee, will grant tenants faced
with eviction because of new development ‘‘an ex-
tra four months to a year”’ reprieve, according to
the amendment’s mover, alderman Bruce Eriksen.

Right-wing aldermen George Puil and
Marguerite Ford opposed the motion at the special
council meeting and public hearing at which 20
delegations, including tenant and community
organizations and a few developer representatives,
made presentations.

The amendment’s successful passage capped
years of effort by Eriksen and COPE alderman
Libby Davies, who as leaders of the Downtown
Eastside Residents Association have fought for
demolition control since 1974.

Under the amendment to subsection 10.12 of

- zoning and development bylaw 3575, developers

who wish to demolish rental accommodation must
first submit to the city full plans for new develop-
ment and receive the city’s approval before giving
tenants the required 119-day eviction notices. The
old bylaw stipulated that the developer submit only
50 percent of the complete drawings.

The bylaw is not as tough as those COPE

caps a nine-year campiagn

aldermen had sought in previous years. They were
outvoted as recently as 1980 when the right-wing
majority council defeated motions calling for a
moratorium on demolitions of existing accom-
modations and force developers to replace

. demolished rental units.

But it will put an end to ‘‘those ugly mudholes
that remain where developers have demolished
useable buildings,”’ said Davies at the public hear-
ing. : i

‘‘We don’t just have rich executives in this city,
we have workers too. People havea right to remain

in their housing and developers havea responsibili- _

ty to their tenants,”’ she asserted.

The amendment was opposed by several senior
city staff on the grounds that in the absence of
government incentives ‘‘stringent demolition con-
trol may place an unfair onus for housing the poor
on the owners of existing rental housing.’”’ They
also argued that increased costs resulting from
delays in demolition and construction would be

passed on to the buyer and tenant of the new ac- ~

commodation. .

But social planning director Max Beck backed
the move, noting that ‘‘one needs only to consider
the number of developments which have not pro-
ceeded after demolishing existing buildings where

lower-priced rental housing stock was previously

provided.”

Eriksen added later that most low-cost accom-
modations are replaced by high-priced con-
dominiums ‘‘and the buyers can well afford the
few extra costs.”

‘Pay cost,
gov't told

Representatives from thé
B.C. Nurses Union and t
Vancouver and Municipal 4!
Regional Employees Unio?
demonstrated against govetl’
ment cuts which will result in the
cancellation of schools’ preve”
tative health services and the
layoff of 30 city employees out
side the provincial health office
in Vancouver Monday. ;

Inside mayor Mike Harcoutt
and aldermen George Puil and
Harry Rankin were pressing
health minister Jim Nielsen fo!
government funds ‘‘above all!
beyond the regular school board
budget. Nielsen promised
take the issue to the provincl
cabinet and education ministél
Bill Vander Zalm, Harcoutt
said later. ~

The health program, which
includes a range of services such
as compulsory immunization,
preventative dental care al
counselling for mental pro
blems, is slated to be axed Mat.
14 when 30 nurses and othe
staff are to be laid off by the
ty.

—

—

Ww ith every opportunity he gets, Bill Vander Zalm, the

Socred minister who oversees transit in the province,
has been preaching restraint and the need to cut ad-
ministrative costs in running the transit system. In fact,
“economic efficiency’’ was the pretext, if not the political
reason claimed for stripping the Greater Vancouver
Regional District of its administrative role.

Since restraint is what the Socreds are after, you
wouldn’t think that B.C. Transit, created by the Socred
government, would waste money paying an information
officer to monitor public meeting on transit and prepare a
report for senior staff. After all, it isn’t something that is
going to increase efficiency in the running of transit, is it?

Yet that is exactly what B.C. Transit did.

An inter-corporate memo obtained by the Tribune
shows that Norman Gidney, information officer for B.C.
Transit, covered the conference on transit held Feb. 21 and
reported back to John Arnett, executive director of cor-
porate communications for B.C. Transit.

As reported in Tribune, the conference was organized
by several directors of the GVRD, together with other
oreganizations including the Independent Canadian Tran-
sit Union to organize opposition to the unilateral takeover
of transit by the provincial government.

Most of Gidney’s report of the meeting is straightfor-
ward enough, presenting an account of what took place,
although anyone could be excused for wondering why

PEOPLE AND ISSUES

B.C. Transit, with a mandate to run a transit system,
should waste taxpayers’ money sending its employees out
on intelligence gathering missions.

But there are a few testy comments at the end of the
report—suggesting that B.C. Transit had more than just
an informational interest in the Feb. 21 conference. It ap-
pears to have viewed it as a threat — and just those words
were used. by Gidney:

“Media coverage of the meeting seemed to be limited to
the Pacific Tribune, the Communist Weekly, but given the
talents of Bose, Kelly and the rest, it is certain that the
Coalition to Save Transit will be heard from again. Ifit can
build on the initial support from neighborhood groups, it
could be a serious threat.

““Given the Vancouver media’s general attitude of op-
position to the the proposed re-structuring and the coming
debates at local council’s (sic) and the GVRD board, this
week will see a flood of news on transit, much of it negative
from our point of view.”

* * *
s the favored business news source and investment
A guide manual for the corporate elite, the Financial
Post can generally be counted on to touch on most issues
affecting business and profits across the country. For that

reason, presumably, the Post decided to acknowledge the
100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx with a special
feature in its monthly magazine supplement entitled “A
Capitalist’s Guide to Marxism.”

Of course, you’d have a hard time getting a passing
grade if you used it as source material for an essay on
history of philosophy — but then again, the likes of Ian
Sinclair and Rowland Frazee aren’t noted for their intellec-
tual pursuits. What makes the feature interesting, apart
from a few whimsical comments, is the candid evaluation
of capitalism that the current depression has forced even
the ardently pro-capitalist Post to make.

Pointing to Marx’s remarks about the waning but still
potent recuperative powers of capitalism with its boom-
and-bust cycles, the article notes: ‘Thus, if Marx could
have travelled by time machine to our own present day, he
might not hav been terribly surprised to see capitalism still
flourishing . . . Well, perhaps not flourishing exactly. One
need not be a Marxist to observe that the Western
economies are currently in trouble — very deep trouble.”’

It winds up on this very candid note:

‘“‘Of course Marxists have been crying wolf about the

imminent collapse of capitalism for a century and they

may well be doing the same thing a century from now. But
then again, maybe, just maybe, this time the wolf really is
at the door. In which case senior corporate executives had
better begin to thumb through the pages of Das Kapital.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 4, 1983—Page 2

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