VANCOUVER

Is your telephone being bugged?

If you are active in a trade union,
peace group, women’s or native people’s
group, chances are that it could well be.
Big Brother is watching. And Big
Brother in this case is not one but a whole
number of police spy agencies in Cana-
da. . . and in Vancouver. They include
the special spy agencies of the RCMP,
the Co-ordinated Law Enforcement
Unit (CLEU) and other police spy
agencies.

Their activities are by no means
limited to crime detection. In their eyes
crime includes subversion and in their
eyes subversion includes trade unions,
peace organizations or any group seek-
ing reform or battling the Establishment
in any way.

One of the top intelligence experts in
the country, Robert Bourne, is right in
Victoria. He has served in the attorney-
general’s ministry as assistant deputy
minister for police services for the past
two years. He is the former head of the
Security Planning and Analysis Group in
Ottawa. According to the Bulletin of the
Civil Liberties Action Security Project
(CLASP), Vol. 1 & 2, 1983, this group
“spied on unionists and political acti-
vists, blacklisted civil servants, and
planned covert actions with the RCMP
Security Service aimed at disrupting rad-
ical activity across the country.” Its
targets included the Canadian Union of
Public Employees, the National Farmers
Union, the Alberta Indian Association,
and Ed Broadbent, national leader of the
NDP. .

Bourne is credited with the statement,
“Most peace organizations, if they are
labelled:as such, are manipulated by the
Soviets.”

Phones can be bugged without your
knowledge simply by someone punching
your number on a VDT at a telephone
exchange. One report is that 3,700
phones in the Lower Mainland are now
under continuous wiretap. The technol-
ogy now exists for thousands of tele-
phones to be tapped at the same time
using a computer. Many pay phones are
being tapped too — it seems there’s no
getting away from these spy agencies.

Information such as the above is con-
tained in the publication Bulletin men-

‘Big Brother’ taps
Phones here in B.C.

tioned before. It also has some other
interesting bits of information:

© RCMP spy agencies are maintain-
ing their liaison with some top leaders of
the B.C. Federation of Labor. Last year
a RCMP officer lectured at a labor
school at Harrison Hot Springs — the
officer involved was the same one who,
as a member of the RCMP spy agency
Security Service, had earlier served on a
secret liaison body established between
the RCMP and leaders of the B.C. Fed.
(It’s to the credit of B.C. Fed vice-
president Art Gruntman that he walked
out of the school saying, “The RCMP is
one of the most disreputable organiza-
tions this country has ever seen
.. . they’re always trying to infiltrate us.
We don’t need the RCMP to tell us what
our rights are on the picket line. If you
think that’s all they’re after, you’d better
think again.”):

© The police can legally tap any phone
they want without letting you know or
getting permission from any one. It’s

ee,

only when they say they need a tap to’

gather evidence for a prosecution that
they need to apply for authorization
which incidentally, is invariably granted;

© Canadians are being sent to the U.S.
by Canadian spy agencies to receive
training in domestic spying at the
expense of the FBI. One would have to
be naive indeed to think that the FBI
isn’t getting something out of it:

© The spy agency headed by Bourne
for a long period in Ottawa also met with
employer groups to advise them on labor
“subversives” and presumably to pass on
information gathered by their labor spies
so employers could better deal with
unions;

When in 1945, George Orwell wrote
his book 1984 its intention was to warn
people that authoritarian and totalitar-
ian states would be established by social-
ists if they came to power. Ironically as it
turns out this authoritarian, totalitarian -
State is being established by our free
enterprise capitalist system here and now,

Seeking feedback from the commun-
ity, Vancouver city council’s Committee
on Race Relations has circulated a leaflet
entitled “Fighting Racism is Everybody’s
Business.”

Some 8,000 copies of the leaflet have
been distributed to community groups,
public libraries, the school board and
community centres, said committee
chairman Ald. Bill Yee.

Readers of the leaflet are asked to mail
their views on combating racism in the
city to the chairman, care of the social
planning department at city hall.

The committee, composed of various
community and ethnic groups, was
established in February, 1982, during a
period of relatively intense racist activity.
While outward racist organizations such
as the Ku Klux Klan were stepping up
organizational efforts, and racial inci-
dents in the streets were increasing, anti-
racism groups were also pointing the
finger at hiring practices and the ethnic

City targets racism

makeup of staff in various city depart-
ments and services.

Since then, the leaflet points out, the
committee has, through resolutions
adopted by city council:

© Established a full-time Equal
Employment Opportunities Coordina-

- tor position;

© Created an Ethnic-Police Liaison
Committee and cultural sensitivity train-
ing program for city police;

© Applied to Victoria for a Charter
amendment allowing the city greater
powers in dealing with discrimination
practised by licenced businesses;

@ Designated a part-time Multicul-
tural Relations Coordinator and an Eth-
nic Community Liaison Officer, the
latter to work in the health department.

The committee has also “gone beyond.
the jurisdiction of the city and its con-
cerns,” said Yee, noting the city’s recent
protest to the provincial government
over the abolition of the Human Rights
Commission and Branch.

2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 11, 1984

Pullout threat a
B.C. Place ‘trick’

The B.C. Place game of bluff with the city
of Vancouver took another turn last month
when the crown corporation’s new chair-
man, car salesman Jim Pattison, made what
amounted to a threat to withdraw all plans
for buildings on the area known as the
Granville Slopes.

But that’s “nothing more than an old
developer’s trick,” according to Ald. Bruce
Eriksen, who along with the other aldermen
from the Committee of Progressive Electors
has fought most B.C. Place schemes for
high-density, commercially oriented devel-
opment of the North shore of False Creek.

Pattison made his announcement at a
council hearing Dec. 15, called to hear sub-
missions, pro or con, on rezoning the area.
to accommodate the B.C. Place scheme for
the slopes area. The hearing, a quasi-judicial
affair at which council members are to
decide on the issue, will continue Jan. 26,
with 50 speakers from community and bus-
iness groups yet to speak.

The corporation is at loggerheads with
the city’s planning department over the
proposed density of development. B.C.
Place had been pushing for three large tow-
ers for the site, including a 100 m high,
32-storey hotel, while the planners argue for
much less height with significantly less
density.

Community groups oppose the gist of the
B.C. Place scheme for the entire area, with

the emphasis on commercial development

rather than desperately needed, low-rent
housing.

Opposition to the Granville Slopes
scheme also comes from the usually Socred
leaning Downtown Vancouver Associa-
tion. The representative body of the city’s
downtown core businessmen’ during a
council meeting on the Coreplan late last
year, expressed its concern that the B.C.
Place development would draw off business
dollars.

Faced with these objections, the Socred
megaproject’s chief officer delivered his
ultimatum at the Dec. 15 hearing: accept the
B.C. Place plan, with somewhat lower
building heights (but still far above what the
city planners, or consultants hired by the
city, have recommended) or Pattison would
recommend to the corporation’s directors
that the project be cancelled.

But it is highly unlikely that the crown
corporation, created by the Socreds and
imposed on the city almost two years ago,

COPE presses unity

With Vancouver Mayor Mike Har-
court’s declaration that he will forgo seek-
ing the provincial leadership of the New
Democratic Party, and instead try for a
third term as mayor in the civic election this
fall, the stage is again set for a labor-backed
unified reform slate.

Indications are that labor’s candidates

will once again consist of aldermanic con-
tenders from the Committee of Progressive
Electors and Harcourt and three running-
mates.
According to Harcourt, those running-
mates will likely include Ald. Bill Yee and
West End activist Carole Walker, both of
whom ran in the 1982 elections, and possi-
bly former alderman Darlene Marzari.

Unity between the Harcourt and COPE
forces was achieved that year when COPE,
which had nominated eight candidates for
its aldermanic slate, dropped one to
accommodate Harcourt’s three running-
mates. That paved the way for financial and
political backing from the Vancouver and
District Labor Council for a full slate of
candidates for city council.

VDLC endorsement also went to

# ee
‘shortage is

ALD. BRUCE ERIKSEN...
housing’.
would take such drastic action. Faced with —
a negative decision by city council, they
would likely invoke the powers granted to
them by the provincial government, igno
the city’s zoning bylaws, and build accord-
ing to their wishes and the desires of the —
private developers to which the corporation
will lease the land.

To do so will, of course, give the corpora
tion the ham-fisted image the provincial
government has strenuously sought to
avoid, and will galvanize opposition within
the city to the corporation’s megaproject
schemes. But B.C. Place, would, from its
Perspective, have no other choice.

“They’re under the gun,” York explained.
“They're several million dollars in debt
already and they need to turn to a quick
profit from land leases.” nee

“They’ve spent $255 million of taxpayers’
dollars, and now they’re asking us to ignore
zoning bylaws to pull Bennett’s ashes out of
the fire,” said Eriksen. a

“Pattison kept saying that we need this
hotel. But where was he when they were
tearing down the Grosvenor, the Devon-
shire or the Ritz (former downtown hot-
els)?” he asked. se

Downtown Vancouver is zoned for more
than enough office space, Eriksen also
noted. Zoning allows for 70 million square
feet, while the core’s current office space —
comes to about 20 million.

“One thing there is a shortage of is zoning —
for housing near the downtown — and ©
that’s what we’ve been saying to B.C. —
Place,” he said. a:

COPE’s full slates of candidates for school _
and park boards. ; Ke
The unity achieved a victory for the pro-.
gressive forces, which collectively captured _
six of the eleven council seats, and spelled —
defeat for a divided right-wing — but that _
division isn’t likely to appear among the ~
right in 1984, COPE officials warn. E:
“No one should think the right won’t try _
to regroup its forces and present as unified a _
slate as possible, to try and topple the pro-
gressive majority that has led the city out of —
megaproject and cutback policies,” said
COPE president Jim Quail. 4
Quail said COPE “remains committed to —
the principle of unity. Welookforwardtoa
stronger working relationship with Har- _
court and any candidates that run with
him,” 4
“We'll press hard for a labor unity slate _
to increase the progressive majority on _
council,” said COPE alderman Bruce
Yorke. a
COPE members will meet Jan. 29 to
nominate 1984 candidates, at a time and
place to be announced. 4