, WEST VANCOUVER

| BURNABY

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LEGEND

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WHO WILL FOOT BILL
FOR RAPID TRANSIT?

Who is going to foot the bill for
the $300 million construction
costs for metropolitan Van-
couver’s projected rapid transit
system emerged as the number
one issue when the study of
consultants De Leuw Cather &
Company was presented to
Greater Vancouver Regional
District this week. .

Since the first of three possible
methods of financing the massive
expenditure suggested by the
consultants provides for the full
cost to be borne by municipal
retail sales tax, increased home
and property taxes and ad-
ditional gasoline taxes, the extent
of senior government con-
tribution is certain to become a
major political issue as soon as
regional authorities get to grips
with the project.

The 24-mile rapid transit
system is but. ONE aspect of a
metropolitan transportation plan
that is essential to service the
regional district population that
is expected to double to two
million within 30 years. Major
arterial streets, additional
freeway and traffic facilities also
will be needed to accommodate
feeder and bus links with the
rapid transit trains. Costs will be
high, even when spread over 20
years.

First step in the plan recom-
mended, and now endorsed by the
G.V.R.D., is for the 14 municipal
councils to establish a_ tran-
sportation agency which would
accept responsibility for
operating an integrated, inter-
municipal transportation system.

The report recommends
“committment” early in 1971 by
the Lower Mainland

municipalities involved, to seek
Provincial government approval
for assumption of responsibility
for transportation. This would
include four rapid transit lines,
terminal parking facilities for
autos of rapid transit passengers
coming to the city centre, and
associated feeder and bus lines
from the 23 stations along the
train lines.

The projected new system
would consist of a network of four
rapid transit corridors branching
out from a subway in downtown
Vancouver

Obviously financial par-
ticipation by senior governments
will have a major bearing on the
ability to implement rapid
transit. The first suggests the

“Entire cost would be borne by
special taxes on GVRD
residents’; the second, where a
one-third contribution ‘would be
provided by senior governments;
and the third, where a 75 percent
grant would be obtained from
senior levels of government (like
the British policy) with the other
29 percent to be raised by GVRD
residents.

Estimated charges in the first
plan would be %4 of one percent
retail sales tax, or 4.3 mills
property tax, or 4.5¢c per gallon
fuel. tax. With senior govern-
ments undertaking a 75 percent
contribution, the retail sales tax
could be cut to 1-20th, of one
percent, and .36 mills, and .37c
per gallon fuel tax.

Tenants fight eviction

By EUNICE PARKER

Residents of Evergreen
Trailer Court in Coquitlam have
been appearing in large numbers
at Coquitlam council chambers
to demand justice for their
families.

Ed Vran, Evergreen Court
operator, served eviction notice
to eight families with a total of
24 children. Residents claim
Vran doesn’t want children and
has ordered the children to play
in the woods bordering the
trailer court or else stay in their
trailers out of sight. A stringent
set of rules has. been set up,
including the banning of inter-
trailer coffee breaks.

Among those who were given
notice is Howard Nichol, presi-
dent of the Mobile Home

Owners’ Association inCoquitlam.
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An emergency meeting was
set for October 3 after 200 mobile
home owners attended the
Coquitlam council meeting to
demand action. Those served
with eviction notice say it is
impossible to find space in
trailer parks if you have
children.

In demanding action, Mr.
Nichol stated that not one of the
88 spaces of Evergreen meets
the standards established by
municipal bylaws and the
business license could’ be
suspended.

Sixty families at Evergreen
are members of Mobile Home
Owners. Association and
residents believe many more
will be faced with eviction if

council doesn’ tact. .
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Need new policies

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for port growth

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

Every growing port has its
problems but the port of Van-
couver has more than its share
right now. They stem from two
main ‘sources — the indifference
of Ottawa and unfair charges
and practices of shipping and
stevedoring firms.

The port of Vancouver is losing
business to the port of Seattle. A
considerable amount of cargo
destined for Vancouver. arrives
in Seattle by ship and is then re-
shipped by rail to Vancouver —
an obviously ridiculous practice.

rhe. reasons. for. our
deteriorating competitive posi-
tion with Seattle appear to be
threefold: (a) discriminatory
rates imposed by shipping and
rail firms against the port of
Vancouver (b) excessively high
wharf rates in Vancouver and
(c) the lack of adequate
container facilities.

Other problems of the port of
Vancouver include lack of
passenger facilities, and the
lack of ship repair facilities that
can handle ships over 15,000 tons.

Ottawa is about to carry
through a re-organization of
port administration of the 500
ports under its jurisdiction. The
National Harbors. Board, a
federal agency which runs our
ports today, is to be abolished. It
will be replaced by a federally-
appointed National Port
Authority under the Depart-
ment of Transport, assisted by a
regionally representative
Advisory Board.

Ottawa also proposes to
establish a Vancouver Port
Authority to run our harbor. It
will have 12 to 15 members, with
the provision that one of them
will be appointed by City
Council.

Local business interests
involved in shipping and the
handling of cargo don’t like
Ottawa’s new scheme. They
want control of the Vancouver
Port Authority in their own
hands, free of all public
restraint. But to give in to them
would only aggravate the
problems we already have;
private interests cannot be
expected to put the interests of
Vancouver or the national
interest over their own drive for
profits.

It makes sense to me that
Canadian ports should be under
the control of the federal
government. But we do heed a
greater degree of local
autonomy to adjust to local
circumstances and problems.

Re-organization of port

authority by Ottawa will only
have positive results if it is
accompanied by other essential
steps. These should include:
Action to end discriminatory
rates against Vancouver by
shipping and railway companies.
eReduction of excessively high
wharf and user rates; place the
whole harbor rate structure
under public control.

~Restore the operation of
federally owned docks to the
Vancouver Port Authority.
(They were turned over to
private firms in 1968. )

Plan now to build more
container facilities.

Build a floating | dry d dock

capable of handling ships up to
100,000 tons.

»Any further bulk loading
facilities should be directed to
Roberts Bank; expansion in the.
port of Vancouver should be for
container and general cargo.
eThe Vancouver Port Authority
and the National Port Authority
too should include representa-
tives of labor.

~The objective in our area should
be a Regional Port Authority for
the whole lower mainland, en-
compassing the four port
authorities we now have —
Vancouver, New. Westminster,

Surrey and Roberts Bank.

Cooper

“ Dull uniformity — that’s

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he history of all hitherto existing society,” Marx and.
Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, ‘‘is
the history of class struggles.”’

Any worker, young or old, who has not learned that from the
epic struggles of labor in the year of 1970 or earlier, has missed
the main essence of that historic reminder. And yet there are
literally tens of thousands, even millions in today’s dog-eat-dog
‘‘civilization’’ who see nothing but a few extra cents or dollars in
their pay envelopes, or vice versa, a few cents less than they had
before as the finale of each successive struggle. Moreover a
good many wage hikes won are taken away by cost-of-living ‘
price hikes and tax extortions before they are even won.

Thus the struggle to promote and advance progressive labor
opinion is an old old story; yet at every stage of this struggle,
always new. To win the minds of working men and women to the
ideals of peace, progress and socialism is a never-ending
process.

Two prime factors must always be contended with; a
powerful class-controlled ‘‘news’”’ media which produces a pre-
fabricated mental pablum 24-hours around the clock, and
because each succeeding generation must learn the hard facts
of life for itself. A working class parent cannot bequeath his
labor and socialist ideology, nor the experience gained from an
active life of struggle to his offspring. With few rare exceptions,
the younger generation must learn the hard way, as did their
parents.

That is why each and every circulation drive to spread the
Pacific Tribune,to win new readers and supporters; to strive to
reach press club quotas, targets, objectives, as set forth in last

_ week’s edition by circulation manager Ernie Crist, is so vitally

important. Not just to win a greater circulation for the PT, but a
wider range of new readers among the young generation of
today; among those young men and women, boys and girls, who,
for one reason or another, are getting the hard knocks and
suffering extreme persecution from a decadent Establishment
pretending to govern a society whose ‘‘time has come”

The need for this ideological awakening among the young
generation of today is perhaps best illustrated by a story from
the North North Burrard shipyard of the war years, when that
industry was booming on the West Coast — and Canada had a
Merchant Marine — which successive Tory, Liberal and Socred
governments have successfully scuttled — more completely
than Hitler ever could.

Two workers going on morning shift were each scanning the
early morning paper, one the news section, the other the comic
page.

“I see,” says the former, ‘that Tim Buck is speaking
tonight in Vancouver. Are you going to hear him?”’

“Who is Tim Buck,” mumbled the other, deeply absorbed in
the hijinks of Mutt and Jeff, “I never heard of him’’.

“Well it’s a cinch,” said the other, “‘you won *t learn much
about Tim Buck, or anything else from that page.”

The moral of the story is plain, spelled out in this year’s PT
circulation drive, and in every successive edition of the Pacific
Tribune: a moral not to be found in the syndicated ‘‘comic’’
strips or the distorted and slanted ‘news’ pablum of a

. monopoly-dominated commercial press; i.e., the need to win

new readers who are rapidly and in great numbers, becoming

- thoroughly disillusioned with a Mutt and Jeff existence, but who

as yet do not realize that their own very existence and survival.

' is inseparably linked to the universal struggle for peace,

progress and socialism — which are also the prime — and only

objectives of the PT.

A greater circulation will bring those objectives ever closer,
and hasten the burial of a “stinking corpse” — capitalism.

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