Dial P-R-O-F-I-T for B.C. Tel.

498 <onr

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B.C. Tel announced last Wednesday that its profits for the first quarter of 1976 had jumped 79 per
cent compared to the same period a year before. The major part of the higher profits came from
increased rates charged the public. Last year the Canadian Transport Commission granted higher rates
to B.C. Tel on the pleas of inadequate capital and low profits. The profit increase has been reviewed
by the Anti-inflation Board, which is quick to denounce wage increases, but has failed to say a word:
about B.C. Tel’s exorbitant profit, let alone order a rollback of phone rates.

Visa refusal hit by YCL

The Young Communist League
has “protested in the strongest
possible terms,’’ the Canadian
government’s. refusal to grant
visas to two members of the Soviet.
Komsomol who had been invited to
tour Canada as guests of the
league.

Fred Wilson, general secretary
of the YCL, said in a telephone
interview from Toronto, that the
denial of visas to the two Soviet
students ‘“‘was discrimination and
reflected the government’s cold
war mentality, which has no place
in this age of detente.’’ He charged
that the government’s action was a
direct ‘‘abrogation of the Helsinki
agreement, to which Canada ‘is a
signatory, in that the Helsinki
accord specifically pledges to
encourage exchange programs
between the youth of different
countries.”’

The two Komsomol members
were scheduled to begin their tour
in Montreal this week, and visit
Toronto and Vancouver during
their 10-day stay in Canada. Their
itinerary had called for visits to

Toronto mayor David Crombie,
and Vancouver mayor Art Phillips,
meetings with high — school
students, university student
unions, anda tour of the Vancouver
harbor aboard a fishing boat. ~
Wilson said the fact that the YCL
has yet to be informed by the

department of manpower and

immigration that there would be no
visas for the two guests, and in fact

4

FRED WILSON

learned of the denial only through
the press, was clear evidence that
the government was harassing the
league and the communist
movement, and ‘‘purposely
playing mischief by allowing the
league to continue with plans for
the tour long after the decision to
deny the visas had been made.”

A departmental assistant to
immigration minister Robert
Andras said in Ottawa that the
decision to bar the Komsomol
delegation had been made “‘about
three weeks ago.”

Wilson said that the YCL would
immediately protest the denial of
visas to Andras, and that he ex-
pected a number of other
organizations who had looked
forward to meeting with the
Komsomol delegation to join in the
league protest.

In Vancouver, Mike Gidora,
chairman of the B.C. YCL said that
the cancellation of the Komsomol
tour was an outrage. “It’s clear
that the government is conducting

See YCL PROTEST, pg. 12 |

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

There is every indication that the
next bite the provincial govern-
ment will take out of our income
will be an increase in bus fares. If
the same pattern is followed as in
ICBC rates and in ferry fares, then
bus rates will be at least doubled.

I introduced a motion in city
council on this question on May 11,
as follows:

‘‘Whereas a reasonable formula
of service and cost for the use of
public transit has been adopted by
B.C. Hydro in the last few years
such that patronage has increased
significantly, especially during
rush-hour periods, and;

“‘Whereas increases in bus fares
and cuts in service will decrease
the patronage of public transit and
result in the increase in the use of
private automobiles during the
congested rush-hour period, and;

‘‘Whereas an increase in private.

automobile use will congest
Vancouver streets, resulting in
arterial widening and upgrading of
residential streets to provide new
arterial traffic corridors, both of
‘which will result in a subsidy of the
private automobile use by Van-
couver taxpayers which they do
not want nor can they afford;

ocreds plan bus
are boost next?

“Therefore be it resolved that
Vancouver city council request
that B.C. Hydro take no action to
cut bus services or increase bus
fares before meeting with Van-
couver council and staff.’

The motion passed unanimously.

If bus fares are increased we'll
get back into the same self-
defeating pattern that we had when
Maxi-Wac was in the saddle in
Victoria. An increase in fares leads
to less people using buses, then to
make up the deficit, bus fares aré
increased again and so on and on.

Where that ends up is putting the
bus system out of business and I'
think that’s what Mini-Wac is after
too, just as was his old man.

Bus service was substantially
improved by the NDP government.
As soon as Social Credit was
elected, the pattern changed.
Orders for buses have been can-
celled and service is already being
cut. With a cabinet packed with car
dealers and with a party supported

by the oil companies, we need be}

under no illusion as to the in-
tentions of this government. :

This time I think it would be good
if-a lot of people spoke up before

they try to increase bus fares in-|_
stead of waiting until after the deed

is done.

CPR rezoning plan
blocked by protests

Marathon Realty, the largest
landholder in Vancouver and a
subsidiary of the CPR, was forced
to abandon plans to build 34 luxury
townhouse units in the Kitsilano
Point unused railway right of way,
as a result of citizen protests.

At a public hearing held last
week on the issue, Bruce Yorke,
president of COPE, asked a series
of questions regarding the
proposal, including: How did the
CPR get the land in the first
place? ; What is its present value?;
What would it be after rezoning? ;
Would the city benefit from the
windfall profits? ; What would the
rents be? ; What about the fact that
the proposed rezoning would result
in densities 75 per cent greater
than the surrounding areas?

In the course of the discussion
following Yorke’s questioning, it
became apparent that Marathon

\

‘substantially increase the numbel!

was misleading the public. COPE
alderman Harry Rankin asked
some probing questions which

revealed that the city planning}

department had given false im
formation about the present zoning
status.

A search of the archives
revealed that rezoning would

of units that could go on the
property resulting in even greatel
windfall profits. ?

The public meeting was quickl : )

adjourned by city council and 4
new one scheduled. The followiné
morning the CPR withdrew if
application under suspicious
circumstances which led observel®
to wonder if a miniature Watergal®
was not involved. One thing ®
certain, public exposure and

See CPR GRAB, pg. 11

TOM —
McEWEN

Ne doubt the media takes a dim view of the ‘‘protest
rhetoric”’ of the many peace groups and movements
protesting against the U.S. nuclear submarine base at
Bangor, Washington, or for that matter protesting
anywhere against nuclear madness and its’ threat to all
life wherever and whenever it strikes.

In an editorial of May 3, the Vancouver Sun sets out to
pinpoint the issue of the Bangor base versus subs. Entitled
“The Real Obscenity”’ the protesters get a tap on the wrist
for protesting the base rather than the fleet of nuclear-
carrying engines of death that will be based there.

It is a moot point, but since the base would be useless
without the subs and vice versa, it is not worth quarreling
about. The real quarrel if such it may be termed, is the
rapid spread and proliferation of nuclear bombs, with a
wide range of 3,000 miles or more, plus a striking power
far surpassing that which laid waste to the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And just so long as the madmen
in the White House and their military paramours in the
Pentagon say build, new centres of death will be built, all
under the specious excuse of an anti-Soviet ‘‘defense,”’
“deterrent” or whatever new term may be coined.

Billions to incinerate mankind and render Nature

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 21, 1976—Page 2

.

barren for a generation or more. Cutbacks and drastic

retrenchment in their meagre health and welfare budgets,
so that the people may suffer greater hardships in life. ; .
to provide the billions required for mass death and
destruction. This is ‘“The Real Obscenity,”’ not a wordy
battle as to whether the protesters should concentrate on
the base or the sub cargo of death. Only by concentration
on both in vastly greater numbers and with greater
‘protest rhetoric’ than ever before, can this greatest of
all crimes against humanity be slowed down and
ultimately halted!

And to be sure we agree fully with “The Real Ob-
scenity,’’ Canada’s hands are not clean. They weren’t
clean in the first atomic bomb that obliterated Hiroshima.
They weren’t clean in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere,
where our highly monopolized merchants of death with
government approval, be it Tory, Liberal, Socred or

whatever, count their blood money in millions of dollars.

profit from the charred and blackened bodies of men,
women and children. For them the kill count was the all-
important statistic.

Even today while peace movements daily protest the
terrible threat of nuclear war and its devastating effects
upon all mankind, Trudeau’s salesmen are out in the far
corners of the world scouring around, eager to sell nuclear
technology and know-how to virtually anyone who wants
to buy. Nor is it accidental that such salesmen con-
centrate with states of a fascist turn of mind — South
Korea, Argentina... .

Our obligation to NORAD, the North American Defense
forsooth, provides us with a ‘legitimate excuse to cash in
on this U.S. Murder Incorporated, to become an easy and

willing partner in ‘‘the real obscenity.’

“Go after Ottawa’s hypocrisy. Go after arms control;
Never mind the docks.” This is the Sun advice to th
Trident protesters, and to the tens of thousands of peace
workers, here and elsewhere. Since we never “look a gift
horse in the mouth,” we will take it as though they meant!
it, and let it go at that.

It was indeed a good editorial from a source that has not
sired too many.

* * * * *

This column total in the current Tribune press drive 5
moving rather slowly, much too slowly to assure that we I
go over the top —if we manage to reach the top at all.

There’s just one more month to go, but a lot to do in thé |

meantime if we are to reach that over-all target. And we

need that target since the confrontations of living a

survival were never greater than they are today.
Make your next donations really count!

RIBUNE

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

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