LENNY, THIS IS THE THINNEST BOOK I'VE EVER SEEN. IT OUGHT TO BE. IT'S A FIFTY YEAR HISTORY OF SOCRED ETHICS. Use election to fight exports, urges Phillips Continued from page 1 election campaign to keep fighting the export application. “The final decision for any ex-’ port license beyond one year must be made by the federal cabinet,’’ Phillips said. ‘We need to press for a political rejection of the applica- tion, regardless of who forms the government after Feb. 18.’’ Phillips passed off the NEB rul- ing that the power corporation was not oyerbuilding for export as “clearly partisan’? and ‘‘taken under a lot of political pressure.’ “It is obvious that in order to meet such massive exports, B.C. Hydro will have to undertake a large scale expansion of generating capacity which means that many B.C. rivers will be dammed at public cost and many valleys will be flooded to generate hydro to serve the interests of a foreign country and not Canada,”’ he said. In a related development last NV spurns park appeal By HEATHER KEELEY >. ‘*What ..a.. mockery... of democracy,’’ was all citizens could say after a demonstrative exist from a North Vancouver District Council meeting Monday night. They had come hoping council would hear their objections to the building of a firehall on Seylynn Park in North Vancouver. But by a four to three-vote they were denied the right to be heard on the issue. The project was under way last week, regardless of community un- rest about it. Two trees were felled before local resident Lou Kennedy threatened to plant herself beside the next tree. ; Council members in favor of the firehall development said that the park was an ideal site, and, most importantly, the price was right. At a demonstration held at the park site Sunday, alderman Ernie Crist pointed out that every time district council wanted something built cheaply they have chipped away at existing parkland. The same trend is happening in West Vancouver. According to local resident Frank Kennedy the district does have suit-: able alternate sites for the firehall, but they are located on sites zoned for industrial use. weekend, representatives from several environmental, - outdoor, Native and labor groups met in a workshop on the future of the Stikine River, held in Vancouver by the Sierra Club. B.C. Hydro has plans to build’ two major dams on the Stikine, considered to be one of the scenic and geologic wonders of Western Canada. The conference adopted a resolu- tion calling for the preservation of the Stikine as a free flowing river. Another resolution ‘challenged Hydro’s program of building power projects in the absence of a provin- cial energy policy worked out by the government with public input. “In the absence of an energy policy so determined, Hydro has constructed power projects of ques- tionable need and which have per- manently damaged fish, wildlife - and forest resources, have per- manently alienated lands and have had adverse social impacts,’’ the resolution said. The meeting resolved to urge the provincial government to im- mediately begin a public inquiry in- to a B.C energy policy. Judge Lawrence Eckhardt’s com- plex recommendations for a partial ward system in Vancouver will go before the public for the first time Tuesday at a special public hearing called by Vancouver city council. The report has received little sup- port since its release last November and the sweeping terms in which it was immediately denounced will in all likelihood be repeated by most speakers again at city hall. Sunday, the Committee of Pro- gressive Electors will set the tone for the attack on the report when it makes public charges that Eck- hardt’s recommendations were de- signed to gerrymander the city in favor of the right wing in civic politics. COPE has linked the ward report to the dirty tricks scandal of the provincial government which has seen Eckardt implicated in an al- leged collusion with Socred minister Grace McCarthy to ‘‘fix’’ provin- cial constituencies in favor of the Socreds during his term as one man commissioner for the province’s electoral redistribution prior to the last provincial election. The electoral redistribution head- ed by Eckardt eliminated two NDP seats from Vancouver and resulted in the Socreds winning three of the remaining five ridings despite a sub- stantially higher NDP vote in the ci- ty as a whole. Recent media reports have alleged that last minute tamp- ering with constituency boundaries helped to secure the Little Mount- ain riding for Socreds Grace Mc- Carthy and Evan Wolfe. When Eckardt brought in the re- port of the city’s governmental re- view commission, he recommended © that the city’s five provincial con- stituencies also serve as wards in a partial ward system. COPE immediately responded that the proposed wards were gerry- mandered by Eckardt, himself a known Socred supporter -and de-- feated Socred-candidate. To back up the charge that the recommendations were purposeful- ly framed to maintain the right wing grip on city council, COPE last week revealed that the Eckardt Commission buried from public Buried report proposes 12 city wards _ Cope links Eckardt report — with Socred ‘dirty tricks’ _ a Kitsilano False Creek Inner City East Hastings Sunrise West Point Grey- Dunbar-Arbutus Ridge Kerrisdale-Shaughnessy Kensington- Renfrew Cedar Collingwood Cottage Vancouver Centre Killarney Marpole — _ boundaries The 12 wards proposed in the Gray report are of roughly equal po ulation distribution, differing by only eight per cent from smallest largest, but are relatively homogenous in class composition. view a comprehensive proposal for a full ward system, which the com- mission hired a UBC professor to produce. UBC professor George Gray will be a feature speaker at COPE’s strategy meeting Sunday at the Plaza 500 and will outline his pro- posal for 12 city wards in a full ward system. Gray’s proposals come at the end of a 60-page report which took three months to prepare, but they bear absolutely no resemblance to the provincial ridings which Eck-_ ardt chose. : In his detailed report, Gray ex- amined the city’s social service areas, church areas, ethnic patterns, housing stock and socio-economic data. The data was overlapped on maps and co-related to physical and historical neighborhoods to produce ‘‘focal areas.’’ The report designates 16 distinct areas of the city, but rejects them as a basis for wards because of wide disparities in size and popula- tion. A further refinement of the study reduced the focal areas to the recommended 12 wards. No community is completely ho- mogenous, Gray says in his report, but the 12 areas finally produced are relatively homogenous in terms of socio-economic ethnic and phys! — cal characteristics. In contrast, the provincial con- stituencies recommended bY Eckardt have wide disparities 1? economic standards. The Little ‘Mountain riding is the most blatant example as it groups together large -working class areas in Cedar Cot ‘tage, Mt. Pleasant and Fairview — with the upper class Shaughnessy — district. The last minute tampering — to the provincial riding saw Eckardt — add to the riding a ‘‘finger’”’ of land — jutting west around the Arbutus — shopping ‘centre at 16th Avenue. The finger added an upper middle | class, solidly Socred area to Little Mountain. Eckardt’s proposals for Vancou- — ver, however, are not likely to be railroaded through in the fashion - that the provincial redistribution — was. His report has been ridiculed and rejected by ward supporters — and at large supporters who favor the status quo. 4 Ironically, the only useful pro- — posal coming from the Eckardt Commission is the buried Gray — report which offers the most rea- — sonable and democratic ward boun- — daries proposed so far, around — which ward supporters are already — rallying. Ree a t a time when both the old. line parties are telling Canadian voters, particularly work- ing people that they should tighten their belts, since they already enjoy some of the best living standards anywhere in the world, the findings of a recent West German study — summarized in CUPE’s The Facts — offers some revealing in- formation. In fact, as a direct result of the policies of Liberal and Tory governments, Cana- dian workers have been steadily losing ground relative to other countries. According to the study, workers have shorter holidays than workers in Sweden and West Ger- many and have less national holidays than Italy, West Germany and Belgium. But the wage disparity is particularly great. Although Canadian workers apparently gained 17 per cent in real wages in the years 1970-78, they were far behind their counterparts in France and Italy where real wages rose by 50 per cent, and Japan where they increased 100 per cent over the same period. : Perhaps most galling was the fact that Cana- _dians have to work longer hours to get those ear- nings. In fact, workers in Canada worked longer hours than those in every country but one of those studied. Among workers in the U.S., the UK, Italy, France, Belgium, West Germany and Japan, only Japanese workers worked more hours — 1988 per year — than Canadians who worked 1955 hours. By way of comparison, . those in France worked only 1598 hours per year. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 1, 1980—Page 2 PEOPLE AND ISSUES ince its formation some six years ago, the Soon group Bargain at Half the Price has seen its reputation in the fields of progressive culture grow to international stature — as demonstrated by its participation in the World Youth Festival in Havana in 1978. And they ob- viously reached an even wider audience there since, last week, Bargain received an invitation to take part in the prestigious Festival of Political Song which brings performers every year from all over the world to Berlin in the Ger- man Democratic Republic. The festival is organized and sponsored by the Free German Youth. : Sr Although the group’s number will have to be trimmed for reasons of travel, six Bargain members — Jim Carlin, Craig Phillips, Dave Jensen, Jan Wishinski, Jamie Gidora and musical director Steve Gidora — will be perfor- ming at the festival, scheduled this year for Feb. 9-16. ) : An earlier Canadian group to perform at the festival was the Ontario contemporary folk group Perth County Conspiracy which later pro- duced an album from its performance in Berlin. © * * * * * Ithough he spent the last three decades in Toronto, Bill Repka’s was a name familiar to many in this province, for he had reached a wide audience during a long career as an editor, author and contributor to many progressive journals. But sadly that career ended Jan. 23 — when Bill was just 65. ; Born-in southern Alberta Bill quickly became ‘an activist in the early struggles to organize — agricultural workers and the unemployed. In ~ 1940, he was one of many labor leaders and anti- — ‘fascists to be interned by the Mackenzie King ~ government under the War Measures Act. But it was in Toronto in the United Electrical — Workers Union that the careers of trade unionist and writer merged. A member of the Canadian ~ General Electric shop local of UE for 25 years, he held most of the local union executive posts and also edited Voice of The Worker, a local — union journal. Among the journals to which he contributed © various articles on labor and other issues was the © Ukrainian Canadian, published by. the Associa- tion of United Ukrainian Canadians of which he was a member. He was also a long-time member of the Communist Party, and an active member of the Canadian Authors Association. Last year, Progress Publishers in Toronto — brought out Repka’s biography of Toronto doc- tor Howard Lowrie. 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