2 ANDREWS VAY WORLD ia BARRIE CLARK HIT Rent controls must sta By ALD. HARRY RANKIN Why the former NDP govern- ment appointed Barrie Clark, a former Liberal member of the legislature, as B.C. rentalsman in charge of administering rent control legislation, defies all logic. Could the former attorney-general have been so incredibly naive as to’ think that Clark would do a good job of administering NDP legislation? Or was it a form of crass political opportunism based on the theory that if you drawn in your political enemies, they will cease to oppose you? : Whatever the reason, the ap- pointment of Barrie Clark was just one more example of the ineptness of the NDP government which messed up so many good programs, that were sound in Save Skagit fight looms With the Social Credit govern- ment now in office in B.C., the decision by a U.S. judge last Wednesday giving the go-ahead to raise the Ross Dam on the Skagit River, poses the most serious threat yet to the flooding of the Skagit Valley in B.C. The decision by. Judge Allan Lande of Washington gives ap- proval to Seattle City Light, which is a department of the city of Seattle, to raise the dam by 122-1/2 feet which would flood 5,000 acres of the upper Skagit Valley. His decision goes as a recommenda-’ tion to the U.S. Federal. Power Commission which will decide whether to accept it after a 60-day period allowing for the filing of appeals. In rendering his decision Judge Lande rejected objections from Canada. In 1967 the Socred government head by W. A. C. Bennett entered into a deal with the city of Seattle giving Seattle City Light authority to flood the Skagit Valley in return for a nominal amount. When news of this deal leaked out an uproar -followed. which has so far prevented the raising of the dam. The defeat of the Socred govern- ment, in 1972, temporarily blocked action on the project. In June, 1974 the NDP govern- to the International Joint: Com- mission, a U.S.-Canada body set up to deal with matters affecting energy and other boundary issues between the two. countries, questioning the validity of the 1967 agreement. The NDP government voiced strong opposition to the raising of the dam and negotiations between B.C. and Seattle have been going ahead with the hope of reaching an agreement which would block the project and save the valley. Environmental and other groups organized a strong protest in both B.C. and Washington against flooding of the Skagit Valley, which at one point included hundreds of participants in a demonstration in the valley itself to halt the project. Environmental groups have already indicated that if the new provincial government’ does not appeal Judge Lande’s decision that they will do so. Premier Bill Bennett said last week that the Socred cabinet would be meeting on the issue in the next few daysand would announce what action it intends to take this week. However, regardless of what announcement it makes, it has been clear ever since the former Socred government entered into the giveaway deal, that there are strong forces inside the Socred government who favor going ahead with the 1967 agreement to flood the valley. ; This was revealed only a few days after the Socred government’ was elected when the new president of the Social Credit Party in B.C., Peter Hyndman, a former Tory, said in a widely publicized statement that the Ross Dam will likely go ahead now that the Socred government has been returned to power. He immediately ran into a lot of flack and tried to soften the effect of his statement. Since then Hyndman has played a much less public role and has been pushed into the background by his party. But his statement was a tipoff. It’s quite likely that the Bennett government will make some pretence of fighting the project ina statement expected this week. But the fact it was the previous Socred: government which entered into the deal, that resource giveaways has ° been one of the trademarks of Social Credit regimes, and that Socred environment minister James A. Nielson has taken no initiative up to now to reopen talks on the issue with Seattle, does not bode well for the future of the valley unless an aroused _ public again takes up the fight to save the Clark and the Province bol blame rent controls for the sho tage of rental units in Vancouvel The Province even goes to tht ridiculous extreme of blaming Nev York’s ‘‘slum apartments, payoffs) rackets — and even the torching 4 principle, by placing them under the control of people who were basically hostile to NDP policy. Ever since he was appointed, Barrie Clark’s actions and statements were such as to un-. dermine rent controls. He refused to strictly apply rent controls and he allowed landlords to violate or circumvent the legislation almost at will. The result is that a large percentage of tenants are now paying rents far in excess of that provided by the rent: control legislation. that city. The Mafia should be glal to hear that! The Province make the further ridiculous suggestio) — competition may limit rent creases to 3.5 per cent! One might well ask: ‘‘Whal competition?” There are mé vacancies in Vancouver. If } weren’t for rent controls, the sk) would be the limit. People have ml) place else to go; they pretty wel) have to pay what the landloré demands, . As soon as the Social Credit government was elected, it moved to allow rent increases to go up from the eight per cent announced by the NDP government to 10.6 per cent. With a government in office that is opposed to rent controls, Barrie Clark, who of course was kept on as rentalsman by Premier Bennett, now campaigns even more openly against rent controls. Speaking in Ottawa last week to the Housing and Urban Development Association, he used the occasion to again attack rent controls painting a doom and gloom picture if rent controls stay in B.C. and are applied to the rest of Canada. * that if rent controls were dropped rents would double in-many caseS:_ Many people would be compellet to pay half or two-thirds of thell income in rent. Incidentally, somé old age pensioners and others 0! low incomes are already doing that. They are literally starving themselves to keep a roof ovél their heads. Yet the Province hat — the gall and arrogance to say — “*. . .it’s 'time now to decide to ge! rid of rent controls. ...”’ : The Province asserts tha “politicians got into rent control because they’re popular with | _ thousands of visible tenants’’ with the suggestion that apparently The Vancouver Province (see its editorial ‘“Rent Controls CAN be dropped,”’ February 5, 1976) was quick to pick up Clark’s speech and use it for a takeoff for another attack on rent controls. Clark’s job, it seems, is to manufacture the dung balls, and the Province’s job is to throw them. City Int. Women's Day | celebration March 7 International Women’s Day on March 7 will support the U.N. call. for a ‘‘Decade of Action,” stated Helen O’Shaughnessy, president of the Congress of ‘Canadian Women, B.C. Chapter. Celebration of International Women’s Day will take place at a rally at the Dogwood Room, B.C. Building, Hastings Park, on Sunday, March 7 at 2 p.m. ’ Rosemary Brown, NDP MLA for Vancouver-Burrard and University of B.C. professor Hannah Polowy will address the gathering following a program of music and drama. An in- ternational bake'sale will be held consisting of home baking from || many lands. -The CCW has extended a warm welcome to all those interested in the advancement of equality and for the fight for a peaceful world — * See RANKIN, pg. 11 ment in B.C. made an application here is an old saying, especially fitting .to B.C. politicians at this point in time, viz, ‘‘there are none so blind as those who won’t see.”’ The entire accumulation of all the ills of world capitalism are right here in B.C., bearing down upon every facet of social, economic and political life, and ‘weighing most heavily upon the common people. Yet from the empty rantings, the worthless promises and the sheer stupidity (bordering on the criminal) of the _ assorted politicians, used car salesmen, legal beagles, ex- crooks and the like, no one would ever know that anything was amiss. All lumped together in a Social Credit cabal, to these political misfits “‘God is in his heaven and all is well on earth’ and what isn’t so well can be solved with another empty promise. : Just this past week we had two exercises in futility. All provincial ministers of finance journeyed to Ottawa to bring all provinces into line with federal guidelines on wage and price controls. The media tersely reports that “nothing concrete was accomplished,” period. Another delegation took off, this time to discuss the nation’s health problems, bearing on welfare handouts, health cutbacks, etc., etc. So far we haven’t a report as yet on this exercise, but when we do you can bet it won’t be national health that will be the gainer. - The only positive outcome of these ‘and. similar delegations will be to up the “‘cost-of-government”’ to the taxpayer for eats, drinks and other guest amenities while . PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1976—Page 2 Thus, the perspective for British Columbians for the Skagit. to participate in the-celebration. _ he is a charge on the federal government — trying to make an unworkable scheme work. And, as if vying with an illustrious forbear Gerry McGeer, whose only claim to fame was his reading the Riot Act to a group of hungry and destitute men, Pat McGeer, minister of ICBC is currently reciting with all the vehemence of a grade three scholar ‘‘the boy stood on the burning deck” anent his exorbitant car insurance rates, ‘‘nothing can change it now.” The public protest, possibly the greatest in the annals of labor and the people’s in recent times; monster rallies, petitions, protest meetings big and small, broad in their scope and determined in their objective — all have fallen on deaf ears. “Nothing can change it now,’’ intones the dictatorial Pat after the fashion set by King Bennett the First ... even carelessly forgetful of what happened to that ‘monarch.’ It could be,-of course, that this Socred hierarchy of car salesmen and other nondescript opportunists are banking on the inflexibility of erstewhile ‘Liberal’? Pat McGeer - and his car-insurance heist as a pattern for other im- mediate heists since there would seem to be no lack of these in the offing. : Steep increases in hydro, gas, light and transit rates, heists in rail, ferry and other tariffs, in fact in most if not all fields of the public service. And invariably, as the pretext that the former NDP government made such a hell of a mess of things that there is just no way, except by further gouging of the public, that the ‘‘mess’’ can be cleaned up. This government forecast of the shape of things to come can also herald its own demise, since John Q. Public can only be “‘taken”’ so far and for so long. And as ever the “lawyer” in the McGeer makeup questions the legality of the deep-going protest of the rallies, rather than the justice that gave them birth. Subscription Rate: Canada, $8.00 one year; $4.50 for six mont! coming months is one of a substantial rise in living cost call it what you like, “inflation,” “tight money,” 0 whatever. Some of it will be squeezed out of us by blam the “inefficiencies” of the previous NDP governmen' But when that argument peters out (which it already) we will still be faced with.a gigantic ripoff on ou! daily needs, be it food requirements, heating, travel what have you. The election pledge of this consortium of fast-b sleazy artists was to make the world, or at least Bri Columbia ‘‘safe for free enterprise,” and that is preci what they are doing, as the praises and hallelujahs of monopoly plunderbund testify. And since there is nothi in the Trudeau wage-and-price guidelines that wo constitute any encumbrance whatever, it may be taken a big assist for a greater monopoly heist. a Sufficient time has now elapsed for the people of B: not only to roll back the heist Pat McGeer’s “sell-yo car”’ dictum has levied on the people of this province, to roll back the fast-buck artists themselves. That befo worse fate on behalf of ‘free enterprise” hits populace. And as the Cubans say, “‘muy pronto.” PACIFIC RIBUN Editor - MAURICE RUSH Assistant Editor SEAN GRIFFIN : Business and Circulation Manager — MIKE GIDORA Published weekly at Ford Bldg.,"Mezzanine No.