Housing shortage acute TEAM-NPA aldermen bo
for returning students tg gnti-fluoridationists

Students returning to university this fall will face an even greater
housing crisis than last year when many students wound up sleeping in
their cars until they were able to find affordable housing.

Neville Millar, in charge of off-campus housing for the British
Columbia Institute of Technology, said that the situation this year is
extremely serious because of the tight apartment market. He cited
figures which showed that Burnaby, which has two post-secondary
institutions, BCIT and Simon Fraser, has an apartment vacancy rate
of .1 per cent compared to the national average of 1.2 per cent.

BCIT requires housing for more than 1,500 out of town students and
has only 350 units listed, while SFU has only 200 listings for 2,500
students who will need accommodation. Both institutions have very
limited on-campus housing available to students.

One of the major reasons for the critical situation in this field, in
addition to the general housing crisis which afflicts the Lower
Mainland, is the fact that the provincial government has been very
reluctant to free any money for the construction of student housing as
they cut back on educational costs generally.

A student spokesman said that another factor is that because of the
high unemployment rate among students this summer, any housing
that is available costs so much that students just will not be able to

afford to rent.

Car accident takes
life of CUPE rep

The labor movement
province. lost

in this
an able and

progressive spokesman last week
with the untimely death of Aubrey

Burton who was killed when the
car in which he was riding went out
of control on the Hope-Princeton
highway.

Burton, his wife, Joan and three
friends, Diane, Scott and Amy
Klein, were returning from
holidays in the Okanagan when
Mrs. Burton, who was driving, was
-unable to regain control of the car
after passing a truck. The car
~ rolled some 125 feet down an
embankment into a creek.

The others sustained injuries
_ including Diane Klein who suffered
a fractured skull.

Burton, OD, a national
representative of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees and the
chief CUPE spokesman in the
recent bargaining with Lower
Mainland municipalities, had been
active in the trade union
movement for most of his adult
life.

Raised in Quebec, he served in
the Canadian merchant marine
during World War II, moving to
Trail after the war where he
became a truck driver and an
activist in the Trail Civic Em-

ployees Union. He was later named
as a business agent for the union
when it became Local 343 of CUPE.

For several years he served as
an executive member of the B.C.
division of CUPE and_ its
predecessor, the B.C. Council of
Public Employees. In 1966, he was
appointed as a_ national
representative for CUPE and was
assigned to the Kootenay district
and later to the Kamloops-
Okanagan area.

In 1974, after long time CUPE
representative Jack Phillips
retired from union office to take up
work as provincial organizer for
the Communist Party, Burton took
his position as . Vancouver
representative responsible for
servicing CUPE locals in the
Lower Mainland. -

In that position, he became the
main spokesman in _ joint
negotiations and was well known
among trade unionists, many of
whom also knew him as a delegate
to the New Westminster and
District Labor Council.

Services for Aubrey Burton were
to be held Thursday, August 19 at 4
p.m. at Forest Lawn in Burnaby.
He is survived by his wife Joan,
and his father, mother and sister in
Trail.

Guest columnist this week — the
last before alderman Rankin
returns to this column — is Bruce
Eriksen, president of the Down-
town Eastside Residents
Association.

If Vancouver’s children are to be
known for their cavity-filled teeth,
it will be because five city alder-
men have vast cavities in their
heads, which has left them with a
complete lack of civic conscience
and political courage.

On July 27, in a disgusting
display of self-serving op-
portunism and political cowardice,
two TEAM aldermen, Jack Volrich
and Mike Harcourt joined three
NPA aldermen, Ed Sweeney,
Warnett Kennedy and Hugh Bird to
defeat the recommendations of the
city’s medical health officer, Dr.
Gerald Bonham, that would have
brought us one step closer to en-
ding the stigma of being the rotten
tooth capital of the world. They
voted against a resolution to
request a change in legislation to
make fluoridation mandatory in
B.C. They also defeated a
resolution to request a change in
legislation which would permit a
democratic, simple majority vote
of 50 percent plus one on com-
munity water fluoridation.

Instead the five, trembling
before the sound .and fury of a
small anti-fluoridation lobby,
decided to duck their civic
responsibility. They voted to
request the appointment of a
commission of enquiry to review
all information relevant to
fluoridation and recommend ap-
propriate legislation for B.C.

Not more than 18 months ago, a
commission of enquiry appointed
to review. all information relevant
to community water fluoridation
had reported and recommended
appropriate legislation for B.C.
The co-ordinating committee of the
children’s dental health research
project, chaired by Dr. Robert
Evans, in the report to the
provincial minister of health and
the president of the provincial
college of dental surgeons
recommended ‘‘on humanitarian
epidemiological and economic
grounds that community water
fluoridation be implemented

throughout the province with
determination and urgency.” So,
when Dr. Bonham recommended
that our city request a change in
legislation which would, in effect,
implement the recommendations

on community water fluoridation,
he was not exactly behaving as a
wild-eyed radical. Not only does
Dr. Bonham reflect the views of a
provincial government research
team; he reflects the views of more
than half the population of,the city,
the member municipalities served
by the Greater Vancouver Water
District and the electors of the
University Endowment lands, who,
in 1968, voted 54.4 percent in favour
of the fluoridation of the water

supply.
Twenty major cities in Canada
have community water

fluoridation, leaving Calgary and
Vancouver as the only major cities
without fluoridation. Which brings
us back to the five dinosaurs of city
hall. They will be asking you to re-
elect them to run the affairs of
Canada’s third largest city. It is
my opinion that every one of them
has forfeited any serious con-
sideration the voters may have had
concerning their competence to
take part in the government of this
city. Their actions of July 27 show
very clearly that determination

and urgency are absent from their

thinking. ,
In the Evans’ report on com-
munity water fluoridation,

reference is made to the ecological
arguments for the rejection of
fluoridation, most of which are
based on the 1971 Marier and Rose
study of environmental fluoride. It
is these arguments that the local
anti-fluoridation lobbyists have
been using, and the five flabby
minded aldermen have been
listening to. The arguments have
been answered in a World Health
Organization document. The
committee chaired by Dr. Robert
Evans notes, ‘‘After an extensive
review of the literature on fluoride
ingestion the committee concurs
with the view of Schlesinger — as
described’ in the World Health
Organization study — that there
have been no ° adequately
documented reports of any adverse
systemic effects from fluoride
ingestion even at levels several
times greater than those used in
water supplies for the prevention

of dental caries.”

But then leading world wide and
international health authorities do
not cast votes in Vancouver’s civic
election. ;

In recent years, the name of
Ralph Nader, the consumer ad-
vocate, and the organization with
which he is associated, ‘center for

BRUCE ERIKSEN...
already completed.

studie |

science in the public interest
have been linked with organize)
opposition to community wale!
fluoridation. No doubt his name)
has been used by those who hav’
been calling the Vancouvél
aldermen to oppose fluoridatio”

If the aldermen had read tf
Evans report before voting on Di :
Bonham’s recommendations th
would have known that Mf)
November 1972, Mr. Nader, !
response to a_ request fol
clarification of his position )
community water fluoridatioh
requested the center to answer t
inquiry, which it did, making thé
following points: “while
remaining critical of the manner !
which fluoridation has bee!
promoted, our intensive 1
vestigation of this subject leads #)
to conclude that the known benefil®
to dental health which fluoridati0!
brings far~ outweigh any risk
which may be involved. There af
firmly established dangers in th
increasing pollution of our drinkiné
water. We do not believe tha)
fluoridation is one of thes’
dangers.”

One expects a_ legislatol
national, provincial or civic, to a

‘in the best interests of the col’

munity and to exercise his 0
intellectual judgment. Bird
Harcourt, Kennedy, Sweeney ail”
Volrich have acted against the b®
interests of the community al!
have exercised nothing but thei!
ability to add up potential votes. 4*
legislators seeking the trust of t
electors they have earned nothité)
but contempt.

way back inthe year 1653 Oliver Cromwell stomped into

the British House of Parliament and uttered these

historic words:

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in
this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of
all virtues and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye
are a facetious crew and enemies of all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and would, like
Esau, sell your country for a mess of potage, and, like
Judas, betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there one single virtue now remaining among you?
Is there one vice you do not possess?. Ye have no more
religion than my horse. Gold is your god. Which of you
have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a
man amongst you that the least care for the good of the
commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes, have ye not defiled
and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your
immoral principles and immoral practices. Ye are grown
intolerably odious to the whole nation. Ye were deputed
here to get grievances redressed — are not yourselves
become the greatest grievance?

‘Your country therefore, calls upon me to cleanse this
Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous
proceedings in this House, and which by God’s health and

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 20, 1976—Page 2

strength He hath given me, I am now come to do it. I
command ye therefore, on peril of your lives, to depart
immediately out of this place. Go, get out! Make haste ye
venal slaves, begone! Take away that shining bauble
there. And lock up the doors!”

All that took place in a British Parliament well over 300
years ago and forms part of our parliamentary heritage
which we are intermittently urged to study or at least give
some thought to. In Cromwell’s day, of course, we were
scarcely civilized which perhaps explains the ease with
which we were had. Be that as it may, the prime
achievement of Cromwell in this case was to lay a
reasonably solid foundation for parliamentary rule from
which it could go ‘‘reasonably” straight of “reasonably”
crooked. In its day-to-day progress over the years, it has
rarely deviated from this route. And the honesty of its
members has largely depended on the various op-
portunities to cash in while the getting is good.

That hasn’t changed much over the centuries, and if it
has changed it has been for the worse. Governments
today, be they capitalist or semi-feudal have been
elevated to the point where almost a third of the govern-
ment is drawn from the center and upper brackets, while

. the other — and largely unrepresented — two-thirds are

the lower orders, the traditional hewers of wood and
drawers of water. The two old-line parties. have little to
distinguish them apart nowadays, and whatever they
have or may have had has long ago been carved up by
umpteen different parties, which aside from their names,
are similarly indistinguishable. They all serve big’
business, the banks and the counting houses and whatever

may be added. The Liberals and the Tories maintain the
fine sham of a difference but under the skin they are
Tweedledee and Tweedledum. - |
At times one would think that they are tearing eacll
other apart, but that is only for show purposes. In a&
tuality they are one and the same. Every once in a while)
‘they set up one hell of a furore and then, alas, it fad@
lower than a whisper. After a time the one’s stock fade
out, while the other rises to new heights. This merelY
shows that for a time, at least, the one won’t enjoy much}
popularity until the next time around. g
All of this comic opera is what, in this modern age, ®|
passed off as politics, the one fading out for a time, th®
other burgeoning, the democratic cover-up of a moé
undemocratic setup. :
But then, it is supposed to be the most democratic setuP
for a truly undemocratic system. If you don’t believe it :
just take a cursory glance at the AIB . . . then reach for
the Epsom salts. - ’

RiBUNeE

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