“Stop agitating . .

. Don't you know we have to fight inflation?”

Save Boundary Bay
for people’s needs

A major confrontation is
shaping up between people who
want at least a small portion of
land in the Lower Mainland kept
for parks and recreation, and
developers who see in the
Boundary Bay area a veritable
gold mine through land
speculation.

BACM Development Corpor-
ation, according to reports, has
spent some months and many
thousands of dollars doing a
“‘preliminary’’ report on how
the Boundary Bay area can be
made profitable — to them.
Conservationists and ecologists
have also made a long-time
of the situation and are opposed
to any development.

BACM’s scheme calls for a
project that would see some
50,000 people living in the
vicinity of Boundary Bay.
Ecologists say that many-people
would put an end to hope of
retaining even a semblance of a
natural environment.

During the hot spell Vancouver
has experienced this summer,
the few parks within driving
distance of the city see more
people than trees by a Saturday
morning.

Cultus, Allouette, Aldergrove
and the Squamish area, as well
as the beaches at Kits and

NDP names
candidates

Paddy Neale, secretary of the
Vancouver and District Labor
Council, was chosen to run for
mayor in this fall’s civic
elections by delegates attending
an NDP nominating convention
’ last week.

Others chosen were John
Stanton, Paul Sabatino, Hilda
Thomas, Harry Winrob and
Angus Macdonald ‘as alder-
manic candidates; Norman
Read, Jake Rempel, Lillian Whit-
ney, Amy Dalgleish and Nigel
Nixon for school board.

Parks board candidates are
Peter Dent, Roy Lowther and
Peter Davies.

The remaining candidates -to
make up a full slate on an NDP-
COPE-LABOR ticket will be
nominated by the Vancouver
Labor Council.

Alderman Harry Rankin, Ron
Gomez and Bruce Yorke were
chosen in June at a COPE nomin-

“ating convention to run as
aldermanic candidates, with

Peggy Chunn, Paul Mitchell,

Donald Greenwell, Sid Sheltor.

and Ed Leong chosen as school

and parks board candidates.

A joint program is being
worked out by the three groups
-coneerned. Les

English Bay are awash with
bodies trying to escape the heat
and noise of city streets for a few
brief hours.

As Vancouver grows there will
be increasing need for more
parks and more islands of nature
left untouched. Boundary Bay
must be one of them.

Mayor Dugald Morrison of
Delta is in the position where he
must weigh the development,
with its consequent revenues,
against leaving the Boundary
Bay vicinity as a park for people.
The government at Victoria
gives no help-in strengthening
the financial situation so the
lures of commercial develop-
ment would be less enticing.

Boundary Bay has never been
set aside as a park although it
has long served as a recrea-

tional area. Obviously the govern-

ment, as usual, prefers high
risers and factories over parks.

Wildlife — fish, fowl; and even
seals which inhabit the area
would suffer from development.
Boundary Bay would be lost
permanently as a mecca of
recreation and relaxation, no
matter how well planned the
development.

Howard Paish, a former direc-
tor of the B.C. Wildlife Feder-

ation, has this to say in his

report: ‘‘From a purely
ecological standpoint there are
strong and technically sound
arguments to support the reten-
tion of Boundary Bay ina natural
state for park purposes. It would
be extremely difficult to refute
these arguments on ecological
grounds.”

Provincial government
cabinet ministers Kiernan and
Williston are scheduled to meet
with the Delta Council on July
24. In the meantime thousands of
people are signing petitions
against the threat of losing this
area to smoke, smog and the
pollution that goes inevitably

- with modern exploitation.

Civic Housing Authority
needed for quick action

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

I believe the best way to tackle
the urgent problem of low cost
housing would be for City
Council to set up a Municipal
Housing Authority under its

_ direct control.

The Authority would not only
be responsible for all low rental
housing projects in the city —
more important, it would be
charged with taking advantage
of all existing powers and legis-
lation to initiate new low rental
housing projects of various
kinds. The Authority should, of
course, include representatives
of labor and other community
groups.

There is no valid reason why
such a Municipal Housing
Authority could not go into the
house building business itself.
Why give private contractors a
profit of 10 percent or more?
Why shouldn’t the city make this
profit and re-invest it in more
housing?

The Municipal Housing
Authority should buy up old

properties such as houses and

hotels and renovate them into
clean, modern low rental units.
The Hilton and Stanley Hotels in
Goastown, for instance, could be
renovated for the people who
live there now.

Furthermore, the present
inhabitants could be given some
employment in helping with the
renovation. There are many
similar old properties in the city
that could be converted. It
would be one way of replacing
slum housing with modern, live-
able homes and suites.

The Five Year Plan passed by
referendum vote last year
includes $1 million for low cost
housing. Council only agreed to
this after I made it clear that I
would not support the Five Year
Plan unless it did include some
provision for low cost housing.
The Municipal Housing
Authority could make use of this
fund now.

The National Housing Act,
Section 35A, provides funds for
low rental housing with the fed-
eral government putting up 75
percent of the capital cost and
the provincial government 25
percent.

The city’s share is limited to
12% percent of the operating
deficit.

Under Sections 35C and 35D
long term loans are available for
90 percent of the construction
costs, bearing an interest rate of
8% percent for a term of 50
years. Furthermore, under
Section 35E the federal govern-

ment will contribute up to 50
percent of the annual operating
losses incurred.

Under Section 16 of the
National Housing Act loans of up
to 95 percent with interest rates
of 7% percent may be secured
for senior citizens low rental
housing. Furthermore, the
provincial government has a
one third capital cost grant if the
city puts up 10 percent of the
overall cost of such a project.

As is evident from the above,
funds are available if we will
only go after them. Our Muni-
cipal Housing Authority could
take advantage of this legis-
lation and initiate a large scale
low rental housing program, to
build 2500 new units a year, with

at least 500 of these for senior
citizens.

What it all boils down to is this.
We have the means but City
Council hasn’t the desire. The
pressure of real estate interests
and apartment owners 0D
Council is great. They want to
perpetuate the housing shortage
because-it means higher prices
and higher rents.

This will only be changed when
either the pressure of the people
for low rental housing becomes
greater than that of real estate
interests or apartment owners,
or when new aldermen aré
elected to Council who will
respond to the needs of the
people and not just servé

CELEBRATE
CUBA’S NATIONAL HOLIDAY —

SUNDAY, JULY 26

Garden Party at 3882 Yale, Vancouver, 2:30-7 p.m.
Dinner 5-7 p.m.
Adults $1.50 Children 75¢

~ Proceeds, Cuban School for Blind

corporate interests.

4

E very law placed on the statute books containing pro-
visions directed against labor and the people is, as
the lawyers say, ipso facto; in short it means that in a so-called
democratic society the party in power has ceased to govern by
the authority by and from whom it derives its power to do so,
(the people), and substitutes arbitrary partisan decrees in
place of just laws.

In a class society, dictated by the whims and interests of a —
privileged monopoly class, this ‘‘legal’’ usurpation of power,
even though it may be dressed up to ‘“‘serve the interests of all
the people’’, is primarily applied by government to serve the
interest: of powerful monopoly, and has nothing in common
whatsoever with the general wellbeing of the people.

Governments having to resort to the application of such laws
and statutes, and again particularly with respect to labor, do
not demonstrate a position of strength (wide popularity) when
doing so. On the contrary every government having to resort
to such measurés illustrate their weakness, irresponsibility,
and political bankruptcy. The history of all so-called
democracies is replete with such illustrations of legislative
and/or extra-legal enactments.

Laws like Section 98 of the Criminal Code and similar
enactments, largely by Order-in-Council (O-in-C); that is
decrees not passed by act of parliament of legislative
assemblies, where the elected ‘‘voice’’ of the people can be
heard, but by secret sessions of members of a ministerial
cabinet of ‘‘governor-in-council,’’ who assume an authority —
never conferred upon them by an electoral body.

Canadian “‘law-makers’’ have been notorious for this sort of
rump “‘laws’’ designed to restrict, curtail, or destroy entirely,
various and numerous freedoms which. workers in particular
come to regard as inviolate; until bang, some tin-horn
magistrate with one stroke of his pen, can cancel out or annul
_the rights of hundreds of workers.

The injunction racket, highly used and “‘legalized”’ in B.C., is
one of the more common illustrations of this type of legal
abuse against working people.

Some years ago we used to have a few prominent so-called
labor leaders who tried to tell us our modern society in its class
divisions was just ‘‘one happy family’’, that there was no class
struggle, that all such ideas were poppycock, and that Marxists
who argued there was such a struggle were all haywire, trouble-
makers, etc., etc. Now these voices are all happily very silent.

The injunction record in B.C. alone has silenced them. They
are learning the hard way, thanks to the ‘‘legislative’’ goon
squad we have in Victoria called Social Credit, elected in the
last electoral farce to ‘‘save B.C. from Socialism’’.

How many Bills W.A.C. Bennett may invoke against labor
and the people during this ‘‘long hot summer”’ is anybody’s
guess, but with the Employers’ Council of B.C. egging him on,
it may be expected WAC will throw the book at workers on
strike or workers deprived of the right to work and demanding
full compensation for their wives and children. And don’t look
or feel surprised. That is precisely how Bennett and company
regard their job of ‘‘saving’’ B.C. for Big Business, and
consequently ‘from Socialism”’.

Its time labor and the people got rid of their ‘‘legal’’ blinkers
and got to see things as they really are. When they do, Bennett
won't have enough jails in B.C. to hold the awakened ones — not
even with federal aid from ‘‘Just Society” Trudeau.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 24, 1970—Page 2'' ey ae
Lope tals Serb € 6925-4 THAT. DSUDAG,

hehe