Mike Tytherleigh, a regular
columnist in The Province, is
worried (see his comments of
June I, page A2) about a
“COPE majority in the next
election’’. I hope his fears are
well founded. His solutions —
that the NPA and TEAM need
“paid professional organizers”’
and more funds doesn’t worry
me, as long-as COPE gets the
votes. But he did make some

Harry

Rankin

other remarks that require an
answer.

For one thing, he makes the:
rather silly statement that
COPE is “‘the only political par-

ty in civic politics’’. First of all
COPE is not a political party
but a reform: group in civic
politics. It is no more a political
party than the NPA or TEAM.
All three groups have members
of political parties within their
ranks. Of course we have dif-
ferent objectives and aims. The
NPA and TEAM represent
developers and other big
business interests, while COPE
represents the needs of the or-

business.

voters with his -equally silly
statement that ‘‘a COPE ma-
jority in the next election will see
a civic administration that has
no time for the free enterprise
system’’. That’s the old NPA
red herring. COPE is not com-
mitted to the abolition of the
free enterprise system nor could
it abolish it at city hall even if
it were. What COPE wants to
do is take city council out of the
hands of the developers and big
business interests where it’s been
for the past 45 years’ (since the
NPA ‘was. formed) and put it
back into the hands of the peo-
ple. Wherever and whenever it is
in the public interest, controls

Politics at city hall

_ less, free enterprise in the true

dinary citizen and small

-Tytherleigh tries to frighten .

who want to use city hall to fill
their own pockets. As for the
small businessman, the only free
enterpriser left in our society
because big business is highly
monopolized today, he’ll get a
better break from a COPE
council. We’ll have more, not

sensé of the term. And COPE
will introduce a new system of
priorities. Affordable apart-

will be placed on the depreda-
tions of developers and others
ments for example will take
precedence over trade and con-
vention centres.

Tytherleigh also urges the
‘*business community to pay the
shot”’ if it wants friends at city
hall” with the inference that this
would be something new. Is he
sO naive as to believe that the
developers and other big
‘business interests have not been
funding the NPA and TEAM
all along? What about those
donations to the NPA from the
CPR that were revealed some
time ago? Who is he trying to
kid? Business interests have had
more than friends at city hall;
they’ve had willing servants.

Finally, he says, ‘‘the concept ~
of_keeping .politics out-of -city
hall must be changed now that
politics are in.’’ Politics has
always been “‘in’’ at city hall
ever since 1886 when the city
was formed. The NPA, for ex-
ample, isamotley assortment of.
bone-headed Social Crediters
and Conservatives. TEAM is
dominated by Liberals posing as
reformers. Their politics has
been that of the corporate in-
terests they represent. What~
Tytherleigh and his friends
don’t like is the fact that with
COPE the ordinary citizen, the
working middle class and the
middle classes, will also have a
voice.

BRITISH COLUMBIA.
SMOKING

SPEAKERS AT ALBERNI HOUSING MEETING .

Behn, Dave Fairey, Ald. George McKnight.

Housing crunch about to hit
Alberni, but city can block it -

ALBERNI — Labor economist
Dave Fairey warned June 5 that the
speculation and market manipula-
tion which have sent land and
house prices soaring in most major
B.C. centres is about to hit Alberni,
but unlike most other places, Port
Alberni municipal council can act
to curb inflation in the housing
market if it chooses,

_ ABurnaby civic activist who has,
focused attention on the injustices

of property taxation in B.C. with
challenges last year and this year
against the property tax
assessments of oil refineries on
Burrard Inlet in Burnaby, Fairey
was invited to Alberni to discuss
land prices, taxes, rents and mor-
tgages by three Alberni aldermen,
George McKnight, Walter Behn
and Paul Reitsma. With Fairey. to
address tenant issues was Greater
Vancouver Renters Association
president Tom Lalonde.

Fairey told the 80 Alberni
residents who turned out to the
public meeting about his tax
challenge against the oil refineries
and drew the obvious analogy to
the situation in Port Alberni where
the huge MacMillan Bloedel com-
plex dominates the skyline and the
tax rolls.

In spite of the dominance of the

MacBlo mills, homeowners still
pay unjust property taxes, he
charged. Residential property
amounts to 38.5 percent of the total
assessed value, with. industry’s
share only slightly larger at 42.8
percent. A glaring inequity is the
exclusion by provincial law of

machinery values from the tax roll
for municipal -purposes.
Machinery is only taxed for school
purposes. In Alberni, total
machinery values of $79.7 million
almost equal the total assessed
values for all land and buildings of
$87.5 million.

Citing Alberni alderman George
McKnight’s past appeal against
MacBlo assessments and his own
fight with the oil companies in Bur-

naby, Fairey said that unjust pro-

perty taxes can be fought.
The housing crisis has yet to hit

Port Alberni with the full force it -

has in the Lower Mainland, which
has seen three bedroom bungalows
in Surrey and Langley increase in
price by 69 percent and 73 percent
in the past eight month period.

. However theinflationary spiral has

begun to hit Nanaimo where prices
have soared between 40. percent
and 55 percent in the last year.

Reports that a consortium of
doctors and professionals have
recently purchased as many as 200
houses in Alberni and still have a
standing offer to buy every house.
selling for under $55,000 is a sure
sign that the speculators are mov-
ing into Alberni and that prices will
jump soon, he said.

However the scenario which has
been precedented in the Lower
Mainland and Fraser Valley need
not happen in Alberni, said Fairey,
because the municipality of Port
Alberni owns: 320 acres of vacant
land within city limits and the pro-
vince owns another 210 acres, ex-
cluding’ parks. There is enough

. .(Lto R) Tom Lalonde, Ald. Paul Reitsma, Ald. Waltel_

land to accommodate almost the.

_. entire need for new housing for 4

considerable period, providing the

land is made available at affordable

prices.

In 1961, the average worker if

Vancouver could buy the average

house with monthly payments
amounting to 29 percent of in)
come, Today the average house has

increased in price 400 percent and

payments consume 83 percent of
the average wage, excluding most
working people from the market.

In Alberni a worker at the mill
earning the base rate will earm
about $1725 per month. If the
worker put down $18,750 on a
$75,000 house, mortgage payments,

today would be about $851 or 50

percent of monthly income.
tradesman at the mill earns $2,237

$100,000 house, mortgage
payment wouldstill amountto 5 |

. percent of income.

McKnight told the meeting thal
it is possible to build affordable”
housing if the city used its $700,000.
development fund to build on its
own land.

Tenant spokesman Tom.
Lalonde said that the housing crisis _
is squeezing low incometenants oul

of their homes and they have no_

alternative but to organize and”
fight back. He said he will be
speaking to meetings in Courtenay; —
Campbell River and Port Hardy to_
help -organize the tenants move-
ment. E

aving just read accounts of the participation by the

Ku Klux Klan in the plot to overthrow the govern-
ment of Dominica and, more recently, the Vancouver Sun
account of the cross-burning in Stave Lake by rifle-toting
KKK members, it was almost with disbelief that we read
over the editorial comments in the May issue of The
Democrat, the journal of the B.C. New Democratic Party:

Thecomments, written presumably by Democrat editor
Stephen Brewer, were in response to several letters from
readers who had suggested that the Democrat’s defence of
the Klan’s right to advocate racial hatred’ was wrong. In
|. defending that position — and in upholding the right of
any group to advocate anything, even violence — Brewer
offered the following remarks:

“*Yes, we would — in the name of democratic rights —
permit people to advocate violence towards women and
sexual abuse of children:

“We would not, of course, claim that they had any right
to carry out violence against women, or to sexually abuse
children, any more than we champion the Klan’s “Tight”
to carry through with its threats .

“*The activities are proscribed by law, as they should be; .

advocating them is not and —ina free society — can never
be. ”

We’re sure that many readers must have oe in-
credulous — and perhaps even horrified — at the stark ex-
pression of the Democrat’s freedom of speech argument;
according to that argument the right of anyone to advocate
racial hatred — or violence or sexual abuse of children —
must be upheld for the sake of democracy.

(es Ni dara pais sir niete sees ee Stee rR bee ar mea Tt
People and Issues
a a a ie a i rr ea tier acer te ae aces wera

As for racism, the only response, argues The Democrat, -

is an educational program which promotes tolerance and
racial harmony.

Ironically, it was in another NDP journal, the Saskatch-
ewan-based Commonwealth, that we came across a
rather different view of the response to the Klan. Writing
in the July 16, 1980 issue — some time before the Klan
assumed its current high profile — columnist Lloyd
Robertson commented:

‘*As the late Saskatchewan Liberal premier Jimmy Gar-
diner discovered, you can’t fight racists with just logic.
Slogans and slurs can be invented faster that the research it
takes to prove them false. And quiet logic is lost on amob
that just wants to kick someone less powerful.’’

Robertson didn’t state just how the Klan could be

fought, of course. But his comments demonstrate that

education isn’t of much value when racists are allowed free
rein — and anyone is allowed to advocate violence.

More disturbing, however, is that The Democrat’s -
views are presented as if none of the history of the past five .

decades ever happened.
ecause of that history, racism has been characterized
for what it is — a crime against humanity. Contrary to
Brewer’s arguments, racism does not require a violent act
for a crime to be committed. It is itself a crime and those

organizations which promote or incite racial hatred are
guilty of a criminal act — at least that is how it is placed in
at least three international conventions to which Canada is

signatory.

holocaust to ensure that the racism which had contributed
to the deaths of six million Jews was not allowed to take its

toll again. And one of the profound lessons that at least |

some people have learned since then, is thata society which
tolerates violence, whether racial violence or violence
against women and children — a society which, in fact,
even guarantees the right of anyone to advocate such

violence — is a society which inevitably creates the condi- |

tions for such violence to be carried out.
hat is unfortunate about The Democrat’s preoccu-
pation with the right to free speech of the Klan is that
it comes at atime when pressure is mounting on the provin-
cial government to take action against the Klan, — to
allow charges, laid under the federal Criminal Code, to
proceed, and to release the report on Klan activities

prepared by lawyer John McAlpine. Several organizations— ;

including union locals, the Coalition Against Racism and

. the B.C. Committee Against Racism have demanded that
the government move against the racists.

To his credit, NDP MLA Emery Barnes has added his
voice to the demand that attorney-general Allan Williams
allow charges against the Klan to proceed. But in the cam-
paign to move the provincial government, a supportive
voice from the publishers of The Democrat would have

Those conventions were drafted in the wake of the Nazi |

considerable impact.

— TRIBUNE— JUNE = _— aes ae