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Public should put curbs
on downtown developers :

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

There are several issues in-
volved in the criticism that Mayor
Art Phillips has publicly levelled at
planning director Ray. Spaxman.

One is the harmful and unfair
practice of announcing in advance
actions which he intends to take
before. these matters are even
discussed in City Council where the
decision has to be made. That’s

what Mayor Tom Campbell used to
do, for which he was roundly
condemned and justifiably so. It
isn’t necessary for the mayor to
manufacture spicy news and
gossip for the press every week.
It’s City Council’s responsibility to

_make whatever decisions are
necessary on issues as they arise,
whether newsworthy or not. —

Secondly, it’s more than just bad
taste, it’s downright unfair for the
mayor to make a personal attack
on a person hired by the city for
alleged incompetence without first
discussing the problem with the

downtown development, as it is
what kind of development we are
going to have in this already
congested area. :

Two concepts are beginfiing to
emerge.

The developers want the un-
bridled ‘right to continue doing
what they have been doing —
making an unplanned mess of our
downtown area, their only con-
sideration being how to make the
biggest profit in the shortest
possible time.

Some of our planners and I think
Mr. Ray Spaxman himself, realize
that some controls and guidelines
are necessary and these involve
down-zoning to enable residential
accommodation to be built in the
downtown area and a limitation
placed on the size of buildings
(floor space ratios). Furthermore,
private developers should be
compelled to provide public
amenities.

I think that some of th
developers are beginning to tu
the heat on the mayor and hi
TEAM majority in council as we
as on the NPA. They want a byla
brought down quickly that will le
them do what they want. And the
don’t want any more publi
discussion which could only put
crimp into: their plans.

That, I think, is what’s reall
behind the mayor’s attack on‘cl
planning director Ray Spaxma
The real issue is policy, what kin
of a downtown we want and need,
and rather than face up to this
issue publicly, the mayor is tryin
to make Spaxman the scapegoa

It’s a poor way to run the city, to.
say the least. | 4 :

I think a bridle needs to be put on
the mayor, if not a muzzle, with
instructions to conduct city
business through City Council, not
through the press.

Secondly, the real issue at sta
should be placed squarely on t
table so that all citizens may take @

MARG GREGORY, who was defeated as Conservative candidate in the
New Westminster federal riding in the last election, is now spearheading
a campaign for restoration of capital punishment. Simon Fraser
University student Linda Chobotuk has captured her in this “Alice In
Wonderland” cartoon. :

look at it and then let Council know |
what kind of a downtown they |”
want. This isn’t something to be ||
left only to developers meeting in
private sessions with planners, the

person concerned.

I think the real issue at stake is
not so much the time it is taking to
draw up a. bylaw to govern

ORDER NOW:
SPECIAL PT
EDITION

‘AFTER SOME PROGRESS

AUCE talks stalemated again

After a week of seeming
progress in contract negotiations,
clerical and technical employees

- members of the Association of

University and College Employees “house: ©" -
— have again encountered the
unwillingness on the part of the
university administration to grant
a decent wage increase.

Some gains were made in
negotiations following a-strike vote
by the 400-odd employees March 17
and 18 which recorded a 78.8%
mandate for strike action. Seventy-
two hour strike notice was served
on the university March 18 but the

action was not taken since, as local
president Reva Clavier pointed
out, the vote had strengthened the

shutdown.

union’s position. - time.
- This week, however,
negotiations reached another 32-hour work week.

SSN

— agement facets and many meanings. Freedom
3 to the multinational monopoly octopus, to the free en-

, to the predatory imperialist, to all the breed .

which profits from the toil, suffering and hunger of

_ another, has one meaning, but to its countless millions of
victims, something entirely different. -

3 In democratic Canada the long and hard-won rights of a
- legitimate trade union to collective bargaining can be
cancelled out overnight, and the slave law of compulsory

- arbitration instituted in its place, all under the pretext of
“national security” and the public “weal!” Similarly, the
application of a repressive War Measures Act by a class-
dominated Establishment can transform a relatively
democratic state into a military-police state almost

overnight, with all freedom of expression, movement and _

action consigned to the ashcan. Again the stock excuse
“national security.” :

We may be a long way away from Ireland, from Chile,
from Bangladesh, from the tattered tents of homeless
Palestinian Arabs, from the starving and destitute
villages of the emerging countries of Africa, where untold
millions count their dead with every sunrise. Every day,
by hunger, bullets, bombs and bludgeons, these dead go
into the hopper for freedom; freedom to eat, to live, to
shape their destiny in accordance with their own concepts
of freedom and needs: this freedom is indivisible!

“In Canada it means the right to strike and picket for

"PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 1975—Page 2

impasse with union spokesmen
noting that the university ad-
ministration had only cooperated

at Simon Fraser University — in negotiations in order to avoid a
strike during the university’s open

A general meeting has been
called for next week with strike
action possible, either in the form
of rotating strikes or a full-scale

Certified since November -22, A
1974, AUCE, an independent union,
has been seeking to negotiate a
first contract for its members, the
vast majority of whom are women.

Wage demands would give
clerical and technical workers
parity with physical plant workers
who have been certified for some

The union has also demanded a

AUCE vice-president Melody
Rudd told the Tribune that since
negotiations began last December
the university has attempted
various stalling tactics including
the refusal to allow local president
Reva Clavier to sit in on
negotiations during the day. The

--only negotiating session held.
during university hours was March
20, ostensibly to avert any dif-
“ficulties during open house.

regular two-hour union
meeting on university time is one
of the demands submitted by the

AUCE negotiators. :
Another point of contention in

contract talks is shop stewards.

Although the university has

already initialled that clause in the
contract, it now wants amend-
ments and has refused to recognize

in 1935.

Hurry to get your ad-
vertisement and bundle order
for the special May Day-40th
Anniversary Issue of the
Pacific Tribune which will
come out on April 25.

This special issue will carry
many interesting features
including articles on ‘The On-
To-Ottawa Trek,’ and the
“Battle of Ballantyne Pier”
which -were_ two f
struggles that coincided with : £ |
the founding year of the paper | aya

There will also be other
interesting and entertaining
features’ by Maurice Rush,
Tom McEwen, Nigel Morgan,
Hal Griffin and others, as well
as photos and illustrations.

Advertisements and
greetings for this special issue
must be in the PT office no.
later than Friday, April 18.
Place your advertisement
early. Also order a special
bundle for distribution to
friends and workmates.

mayor or anybody else. It’s public |
business and should be discussed |
and decided in public. |
We do need controls and”
guidelines for the
development of the downtown
area. They are not going to be the |
kind the developers like. So what?.
The developers come and go; they |
make a fast buck and are gone. But)
the citizens have to live with theil
major “creations” from then on. So let’s |
put some curbs on them = am

develop the downtown in a W
that will benefit the citizens as 4
whole, not just special groups.

ae

STATE SUBSIDIES

Rent and payment for everyday |
services (hot and cold running |"
water, heating, lighting, gas) in the | °
Soviet Union accounts for only 4.5 |
per ent of the family budget. The
state subsidizes housing and many —
retail prices. After deductions for
rent, taxes, transportation, etc.)
the Soviet family is left with at
least 80 percent of its money i?
come.

shop stewards elected by the
AUCE bershi

wages and conditions. In Ireland it means the right to self
government without the interference, aggression and
murderous intent of a decadent foreign imperialism. For
the Palestinian Arabs (PLO) it means the right to a home,
an industry, and peace on your own ancestral lands, now
annexed by another country. In Chile it means that a
democracy brutally crushed by a foreign imperialism,
aided and abetted by local fascism, be restored to the
Chilean people. To the jobless and homeless and starving
of all lands it means the right to earn a livelihood, the
right to eat, the right to live.

“So it doesn’t really matter how we evaluate or dif-
ferentiate on the question of freedom. Reduced to its
simplest formula, it simply means the right to life — the

right to life in a world which, by the knowledge and in-.

dustry of man, can and will produce in abundance all the
things of life.
All the current moth-eaten claptrap about population
explosions, about world food supplies running out etc.,
comes from the same gang of imperialist and monopoly
exploiters, who profit most by the export of armaments,
rather than bread to meet a world hunger and destitution
of their own making. But the forecast of over-population
and other such prophecies of doom serve only to blind a
great portion of the world’s peoples to the realities of the
If we would only remember that the same ‘“‘food shor-
tage experts’’ were only yesterday subsidizing their farm
people not to grow grain, not to produce so much beef,
‘mutton, eggs or whatever, in order to stimulate mass
starvation and higher prices for the many, then we might
get around to finalizing this homicidal profiteering racket

shortage of

food supplies required to k

Secseas

profits ascending rapidly, modern Establishments hav!
perfected a new gimmick — the cold storage stockpile for
millions of dozens of eggs, millions of pounds of butter
meat. And all for one purpose: not to feed the destitul \
and hungry, but to keep monopoly prices and profits at top
peak.
With a cold storage product — as with an outmoded
Establishment whose time has come — decay and rot
in. All those millions of eggs or untold millions of po
of butter and meat may not have saved the lives
starving people in Vietnam, Bangladesh or elsewhere D¥
they would have been far more digestible and
sustaining than the lame ministerial excuses of a Eug
Whelan. And of infinitely more value than the mad
Canada arms for U.S. aggression and mass murder
Freedom is a many-sided concept, very hard to
easy to lose. It is also a very unifying idea if we remem!
that a B.C. worker with a compulsory arbitration ball
chain fastened to his neck and’a starving child are P
born with the same inalienable right: the right to live fr¢
from capitalist exploitation. -

ion, Canadian Tribune:
seas
Editor - MAURICE RUSH
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