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iWEWS ITEM: Vancouver and Ottawa had the highest over-all increase
in prices among major cities in December, due mainly to higher food
prices, Statistics Canada reported last week. The 12-month rise in the

food price index for Vancouver was 20 percent, and the largest

over-all price index in the 12-month period, 14.1 percent.

REJECT ‘LAW & ORDER’ GANG

By MAURICE RUSH

It’s not accidental that in the
midst of a drive by reactionaries to
turn B.C.’s politics to the right that
the cry should once again be raised
of ‘‘law and order,” ‘‘more police,”
“get tough with juveniles,” and
“restore the death penalty.”

The same cries where heard in
the U.S. when Richard Nixon
campaigned for president, and
when Ronald Reagan ran for
governor of California. It was the
main stock in trade of former
mayor Tom Campbell when he was
looking for an issue with which to
hold on to the mayor’s office.

Now one or another of these
demands have been taken up by
Tory MPs, far right wing groups
such as the pro-fascist Canadian
League of Rights, by Vancouver’s

police chief, and by Dr. John:

Hogarth, chairman of the B.C.
Police Commission. Mayor Art
Phillips has joined the chorus and
is now calling for 100 more police to

More police not answer
to growing crime in B.C.

be added to the city police force
each year for the next three years.

The main theory behind all these
groups is that tougher ‘“‘law and
order’’ measures is the way to deal
with deep-going social problems.
In other words, don’t go to the root
of the problem — the crisis in
human relations brought about by
a profit-seeking system which is
dragging humanity down with it —
but adopt tougher measures: more
prisoners, more police, more
courts, more hangings, etc.

One of the main proponents of
the ‘more police’ solution to
growing crime in B.C. is the
chairman of the B.C. Police

Commission, Dr. John Hogarth, ©

who recently appeared on prime-
time TV programs and other public
forums to propagate his demand.
In each case he covers it up with
“the needs of the community,’’ but
in essence he is calling for a sharp
increase in B.C.’s police forces.
Pointing to the serious crime

Realistic program for city skid road

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

City Council currently has under
consideration a report entitled,
“Making Skid Road A _ Viable
Community’’. It is one ofa series of
projects being looked at by Council
in preparation for the United
Nations Conference on Human
Settlement being held in Van-
couver next year.

What is outstanding and dif-
ferent about this report is its
realistic and humane approach to a
serious social problem — what to
do with the City’s Skid Road area,
or more precisely, what to do for
the people who live in it.

About 6,700 people live in this
area. It is a predominantly male
population including pensioners,

pension or social assistance. Those
who work have jobs with ex-
tremely low wages.

Skid Road is one of the most
stable residential communities in
our city, with relatively few
transients. Over one half have
lived there for at least five years;
38% more than 10 years.

Housing is in the area is of a very
low standard; fire deaths are
common.

But still, with all its faults, the
people who live there want to stay
there. It’s the one area of town that
they know well, that’s where all
their friends are, and its close to
the many services they need.

What is required, is an up-
grading program to make it a more
liveable area. This cannot and will

residential areas being turned into
commercial, or in renovations that
will place rents far beyond the
reach of those who live there now.

The report, ‘““Making Skid Road

A Viable Community’’, makes the’

following specific proposals:

1. Renovating the. main floor
and basement of the existing hotels
to provide a low cost food service,
public bathing
recreation area.

2. Low interest loans to hotels
and rooming houses in the area to
enable them to renovate their
premises to meet fire, health and
safety standards.

Ses The acquisition and
renovation of three hotels to
provide low cost accommodation.

4. The construction of 1,500

facility and.

5. The provision of ac-
commodation to people currently
being displaced by the closing
down of-hotels and lodging houses
not meeting fire by-law standards.

6. Providing a_ recreation
program that will include a
library, indoor entertainment and
craft activities.

This project would involve a cost
of about $23.5 million, to be met
through grants and loans.

In my opinion these proposals
are down to earth, humane and
realistic. This is exactly the sort of
thing we should be doing in
preparation for the United Nations
Conference — projects that will
help people, not show places for
tourists.

It is my. hope that all groups

rate in B.C., Hogarth says the |
province is 2,000 police short of
what he calls the national ‘‘police-
to-crime rate ratio.”” He urges the
addition of about 500 more police
“to bring it up to the national
average.” a
But one might ask the police |

officials, including ‘police chief |

in Vancouver and
Hogarth: where in Canada has the ©

Winterton

addition of more police done |

anything to solve the rise in crime |
which is a product of social con- |
ditions in Canada? a

Vancouver has 17.6 policemen E 2

per 1,000 of the population. Mont- —
real has 46.6. But has a police ratio
which is more than 300 percent
higher in Montreal solved the
crime problem there? Absolutely
not! Nor will it. Sociologists have —
long pointed: to the fact that the
“‘more-police-more crime’’ merry- _

go-round does not solve the |

problem of rising crime in Canada. |

It is undoubtedly true that 7 x
Vancouver faces a serious drug |
problem which intensifies the |

incidence of crime. But is the

solution to that problem more :
police to arrest drug users, more |

paid stool pigeons to infiltrate
among the drug users? More police
to fight the petty and serious
crimes that arise from the drug
traffic? There is not one whit of
evidence to show that the drug
problem can be solved by stepped
up police actions.

How many of the big wheels at ©
the top of the lucrative drug trade
have our police been able to ap-
prehend? As long as the profit
motive remains in the drug trade it
will flourish and crime will
flourish. And as long as the main
attack is on the victim’s of the drug | —
trade, and not the Mr. Bigs, drugs |

will continue to push up the crime — 2 7

rate.
In other words, we need an at-

working poor, the ill, handicapped
people, alcoholics and otherwise
unemployable people.

Eight-three percent (83%) of
these people draw some form of

developers.

TOM
> McEWEN

Ts. spokesmen and, apologists of big business, in
Parliament or scattered across the nation like a fungus
epidemic, never tire of reminding us what a
“prosperous”’, ‘‘affluent’”’, ‘fortunate’ and well-to-do
people we are. By comparison, they tell us to take a look at
some of the starving sectors of the globe,

Bangladesh, areas of darkest Africa, etc. and etc., to
realize what ‘happy’ people we should be. This good
fortune, it may be added, is always attributed to their
marvellous foresight and management as heads of State.

By and large this Establishment guff is readily
swallowed, perhaps at times with a grain of salt, but
swallowed nevertheless until the next time around.

During the last federal election the old-line political
acrobats concentrated on three main objectives: the
creation (cost no barrier) of the most attractive “‘image’’;
the very best in panaceas and promises, and last but not
least, the best in quack ‘“‘cures”’ for what ails Canada.

The real issue of course was (and is) Canada’s
economic survival, an issue which only candidates of the
Communist Party dared to raise, while the well-heeled
image makers argued loud and long about closing the
storm door to keep the pesky profiteering flies out.

Even the federal NDP which had starred in its balance
of-power image to prolong the life of a Liberal minority
misgovernment, suffered the fate of all who attempt to
build a new social edifice upon the political debris of fake
Establishment images and trickery.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1975—Page 2

not be done by private investors or
Their objective —
maximizing their investment —
can mean only a result in present

units of new accommodation to
house those long term residents
who have been or are about to be

displaced. project.

To top off this spate of image building in the best
tradition of Liberal spookdom a la Mackenzie King, a
majority government was loudly. called for — to solve all
of Canada’s problems — and incidentally to test an
electorate’s credibility. The test along with the image
remained. as did (and does) the real issue — Canada’s
economic survival.

Statistics aside, it is often said that British Columbia is
not only a very beautiful country (for which we are sup-
posed to thank former Socred Bennett and company), and
50-cents of every revenue dollar comes out of its forest and
lumbering industry alone. That being the case, after
scanning the vast corporate profits of the big timber
barons, we are pretty damn sure where the other 50-cents
or more goes.

On the other side of the coin we have some factors basic
to Canada’s economic survival, which any ape from the
local zoo could solve while scratching his backside.

The Vancouver and District Labor Council issued a very
timely leaflet, which tells us, interalia, that in the Lower
Mainland of B.C. alone over 60,000 units (homes) are
needed now. Nor is the national scenario on urgently
needed housing less grave. On the national scene the VLC
pamphlet proposes a minimum of 300,000 units of low cost
housing annually.

Thus while profiteering landlords nail up ‘‘no vacancy”
signs on vacant apartments, and predict the ‘‘homeless
can sleep in cars,” while twenty to thirty thousand lumber
and construction workers.are fired, locked out, jobless or
what have you; while billions of board feet of building
timber deteriorates in the lumber yard or in the ‘‘drink’’
and the once relatively proud home owner is now reduced
to the status of a tenant, or the latter with his family
headed for the street or the parks as his long-range
“abode’’, the Canadian economy has not and will not

concerned with improving Van-
couver for its people will let
Council know their views on this

survive. As any local zoo ape would tell his cousin Homo

tack on the social problems that

traffic> But hundreds more police
See MORE POLICE, pg. 11

Sapiens, were he endowed with the power of speech, “‘it is
just as simple as that!”

Total it up! Tens of thousands of unemployed and part-
time workers, systematically being pauperized by being.
denied the right to earn a livelihood. This is an un-
precedented era of monopoly affluence, profiteering and
waste!

Billions of board feet in sawn and standing timber,
subject to what is called a ‘‘shrinking market’, in which
only the prospective builder or repairer, rather than the
excess profits “shrink.” :

Countless thousands of young and old people alike,
pleading for a roof over their heads they can reasonably
afford — to little or no avail.

Here the much-distorted Establishment law of ‘‘supply
and demand”’ goes up in a billowing cloud of political

- yakkety-yak. A vast’ army of jobless workers, plus a

mountain of unused material provides a ready-to-hand
supply, while a like contingent of homeless citizens,
seeking in vain for a home they. can reasonably afford,
provides more than enough demand! Thus both of these
essential ingredients are more than in ample supply —
were it not for the inherent monopoly greed for profit
which bars the way.

The urgent need for low-cost housing, and the obstacles _
opposing it is only one example of monopoly profiteering

and dominance which gravely endangers Canada’s 4 é

economic survival.

The ‘Ides of March” which heralded the collapse of the
Ceasars of ancient Rome, could also herald in this age a
“rendezvous with history’ where labor and the people
would apply a fix-it-yourself policy to the lack of housing
and like problems facing the Canadian economy. In a
number of countries this is known as Socialism, in which
the economy is geared to the needs of the people, rather
than to the greed of monopoly capitalism. It’s worth ~
trying!

lead to and stimulate the drug — *