_B. Archer, President,
Federation of Labor, in
last weekend asked
has the Hellyer Task
| Housing told us? It has
are not enough
those who need them.
that.”
lyer’s suggestion to
e mortgage ceiling on
to $35,000, lower the
payment, lengthen the
tion period and curtail
with public housing,
to say:
see very little merit in
ng lower down payments
fer amortization periods
ure the prospective buyer
her principle and inter-
lgage payments over a
eriod of time. If a buyer
fford a privately owned
addling him with exor-
nortgage payments over
forty year period is
answer to his prob-
order to carry his
, provide building main-
pay taxes and other
much too high a pro-
his income is being
shelter. He is depriving
and his family of those
menities of life that
i be the right of every
”

doing away with pub-
ing,” Archer continued,
oblem is not that we
© much but that we've
mn poor job of build-
gh public housing in

By MEL DOIG

al tenants and with
e trade union movement
g to protest intolerable
ases.

winter of ’68-’69 will
ye remembered in Montreal.
ows came early and
The temperature has
w. And the four out of
s of Canada’s metro-
ho are tenants are now
ost wholly unprotected
of an onslaught of exor-

= Canadian Labor Congress
en urged to call a special
mce of all local union
across Canada to meet
oyers attack on the la-
'Movement and the living
Mards of the Canadian

le St. Catharines Labor
unanimously passed a
on at its Wednesday,
5 meeting expressing
at “the passage of Bill 33
sh ‘Columbia, the Rand
; in Ontario, the federal
ent’s Woods Report and

tied in these
ents with “the attack
past year im England,
Italy and the U.S.A.”
they. are. all “an

Canada to meet the need, never
mind the demand.”

“We should not allow Hellyer
to get away with a gratuitous
insult that calls for an investiga-
tion into restrictive union prac-
tices,” he said. “Hellyer was a
large private developer in the

. Toronto area where home prices

are among the highest on the
continent, and he should know
that few if any homes are built
with union labor. In fact at one
time workers in residential con-
struction, mostly recent immig-
rants, were so badly exploited
that the Ontario Government
named a Royal Commission to
investigate. Obviously Mr. Hel-
lyer hasn’t read the Goldenberg
report or he would be suggest-
ing investigating the contractors
and the speculators, not the ex-
ploited workmen.”

“The report, he pointed out,
“opts for private development
and individual ownership. Well,
until recently we’ve had nothing
but private development and
where has it landed us? As for
individual ownership, how can a
family earning under $6,000 a
year buy a home costing $20,000
and up?

“We in the Federation recog-
nize, and we have said it re-
peatedly, that we need homes
for all kinds of families. But
the desperate need is to provide
homes to those families who
cannot afford to buy at market
prices. This represents any-
where from 25 percent to 50 per-

bitant, merciless increases in
their rents, ranging monthly
from $10 to $25 and very often
higher.

The landlords proclaim their
“innocence.” They lay the blame
on Montreal’s city administra-
tion which last month increased
property taxes by 23 percent.
But the facts are that the rent
increases exacted by landlords
are bringing them increased
profits on their property invest-
ments which range as -high as

rge conference against
anti-labor legislation

attempt by the owners of cap-
ital to strengthen their mono-
poly position in the world mar-
ket at the expense of the
standard of living of the work-
ing people, and to weaken the
struggle of organized labor
around the world.”

“It is organized labor who
must lead the fight against the
monopolies attempt to weaken
the people’s struggle for a high-
er standard of living and a bet-
ter way of life for ourselves and
future generations,” the resolu-
tion concluded.

The Labor Council decided
that in addition to sending the
resolution to the CLC for action
it would send copies to all Ont-
ario Labor Councils and its own
affiliates asking them to take
similar actions.

oe A Gee.

cent of our people—not an in-
significant number. These people
must be helped and the best
way to help them is providing
them with good public housing,
subsidized where necessary.
And this is particularly true of
our senior citizens—probably 75
percent of whom are living on
substandard incomes and who,
when they get their pension
cheques, have to spend too large
a portion of it on rent, many
times to slum landlords.”

“Hellyer’s task force”, he
added, “‘has also suggested doing
away with ‘red tape’. Everyone,
of course, is opposed to ‘red
tape’. But what is it he wants
to do away with? Is it the regul-
ations governing housing stand-
ards and zoning which protect
the community and its citizens?
It took us years to stop slum
building, even yet we are not
completely successful. Let us
not give private developers a
free hand to disregard density,
pollution, overcrowding of ser-
vices in their efforts to make a
fast buck.”

The Hellyer task force report
on housing was denounced by
Vancouver Labor Council deleg-
ates as a sheer fraud upon the
Canadian people. Nick Podvini-
koff (Carpenters), said “one is at
a loss to understand how a re-
port of this kind could ever be
written—with two fundamental
questions totally omitted; exor-
bitant interest rates and the
high speculative prices of land.”

100 to 200 percent.

So far, the landlord-leeches
of Montreal, with rare excep-
tions have been able to get away
with it. For with the exception
of the dwellings built up to 1951
which come under the control
of the Quebec Rentals Board,
there is no recourse, no rental
appeals board, no protection for
the great majority of Montreal’s
tenants. The Quebec Rental
Board, Montreal District, re-
ports received in January alone
38,000 complaints from tenants
living in the 100,000 dwellings
under its control.

His worship, the prestigious
Mayor of Montreal, Jean Dra-
peau, is scurrying to find an es-
cape hatch. Threatening to re-
sign from his post following the
city’s decision to close Man and
His World, (the continuation of
“Expo ’67”), he has charged the
Federal Government with en-
dangering Canada’s very future
in its indifference to the prob-
lems of cities. “I am afraid,” he
said on the eve of the Federal
Constitutional Conference,“ that
we'll have no choice but to wit-
ness Canada’s break-up if Otta-
wa continues to act as it does.”

Montreal tenants consider this
hypocritical. For whatever the
considerable truth of the Mayor’s
charge that Ottawa has disre-
garded the financial and admi-
nistrative crisis of Canada’s
cities, he himself is guilty of
having betrayed the interests of
over 80 percent of Montreal’s
population, the tenants.

In March 1968, the Quebec
Government passed a law, now
referred to as Bill 12, which of-
fered a system. of rental con-

Hellyer’s housing hoax hit

Other delegates from unions
in the construction industry
pointed out that many of these
homes now being built “are just
boxes thrown together,” which
will have collapsed long before
the 40 years are up, so that by
the time'a homeowner has man-
aged to pay for his home (if
ever), it will be pretty much of
a wreck.

In Manitoba, Bill Ross, pro-
vincial leader of the Communist
Party, said, “Mr. Hellyer’s Task
Force on Housing has spent the
taxpayers’ money to tell them
that nothing will be done to
provide housing for those who
need it most. The public is to
be left out of housing.” —

“The Report of the Task
Force”, he continued, “is an at-
tempt to absolve the Federal
Government of its responsibility
to launch a large scale program
of subsidized housing to meet
the needs of the hundreds of
thousands of Canadian families
who cannot afford decent accom-
modation. The proposal to halt
the construction of public hous-
ing projects condemns these low-
income families to continued
existence in over-crowded, sub-
standard and demoralizing liv-
ing conditions. This will only
worsen and perpetuate the grow-
ing blight of slums.

“The fact that the Task Force
offers nothing to the majority
of Canadian families who earn
less than $5,500 a yetr, exposes
the Liberal Government’s callous

trols on all dwellings in all mu-
nicipalities in Quebec. But it
made the law optional. Mon-

‘treal’s City Council, in which

48 of 52 councillors are mem-
bers of Jean Drapeau’s Parti
Civique de Montréal, voted
against participating in the uni-
versal rent controls of Bill 12.
And Mayor Drapeau led the
campaign to “opt out,” declar-
ing “it is easier to get into con-
trols than to get out of them.”
He spoke for the property own-
ers, for those who control the
city, for the monopolists, Can-
adian and American.

Demands have been made
that the city administration
change its policy immediately
and vote to make Bill 12 applic-
able to Montreal. The first of
these demands was that of the
joint delegation of the Montreal
Labor Council and the League
of Women of Quebec. They ob-
tained from Lucien Saulnier,
chairman of the City Executive,
a request that they prepare a
joint report on all rental com-
plaints received by these two
organizations, and a “promise”
that the “city will intervene if
cases of abusive rent can be
proved.”

The hollowness of this pro-
mise is only equalled by the
practical impossibility that the
city administration could even
begin to tackle the enormous
job of “intervening” in the flood
of individual complaints.

A year ago, in a period of
“normal” rent gouging, Quebec
cabinet minister Gabias report-
ed that 36.5 percent of rent in-
creases demanded in Montreal

were abusive. Today in Montreal

disiegard for the hopes of the
working people. The govern-
ment’s policies continue to serve
the big real estate interests, the
private construction companies
and the mortgage institutions.”

“The labor movement”, Ross
concluded, “and all those con-
cerned with really tackling the
shameful housing crisis mus!
intensify their pressure on the
Federal Government to launck
a crash program of subsidizec
housing as the only means tc
ensure the right of every Cana:
dian citizen to decent accom-
modation.””

Montreal labor protests rent gouge

that percentage can reasonabl:
be estimated to have at leas
doubled.

The organized labor move
ment of all Quebec has beer
quick to come to the support o
the initiative shown by the
joint protest delegation of thr
Montreal Labor Council and the
League of Women of Quebec
The Quebec Federation of Labo
(QFL) in a telegram sent by its
general secretary, Claude Méri
neau to City Executive chair.
man Lucien Saulnier “demand:
that Montreal urgently take ad
vantage of Bill 12 retroactively
to May 1968 to protect tenents
against unjustified rental in-
creases.” The QFL has support-
ed the identical demand of the
Housing and Urban Renewa
committee of the Montreal Coun-
cil of Social Agencies.

The Montreal Central Council
of the Confederation of National
Trade Unions (CNTU) and with
it the CNTU as a whole, through
its general secretary, Raymond
Parent, have publicly supported
the Montreal Labor Council
(QFL) and the League of Wo-
men of Quebec in their demand
that Montreal “opt in” to Bill
12 rental controls.

The massive campaign now
developing against rent increas-
es and for rental controls pro-
mises to expand into a wide de-
mocratic campaign of unity be-
tween citizens’ associations and
the organized trade union move-
ment for low-rental, low-income
housing, and for democratic
participation of Montreal citi-
zens in the government of their
city. stat overt: bt