_ organizations,

ne PCy

— Sean Griffin photo

About 150 Vancouver Heights and Hastings Sunrise residents blocked the intersections of residential
streets between Hastings and Oxford on Cassiar St. Wednesday morning to demonstrate their opposi-
tion to the continuing problem of commuter traffic using residential streets. Problems at the busiest in-
tersection in western Canada; Hastings and Cassiar, will only worsen if plans to build a 60,000 seat
stadium at the PNE go ahead. Demonstrators want government action to connect Highway 1 with the
Second Narrows Bridge, possibly by a tunnel under the Hastings and Cassiar intersection.

‘Equal access to education’
is target of NUS campaign

By DAN KEETON

A fight for equal opportunity to a
post-secondary education for all
students in Canada will be the main
focus of activity for Canada’s na-
tional student organization this
year.

This was the decision of over 110
delegates who attended the seventh
annual conference of the national
Union of Students at the University
of B.C. May 9 to May 13.

The student leaders, who collect-
ively represented 37 student organi-

zations from member campuses as

well as a number of non member-
aul also endorsed
students Tights to union member-
ship and activities and called for an

end to discrimination against for-

eign born or
students.”

The conference delegates dis-
played a ‘‘real commitment to the
proposal” for a grassroots cam-
pa?gn On universal accessibility as

‘international

mittee in its annual report to the
conference, according to NUS re-
searcher Morna Ballentyne. The
student representatives decided on a
three-pronged campaign for the
coming year aimed at getting sup-
port for the program at local, na-
tional and provincial levels.

The focus on accessibility is part
of the seven-year-old organization’s
overall campaign against cutbacks
in post-secondary education.

Although the format of the strat-
egy will not be finalized until the
NUS fall conference in October,
NUS envisages a week of general as-
semblies on campuses, member and

non member alike, in early Novem-’

ber. In this effort, it hopes to
cooperate with Quebec’s national
student association ANEQ.

The conference final plenary also
voted acceptance of a motion from
the NUS labor caucus which rec-
ognizes that many students are also
workers and that some of them are
unionized. Delegates voted that, as

such, students have the same rights
as any worker to engage in union
activities, including picketing, and
that no student should suffer any
academic or financial penalty for
participating in or respecting picket
lines on campus.

The conference delegates reaf-
firmed NUS opposition to the dif-
ferential in tuition fees charged to
international students in some
Canadian provinces, including B.C.
Alberta and Ontario, and added
that international students should
be protected by Canadian human
rights legislation and that quotas on
foreign born students at some in-
stitutions be abolished.

Another resolution called on stu-
dent unions and bodies to boycott
investment in firms which deal with
or have holdings in Chile.

The conference was the first to be
preceded by a one-day conference
on women’s issues, which has now
become a permanent feature of
NUS conferences.

_. ‘Cut arms budget

for housing’ —C

Continued from pg. 1

Star, have also switched their sup-
port to the Tories.

The reason for the shift to the
Tories is Joe Clark’s program for
“privatization of the economy”
which would see the return of
Petrocan and other crown corpora-
tions to the private sector.

Kashtan rapped Clark’s dema-
gogic stand that the Tories would
turn Petrocan over to the people..
“Everything profitable - will be
handed back to private interests,
anything unprofitable Clark prom-
ises the government will maintain.”’

Clark’s promise to cut_ 60,000
people from the civil service and to
increase the army to 83,000 have
also’ caught the imagination of the
key business circles, he charged.

Trudeau’s ‘‘get tough’’ attitude
to the unemployed and poor is an
attempt to counteract the swing to
Clark in business circles, he added,
and ‘‘to prove that he can be just as
right wing.”’

NDP leader Ed Broadbent is
making a strong pitch for Canadian
control of resources, but he has yet
to say how it will be achieved, Kash-
tan said. ‘‘With the NDP it is na-
tionalization if necessary, but not
necessarily nationalization, he said.
With the NDP committed to the
free market system it is limited in
the extent to which it can be an al-
ternative in Canada, he said,
although ‘‘opportunities are here
for real change.’”

Working people are developing
an anti-monopoly attitude in
Canada — ‘“‘slowly, but it’s there”’
— and Kashtan said, that will mean
increased support for the CP in the
election. ‘‘A vote for Communist
Party candidates is a -vote that
counts.”’

Tuesday, Kashtan put in a full
day of campaigning in Vancouver
beginning with a morning tour of
the Imperial Fish Plant in Steveston
with Burnaby South Delta CP can-
didate Homer Stevens.

Following the tour of Imperial
Kashtan made’an appearance at the
False Creek fishermen’s wh arf
with Vancouver Centre CP candi-
date Bert Ogden. Ogden, himself an
officer of the United Fishermen and
Allied Workers Union, introduced

Kashtan to a group of fishermen for
a brief exchange on the problems of
the fishing industry. The impact of
Japanese capital on the industry,
over fishing and over capitalization
and bargaining rights for fishermen
were all stressed by the fishermen.
Kashtan used the occasion to
reiterate CP policy for the immedi-
ate granting of bargaining rights to
fishermen and for the calling off of
the Combines attack on the union
which he said was an open attempt
by the Liberal government to smash
the UFAWU.

Next stop was the Downtown
Eastside and a tour of housing con-
ditions with Vancouver East CP
candidate Fred Wilson and officers
of the Downtown Eastside Resi-
dents’ Association. “‘It’s guns or
butter,’’ the CP leader said outside
the Wonder Rooms on Cordova
St., ‘it’s either $4.1 billion for
arms, or decent housing for
people.’’

The main point made by DERA
and Wilson was that the slum hous-
ing existed only because of the
policies of the federal, provincial
and city governments. Kashtan re-
sponded with the CP’s demand for
300,000 units of low-cost housing to
be built annually and he also sup-
ported the call of Wilson in Van-
couver East for an immediate $30
million program in the Downtown
area to built 1,800 units of new
housing in 1979 and 1980.

Wilson and Kashtan then moved
on to Hastings and Woodland Dr.,
site of the proposed new Vancouver
Indian Centre. There are 30,000
Native people living in Greater Van-
couver and about half are estimated
to be in Vancouver East, Indian
Centre spokesmen Archie McDon-
ald. and Gordon Norquay told
Kashtan, but there is no cultural
centre or community for Native
people in the city.

Native peoples need to be able to
make their own decisions about the
programs, industries and forms of
government they desire, Kashtan
said, and their right to make deci-
sions as a distinct people has to be
enshrined in a new constitution.

Later Kashtan and other CP can-
didates mainstreeted on Commer-
cial Drive and wound up at a lun-
cheon.

proposed by the NUS Central Com-

Socred-Tory alliance seen in Bennett win

Substantial, if tacit, support
from the federal Tory organization
and electoral redistribution that was
weighted heavily in its favor com-
bined to put the Social Credit
government back in office follow-
ing last Thursday’s provincial vote.

But when the count was com-

plete, the Socreds’ 17-seat majority _

had been slashed to a bare five,
significantly restricting their ability
to push through the kind of un-
popular legislation that had typified

_ the government since its election in
December, 1975.

‘The result was also far from that
sought by premier Bennett in his bid

to ensure a favorable climate for.

corporate investment.

The New Democratic Party in-
creased its representation from 18
to 26 seats and increased its share of
the popular vote to 45.9
percent—less than 242 percentage
points behind the Socreds.

A key factor in the Socreds’ nar-
row win was the tacit. agreement of
the federal Conservative Party
organization to support the Socreds
in return for Social Credit electoral
support in the federal vote May 22.
Tory provincial candidates had
made the charge in the campaign

and it was essentially borne out in’

the vote.

Despite the fact that it ran
substantially more candidates this
time than in 1975, the Tories only
increased their share of the popular
vote by about | percent.

Most of the Liberals’ vote, on the
other hand, went to the NDP.

But a more important factor was
the Eckardt Commission’s
redistribution which, even though it
did not result in all the Socred vic-
tories that party strategists had
planned, was decisive.

The redistribution wiped out the
double member riding of

Vancouver-Burrard—long con-.

sidered an NDP stronghold—and
included the wealthy district of
Shaughnessy in Vancouver-Little
-Mountain, a shift which analysts
estimate added a net of 3,000
Socred votes to the riding.

Without the redistribution, the
NDP would certainly have taken
Vancouver-Burrard and would like-
ly have taken Vancouver-Little
Mountain, since the vote margin in
both cases was less than 3,000 and,
in Michael Harcourt’s case,was on-
ly 1,400 votes. In the old
55-membef Legislature, the dif-
ference could well have meant the
government.

Instead, the NDP picked up only
two seats by the redistribution—in
North Island where former MLA
Colin Gabelmann was successful
and in Surrey where Ernie Hall won
one of the two seats.

But even at that, the Socreds
were set back as all but two of the

-Vancouver Island seats went to the

NDP and three cabinet ministers
went down to defeat.

Moreover, in the city of Van-
couver, the popular vote which
went to the NDP was substantially
greater than that which went to the
Socreds. Vancouver has long been
under-represented in the
Legislature, but it lost even more
seats through redistribution.

The Communist Party’s cam-
paign, though it was limited as the
party sought to have the main atten-
tion focused on the defeat of the
Socred government, also resulted in
gains. Still small, they were never-
theless significant in the context of
vote polarization.

Party leader Maurice Rush led
the campaign from Vancouver Cen-
tre where he chalked up 268 votes
while running mate Miguel
Figueroa took 218. The two CP
candidates in Vancouver-Centre in
1975 took 164 and 140 votes respec-

tively.

Similarly, the vote in Surrey in-
creased substantially from 67 votes
for the single member running in
1975 to 193 votes for George
Gidora and 167 for running mate Jo
Arland.

Elsewhere, the Communist can-
didates’ results were: Betty Griffin,
Burnaby-North, 82; John Stevens,
Delta, 66; Gary Swann, Alberni,
93.

“The Communist campaign for
real change in B.C. brought for-
ward the major issues in this cam-
paign and forced debate-on them
wherever Communist candidates
were running,’’ Rush commented
following the May 10 vote.

“It wasn’t reflected in the vote

_because of the polarization, but the

Communist platform won ‘wide
public support in its demand for
new economic policies to create

‘jobs through resource processing

based on public ownership of the
multinationals.’”

Rush emphasized that it was the
focus on policies of public owner-
ship of resources and the campaign
for labor rights which had
distinguished the CP platform.

He noted that the NDP had

“abandoned the fight for public
ownership and accepted the Socred
plan to scuttle crown corporations
through the shore scheme.’’
In addition, he said, the NDP
“kept the major issue of labor
rights in the background,”’ making
no pledge for the repeal of the
Essential Services Disputes Act or
for bargaining rights for fishermen.
“It can be expected that the NDP
will continue to stress its ‘moderate’
image in the hope of appealing to
more Liberal and middle voters,”’
he said, adding that s uch an ap-
proach by the Barrett leadership,

‘‘will pose serious obstacles to labor ,

and the people winning new
policies.

“United action by _ leftward
members of the NDP, labor and
progressive forces will be needed to
press the NDP to fight in the
legislature for new policies.

“Obviously a new political situa-
tion has been created in this pro-
vince,’’ he emphasized. ‘‘It opens
the way fora further defeat of right
wing policies and for gains for labor
and progressive people provided the
anti-right wing forces are united in
pressing their demands in the new
legislature.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 18, 1979—Page 3

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