B.C./Canada

Care eroded at Surrey
Hospital, doctors warn

Continued from page 1
— and that even that status is threatened

with a growing deficit and inadequate min-
istry funding.

The report cited examples of eroded care
such as waits of more than six hours for an
emergency appendectomy, treatment for
bowel obstruction, or hip and ankle frac-
tures. “It is not uncommon to wait for more
than a day or two to have a kidney stone
removed, or to have prostate surgery for
acute retention of urine.

“In the emergency department, it is not
unusual to have laboratory results returned
two to three hours after they have been
ordered, because of lack of laboratory tech-
nicians, or to wait 1/2 to one hour for the
porter to come to take a patient to the x-ray
department,” it related.

The report recommended the ministry be
petitioned for more money, and if that failed,
that reductions be made in several non-
medical areas of the hospital, including the
administration.

Allnutt said it was noteworthy that in a
subsequent report to the hospital board, pre-
sident and chief executive officer Roger
Bernatzki did not contradict the main points
made in the doctors’ “damning” report. The
president either accepted or rejected various
recommendations the medical advisors
tendered.

~ Inthe case of Bumaby General, the HEU
has called on the Socred government to ap-
point a public examining board under Sec-
tion 44 of the Hospital Act to investigate the
hospital’s staffing policy.

The union has long waged a campaign
against the practice of hospitals eliminating
LPNs and replacing them with RNs, who
receive more training and are qualified to
administer medication. The HEU says using
RNs— who are members of the B.C. Nurses
Union — for tasks that can be performed by
practical nurses is a waste of training and
money.

CHRIS ALLNUTT

B.C. hospitals face chronic nursing short-
ages, which hospital unions say is due to
poor wages and working conditions
throughout the province.

Until recently, there was only a slight
wage gap between RNs and LPNs, the result
of the HEU fighting wage discrimination
against women employees in the mid-
Seventies during the NDP government, All-
nutt noted.

More recently the wage gap has in-
creased with LPNs earning close to 50 per
cent less than Registered Nurses, he said.

Burnaby General president Barth, at a
press conference with the HEU, acknow-
ledged the hospital is now reconsidering the
issue and has called on the health ministry
to review procedures.

By MEGAN WILLIAMS

OSNABURGH, Ont. — On a cool,
windy day, under a flapping blue and
white carnival tent, the Anglican arch-
bishop of Capetown, South Africa, Des-
mond Tutu, told the people of this small,
poor reserve that someday they will be
free.

Tutu made the statement Aug. 16 at
the end of his two-day visit to this north-
em Native community, 315 kilometres
northwest of Thunder Bay. Before a
crowd of about 200 people, Tutu talked
about the poverty, injustice and depriva-
tion faced by Canada’s first nations
people. He said, in reference to both his
own people in South Africa and Native
people in Canada, “Even when people
have been oppressed for years, one day
they will stand up to enjoy their free-
dom.”

With that, Tutu led the crowd in sev-
eral shouts of ““We will be free,” and then
he was gone, to carry on the final part of

- his 10-day visit to Canada.

The 59-year-old archbishop, known
throughout the world for his support of
human rights and justice for all people,
came to. Osnaburgh at the invitation of
the Osnaburgh band. As Tutu explained,
“This place picked me, I didn’t pick it.

“We support your legitimate right to
your aspirations, your call for recogni-
tion of land claims, your call for self-
determination,” he declared.

On his tour, Tutu saw firsthand the
state of the reserve. He spoke to people
about their living conditions. He stopped
for amomentof silence atthe community
cemetery. And he saw a hydro dam site
that has flooded the waters traditionally
used for wild rice harvesting.

Bentley Cheechoo, Grand Chief of

Freedom will prevail, Tutu

tells Ontario Natives

Nishnawbe-Aski Nation (NAN), which
covers many of the reserves in north-
western Ontario, told Tutu that the people
of NAN have inherent and independent
rights. “The people of NAN will no
longer tolerate these injustices against
us.”

Fred Plain, the respected national
elder, asked Tutu to “remember this day
and take it back to South Africa with
you.” He added that Tutu should not let
the Department of Indian Affairs tell him
Osnaburgh is a unique community in
terms of its social ills.

“These conditions exist in every first
oe ie oe :
nation in Canada,” said Plain.

Tutu promised he would write a letter
to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney,
whom he quickly said, he regards as a
friend of his own people’s struggles, as
well as a letter to External Affairs Mini-
ster Joe Clark and Ontario Premier David
Peterson.

Assembly of First Nations president
George Erasmus said there will be many
positive impacts from Tutu’s visit.

“This will bring more awareness to
Canadians and others that indigenous
people here are in a similar situation as
blacks in South Africa. They have no
self-determination, control or lands,”
said the national chief. “Tutu’s letters
will remind the prime minister that he has
work to do at home.”

Megan Williams is a Native journalist
who works for Wawatay News, a bilin-
gual (Native and English) newspaper
serving 18,000 Native people in
northwestern Ontario.

The alchemists of the Middle Ages
never did succeed in finding a way to tum
base metals into gold. But where they
failed, the modern day CPR — through its
real estate arm, Marathon Realty — has
gone them one better: it has found a way to
turn mud into gold. The alchemists dab-
bled with physics and chemistry; the CPR
dabbled with civic politicians.

I’m referring of course to the CPR’s
massive Coal Harbour project, the area on
Vancouver’s waterfront between Canada
Place and Stanley Park, or to be more
precise, between Cardero and Burrard
streets. The project is supposed to include
a hotel, two marinas, office towers, con-
dominiums and a variety of other facilities
to be built over a period of 15 years. The
daily population in the area would increase
by 15,000.

The CPR “persuaded” the majority on
city council to rezone this waterfront
property. That simple act turned an almost
worthless piece of mud and sand into $500
million worth of prime real estate.

I’m reasonably certain the CPR will not
go through with the project as it was
presented to city council. All we have is an
outline of what it says it will do over a
period of 15 years. It will likely sell off the
property piece by piece to other
developers, and can make hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars profit this way without
spending a cent of its own.

What does the city get out of it? The

short term answer is nothing. The long
term answer is trouble and expense.

City council swallowed the project
without making any provision for the
thousands of extra cars this development
will bring into the area. A private consult-
ing firm of transportation planners and en-
gineers was hired to prepare a report on

| Harry
Rankin

traffic problems that would result from this
project. They reported that:

¢ “Traffic congestion on existing streets,
aggravated by the additional traffic
generated by Coal Harbour, will delay sur-
face transit operation”.

¢ “Routes along Hastings and Pender,
particularly west of Burrard Street will
suffer delays and consequently scheduling
problems”.

¢ “Surface transit (is) likely to suffer
from road congestion”.

¢ “Parking shortages in the area, already
an acknowledged problem, may worsen. If

so, illegal parking activity may compound
the traffic problem”.

¢ “Existing congestion in the downtown
area is acknowledged ... but there is no
specific plan to resolve this problem either
generally in the downtown or specifically
in the area adjacent to the Coal Harbour
project. There seems to be tacit acceptance
that traffic congestion will worsen, without
an explicit plan to mitigate its effects”.

So much for city planning. How that
traffic jam will eventually be solved is
anybody’s guess. But I’m sure the tax-
payers of Vancouver will foot some of the
bill. The city’s associate director of central
area planning also notes that “the Coal
Harbour project will create demand for
additional library facilities in the
downtown area.”

To justify this sell-out to the CPR, the
dominant Non Partisan Association block
trotted out the tired old argument that the
Coal Harbour project will extend the city’s
tax base. The answer to this false argument
is: (a) the property will be under-assessed.
as are all big corporate properties in the
downtown area, with the result that taxes
on this project will be low compared to
what homeowners pay, and (b) the extra
costs involved for the city — police and
fire protection among them — will more
than absorb the money coming in from
taxes on this property.

Mayor Gordon Campbell appealed to
aldermen to be kind to the CPR, to apply

Coal Harbour giveaway will cost us plenty

“an element of fairness” to Marathon Real-
ty. His feelings are understandable. Some
time before he came to city council as an
alderman and then mayor, he came on
delegations as a_ representative of
Marathon Realty.

As mayor, he has argued that the project
will bring housing and jobs to the city.
Housing for whom? There will be very
little social or affordable housing. Most of
it will be for the wealthy.

Will it bring jobs? Of course it will and
that’s all to the good, but the same number
of jobs could be created if city council
would have demanded a different type of
project — one which would use this whole
area for housing and for amenities open to
all citizens. If the biggest share of such
housing would be affordable (and there is
no reason why it couldn’t be), it would
make it possible for people who work in
the downtown area to live there. This in
itself would cut down traffic congestion.
The Maritime Museum, for example,
could also be located there.

The CPR’s Coal Harbour project was
adopted by a very narrow majority —a6-5

_ vote on city council. This indicates to me

that more and more citizens object to city
council being simply an arm of the
developers.

2 « Pacific Tribune, August 27, 1990