literary salad concocted out of post-election leftovers

ex-‘‘prime minister’” WAC Bennett last week fore- cast a new epidemic which he claims has hit B.C., viz, — the spread of a socialist disease now infecting the province. That being something which neither acupuncture nor Socred soothing syrup can cure, our erstwhile leading Socred Potentate, .minus his customary grin, urges that the alarm bells ring out throughout the province and the official Opposi- tion sound a warning.

So it’s sound the tocsin, blow the old-line partisan whistles, call out the civil defense and man the barricades; the “socialist disease’’ is spreading like measles and the impending threat of take-overs now replaces the reality of Socred give-aways.

Just a few days before this astounding forecast when NDP Minister of Highways Strachan was voicing some. troubles “understanding Bennett’s financing’ or words to that effect, WAC announced with some asperity that ‘‘Mr. Strachan just doesn’t understand financing’. How true, how true; a shortcoming that would possibly cover a few thousand Strachans in this province who never did understand Doktor Bennett’s financing during all the 20-years of his sleight-of- hand juggling — a fact which no doubt bears a close relationship to his latest hysteria on the ‘‘socialist disease”’ epidemic.

While the danger of any ‘‘socialist disease’’ stemming from NDP policies to date are very remote, the achievements for progress in its first Special Legislative Session were and are very commendable, achievements which kept the rag-tag remnants of a ‘‘loyal” Opposition stuttering and spluttering and snapping most of the time. The cause of their ire how ever did not arise from any fear or threat of socialism, but because they saw most of their legislative sacred cows carted off to the boneyard witha minimum of ceremony. Worse, with some of the carcasses of these sacred cows went their lost opportunities to dispense vast sums of the taxpayers’ dollars— on which they had held an undisputed monopoly for nigh on 20 years. No wonder WAC becomes melancholy and reverts to gloomy predictions, ‘‘socialism’’ among them.

Having saved British Columbia from that pernicious ‘disease of socialism’’ on numerous occasions during past elections, it is not surprising that the ‘‘Hon.’’ WAC wants the alarm sounded to stage yet another great evangel. ‘‘The chicken dreams of millet’’ wrote the immortal Lenin, but for sucha scrub breed of political barnyard fowl, the dream often _ becomes a nightmare. . . with no road back to the affluence that results from the misuse of other peoples’ life resources. Hence the fantastic Bennett hysteria about NDP ‘‘socialist diseases.”

~ Asseen from the results of the recent federal election, as well as a number of provincial turn-overs in recent times, the crisis in Canadian capitalism is wide, deep, andin many basic facets, insurmountable. Despite its victories, which express a - mass peoples’ desire for some fundamental changes, the NDP itself stand out as an exponent against fundamental social change, by its studied rejectionof unity asa prime conditionof achieving such change.

It was noaccidentor slip of the tongue that the NDP right- wing leadership chose the period of an election campaign to reject left unity; to vent their.spleen and misrepresentations upon the Communists and reiterate their go-it-alone policies, thereby short-circuiting the aspirations of the electorate.

Nor is it any accident, now that the Vancouver electorate have an opportunity to bury a discredited and corrup Non- Partisan Association for good, that the NDP again says “‘no dice, it is us alone, undefiled and unmoved by any appeals for unity. If the veteran Alderman Harry Rankin of the Committee of Progressive Electors wants to be re-elected, let him join the NDP’

Who do you think will be the main beneficiaries of that brand of NDP ‘‘unity’’? You've guessed it . . . the Non- Partisan real estate sharks and financial jugglers who are also in the Bennett ‘‘sound the alarm”’ camp against a so-called “socialist disease.”

Any competent political psychiatrist would probably advise Bennett. . . and the NDP leadership. that a stiff dose of this ‘“‘socialist’’ malady would be very good for both.

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CEMBER 8, 1972—-PAGE 2

RANKIN ANSWERS NDP ©

Housing,

not fire hall

need in Strathcona area

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

There are two main questions involved in the controversy over the proposed Strathcona Fire Hall site in Chinatown.

The first is the problem of where the new fire hall is to be located. The second is the land transactions involved.

My proposals for a solution to this problem are as follows: .

(1) The proposed location of the fire hall will have to be changed because the present site is unacceptable to the resi- dents of the area. In finding a new location, two problems must be borne in mind.

One is that the location must be such that good fire protection can be given to the Strathcona area. Secondly, the new location must not.displace people in some other area. In my view, this rules out the Powell Street site proposed by SPOTA because it

' would displace approximately

125 people.

(2) The present site should be developed into a low rental housing project for the people of the area, with preference being given to those people who were originally displaced by the abortive federal urban renewal scheme.

In this connection I would like to point out that I opposed and voted against the sale of this site to Orientif Imports in 1968. Furthermore I spoke and voted in Council against any further extension of time to these developers because it was clear to me from the start that Orientif Imports would not be building low rental housing, and that any housing which it might build would likely be out of the financial reach of the people who had been displaced. (My position on this whole issue was clearly outlined in my weekly column of July 29, 1968.)

Since thenI wasinformedbya newspaper reporter that the pro- prietor of Orientif Imports, Mr. Quon Shum, was an employee of the City of Vancouver until 1970, in various departments includ- ing Planning and Engineering.

City Council voted to use the present site for a fire hall be- cause of information supplied to it by the Fire Chief that of the three sites that had been pro- posed, this was the most suit- able. Following this Council decision, I spent an afternoon with Mr. Harry Con of SPOTA looking at other sites in the Strathcona area. He assured me that a site on the west side of False Creek would be agreeable to all concerned and I told him I would support this site in Coun- cil. assuming that the Fire Chief would go along with the proposal.

However some months later, |

SPOTA came out with a new proposal for a site, one on Powell Street. This I could not support

XMAS ISSUE

Next week’s issue of the PT will be our special Christmas edition. Last minute greetings can still be placed by phoning the PT office no later than noon Monday, Dec. 11.

because Council wasinformed it would displace some 125 people. I’m sure that the people of Strath- cona, in trying to prevent the building of a fire hall on the present site, do not want to create problems of this magni- tude for the people of any other area,

I want to also state that Ihave consistently opposed ‘‘In Camera’’ meetings of Council, furthermore that I refuse to be bound by any restrictions which treat matters discussed ‘‘In Camera’’ as confidential.

As for the original purchase of the site, this took place before I became a member of City Council. I voted for the motion to buy it back when it became apparent that the developer would do nothing and the site was necessary (aS we were informed by the Fire Chief ) fora fire hall. (Three new fire halls became necessary’ when the federal government decided to expropriate the one big fire hall we now have).

No other alternative was apparent at the time. It wasa case of leaving the land for the developer or buying it back fora fire hall site. Now that the resi- dents of Strathcona have expressed their opposition to

this site fora fire hall, it should, as Ihave said above, be used for public housing.

The NDP mayoralty and alder- manic candidates in a lengthy statement to the press and in leaflets distributed among Strathcona residents’ have expressed criticism of ‘‘the way in which the representatives of both TEAM and COPE have con- ducted themselves in this manner although we are not sur- prised.”’ It is interesting that

nowhere in its eight page press)

release is the NPA, which has a majority on City Council, singled out for attack or even men-

tioned. Just TEAM and COPE =

are attacked, even though both voted against the sale to Orientif Imports.

That sale was pushed through by an NPA majority. As for myself I would like to point this out to the residents of the Strath- cona area that, to the best of my knowledge, not one of the present 11 NDP mayoralty and aldermanic candidates who are now trying to make political capital out of this controversy, so much as raised their voices whenall this was going on for the last four years. They were silent, until an election cam- paign came along when they wanted the votes of the Strath- cona residents.

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