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“Let’s have a game of Cops and Democratic Convention ECCLES in Morning Star.

EDITORIAL

The ‘Just Society’?

rime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s ‘‘Just Society’ is beginning to take shape, the pieces falling into place _ like a crude jigsaw puzzle. ;

Last week he announced termination of the 10-year old federal aid to municipal winter work programs. There was little or nothing to indicate that the Prime Minister had even hinted to the financially hard-pressed municipalities that such a measure was even contemplated. The knife just came down with a bang, much after the technique of a guillotine. This measure, says the prime minister, will be part of our “financial belt tightening program’’;

It sure will. With well on to half a million-Canadian workers already jobless} to say nothing of tens of thousands of students for whom a temporary summer job was largely non-existent, the terminating of federal aid to municipal winter work projects, will add thousands of wage earners and family bread- winners to an already large jobless army.

What it will do to hard-pressed municipal governments, already with their backs to the wall financially, is not hard to guess; primarily because Of both federal and provincial disregard for their respective urgent and pressing needs, particularly in such areas as education, construction, health services, ete.

Mr. Trudeau doesn’t ‘‘believe” in winter works programs just to “make work’, so he clamps down on municipal grass- roots winter work financing. His long-range program for his “Just Society’, as yet barely on the drafting board, obviously does’nt take into account how, what or where additional tens of thousands of workers and their families are to subsist meantime.. Millionaire swingers scarcely ever do when away from the public glamor;

B.C. Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Campbell has stated that the prime minister’s announcement has placed many B.C. municipalities “in jeopardy’’, probably the under-statement of the year, while Vancouver Mayor Tom Campbell figures the Trudeau winter works program guillotine will throw an estimated 400 civic workers on the jobless scrapheap alone, to say nothing of important construction projects which will be drastically affected.

Many mayors, reeveS and other municipal officials throughout B.C. have already yoiced strong Opposition to Trudeau’s announcement, knowing too well the grave economic consequences it will have on their respective communities — not only in badly needed municipal projects cancelled out, but in the grave economic hardships it will place upon their local people . . . and the municipal tax load already at the breaking point;

A government that moves to eliminate gainful employment and needed construction projects and condemn those so affected to subsist on temporary jobless insurance payment or a “welfare” subsistence level, is not planning for a ‘“‘Just

Trudeau’s ‘‘Just Society’ becomes more readily discernable with his finale to winter work programs. For the hard-pressed municipalities and their wage earning communities it will fall far short of ‘just’. But for the captains of industry and finance, very ‘‘Just”’ indeed.

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Associate Editor—MAURICE RUSH

Editor—TOM McEWEN iar ie Published weekly at Ford Bidg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 6, 1986 Page 2

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but, —

A ‘deaf ear’,

lt’s a landlord’s council

BY ALD. HARRY RANKIN

7000 UBC students must find rooms or suites off campus this month. Although university opens next week, many of them had no success and the situation is becoming desperate.

Representatives of the: Alma Mater Society appeared before Council last week to ask that the ban be lifted on so-called ‘‘illegal Suites’’. But Council gave them - the cold shoulder. In doing so it responded to the pressure of big apartment owners and real estate interests who want the housing shortage to continue so that rents and housing costs may be kept high.

In Burnaby, on the other hand, where Simon Fraser University Students face a similar housing Shortage, municipal council eased regulations concerning single family dwellings. As a result 9000 extra housing units are expected .to become available. This will benefit not only students but all low income groups.

The sons and daughters of the wealthy attending UBC have no housing problems, of course, nor any other financial problems for that matter. If they live away from home it is in high priced

apartments. They suffer no hardships; their future is

assured.

But what of the students of low income families? What of the girls who worked for $1.00 or $1.50 an hour all summer? What of the young men who were able to find work only part of the time? Are they to be denied the right to attend university just

because they can’t afford to pay high rents?,*

For young married couples, particularly if they have children, the problem is particularly difficult.

City Council’s refusal to lift the ban on illegal suites in the light of these circumstances was both callous and cruel.

Council’s refusal is one more proof that we are up against a heartless Establishment whose control over City Hall must be challenged if people’s needs are to receive priority.

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Prime Minister Trudeau’s action last week in axing the winter works program. will cancel hundreds of municipal -improvements across the country and thousands of jobs.

For Vancouver it could mean dropping of important sewer, sidewalk and_ park improvements, the lay-off of 25- 50 regular employees and up to 400 temporary employees.

Under the terms of the winter works program, Ottawa paid half of the payroll costs of approved projects, with the province also making a contribution, in some _ cases. Ottawa contributed $500,000 to Vancouver’s $3 million winter works program this past year.

The prime minister claims that his action was necessary ‘‘to maintain the greatest possible restraint with respect to expenditures by all levels of -government’’.

' worthwhile recalling at this

_ in Council demanding that the _ prime minister reconsider his il]

That proposition is questionable in itself because I think we need greater expenditures, not less, for housing, education and other needs of the people. But if federal expenditures are to be reduced, why pick on those that create jobs and municipal improvements?

Why not cut subsidies to the CPR, or the huge tax concessions to oil and mining companies? Or why not cut down on the many wasteful and useless expenditures involved in the $1.4 billion spent annually on defence to keep up American- dictatedcommitments in NATO and NORAD?

Prime Minister Trudeau’s cancellation of the winter works program is class legislation designed to make one class bear all the burdens. The drive for economies in government is to be at the expense of the people while the wealthy will go untouched. His action will be a great disappointment to many who expected his policies to be different from those of his predecessors. It may be

point that our prime minister is a millionaire in his own right, all his ties are with big corporations and his Montreal constituency is one of the wealthiest in Canada.

I intend to introduce a motion

advised action in killing the winter works program. Unemployment is higher than a year ago and municipalities are hard pressed for funds. This is no time for cut-backs in community projects.

Cont. from Pg. 1

payment on a $20,000 mortgage is $1800 a year, whereas the 1949 interest on a $10,000 mortgage was only $500. This is an increase

_ Of 230% compared to the D.B.S. assertion of 45%.

' (For those who may be curious about the technical details of such a monstrous inaccuracy, we offer the following speculation. If in keeping with its cherished principle of pricing a ‘fixed basket of goods’’ D.B.S. chose, say, 100 homes, and has surveyed the same 100 houses every year, they would find in 1968, that many of the homes they started with were still covered by the Same 5% mortgage that was in effect in 1949. But in the meantime, most of the principal would have been paid off, thereby reducing the interest to a fraction of its original amount. This greatly reduced intarest is presumably averaged with the much higher interest being paid on homes that have been sold with new mortgages. This is a plausible explanation of how D.B.S. arrives at its implausible figure, but it completely unacceptable as a way of estimating what people in like circumstances actually have to pay.) |

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is of course.

Cost-of-living

But.even if the index itself were unexceptionable, it still would not give -a true picture. For the fact is that the index disregards one of the high and constantly rising elements of the cost of living, namely the income tax. And we have to bear in mind that the income tax is so désigned that even if the tax rates remain unchanged, every wage increase brings with it a

more than proportional increase in taxes.

Consider the married man who earned $2000 in 1949 and $4000 in 1968. On the face of it, the implication is that, since the increase in consumer prices (according to D.B.S.) is 50%, his cost of living went up to $3000. Since he now has $4000 to spend,

he is supposed to be one third better off.

Alas, the facts are otherwise, In 1949, he had no income tax to pay. Today he pays roughly $300 in basic income tax, $80 in Old Age Security Tax and $71 in Canada Pension Plan tax. Thus his actual take home pay is only about $3550, and the net gain

over his presumed $3000 cost of .

living is only about 18 percent instead of 33 percent. Even that small gain could easily have been wiped out by the difference _ between his actual cost of

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housing and the mythical cost included in the Consumer Price Index.

Yet, we in Canada are constantly subjected to propaganda about our rising standard of living and exhorted to refrain from demanding wage increases in order not to rock the boat. Productivity is said’ (also by D.B.S.) to be rising at 4 percent a year, and somehow one is supposed to believe that he: will get the benefit of higher productivity without wage increases. Just how, js something of a mystery.

The fact is, of course, that the average worker does live better today than in the past. But it is a moot point how much of the improvement is due to higher wages and how much to the fact that many more wives today are working and bringing home a secondincome. — .

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