FOUR SEASONS PROPOSAL

City should acquire entire 14-acre site

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

The October 24 plebiscite on the ward system will also give voters a chance to decide what should be done with the Four Seasons site at the entrance to Stanley Park.

City Council on September 11 voted to put two questions to voters:

1) Are you in favor of Council acquiring all of the property being otherwise dealt with to recoup part of the costs of acquisition?

2) Are you in favor of a portion of the property being otherwise

dealt with to recoup part of the,

costs of acquisition?

To buy the whole 14 acre site would cost $6.4 million. I strongly support the purchase.

The second question conceals more than it reveals. The proposi- tion here is that the city buy only the western 10 acres of the site for

$2 million and allow private.

developers to keep the remaining easterly four acres for private development. Or alternatively, the city would buy the whole site and sell back the four eastern blocks to private developers, for $4 million.

Of course the developers, and those aldermen who support them, will claim that only a “‘low-profile”’ development will be undertaken on these four acres, but any high-rise, hotel or other commercial develop- ment here will create enormous traffic problems for this area and should not be permitted. _ The whole 14 acre site should be kept for public use. After the city acquires it, the city can also decide just how best it should be developed as a public amenity and integrated with Stanley Park.

I also believe that the city should get after the federal government to

foot a substantial part of the bill for acquiring this property.

If Ottawa hadn’t turned over water lots to one developer after another in the first place, we wouldn't have the problem today. Ottawa should now turn those water lots over to the city without charge.

Two years ago when citizens were asked to vote on whether or not to buy this property, Mayor Tom Campbell and the NPA Coun- cil puta price tag of $9 millionon it. The obvious purpose of that ex- aggerated price was to discourage voters from voting to buy the property. Land values have gone up in the last two years. IF the pre- sent current market price of the whole site is now $6.4 million, it means that two years ago the NPA put a price on it that was twice its market value!

This time tenants will also be allowed to vote on the issue. It should be possible to get a majority of 60 percent this time to settle the matter once and for all, and ac-

quire this property for public use. * * Ox

Alderman Rankin was elected to the executive body of the Union of B.C. Municipalities last Friday as the convention in Prince George. He was nominated from the floor and defeated another candidate who was put forward by the nominating committee.

SUPPORT THE PT RENEW YOUR SUB TODAY

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Soldier of the armed forces of the Provisional Government of South

Vietnam is shown standing on guard in liberated areas.

— Tass photo

act protested

Schoo! board iim

Opposition to the recent decision by the TEAM-dominated Val couver school board to lease the Dawson School site to a commer | cial developer was voiced last week by the Committee of Progressive Electors’ (COPE) education com mittee. ;

The developers plan to replace the present buildings with a mult million dollar commercial hote- office-apartment complex.

In a press statement, Irene & Foulks of the COPE educatiol ; committee said, “‘it is of great co cern to COPE that this decisio! was reached without due col sideration and without a carelll assessment of the future educatio™ and community needs of the We End.”

COPE had proposed that this site be considered for developme? as an urban-social studies institt and cultural centre. The public { urged by COPE to express its con cern before the giveaway 0 1S public property to promote becomes irrevocable.

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Vietnam aid still

The Canadian Aid for Vietnam Civilians reports that contributions are continuing to pour in for humanitarian assistance to the peo- ple of Vietnam, Laos and Cam- bodia.

Thanks to many sizeable con- tributions the Vancouver com- mittee recently sent $5,000 to help the people, whose lands were devastated by the U.S. war of aggression.

The Children’s Committee of CAVC is readying shipment number 42, which will contain

goods to the value of $16,815. Included in the shipment are a large number of knitted and sewn goods, sewing accessories, school supplies, surgical supplies, medical books and eye glasses.

Meanwhile, protest is continuing

to mount against the Saigon’

government'’s refusal to implement the Paris Agreement provisions governing political prisoners.

Last week the PT received a copy of a letter sent to Bert Padgham of Rosedale, B.C., by the International Committee of the

wise) for a fleeting nebulous ‘unity’, even to terminate NDP

“socialism.”

Only on one issue can such elements ‘‘unite’’ — against the aims and objects of organized labor and the people. Twenty years_ of Bennett Socred ‘tradition’ made that abundantly clear, even in

“beautiful British Columbia.”’

Moreover, any hog-producing farmer will attest to the fact it is

pours in

ow that Socredia’s grand kleagle ex-premier Wacky

& Bennett has had his joie de vivre cup filled to overflow- ing with the election of son Bill in the recent South Okanagan by- election, a few off-the-cuff observations from this column are in order.

The Socred candidate won the vote by a substantial majority over all other contestants. Yet from the tabulated totals of the whole, over twice as many South Okanagan electors didn’t vote for Bill as voted for him.

Of course, in our democratic-way-of-life that kind of an argu- ment won't hold up. That’s why a similar mode of calculation used by Social Credit in its efforts to downgrade the election of an NDP “socialist’” majority in 1972 didn’t and don’t hold up either.

By some political alchemy, known only to partisan tubthumpers, windbags and etc. Papa Bennett “‘sees”’ a vindication of himself and his monopoly-dictated policies in Bill’s election vic- tory. In short an alleged Bennett ‘‘tradition’’ has somehow or other been ‘’preserved” by this election decision. Of such flimsy and shoddy fabric are bourgeois “‘Traditions’’ woven.

A ‘“‘Majority Movement”’ or whatever its full title is, does its election arithmetic on a similar erroneous scale, tabulating a totall- ed majority that didn’t vote the winning ticket, and yodelling for an all-in shot-gun “’unity”’ of all old-line adherents to get together and “unite” to defeat a non-existent NDP “‘socialism’’.

In this 18-carat pipe dream however, there .is one major stumbling block, that of individual partisan anxiety, nay even desperation, for priority at the public trough — that fountain of all inspiration, trickery, corruption and worse in order to get there. Any middle-class or bourgeois ‘’unity”’ that fails to take the cardinal factor of access and control of the public’s tax-dollar trough is

doomed to oblivion. That public trough spells p-o-w-e-r- to tory, - liberal and socred alike, and ‘is not likely to be exchanged (partisan=** '

not a procine characteristic to abandon the public feed trough voluntarily. The same with partisan political hacks of all old-line vintage.. . . not even with the Barrett ‘Sword of damocles”’ (read socialism) poised above their necks. They already know and often are assured it won't drop.

The South Okanagan victory for Social Credit now puts son Bill in line for the Socred provincial leadership, for Papa’s mantle and “tradition.” On this point there will be some plain and fancy political skating come the Socred convention in November.

This in turn will produce its own inner-Socred dissentions, pet- ty jealousies, bickerings and political horsetrading. Old aspirants for the Bennett crown won’t look favourably on another Bennett “ruling the roost”. While those who may have really learned the lessons flowing from the last provincial election may now have grave doubts about the “magnetic” attraction of the Bennett

“tradition” in another provincial free-for-all. After all the South

Okanagan is not B.C., nora “‘tail” to wag a provincial dog in search of bone.

Should the NDP get around towards making its parliamentary achievments coincide with its pre-election pledges, the Bennett “tradition”’ wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance of survival. Even with son Bill in the leadership saddle, plus the spurious ‘‘unity”’ of Tory and Liberal remnants, still lost in the political wilderness, as evidenced by the South Okanagan vote, that ‘‘tradition”’ is definite- ly and decidedly a very dead duck.

Yet, the South Okanagan vote notwithstanding, should an elec- torate become passive or smugly complacent of and about events around them, that is when decadent and dope-laden bourgeois “traditions” become most dangerous to progress and public weal. Hence, there is urgent need for labor and the people to keep a cons- tant pressure upon the NDP government — to honor its pledges, to concentrate in curbing monopoly, to put solid substance into its largely shadow of “socialism,” to realize that its ‘half-baked socialism” is and was largely responsible for the South Okanagan “Tecuperation’’ of the Bennett “‘tradition.” :

Let's get’on with the job, before worse befalls: =< +

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1973—-PAGE 2

Red Cross in Geneva. Padgha@ had written the ICRC urgilé something be done about the Ja! number of civilian prisoners Dé held by Saigon authorities. y. The letter signed by Miss Fe Tombet, of the ICRC said — ‘ situation of the civilian detain® in South Vietnam is a subje i concern for us just as it is for yer and we regret that the provisio"™ the Protocol relating t He prisoners, annexed to the ey Agreements concerning them id particular Article 9 B of the *

Protocol, are not being applie®

“Because of the restrictions i" t | posed by the Governmen he Saigon on the visits whic re delegates of the International a ‘e mittee of the Red Cross \ $ carrying out in the civilian pa of South Vietnam, the ICRC ie ed more than a year ago 1 : *s pend visits to these prisons be : long as the restrictions wer posed.” Cc

The letter said that “the 1c was ready to asssume its as its this sphere, provided th@ |. movements were entirely 2 fettered and that its delegates nets allowed to speak with delat — without witnesses being P

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resell i

Socialism? , “One thing I’m absolutely is | mitted to over all other ba that I’m not, with all my 0) and allmy influence ame”. jo | power, going to allow iat! f develop a substitute state, ship for private ownels | ogi | That’s not the purpose ° i cratic socialism as I se¢ ™ at

: w i “T want to humanize the at is business of what gover? abot! ;. about, what politics are | Saas in | — Premier Dave Barrel’, aio! interview. with Marion ot ¢ in the Vancouver Sum :