CRITICAL SITUATION

MTR Pi

Nearly half of city’s
jobless between 16-24

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

What are we going to do about
the thousands of unemployed
young people in Vancouver?

Before trying to answer that
one, let’s just look at some of the
facts:

- The rate of unemployment
in B.C. is 11 percent of the work
force. We have over 34,000
unemployed in the Greater
Vancouver area. Of these, 42.5
percent are between the ages of
16 and 24.

- Most of the young people
out of work in Vancouver are
resident youth, either living at
home or self supporting, at least
until recently.

- Many students were unable
to return to school this fall
because they couldn’t get
summer jobs. Now they can
neither study or work.

« A sizeable proportion of
unemployed youth are transient.
Last summer many of them
were provided with lodging and
sometimes with meals at the
YMCA-Y Lodge in the old King
George High School at the corner
of Burrard and Nelson; the
Beatty Street Armouries; the
YWCA Hostel; Alexandra
Neighbourhood House; and for a
short while at the old Jericho
army barracks.

A survey made by the
Coordinating Committee of
Hostel and Other Services for
Transient Youth revealed that:

(a) About 70 per cent of the
transient youth came _ from
Ontario;

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The People’s Co-op Bookstore,
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draws attention to the following
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Fidel Castro on: Lenin, The
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The Productivity Hoax and
Auto Worker’s Real Needs —

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Special issue devoted to 150th
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(b) Many suffered from
malnutrition, asthma, bad colds,
and pneumonia (from sleeping
out in cold and wet weather),
and lack of dental care. Only a
small percentage had a drug
problem.

The cost of caring for these
transient young people wasn’t
very high and the cost to the city
of Vancouver was relatively
small. The City Social Service
Department provided $22,328 to

~ the YMCA-Y Lodge. Costs at

Beatty Street Armouries were
taken care of by the federal
government. $20,875 was
contributed by the City Social
Service Department and the
Children’s Aid Society to the
YWCA Hostel, while Alexandra
Neighbourhood House expenses
of $10,300 were also covered by

the City Social Service
Department.

All indications are that this
winter the level of un-

employment will continue to
grow. Young people will be its
first victims. Action of an
emergency nature should be
taken now.

1. City Council crow: exert
all the pressure of which it is
capable on senior governments
to provide jobs, starting with

emergency public winter works
programs.

2. City Council should
pressure senior governments to
provide training and education
(up to and including university)
to any young people able and
willing to take advantage of it.
Unemployed students should be
given board and room and other
necessities without charge.

3. City Council must pressure
senior governments to provide
adequate hostel accommodation
and health facilities for
transient, homeless youth.
Remember that whatever the
city spends for its share will be
small indeed compared to the
hundreds of thousands of dollars
we spend annually out of city
revenues to attract and service
tourists (advertising, street
maintenance, fire and police
protection, etc.) all of which is
done to help the privately owned
tourist industry.

4. City Council should initiate
a constructive program of sport
and recreational facilities for
unemployed young people,
making full use of publicly
owned facilities like the PNE
which are today used almost
exclusively by professional
sports promoters.

Repressive Act
must be fought

Cont'd from pg. 1!

“Now more than ever is there
need for a Canada wide united
effort to compel the government
to withdraw this new legisla
tion.

“The NDP group in Parlia-
ment and the top leadership of
the Canadian Labor Congress
are doing a grave disservice to
the cause of democracy and of
labor, by deciding to support this
repressive legislation under the
specious argument that it is not
as oppressive as the War
Measures Act. This is an
unprincipled position.

“Repression is repression no
matter how sweetened up. To
support the new legislation is to
stab democratic and civil rights
in the back, open the door to
legitimizing attacks on labor,
and in the end, do great harm to
the NDP.

“The Communist Party calls
upon the membership and
supporters and particularly the
left wing in the NDP and in the
trade union movement to press
the NDP to change its position
and to demand the withdrawal
of this repressive legislation. It
calls for the repeal of the War
Measures Act which, as long. as
it is on the statute books, can be
used to destroy the democratic
and civil rights of the Canadian
people.

‘The democratic and labor
forces are strong enough if
united, to do this.

“As the Communist Party has
said before, what is needed is not
repressive legislation but an
extension of democratic rights
coupled with an all out effort to
cope with the economic and

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social roots of the crisis in
Quebec and throughout the
country.

“Neither temporary or per-

manent repressive legislation
will eliminate that crisis; only
far reaching measures of demo-
cratic reform can cope with it.
- “The Communist Party will
unite with all democratic
Canadians in the battle to defeat
this repressive legislation,’’
concludes the statement.

The Trudeau government is
expected to try and push the
measure through a needed third
reading as quickly as possible as
criticism in the House and
across the country continues to
grow.

In Vancouver, the Civil
Liberties Association has voiced
strong opposition to the Public
Order Act. A spokesman said
the organization is opposing the
new legislation for the same
reasons it objected to the
invoking of the War Measures
Act.

The civil rights groups takes
the stand that ‘‘the government
has failed to indicate why the
powers presently held under the
Criminal Code are inadequate to
handle the threat posed by the
terrorist activities of the FLQ.
The government still proposes
that the fundamental civil
liberties of all Canadians be
abrogated for as long a period as
six months.

“Under the new legislation, as
under the War Measures Act, it
will be a crime merely to belong
to a particular organization
(FLQ) or to speak in favor of a
particular ideology,’ says the
statement from the Civil
Liberties group.

s the late and unlamented ’ ory Chamberlain of Munich

fame once declared in the process of throwing Czech-

oslovakia to the Hitlerite wolves, ‘‘Czechoslovakia is a far-
away country of which we know little.”

In a different setting and time the same could be said of
Quebec by a similar gang of political wranglers, ‘‘Quebec is a
little country of which we know little’ and to which it may be
added, we care less. ‘‘And now we have M: Trudeau’s War
Measures Act to proscribe what little we would want to know
which doesn’t conform to an established status quo. :

Without going further, unemployment itself tells .more
than half the story of Quebec. With well over one-quarter of
Canada’s total work force, Quebec had well over 41-percent of
the Canadian average of unemployed in 1969, and today
probably anywhere from 50 to 70 - percent of that average —
with its own staggering total of 10.5 or over jobless.

Moreover, in that high average of jobless workers ready
and able to work, available statistics show a staggering
number of these are young men and women of 25 years or less.

Now all we know of this part of Canada of which we ‘‘know
very little’? is a movement born of desperation, known as the
Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), now declared outlawed
under Trudeau’s War Measures Act — and the rest of us along
with it— if we so much as dare to inquire what the FLQ or any
other French - Canadiene organization is all about.

But let’s get back to that unemployment problem, a
serious crisis for all Canada— a tragedy for Quebec.

It may be recalled that during the recent Quebec
provincial elections that the political welkin rang with threats
(and some of these threats actually carried out) anent the
“flight of capital’ from that unhappy province. Hardly the way
to solve, or seek to solve a national crisis of the highest order.

But then the political hacks who serve as the running-dogs
of Big Capital, are not interested in solving such problems.
Their only interest, regardless of partisan labels, is to assure
that the strangle-hold of big business upon the people and their
resources is held intact. So on with the inequalities, the dis-
criminations, the political abuse of open violence, and if Jean
Batiste can be deprived of his job and livelihood in the process,
so much the better for big business and its political
jannasaries.’

Hence no one should be surprised if such a situation spawns
its own counter violence, terror, or worse. No sensible person,
and least of all those who regard themselves as students and
followers of a Marxist - Leninist philosophy, can condone or
approve the despicable acts alleged to the FLQ.

But neither can any sensible Canadian approve of the
hysterical and witch-hunt methods used by the Trudeau
government to meet the ‘‘crisis’’ of the FLQ.

In the year 1930 the. Tory government of R.B. Bennett
“outlawed” the Communist Party of Canada, not because that
party’ was presumed to ‘“‘‘advocate the overthrow of
constituted government”’ by force and violence, but to take the
eyes of Canadians off the jobless crisis of the Hungry Thirties
by providing them with the delerium tremens of an anti - Com-
mist witch hunt — a jobless crisis which Bennett promised to
“cure in 30-days’’ with a chain of slave camps stretching from
the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The Bennett ‘‘cure’”’ didn’t last longer than the proverbial
snowball in hell, and uitimately swept Bennett into political
oblivion meantime.

Trudeau has ‘‘done a Bennett” and will in all probability
end up the same way sans a “‘peerage’’. But long after his
socalled ‘‘law - and - order’’ has been temporarily ‘‘shored up”’
— with more violence against the people, the issues of Quebec
will remain— calling louder for redress!

“Ye was sent here to redress greivances’’ thundered a
Cromwell once to a parliament of thieves, swindlers and sell-
out artists in Merrie England. ‘‘Ye have become yourselves the
people’s greatest grievance. Out, begone.”’

Peder pet. 7

OUTNOW PETITION AT B.C. FED. A special booth by the Peace Action
league, sponsors of the OUTNOW petition, at the B.C. Fed convention
is shown above. More than 300 delegates signed the petition and the
parley voted support to the OUTNOW campaign.

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