British Columbia

Seniors set plans for budget fightback

Legal challenges, letter-writing and a campaign to turf Social Credit out of office are some. of the responses greeting the provincial budget that gouges seniors, the poor and the working class.

Spokesmen for End Legislated Poverty, B.C. Old Age Pensioners and the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C. linked the budget, introduced by Finance Minister Mel Couvelier last week, with free trade and privatization.

Jo Arland, president of BCOAP, called on the labour movement to join seniors in fighting the Socred budget.

“We're putting the call out to our membership all over the province asking our people what they want us to do to fight this thing,” Arland said.

But she said the organization was ask- ing its members to immediately send let- ters of protest over the increases in long-and extended-term home care fees, and medicare premiums.

“They’ve hit the most vulnerable sec- tion — the people in long-term care — because they know that these people can’t go and demonstrate on the steps of

the legislature,” Arland charged.

Arland said the long-term home care hikes are particularly hard on married seniors, whose benefits are less than those of unmarried or separated individuals. (A column by Nicole Parton in The Van- couver Sun cited an instance of long- term care absorb- ing more than an entire income with the $16.70 daily fee. The patient’s husband also had to pay for the shortfall from his own pocket.) : ~

“It’s frustrating a because govern- ARLAN ment doesn’t respond. We went over to Victoria last year with a delegation and petitions opposing the introduction of the user fee on Pharmacare prescriptions but the government didn’t even respond.”

Ed Apps of COSCO said the umbrella organization’s executive has approved a campaign of lobbying MLAs and the premier, “‘and if that fails, we’ll make sure that this government doesn’t get elected in

the future.”

(The campaign is subject to the appro- val of the full council, which meets April 8. COSCO represents 37 organizations with a combined membership of 120,000.)

The new charges on the long-and extended-care home patients, which will rise to 85 per cent of their seniors benefits, will make those inmates “prisoners in the homes,” Apps said.

With 15 per cent of their income remaining, that translates slightly more than $100 spending money a month, he noted.

Jean Swanson of End Legislated Poy- erty said the umbrella group is considering a legal challenge to the huge hike in medi- cal insurance premiums, possibly on the grounds that it is a violation of the Canada Health Act.

“Many people who could not qualify for premium assistance because they wer- en’t poor enough could not afford the plan. Now there are going to more of those people,” Swanson said.

The government has raised the yearly income level to qualify for assistance to $6,500. But the federally recognized pov-

erty level income for a single person is $11,000, Swanson said.

She said the $40 million extra budgeted for GAIN is not nearly enough, and should be much closer to the rate of infla- tion. And she noted that 11,000 more peo- ple had joined the welfare rolls in the past few months.

The increased medical care premiums, under which rates are to rise with doctors’ billings, were likely introduced in light of privatization and the free trade deal, Swanson said.

“Those rates will get so high that private medical plans will begin be competitive, andthe next thing you know we'll be see- ing U.S. outfits like Blue Cross or State Farm up here selling premiums.”

Apps said the budget’s deficit — $800 million — is there because the Socreds have squandered money on wasteful meg- aprojects.

“They’re now looking for people to pay for it, and the health budget is the last place they should be looking. The corpo- rations who have been raping this pro- vince of its resources should be the ones to pay,” he asserted.

Budget shows Socreds ~ have ‘no heart’: Rush

Continued from page 1

effect and trigger excessive demands in the private sector,” he stated.

In stressing the “competitive” edge of B.C. industry, the finance minister was making it clear he expects the province’s workers to compete with offshore industries and low-wage ghettos in several other parts of the world.

“This budget shows that the government has no heart — in its place, it has a dollar sign,” B.C. Communist Party leader Mau- rice Rush commented.

He said the budget “takes about $700 out of the pockets of the average family.”

“Meanwhile, the corporations get a $55- million tax break,” Rush charged.

Rush also charged that the budget con- tains “cynical gimmicks” that scapegoat doctors and workers seeking deserved wage gains in 1988.

“Economically, this is one of the worst

_ budgets, ever,” commented Cliff Andstein, _ secretary-treasurer of the B.C. Federation _ of Labour.

Jack Gerow of the Hospital Employees

Union called the budget “dishonest”

because it claims to be giving health care a

10 per cent hike, “when really there is very _ little increase at all.”

And John Shields, president of the

_ 29,000-member B.C. Government Employ-

ees Union, hit a special fund that pits wage

_ improvements for public workers against _ increases in social service spending.

_ Seniors’ leaders have vowed to fight the

_ budget over one of its most odious provi-

_ sions: a hike in the costs of extended and _ long-term care that will cost pensioners an _ additional $70 a month.

Key elements of the budget are: © Cuts favouring mining corporations,

_ through reduced mineral resource tax rates

of 2.5 per cent to 15 percent, anda 12.5 per

cent cut to the mining tax.

|

|

© Greatly increased medical premiums — to $29 monthly for individuals, $52 fora family of two and $58 for a family of three or more.

@ Increased rural property taxes.

@ A hike in the premium tax for the Insu-

rance Corporation of B.C., meaning motor- ists will pay three to four per cent more for car insurance.

@ Increased fees for the elderly in extended care and long-term care homes, to 85 per cent of their social security income from 75 per cent.

@ An increase in the motor fuel tax of approximately one cent per litre.

© Increases, and new additions to, the so-called “sin taxes” — to 10 percent from six per cent on alcoholic beverages, a new 10 per cent tax on draft beer, and a nine-cent hike on a 25-cigarette pack.

© A cut in the small business income tax, from 11 per cent to nine per cent.

@ A previously announced hike to public education, and an increase in the health budget.

The budget also makes provision for spe- cial programs, promoting a separate New Programs vote of $90 million for health care, social programs, science and technol- ogy, and small business. But this fund is also supposed to pay wage increases for civil servants; whatever the BCGEU achieves at the bargaining table in upcoming negotia- tions will be at the expense of funds for those categories.

Another new feature is the budget stabili- zation fund, which supposedly contains $450 million, with an additional $124 mil- lion slated for next year. Since the govern- ment has already spent the money in the fund, in effect banking an IOU note, the New Democratic opposition charges that its chief purpose is political. The money, which came from general revenues after the econ- omy performed much better than antici- pated, could have been used to help retire the $800-million deficit. Instead, the Socreds will likely attack the deficit next year when an election looms, finance critic Dave Stupich has charged.

Additionally, there’s the privatization fund, established, as might be expected, to bank the dollars from the sale of public assets.

A “sick joke” is how Gerow, secretary- business manager of the HEU, described the budget.

Finance Minister Mel Couvelier plugged budget, which hits seniors and poor while

granting more relief to corporations, at press conference March 24.

He said the increases in medicare premi- ums makes B.C.’s rates the second-highest of the three provinces which still charge for medical plans. And he said B.C. spends the least of any province on medical care.

Dr. David Jones, head of the B.C. Medi- cal Association, also hit the hike which means that residents fund doctors’ salaries by 50 per cent, with the other 50 per cent coming from the federal government. Jones said Couvelier was making doctors “‘scape- goats” by tying future medical premium hikes to doctors’ bills.

The BCGEU’s Shields objected, in an interview after the budget was read, to the threatening tone of Couvélier’s speech which hinted that the weight of Bill 19, the Industrial Relations Reform Act, might be brought down on workers who want decent wage increases after seven years of cutbacks and restraint. He charged that thousands of BCGEU members, mainly women and sin- gle parents, earn wages below the federally- recognized poverty line and that the union is aiming to reduce the inequity between the higher and lower paid civil servants in this year’s collective agreement.

In a release later Shields also hit the pri- vatization fund, calling for an end to the sell-off of public resources and noting that more than 85 municipal and regional governments have urged the government to

delay privatization.

The budget is a disaster for colleges and other educational institutes, president Paul Ramsey of the College-Institute Educators of B.C. charged.

Ramsey said that while enrolment has increased by 29 per cent since the 1981-82 academic year, and inflation by 44 per cent, government funding for operating budgets has been hiked only 1.3 per cent.

The key crime is that the Socreds have absolutely nothing for job creation, And- stein said.

“It will reduce people’s take-home pay while promising nothing for the unem- ployed and the poor. That alleged surplus of $450 million (the budget stabilization fund) should go into job creation,” the B.C. Fed secretary said.

Rush also hit the lack of plans for the jobless, charging that Couvelier accepts the current official 10 per cent unemployment rate as permanent and acceptable. (Couve- lier, at a press conference after the budget speech, told reporters that he believed fewer people were looking for full-time employ- ment. Questioned as to why Ontario was reducing unemployment to the former “acceptable” rate of about four per cent, the finance minister attempted humour in Suggesting that Ontarions would rather work through the colder winters.)

Pacific Tribune, March 30, 1988 e 7

DAN KEETON

TRIBUNE PHOTO