CAMPAIGN a - TORONTO -- The vote was extremely light in the December municipal election. Out of 419,824 registered voters,. only 35.4% went to the polls. The LSA [League for Socialist Action] supported two ‘candidates, Ross Dowson, the LSA mayoralty candidate got 5,026 votes, almost three times his poll. of two years ago. Patricia Mitchel, LSA candidate for one of four controller posts, received 6,750.
As usual, the capitalist press and radio blacked out the socialist candidates, but they made a breakthrough into television when CBC decided to. stage a “Toronto File" program that included the - minority candidates.
Dowson, speaking for the Trotskyist viewpoint, opened his contribution to the panel by stressing the need for a totally new ‘administration -- a labor administration in City Hall to represent ' the. workers instead of Big Business, He exposed the myth of nonparty municipal politics as a device. to relieve. the Liberal-Tory incumbents from programmatic — commitments; . turning the rivalry of 117 candidates for 37 offices into a personality contest.
Phyllis Clarke, Communist party candidate for controller, told the TV audience, on the other. hand, that she was opposed to party labels in the municipal arena, The CP press had earlier attacked Dowson's candidacy as not to "be seriously considered for support,” The CP candidate lost about one-third of the votes she won in 1962, going down to 10, , 824,
Patricia. Mitchel very effectively pregented the municipal program on which she ran.,:Thts ‘included the” liquidation of a special police squad designed to harass striking printers and costing the taxpayers $40,000 a week; increased civil control over the police
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commission ‘iow “headed by the mayor; the elimination of ‘bax. exemptions covering properties to the value of $400,000,000, particularly such monopolistic corporations as Bell Telephone; an extensive program of low-cost subsidized housing which authorities admitted in 1958 should be'1;, 000: units a year but which had resulted in only 350 units in the six” ‘Years since then; an end to.the scandalous situation where 1,220. are'on the waiting list for hospital beds [she advocated the construetion of municipally owned hospitals under municipally controlled boards]; an attack on the problem of down-town traffic congestion by gratiting free access to municipally owned transit facilities, thus. Tami t ing outlays on expensive thruways , underpasses and parking lots.
_One of the main issues. singled out, in. the ISA campaign was automation. The development of automation in Canada has already led. to the closing down of two important Toronto plants and to the elim ination of about 4,000 jobs a week in the country as a whole.
In its major campaign leaflet, of which 60,000 copies were distributed, the.LSA declared that automation tig’ posing the necessity for an * entirely new society ---a-soctalist society of produc~ tion for. use, and consumption, not on the basis of.ownership, but need, a
The first step in this direction, the program ‘said, "is to install a. labor administration in Toronto's City Halle!
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