To help downtown, start with affordable housing
Re: “ 'Downtown Canada’ no longer the urban dream,” commentary. April 24.
I’m sad to hear that when the writer walks downtown, she feels “poverty, addiction, and mental health issues quite viscerally.” I would like to suggest that the folks she’d like to see locked up in jail feel those issues quite a bit more pointedly.
Personal safety is undeniably important – for all people in our community. It does no good to take a trip downtown, come face to face with an “onslaught of the walking dead,” and then advocate that as a solution we should “start building systems of incarceration.”
The commentary brings forward a few worthy anecdotes about what happens when our community neglects to provide homes and healthcare to those who need it. We all understand that something has gone wrong.
The problem is not law enforcement. It’s that the average apartment rents for $2,319.
People are not generally sleeping rough or living without a permanent address because they want to. It is because no one will give them a place to live at a price they can afford to pay.
That’s when the vicious cycle of poverty, mental illness, and addiction kicks in.
If you want a safe and vibrant city, don’t spend tax dollars on more cops and more jails. Spend it on keeping a roof over the heads of our community’s most vulnerable.
That is where our society currently falls short.
Adam Bailey
Victoria
Depressing news makes it tough to start day
I always start my day with the Times Colonist. More often than not, the news in Section A is a rather disturbing commentary of the state of current world affairs. I am often not left feeling hopeful for the future ahead for my four grandkids.
On Friday I read that Elon Musk feels that his SpaceX rocket just clearing the tower would be a win. Really? I wonder how many billions of dollars were blown when four minutes into launch the rocket disintegrated. I wonder how many thousands of less fortunate in our world could have benefited from his money being spent on humanitarian causes.
Does he even think or care about the environmental impact of all this space junk, fuel, etc. falling into the Gulf of Mexico? Likely not. We have already screwed up this planet, let’s race to the moon and screw up that one too.
If that weren’t enough, I read on the front page of Section C that Sovereign and Ryan don’t plan on having kids because the expense of raising them would make them feel “like they were left behind in life.”
Gee, I should go deliver that message to my kids and grandkids.
I just wanted to put the paper down and crawl back into bed.
Ted Daly
Saanichton
Hiking parking rates will not bring more people
Can anyone at Victoria City Hall tell me how raising parking fees downtown will encourage more people to go there? Makes no sense.
I’m sorry for the merchants that are already struggling. Your city council is not looking out for you.
Val Henderson
Victoria
How much is women’s safety worth?
Interesting to note that the provincial government is touting the $54 million that is spent on 400 women’s services and organizations each year.
That is significantly less than what has just been budgeted for a new left turn and highway widening at Keating Cross Road in Central Saanich.
Judy Lightwater
Victoria
No five-second rule when meat is dropped
I was disgusted by the content in the recent Dustin comic strip. It portrayed Dustin’s father accidentally dropping a pork tenderloin on the floor, and Dustin’s mother saying, “Well, throw it in the trash … I think we’ve exceeded the five-second rule.”
I had to read the comic three times to understand what it was actually saying, and I was shocked and disgusted.
Who in their right mind throws expensive meat in the trash just because it fell on the floor?
There are so many North American families who are food insecure, and with the prices of food in stores today, that was the most unfortunate comic to print.
How dare anyone think that it’s okay to throw meat away just because it was on the floor? I would have rinsed it off, then put it back on my plate, as I’m sure many of us would do in this day and age.
The attitude of Dustin galls and disgusts me. Is that what the authors of Dustin think is funny? I do not think that the comic was either funny or clever.
Janet MacDonald
Saanich
Take serious action on real cause of crashes
As usual, the provincial government’s Bill 23 overlooks the most vulnerable road users out there. More motorcyclists are killed and injured each year than cyclists and pedestrians combined and yet nothing is done.
The Hurt report, the only definitive report on motorcycle accidents, shows that 70 per cent of motorcycle accidents are caused by inattentive car drivers yet nothing is done. Eighty per cent of police reports incorrectly blamed the motorcyclist. How about the politicians start doing something useful?
Another study analyzed the rise in motorcycle deaths, which was higher than the increase in ridership. They found that the cause was an increase in minivans and SUVs.
In an accident with a car which has made a left turn and hits a motorcycle head on, or a car that pulls out directly in front of a motorcycle and gets broadsided, the rear of the bike flips up and throws the rider over the car.
If they are wearing the proper gear they have a good chance of survival. In an accident with a minivan or SUV the rider is thrown directly into the vehicle and chances of survival are greatly reduced.
It would be nice if some politician, somewhere, did something productive instead of just sucking up to the loudest and, usually, most obnoxious, voices.
Kerry Butler
Salt Spring
Sometime in the future, our cars will seem mad
I think that would not be a bad idea to do away with cars when you consider the many vehicles, sometimes massive, causing air and noise pollution, most of them, more often than not, carrying only one passenger.
Furthermore, most vehicles are parked 95 per cent of the time (apparently this is a global statistic). An Australian study ascertains that car drivers spend about 17 hours a year looking for a parking spot.
Certainly, there are situations where vehicles are necessary such as for contractors, deliveries, emergencies and getting to and from locations outside public transportation.
I envision a future when we can, inexpensively, call up an electric vehicle for those times when we do need one.
In the future, I am certain they will look back at this period as total madness.
Deborah Crawford
Saanich
Fossil fuel industry and the tobacco playbook
Re: “False advertising must never again sabotage climate action,” commentary, April 14.
When cigarette smoking was determined to cause lung cancer, the tobacco industry continued to publish misleading information to confuse and deceive the public, even though they knew the truth.
The government stepped in with stricter regulations and warnings to protect public health (which, if I’m not mistaken, is the role of government).
The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the climate crisis. The oil/gas industry has known this for a very long time (since 1959, according to the commentary), yet they, following the tobacco playbook, continue to mislead and deceive the public with slick, expensive advertising (a drop in the bucket of their record profits).
You would think our governments would immediately implement stronger measures to curtail the burning of fossil fuels in the interests of protecting public (and planetary) health.
Instead, they buy up dinosaur projects (like TMX) and announce their support for (and our financial subsidization of) yet more oil and gas initiatives (like Cedar LNG).
This is like approving the sale of cigarettes to minors in full light of the fact that smoking them causes cancer. Why do we stand for this?
Karyn Woodland
Colwood
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