Density will help, more office workers won’t
Re: “B.C.’s flexible working leaves businesses fearing the worst,” Feb. 26.
The claim of higher productivity at the office is made without any evidence. In any event, it’s irrelevant.
The B.C. government is not making a “proposal” as is stated. The public service has been directed to adopt flexible work strategies and that directive is not going to be reversed because of Victoria businesses.
Regardless, the wrong solution is being contemplated, and is addressing the wrong level of government.
The City of Victoria needs to drastically rethink downtown. Victoria needs much higher density like downtown Vancouver, with 30-to 40-storey high-rise condominiums and rental buildings, perhaps with affordable or assisted housing in the lower floors.
Victoria might not like to think of this, but the only solution to the problem businesses face, which is a lack of customers, and to other problems like the lack of housing and downtown crime, is to turn downtown Victoria into a densified community like Yaletown or the west end in Vancouver where businesses don’t have to rely on office workers, tourists and commuters.
The ridiculous and small-minded push back over the Harris Green development, while at the same time obsessing over the missing middle initiative, which will solve nothing, proves that even the city council doesn’t get it.
We need new even bigger and taller Harris Greens all over downtown and all the way north to Tolmie. Downtown Victoria is not going to be saved by office workers.
Chris Lawson
Victoria
Did the government consider the impact?
Re: “B.C.’s flexible working leaves businesses fearing the worst,” Feb. 26.
I have asked my MLA to provide the provincial government’s studies on the impact expanding the work-from-home regime will have on downtown Victoria.
I’m not alone in my concern that empty buildings, sidewalks, restaurants and shops will gut the tax base of the City of Victoria and harm those of adjacent communities.
Sadly, it will add to the alarming deterioration of safety and sense of a vibrant community in our downtown core.
Has the province thought through the ramifications, and how it plans to mitigate them?
Cameron J. Turner
Victoria
Downtown must adapt to loss of offices
There’s an old saying that the only constant in life is change. Demography, the study of populations, is no exception. The composition of any given population will change in response to external and internal pressures. And guess what, we’ve all been feeling the pressure lately.
Businesses, especially those in the service industry, make money and therefore stay in business by serving the needs of the population.
If the population shifts, businesses must shift with it. Supply and demand. Capitalism 101.
The opposite position, that the population somehow exists to keep businesses afloat, is the sort of corporate nonsense reserved for dystopian science fiction.
Insisting that all public servants commute downtown, increasing pollution and making traffic worse for everyone, just so that some of them might buy an overpriced coffee with what little discretionary spending they have, is ridiculous.
If downtown business margins are so thin that some public servants (not all, many positions will not be able to be done remotely) working from elsewhere is really all it takes to initiate a “catastrophic domino effect” then I suggest that that catastrophe is likely inevitable.
Any number of other factors might tip the scale past that point. Will you still be treating the public service as a scapegoat when that happens?
Drew MacLennan
Langford
Private schools shouldn’t get government money
It is time for the B.C. government to stop funding private schools in our province.
Long-time Premier W.A.C. Bennett once said, “Public money for public schools and private money for private schools.”
But in the 1970s his son, Premier Bill Bennett, along with Education Minister Patrick McGeer, started funding for private schools by creating the Independent Schools Act. The name of the act was a farce because as soon as private schools accepted public funding they were no longer independent.
Bennett’s government also introduced a very severe restraint program for public schools and fired school districts that didn’t submit restraint budgets.
I was chairperson of the Greater Victoria School Board at the time. My board and I were totally opposed to the Independent Schools Act, as were all districts in B.C.
Two boards were fired and replaced with a government administrator because they refused to submit restraint budgets. Greater Victoria escaped firing by submitting two budgets — one a needs budget, the other a restraint budget.
Now, just as the government funds public health-care, social services and income supports, it makes sense to show more support for public education and discontinue funding the more than $600 million it gives to the private schools.
Carol Pickup
Former school trustee and Saanich councillor
Esquimalt
Bike lanes, street patios make Victoria better
I took the bus or biked to my downtown job for all my years in Victoria. Retired now, I wish I had the luxury of bike lanes at that time.
Nowadays our granddaughter takes us downtown two or three times a week. We never had a problem parking.
Our daughter and her husband don’t even have a car and they like it that way. They walk, bike or use a scooter for all their needs.
I find Victoria downtown a very attractive place, very vibrant and feeling young. Thank you, Victoria for the bike lanes, for good public parking (like the one under the library), for safer streets, for your well-used patios on former parking spaces, for your wonderful dedication to a more welcome downtown.
Ion Buicliu
Central Saanich
Don’t get rid of culture from downtown Victoria
To view the Royal B.C. Museum primarily as a tourist attraction is a blunder.
The Royal B.C. Museum and the B.C. Archives are primarily cultural and scientific institutions. The B.C. Ministry of Tourism, Sports and Culture is an odd combination in which the Royal B.C. Museum does not fit well.
In the B.C. government, Culture should either
1) have a ministry of its own,
2) be a part of the Ministry of Education, or
3) share one ministry with Science.
To keep the Royal B.C. Museum as a tourist attraction and move its primary functions behind the Colwood Crawl is a costly mistake!
Adolf Ceska
Royal B.C. Museum botany division staff member, 1981 to 1995
Victoria
Eliminate stats, go for a four-day work week
The beneficiaries of all the new statutory holidays are primarily government employees. Small business owners cannot afford to pay overtime wages so begrudgingly close the doors when the holiday traffic could be helpful to many merchants or restaurants.
A four-day work week has been proposed. To do this on top of all the new holidays recently introduced doesn’t make a lot of sense, hurts business owners and is inequitable. The four-day week could help everyone!
Grant Schnurr
Victoria
Saturna Island’s forest is not healthy
Re: “Conservationists buy land on Saturna to protect it,” Feb. 26.
It’s fabulous that Nature Trust is purchasing land to protect.
Having hiked around that area of Saturna numerous times I would predict that the forest is not a healthy one.
Sadly, there are no trees under about 50 years old in the vicinity nor anything growing on the forest floor.
In a couple hundred years or less, this will be barren land. As older trees fall from result of windstorms, age and disease the forest is quickly disappearing.
Goats and deer are the cause of this destruction. They eat almost every living plant. This is a problem also on Pender Island where I reside.
Anita Laine
Pender Island
Freighter parking area worries Gulf Islanders
Southern Gulf Island residents are very concerned about the proliferation of vessels being anchored off our shores waiting to enter the Port of Vancouver.
We are being used as a parking lot and anchor-dragging incidents are increasing. Freighters carry huge amounts of fuel.
We are dodging bullets so far but it is only a matter of time before we get hit. A spill in the Gulf Islands would be a tragedy. We have been warning the feds about it but nothing has changed.
Beverley Bradley
Pender Island
Pro athletes shouldn’t covet other’s success
Re: “Professional athletes trivialize their religion,” letter, Feb. 25.
Praying in sports is much more pervasive than the letter describes.
In baseball these days, many players are pointing heavenward, dropping to their knees in prayer, making the sign of the cross etc. before every at bat.
If this behaviour actually affects the outcome of the at bat, then it should be banned. If performance-enhancing drugs are banned, then performance-enhancing deities should be as well.
If this behaviour has no impact on the outcome of the game, then it just becomes “my God is better than your God” trash talk and should be banned as unsportsmanlike conduct. In purely religious terms, breaking the 10th commandment by coveting their neighbour’s success doesn’t seem like behaviour that would please most Gods.
With all humanity’s current issues I, like the letter writer, hope God is addressing more important issues than who is going to win the World Series or other sporting events.
S.I. Petersen
Nanaimo
Instead of a rail subsidy, support Wilson’s buses
Re: “Be honest, now: Would you use E&N?” letter, Feb. 24.
The letter gets to the heart of the problem and the answer, as shown by the lack of ridership when the E&N was operating, is a resounding No.
Back in the day, when taking the train from Courtenay to Victoria was an option, my wife and I would do so and often we were part of a crowd of maybe a half dozen riders. The good citizens of the rail corridor voted with their feet, so to speak. So, why is there even a discussion about spending millions on a service that only a few would use?
Why is there no discussion about restoring what was once a viable bus service? No need to raid the treasury to restore a deteriorated road bed or spending millions for fancy railcars.
Service could be from downtown to downtown as opposed to dropping riders off in the middle of nowhere in Victoria.
John Wilson is doing his best to restore that service but even he could use at least a part of the rail operating subsidy to put regular buses on the road at a reasonable tariff rate for riders.
An expensive rail operation for the very few? No!
A responsive, flexible, affordable bus service for the rest of us? Yes!
Lorne Finlayson
Cumberland
An electric train would help the Island
When my wife and I travelled in Europe in 2015 we experienced the pleasant, efficient and sustainable service provided by Europe’s network of electric trains.
The future challenge of moving large numbers of Vancouver Island residents and visitors up and down the Island in an inexpensive and sustainable way could be solved by an electric train system similar to what we experienced in Europe
This could be accomplished by upgrading the system of rail lines that we already have and equipping it with the latest in commuter rail technology. This would also create much-needed jobs during our energy transition and lessen the need for lithium and other critical minerals used in the production of batteries for electric vehicles.
However, we must act quickly to secure our existing railway corridor.
The courts have given the federal government until March 14 to make a commitment to develop a commuter rail system on the Island.
I urge our government officials to seize the opportunity to create a world-class electric rail system that we will be able to enjoy in the future.
John Mayba
Port Alberni
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