Saanich should ban burning of waste
Saanich continues to allow burning of “garden waste” on rural properties outside the urban containment envelope.
Since this is not a scientific publication, I will skip the extensive bibliography and simply point out that exposure to wood and biomass smoke causes significant increase in the body’s immune response.
It reduces the activity of critical immune competent cells in the lung due to chemicals and particulate matter. Despite living on Vancouver Island, we have all become familiar with exposure to this kind of smoke for days at a time over the past several years.
We have a council and numerous citizens more than willing to subject residents to these conditions on a regular basis each fall and spring, and it pervades the entire region.
The fee for obtaining a licence to burn is $10, hardly a tax on pollution, and this permits burning any day of the week. This is often interpreted as every day of the week as I have time and date stamped photos and video of fires burning up to five consecutive days.
Please imagine being next door or downwind from that. People several kilometres in any direction are affected for days at a time.
Burning occurs outside of the burning dates stated in the bylaws and there is little to no enforcement or consequence. Because the burning season is in the more damp weather, accelerants are used in many cases.
I have written to Saanich council and had no reply. Calling the fire department non-emergency number is the prescribed approach but they are legitimately often too busy.
I do not think it is the best use of their resources to be tasked with this oversight regardless.
Council should eliminate all burning and preserve the most precious commodity we all share — the air we breathe.
Jim Dooner
retired surgeon
Saanich
Written by someone from another planet
I read the open letter to members of Parliament, associated with Victoria Coun. Susan Kim, several times and kept coming to the same conclusion. Nothing human could have written about the war without mentioning Hamas, the hostages or the 1,200-plus victims of the Oct. 7 slaughter.
Then the penny dropped and I sent it off to the Director of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UFO) Task Force in Washington.
The director responded, saying it was definitely written by an inhabitant of planet Outer Woke. Trick is, they look, write and talk just like humans and have been infiltrating organizations all over North America for the past decade or so.
Some of the worst infestations are in elite American universities like Harvard. First she’s heard of a municipal council in Canada being penetrated.
John Farquharson
Victoria
A defining moment for Victoria council
It is troubling to see all the pro-Palestinian demonstrations considering the murderous attack that Hamas inflicted on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis.
These demonstrations have attracted a broad range of participants from local Communists to, in the U.S., white supremacists. Strange bedfellows!
Clearly, antisemitism is alive and well in our community, our country and worldwide.
Now we have politicians like Victoria Coun. Susan Kim questioning sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and demanding Israel free all Palestinian prisoners during a war that Hamas started and has stated they will continue.
This reminds me of past Holocaust deniers.
The Holocaust was made possible because too few voices opposed the persecution of Jews, culminating in the final solution.
Although the inability to call out the murderous Hamas terrorists is certainly cause for a politician to resign, I don’t expect Kim to do that.
No doubt her inability to clearly understand right from wrong is likely not a transitory moment. The defining moment will be if her fellow councillors will demand her ouster.
It is refreshing to learn in this same reporting that an Ontario MPP was removed from the Ontario NDP and the University of Alberta fired a member of its staff for signing the same letter that Kim signed.
Yes, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts!
Wayne Cox
Saanichton
A recent reminder of the need to prepare
Re: “Policing priorities on display in Victoria,” letter, Nov. 18.
The letter calls out the spending priorities of the Victoria Police Department. Setting aside the question of what “posing in para-military formation” even means, I would draw attention to the events at the Bank of Montreal on Shelbourne Street on June 28, 2022 — an incident that even made the news here in the U.K. — as to why law enforcement officers are equipped and trained as they are.
Yes, more can, and should, be done to police the small things like broken windows. But residents of Greater Victoria had an all-too-vivid reminder last year of why preparing the emergency services for every eventuality is both prudent and appropriate.
David J. Chmiel
Chislehurst, Kent
Harmful consequences of the housing plan
B.C.’s simplistic plan to attack the complex housing crisis will unleash more crises in its wake.
With a breathtaking, one-dimensional view, up to six homes are crammed into one parcel, making peaceful neighbourhoods mutate to congested ones, as a group of 20 residences becomes 120.
The rights of homeowners who invested their savings, the character and common good of communities, existing infrastructure, and the hard work and judgment of local municipalities engaged in customized solutions, will be sacrificed for this Stalinist central plan, along with its menu of just-announced, cookie-cutter house plans.
Single family home prices will jump, given expected cash flows from unbuilt houses on that land, hurting home buyers.
The plan astonishingly disregards the climate crisis, and its hotter, drier summers. Jammed houses leave scant space for trees and gardens, robbing neighbourhoods of greenery, beauty, and protection from heat, and air pollution. More hard surfaces mean flooding during severe storms. Ecosystems and local wildlife’s last refuge in backyards will crash, as bird song is replaced by the din of bulldozers.
There’s a maximum carrying capacity of the land. Simplistically multiplying the numbers of homes does not magically make drinking water for more residents.
Instead, overcrowding leads to dried rivers, spent aquifers, depleted wells, and water wars between residents, industry, and farmers in our important and fertile agricultural bread basket, the Cowichan Valley.
“Build, baby build” everywhere is an outdated mentality, a developer’s dream that must be tossed before becoming a nightmare for the rest of us.
Christine Volker
North Cowichan
Stalin would be proud of Eby’s housing plans
History keeps repeating and socialists keep attempting the failures of the past only to discover failure once again.
David Eby was acclaimed by his fellow MLAs because, as we were told, no greater man or woman exists in the NDP ranks. Great accomplishments were alluded to, but not specifically spelled out.
Less than two years later, we find out that everything this man touched ended in confusion, particularly his law and order attempts.
Fast forward! We need accomplishments before the election, so forget “law and order.” Let’s do housing, it is easier to fool the people!
I appreciate that the products of the B.C. education system believe that one of their many rights is housing. I totally agree with that premise, but I do not agree that the “unhoused” should dictate to the taxpayers representatives as to where they live.
Those that don’t work, do not want to work or simply cannot work should not take up space in inner city premises.
I toured parts of Russia in 1999 (St. Petersburg and Stalingrad) and saw the Josef Stalin housing. Yes, definitely affordable, I admit.
These endless rows of grey monoliths (coldwater flats) were a disgrace to the people of Russia, but were more or less forced upon them by a dictatorship.
The B.C. government is designing housing to be ready next year.
While I do not anticipate grey monoliths, I am fearful of dictatorship by the “taxpayers representatives.”
We apparently don’t have dictatorships in Canada, but we do have Eby.
Ken Knogler
Saanich
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