We should remove trees close to urban areas
The recent forest fires suggest B.C. has too many trees in urban locations.
Large-scale removal of trees in and around urban habitations would result in more arable land for farming and pasture as well as mitigate the risk of future out of control fires.
Look at the United Kingdom where large copses remain, but centuries-old villages are not burned to the ground as they are too distant from the forest.
Terrance Swan
Victoria
All those delivery trucks are hurting our Earth
Re: “Time to consider personal responsibility,” letter, Aug. 24.
The letter is correct on so many fronts. While we all look on in horror at television coverage of the many wildfires raging around the world, there seems to be no shortage of all types of large delivery trucks delivering endless parcels, most of them smaller than a breadbox, to my neighbours’ doorsteps (and that’s just on my street).
Imagine this occurring in every town and city every day. Earth’s resources are dwindling by the minute yet fingers are endlessly clicking the “order” button on their cellphones, not thinking for one minute about all the pollution involved in the manufacturing, shipping and delivery of all these items they are ordering.
Let alone the reality that many of their returned items end up in landfills.
Time to wake up folks! We cannot keep going on like this. Our children are waiting to borrow Earth next.
Anne Forbes
Victoria
Proportional voting would help housing
Re: “We need to end the big business of poverty,” commentary, Aug. 25.
I completely agree with Doreen Gee’s commentary about homelessness in Victoria. Of course, the problem is a national one.
In B.C. one would have expected that an NDP government would have done something practical and useful, instead of paying a bureaucrat a salary of $366,000 plus benefits (and no doubt a bonus for showing up for work) and a hefty contribution to a golden pension plan.
Or paying a company $74 million to run a string of derelict filthy hotels to house homeless people.
A politician’s main concern seems to be 1) to be re-elected, and 2) to have their party re-elected.
I often think that politicians should be limited to two terms. I live in a strata and experienced the messing around with their stricture to “create” affordable housing.
Stratas worked fine. Now they don’t work as well. We don’t need affordable housing, we need housing for people with a low income.
We managed to do that in the past. How do we hold our elected officials accountable? Elections seem to replace one set of incompetents for another.
I think as individuals we should talk often to our MP or MLA. We should also talk to people running for office. Proportional voting would also help.
Vince Devries
Ladysmith
Reduce the number of health authorities
How many independent health authorities does B.C. need?
The province has a singular Ministry of Health, yet the province is dotted with multiple costly independent health authorities only creating jobs for civil servants that are costing our health-care system billions of dollars annually which could be better unused in-patient treatment and hiring nurses and doctors to replace our present shortages.
Each region doesn’t need its own health administration as all decisions could easily be managed from a central administration. The supply chains now broken by multiple health administration is also leading to delays in treatment, supplies exceeding their useful dates and enormous cost in replacement combined with excessive delay in delivery.
Isn’t it time the NDP recognized its own internal mismanagement and corrected a now-broken system?
James Cooper
Victoria
Just remember, nature was here first
Re: “Police to the rescue after raccoon rampages in Langford home,” Aug. 5.
A dog, two adults, armed with a great big guitar, at the mercy of one desperate raccoon! What a heroic tale!
Years ago I re-habbed a baby raccoon whose mother was killed by a car. Ringo was never in a box or cage or on a leash and hibernated happily in a neighbour’s farm after several visits to the wild. When she finally left to join other coons she weighed 32 pounds.
She turned up at our door one evening, later, smelling deliciously wild, climbed up to be petted and then returned to the woods. We never heard from her again.
She would certainly have strongly objected to being shooed out of someone’s home but most wild things are hungry.
Raccoons are highly intelligent and won’t fight unless they feel threatened. I am sure this one was just as terrified as the Brown family. Maybe this encounter would teach her the perils of thievery.
I hope the Browns recover eventually from their heroic encounter with nature but we have to accept that nature got here before we did.
Alison Acker
Victoria
Low capacity, higher cost if ferries are built here
A recent letter proposed that our ferries should all be constructed in B.C., providing seemingly limitless benefits for the B.C. economy and our workforce. And it slightly slagged off foreign construction (given recent technical difficulties) as not quite being up to snuff.
The letter ignored the issue of capacity in B.C. shipyards. With major federal building programs underway, I doubt we could find a spare spot in a local yard for years, if not decades.
Using overseas yards is definitely cheaper and the ships are built to international specifications, so let’s not be too hasty in our criticism.
The real issue is the level of premium we are willing to pay for a made in Canada option, if we have or are willing to create the capacity.
The premium for a home build is at least 25 per cent over offshore options. And that is if we can create the number of qualified skilled trades in B.C. that home shipbuilding requires.
What do British Columbian taxpayers want as we go forward?
David Collins
Victoria
Keep Canadian ferries as reliable spares
My dad was an engine fitter at Burrard Dry Dock where they built most of the ferries and they were workhorses.
The C class and S class ferries are still plying our waters and despite their age are more reliable than the European built crafts. I don’t understand why they don’t tie up a couple of C class ferries at Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay for use when the European ones break down.
Apparently they would rather scrap them. Makes no sense to me. Build Canadian.
Jane McCall
Delta
More efficiency needed at B.C. Ferries
Washington State Ferries run efficiently because upper management runs a “tight ship” and they always have a backup plan in case their ships break down.
Please, B.C. Ferries, stop whining and get on with running a more efficient organization.
Sherrie Boyte
Sidney
She will run B.C. Ferries and take care of rodents
It seems to me and Piper (my cat), that with the provincial ferry monopoly and the province’s credit rating (the parents’ credit card), that she could run B.C. Ferries better than the current gang.
She is prepared to do it “pro bono” (with the right to an occasional rodent).
Peter Foran and Piper
Victoria
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