Closed containment is the best answer
The executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farming Association has written a paean declaring that his industry is “developing new sustainable technologies and practices on a foundation of current science.”
What is clear is that the practices of this association to place open-net fish farms in the paths that migrating salmon take ensures that contaminants used to allow farmed fish to survive in crowded conditions and to survive viruses that they carry still affect and infect wild salmon.
The technology to raise salmon in closed containment conditions on land exists.
When this technology is used, I will consider accepting farmed salmon, at least to look at in stores. Eventually, I will probably try eating it.
Meantime, I still demand that farmed salmon not be allowed to deplete our wild stocks by being raised in open pens in the migration paths of wild salmon. In addition, I demand that farmed salmon in stores be labelled as such.
Edwin E. Daniel
Victoria
No mask on you, no vaccine for you
Some members of the public think their rights are being compromised by being convicted and fined for not wearing masks during this pandemic.
It would surely bring them to their senses to put their own lives at risk by being denied the opportunity to receive the vaccine when available by placing them at the back of the queue until everyone else has had theirs.
John Martin
Nanaimo
Tougher rules for anti-maskers
Anti-maskers fret and cry about losing their civil rights and freedoms. What about the poor citizens that they deliberately or accidentally infect with COVID-19?
Surely those of us who respect the law and do our best to follow Dr. Bonnie Henry’s leadership have the right to live without these delusional people trampling on our civil rights and freedom.
In a recent case, a belligerent and offensive person threatened the staff and patrons of a local restaurant and received a token fine of $230. Hardly a deterrent! Not only did he break the law, he endangered the health and well-being of those concerned. This action of endangering and threatening the health and safety of others must certainly be worthy of more serious charges.
Also, the anti-masker public demonstrations are not just spontaneous events. They are well-organized by a core group of professional anarchists.
I expect law enforcement know who these people are. And yet, they allow them to organize and recklessly endanger the health and wellness of a much greater number of our citizens, with impunity.
Unless law enforcement act more decisively, target these offenders and levy fines befitting the crime, we will continue to see increased disruptive and dangerous activity.
Quebec recently fined a group of party people $1,000 each for contravening their laws. Maybe B.C. should follow their lead.
Steve Nielsen
Victoria
Quarantine needed to protect us all
This is going to the point of ridiculousness with Dr. Bonnie Henry once again asking for a further lockdown. The first did not work. When will this government get it?
It took them far too long to make masks mandatory when the science was out there to support that requirement. Look where we are now.
Let’s get a plan that will work. COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon and is mushrooming at a pace that is out of touch with reality.
More than 2,000 new cases over the weekend with 45 new on the Island. Something is not working here! We seem to have mass confusion on these requirements.
Even the possibility of fines is questionable!
They have the power to institute a provincial quarantine on travel. Any person coming into this province, including residents who leave to travel outside, shall be required to quarantine for 14 days when entering/returning from anyplace.
I also strongly urge Premier John Horgan and Henry to extend that to further protect those of us living on Vancouver Island. Anyone leaving the Island for any reason should be required to quarantine for 14 days upon returning.
Joseph E. Dennie
Qualicum Beach
Cyclists can be partially to blame
Re: “Yes, the driver is always at fault,” letter, Dec. 8.
The answer is yes, but the cyclist is sometimes partially at fault, as implied by Steve Wallace’s column last week. He suggests that the cyclist was going very fast at night without a light.
There are many more cyclists on the road in Victoria these days, which is good, but again, many of them do not obey the rules of the road.
My observation, as an octogenarian, retired cyclist and careful driver, is that the majority of cyclists do not stop at stop signs, and many of them do not even slow down. There are also more electrically aided bikes that can go very fast.
Many cyclists do not wear helmets, have them hanging on the handlebars, or do not fasten them properly under the chin, which is useless.
In cyclist/car collisions, the cyclist always comes off worst, often with significant head injury at great cost to the health-care system. The time has come when the cyclists must be responsible for their behaviour on the roads.
I suggest that bicycle licences be brought back. Greater Victoria should supply, free for a year, all cyclists with two reasonably large licence number plates visible on both sides of the bike.
After the year, all new bike owners should pay a $10 fee and all existing licensed cyclists should have to pay $10 for the year’s licence sticker.
Hopefully, cyclists not obeying the rules of the road can be identified and fined. These fines could then go to the provision of licences to new cyclists for the first year.
Fines should be levied for failing to stop at stop signs, speeds over the speed limit, improper wearing or not wearing a bike helmet, improper or non-functioning lights at night and other infractions of the rules of the road.
Charles Simpson
Oak Bay
Victoria candidates are disappointing
The candidates’ responses to your questions, published on Dec. 2, yield a disappointing analysis, as follows:
• Not one pledged to remove the portion of the mural in Bastion Square that denigrates the men and women who serve in our police department;
• Not one pledged to restore the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald to a position of respect somewhere in Victoria;
• Only three appear to have ever been self-employed;
• Only one deals with the reality that property taxes and levies on homeowners and businesses are what pays for every dollar that council spends.
William Birney
Victoria
Keep containers out of our parks
Re: “Developer, coalition pitch ‘tiny homes’ for homeless, using shipping containers,” Dec. 8.
Please, please, please, please do not locate the proposed converted containers in Beacon Hill Park or any other of Victoria’s very limited green spaces.
The amount of green space in Victoria per capital is rapidly decreasing as the city promotes rampant increased “densification.”
When was the last time that the city added to the green-space inventory, as opposed to removing city land for “affordable” housing (i.e. converting school lands into housing)?
I recall that the Victoria philanthropist Michael Williams once provided converted containers for the vagrants under the old Blue Bridge. For his generosity, he was sued by the vagrants, when the vagrants themselves burned down the container shelter.
So much for gratitude.
Peter Davis
James Bay
Where to put the container homes?
Re: “Developer, coalition pitch ‘tiny homes’ for homeless, using shipping containers,” Dec. 8.
I heartily applaud the concept of crowdfunding for shipping containers as housing for Victoria’s homeless.
However, the problem still remains with regards to location, location, location.
I believe that I have the ideal solution for that most important single NIMBY obstacle: The shipping containers should be sited on an obsolete, repurposed barge docked in Rock Bay off Bay and Government streets.
Point Hope was in the recycling business of barge-breaking a few years ago … with still many opportunities to find such a barge to serve as a homeless encampment at the ideal location of Rock Bay.
Richard Krieger
Esquimalt
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