Many lightweight EVs go much too fast
Re: “Should mobility scooters and wheelchairs be allowed in B.C. bike lanes?” March 4.
This is a bad idea, and the comment “lightweight electric vehicles operated at low speeds such as e-bikes and electronic kick scooters” is an incorrect and ill‑informed assumption. As someone who cycles our bike lanes and trails, many of these lightweight electric vehicles are operated at excessive speeds, many over 30 km/h. Throttled e-bikes and powered scooters are the primary culprits here, not mobility scooters that accommodate people with disabilities.
Approval of this by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure is a formula for personal risk/injury and inappropriate “lane rage” incidents.
John Stevenson
Victoria
Scooters don’t fit on these bike lanes
Given their stance on permitting micro-mobility vehicles access to and right-of-way on our fair city’s bicycle lanes, I am quite certain that neither of the city councillors mentioned actually use said lanes for transportation. These bike lanes are one-vehicle wide, and frequently provide no room to pass another vehicle. The newly created Fort Street lanes are single lanes, bordered by concrete sides, trapping a bicycle in the lane behind a mobility scooter. You can’t get out.
Scooters, mobility assists, skateboards and their electric kin are designed to travel at the speed of walking, not the speed of cycle traffic. E-bikes can and do travel much faster than a human-powered bike.
The speed differentials alone dictate that the bike lanes should be reserved for human-powered bicycles. E-bikes should be on the roads (and should comply with the Motor Vehicle Act), and the others should be on the sidewalks, acknowledging that pedestrians have the right of way. There does need to be some communal “live and let live” in play here. Everyone needs to know and acknowledge their rights and responsibilities.
Just because someone invents something, doesn’t mean society must adapt to allow it to function. Generally, these things must adapt to society’s infrastructure, not the other way around.
MD (David) Hansen
Victoria
School standards have dropped for decades
Re: “Getting a read on global schools survey,” Geoff Johnson, March 3.
The misrepresentation of education’s longstanding gold standard of academic achievement by our education leaders — present and past — continues to boggle the mind.
Geoff Johnson’s latest word salad, used to champion progressive ideology, ignores the very real trend of declining student performance in British Columbia for more than 20 years – despite higher spending and smaller class sizes. All evidence-based data from PISA and other standardized measures point to weaker curriculum guidelines, an over-reliance of failed student-led learning techniques, and a cancellation of provincial exams as contributing factors for more kids graduating today who are knowledge-deficient and unprepared for life past high school.
It’s hard to think critically about anything if a student hasn’t at first mastered any knowledge first, something that is becoming increasingly rare in today’s classrooms. The main difference between a fifteen-year-old student now and 20 years ago is that the standards they are being asked to measure up to are much lower. Why we insist on ignoring these truths is the real issue at hand.
Tara L. Houle
North Saanich
Working on a leap day shouldn’t earn extra pay
I’m not sure who is behind the movement to institute an extra day’s pay for people on an annual salary when they work on Feb. 29 every four years, but they have their mathematics all wrong. Contrary to popular belief, there are not 365 days in each year. In fact, there are 365.25 days (rounded) in each year.
This means that they receive pay for 365.25 days each non-leap year, but they only are salaried for 365 days. This also means that at the end of each normal year, they owe their employers 0.25 of a day. So, when they work on Feb. 29 every four years, they are actually paying the employer back what they owe them, and dreaming if they believe otherwise.
Remember — there is no such thing as a free lunch.
James MacDonald
Coombs
Civilian death toll in Gaza and Ukraine
There were reports in the past week that a ceasefire might finally be coming to the Israel-Hamas war. Sadly, it comes too late for thousands of civilians.
I am deeply concerned about the alarming disparity in civilian casualties between the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the much shorter Israel-Hamas war. Despite the Russia-Ukraine war lasting for 25 months, the reported civilian deaths have reached 29,330. In stark contrast, the Israel-Hamas war, spanning merely five months, has already witnessed a staggering toll of over 30,000 civilian lives lost. This discrepancy is not just shocking, but completely outrageous.
The brevity of the Israel-Hamas conflict with its devastating human cost lays bare a catastrophic failure to protect civilian lives. This situation demands immediate, intensified international scrutiny and action that Canada should be a part of.
The staggering loss of civilian life in the Israel-Hamas war, within such a condensed period, should serve as a wake-up call to all of us. We must not stand idly by while thousands of civilians pay the ultimate price for conflicts they have no part in.
John Pope
Victoria
Premier must act on ministry’s failings
Re: “Ex-children’s staffer faces threat of legal action for talking about boy’s death,” March 2.
The front-page articles in the March 2 issue, describing situations where children are dying in care, are very disturbing. Even more disturbing is that the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth discouraged an investigation of a child’s death while in care of an Indigenous child welfare society.
Thank you, Jody Bauche, for bringing this case to light. I hope Premier Eby is making the necessary changes to protect children in care.
Phil Harrison
Comox
Ministry’s changes have made little difference
Re: “Ex-children’s staffer faces threat of legal action for talking about boy’s death,” March 2.
A new associate provincial director of child welfare to strengthen child-safety oversight and accountability has just been created within the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Over the past decade, the ministry has undergone several commissions providing extensive recommendations for improving child-welfare delivery and accountability.
If the ministry’s child welfare structure and successful implementation of recommendations over the past decade is anything to go by, this new layer of bureaucracy will probably do more to strengthen senior management than anything else.
Many of the recommendations from these commissions are not rocket science and empirical in nature. The existing recommendations include a working blueprint for accountability, training and support for front-line child-welfare staff. Training and support is paramount if child-welfare delivery and accountability is to be successful.
Keith Laxton
Saanich
Ignorance fuels fear of life-saving vaccines
Parents resisting vaccines for children? Really? This is Neanderthal thinking and is a disservice to children, potentially for a lifetime.
I hope these same parents don’t expect our overstressed health-care system to treat their unvaccinated children or save their lives from completely preventable diseases. Come on, people, stop buying into the lies about vaccines. It’s a world where climate change is allowing many diseases to propagate and spread much faster and more easily than in the past.
Mike Wilkinson
Duncan
CRD’s water estimates are off the mark
Re: “Health officer recommends $1.1B water-filtration plant,” March 3.
Contrary to the headline, the health officer did not recommend a filtration plant. He recommended that the Capital Regional District continue planning to build a water-filtration plant and linked the need to the diversion of the Leech River, needed in the future to meet demand for water. It is prudent to continue with planning. But we also need to find ways to defer the Leech diversion beyond the current projected date.
The CRD Master Plan assumed, without any analysis of current water use, that water demand would increase at the same rate as the population, i.e., per-capita demand would remain constant. Multi-family units typically use less water than single-family units; new homes on smaller lots also use less water compared with the regional average. With the trend to more multi-family units as a proportion of new builds, the data need to be analysed to determine per-capita demand trends more accurately. For example, the City of Edmonton found that new sub-divisions used 15% less water that the city average.
The Master Plan assumed there was little opportunity for reducing per-capita demand through demand-management measures. Considering how far the region is above the Canadian average demand, more can and should be done. If we are to face milder, wetter winters, longer and drier summers and more variable precipitation with climate change, we can’t rely solely on expanding our water sources as the means of meeting demand. Climate change requires a multifaceted response to how we use water.
Jack Hull
Saanich
A condition for building the towers of Saanich
By all means, build more 18-storey towers in Saanich.
One condition: Build a medical clinic on the main floor with doctors or nurse practitioners.
Colin Newell
Victoria
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