Slight misunderstanding about the new holiday
I overheard in doctor’s office:
A: What are all these people in here with orange shirts on about?
B: It’s to honour new Canadians.
Sigh …
Jon Ackroyd
Campbell River
We need to pay rent? What poppycock
Re: “Reconciliation initiative aims to make up for ‘rent free’ living,” Sept. 30.
This is blatant dictatorship. How dare they make some sort of rules and try to shove them down our throat — all for their own benefit and their own bank accounts.
There are young families living on macaroni and cheese just to maintain the mortgage or rent payments, businesses who practically lost almost everything and now this Reciprocity Trusts wants to arrange for payments to their cause?
And we can go online to calculate what we owe them? For living rent free? Are we supposed be thankful for this nice convenience?
I have heard some poppycock, but this article takes the biscuit.
Heidi Lamb
Victoria
Many billions have gone to Indigenous Peoples
Re: “Reconciliation initiative aims to make up for ‘rent free’ living,” Sept. 30.
I want to rebut the assertion that Canadians have been living rent-free on Indigenous lands, and ought to be paying rent, backdated 150 years, for occupying the continent of North America.
With all due respect to these sublime economic theories, what have Canadian taxpayers have been doing for the last 150 years? Throwing flowers at Indigenous settlements?
The budget of 2021 allots $18 billion over the next five years to Indigenous communities. In general, spending on Aboriginal matters rose from $79 million in 1947 to $7.9 billion in 2012, an increase of 1,000 per cent.
I mean, how much more do you want? Where is this financial madness going to end? You want to tax the homeowners more? If you want Truth, let’s find out where these billions went. If you want Reconciliation, let’s ask what the Indigenous folk really want financially.
Most Indigenous peoples do not want a handout any more. They want justice and equality, just the same as the rest of us. They are Canadian, and proud of it. Just like us.
M.D. Hansen
Victoria
Weak sound system hampered gathering
On Thursday I was pleased to attend the gathering for Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Centennial Square. The event was well attended by a wide variety of supporters of all ages, the majority wearing their orange shirts.
But it was impossible to see the stage, and next to impossible to hear the prayers, speeches and most of the singing. This was frustrating and disappointing to the many people who weren’t standing close to the stage.
The sound system was even more disappointing and, as such, an insult to the people who had gone to the trouble of organizing and mounting the event.
To practice truth and reconciliation, we are asked not to merely pay lip service to the precepts, but also to follow up with concrete actions.
Today’s event showed little more than the dreaded lip service from the City of Victoria. Why could it not provide a decent sound system that broadcasts to all Centennial Square? Why could it not provide a higher stage so that people could see?
Yes, the city provided the space, a clean-up crew, first aid and security. The rest was an unfortunate affront to the Indigenous organizers, the Indigenous attendees, and a disappointment to their supporters.
Sheila Protti
Victoria
Trudeau’s Tofino break the wrong thing to do
For Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I found myself thinking quite a lot about the tragic and painful wrongs suffered by Indigenous people in our country, and really everywhere that colonizers have imposed themselves and their tyranny. I sure wasn’t comfortable behaving like it was just another day.
Then I learned that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to spend his day travelling to Tofino with his family to have a nice head start on their vacation.
Oh, he said he called a few residential school survivors, and participated in a ceremony, but all I could feel was that his mindset is so representative of the colonial arrogance and lip service that plagues reconciliation and soils truth.
My feeling is that the prime minister’s actions do not spring from any sincere remorse, or empathy, but are put-ons just to look good and in line with what has become politically correct.
In my heart I apologize to every Indigenous person for the wrongs suffered, including what I feel is the wrong of a leader who has absolutely no self-awareness despite being so very self-centred.
Joanne Thibault
Victoria
Returning the land has been tried before
Re: “We need to do more than talk about reconciliation,” commentary, Sept. 30.
Professor John Price’s commentary on reconciliation is intriguing, up to the point where he suggests that building respectful relationships between Indigenous people and “settler descendants” will depend on “returning the land to its rightful owners.”
This is an alarming point of view. He seems to be saying these “rightful owners” would be the descendants of a particular racial group. The only way returning land to a particular social class or racial group’s descendants could be done would be by abolishing private property and then handing the land over to the group.
Just a few thousand Canadians voted for political parties who would do this, and as we know it’s been tried before in recent European history by political forces of the extreme left and the extreme right, with rather unfortunate results.
Kim Harrison
Esquimalt
Why won’t RCMP union give us the numbers?
The RCMP union has defended the right of members to refuse to be vaccinated, and will not say how many members have voiced concerns about vaccination against COVID-19, citing privacy reasons.
I could comment on the issue of the union of our national law-enforcement agency supporting members who disobey a lawful order, but I won’t. Instead, I will ask whose privacy would be compromised if the union revealed the number of RCMP members who are not vaccinated?
The request for numbers did not ask for names, just a number or a percentage. How does that compromise privacy?
There are only two alternatives of which I can think: the union doesn’t understand the concept of privacy, or the number of non-vaccinated RCMP personnel is so high it would create a public outcry.
I sure hope it’s the former.
Ian Cameron
Brentwood Bay
Prevent the damage dogs do to beaches
I love dogs, but just like anything in life, too much of anything is never a good thing. I have never seen so many dogs on the beaches in Victoria and surrounding areas as in the past two years.
I go to the beach searching for peace and quiet, which includes watching the beautiful multiple species of birds that grace the shoreline and sky.
I am constantly on edge, however, because I have had too many unwelcome encounters with dogs running up to me, jumping on me, circling my feet, barking loudly, and as much as I like dogs, it can be very unnerving because I don’t know them.
I sometimes get very anxious because of that. I am sure that there are enough dog parks in which dogs can get their exercise, but the environmental damage occurring at the regions’ beaches is becoming a serious issue.
I also have had to pick up numerous plastic dog-doo bags and also have to watch where I step all the time. Surely everyone wants to protect the beaches, birds and marine life, even dog owners.
Anne Forbes
Victoria
Those dogs at play end mail delivery
I live across from Pemberton Park, which is an off-leash dog-friendly park.
During the early morning and evening there are usually about 10 to 15 dogs playing, chasing balls or frisbees and generally getting well exercised.
Last Thursday we received a handwritten note that we were no longer receiving mail delivery because of “safety concerns” and would have to pick up our mail at the Glanford Avenue sorting station some six kilometres away.
The “safety issue” according to Canada Post is the dogs in the park and the park not completely fencing the area.
We have become hostages in a dispute between the city and the postal union.
What bunk. Postal workers are now in the same category as migratory birds.
Brian Rogers
Victoria
Focus on climate crisis, not on party politics
If ever there was a demonstration of opportunistic, short-term thinking, this election was it. The $600 million it cost could have been spent on initiatives to speed the energy transition to a renewable, sustainable, livable future.
Our electoral system needs reform. And our government needs to put strategy and party politics aside and focus on substantive, systemic, real change if we are to avoid sinking deeper into this climate crisis.
First and foremost, end subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry.
Karyn Woodland
Colwood
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