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Letters Oct. 30: Yes, the navy can fight ship fires; the state of our health-care system

Recent stories about health care prompted several letters to the editor
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Containers that caught fire aboard Zim Kingston, anchored off Victoria, collapsed onto themselves. CANADIAN COAST GUARD

Yes, the navy has firefighting capacity

Re: “Navy no longer has firefighting capacity,” letter, Oct. 28.

Contrary to what the letter said, ­Canadian Forces auxiliary vessel Firebrand, Her Majesty’s Canadian Dockyard fireboat, was one of the first on scene, having been dispatched by the Joint Rescue ­Co-ordination Centre along with ­Seaspan Raven before Maersk Trader and the Maersk Tender were contracted to ­maintain a cooling water mist on the Zim Kingston. As has been reported, ­Firebrand stood by for a time and left after it was ­determined that it was a hazardous-­materials fire and water shouldn’t be used to fight it.

Gerald W. Pash

Victoria

Premier John Horgan’s message rings hollow

While I wish Premier John Horgan all the best, I permit myself to laugh at him. “Don’t wait and see a doctor,” says he.

What doctor would that be? The one many of us don’t have? Call non-stop to try day after day to get into a walk-in clinic? Be put on a wait list to see a specialist?

And, how is it that he is getting ­surgery while so many others are having their surgery cancelled?

We must be in Denmark.

Julia Pollard

Victoria

I’d love to see a doctor, if only I could

I add my plea along with all the others that I need a medical doctor.

I have written to Premier John Horgan many times and others in the government pleading to get myself and my husband a medical doctor.

I can’t find an urgent-care or ­walk-in available. I haven’t been seen in two years. I suspect there are people dying that have medical problems that if they had been caught in time would have had appropriate treatment.

Now Horgan has to have a biopsy and says: “If you are concerned about something, don’t put it off. Go see a doctor, go to an urgent and primary care centre to get it checked out as soon as you can.”

He obviously has paid no attention to our cries. This is an embarrassing state for B.C. to be in. It has been reported there are 700,000 to 900,000 people in B.C. without a family doctor.

Judith Sears

Sidney

Time for compromise on doctor shortage

Re: “Our monopoly health-care system is dysfunctional,” commentary, Oct. 28.

Gwyn Morgan has once again touched on the heresy of changing our failing health-care system. A predictable super majority will object strenuously, and this conundrum will persist until the vested interests and those locked on the moral high ground yield.

There is a reason no graduates are choosing general practice as a career. The exodus of early retirees is ­accelerating and fewer imports are ­coming to Canada from failed regimes around the globe.

Surely the evidence suggests there is room for some compromise?

If we are satisfied with a system that continues to produce more lawyers and social activists than doctors, then do ­nothing. Just pray you don’t get sick.

Russell K. Thompson

Colwood

Encourage more people to enter health fields

Despite Gwyn Morgan’s logical evidence supporting the need for private health care in Canada, I believe that access to private health care would further dilute the availability of health-care-provider staff in public care and would limit access to help based on personal finances.

Instead, what might assist our ailing health-care system is educational funding (as well as retention incentives) to ­encourage students to enter programs that will ­produce the needed physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals.

Even before the pandemic, it has been common practice to cancel ­elective ­surgery due to staffing limits during ­holidays. As the pandemic has advertised the hardships health-care ­professionals face on a daily basis, it is likely that the numbers of students entering these ­professions may further diminish.

Fern Davey

North Saanich

We must protect universal health care

Re: “Our monopoly health-care system is dysfunctional,” commentary, Oct. 28.

Every once in a while the provincial NDP do something that very much annoys many of us. The recently ­proposed changes to freedom of information ­legislation for example, or applying the provincial speculation tax outside the Lower Mainland, to name just two.

Then when a column like Gwyn Morgan’s appears, doubts that the NDP are best to govern evaporate. The same applies to the federal Liberals.

There remain forces that will misrepresent reality and grapple at straws to argue against universal health care, and would then use that straw to replace a solid ­structure they falsely claim is unsound.

All Canadians have continued to have access to excellent care in every province throughout the pandemic. Our system of universal health care, like our governments, has its flaws. And its strength remains its universality, access for all.

Many points in Morgan’s column can be challenged, beginning with the ­erroneous use of the term monopolistic.

But the argument about creating a two-tiered health system in Canada is over. The law was most recently affirmed in the long-running Cambie Surgeries court case in September last year.

It’s up to Canadians now to continue to vote for parties that will protect ­universal health care.

Paul Walton

Nanaimo

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• Email: letters@timescolonist.com

• Mail: Letters to the editor, Times Colonist, 201-655 Tyee Rd., Victoria, B.C. V9A 6X5

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