When is enough, enough?
It appears that some municipalities have gone development mad.
Langford has permitted some of the ugliest sites imaginable. The Westshore Parkway and Sooke Road junction is a boulder nightmare, with even more being developed. Then the mess behind Costco on McCallum Road.
Giant apartment blocks border the beautiful Galloping Goose near Sooke Road and Happy Valley. Townhouses have pushed to the Island Highway edge of Thetis Lake Park. Goldstream at Westshore Parkway (Langford again) and the Malahat have roads pushing into previously forested areas.
View Royal has joined in the mess and greed with massive construction right onto the main entrance area of Thetis Park, West Park Lane, and Colwood is vigorously expanding into the old gravel pit at West Bay.
It appears that money, profit and greed are the guiding lights for these municipalities.
Highlands council, please, stay true to your bylaws and hold firm to your environmental protection principles. You are our only hope for a greener and still beautiful Greater Victoria.
Laurie Hardy
Victoria
Two dishonest leftists taint B.C. politics
It is hard to swallow it all these days: The irresponsible spending of billions of dollars and the excessive spin put on it all.
But the holier-than-thou self-proclaimed masters of deceit must be this province’ s two most prominent provincial politicians of the past few years: one NDP Leader John Horgan, and the other former Green Party leader Andrew Weaver.
Let’s take Weaver first.
Remember his sweet talk about all that green? Yet, he approves a gigantic non-green hydro project that floods hundreds of acres of ecosystems, and uses tons of concrete and tons of steel. The government has the audacity to call it on its website a “clean project.”
But Weaver’s hypocrisy goes further with his silence on coal mining and transportation of it, and natural-gas development (fracking) and its transportation. This guy was going to revolutionize this place. You could almost hear him saying: “Those disgusting people who can’ t understand green living.”
Weaver stabbed his party in the back by supporting another political party in this election.
Then there’s Horgan, the great spinner. Nothing is too large or small to spin as he presides over $75 billion of borrowed money that generations to come will have to try and pay for. is spending of public money to fight a constitutional case that any high-school political-science student could have told him was silly demonstrates either ignorance or arrogance; I suspect a bit of both.
Of course, he lost, and the loss is a shameful mark on the province’s reputation.
He, too, does not mind breaking his word. He signed an agreement with the Green Party in which, among other things, he committed: ‘This agreement will continue until the next scheduled election.”
But power overtook honesty and he broke his word, calling a snap election a year before the agreement is due to expire.
Brian Peckford
Parksville
Give everyone some cash, be done with it
It is appropriate to ask the four party leaders what their unequivocal stance is with respect to a flat injection of funds into the public’s bank accounts.
I propose that anyone earning over $75,000 be automatically disqualified.
Falling back to a zero sum, accountants could propose a number in reverse order, granting, say, $12,000 yearly, this amount to fall as income increases.
Since we have all the necessary technology, e-transfers could be made mandatory on any one day of the week. Who stands to gain? The taxpayer of course.
No more last of the month Wednesdays bee-lines to one’s favourite watering hole. Instead it can happen weekly, and perhaps small reserves of money on hand would eventually decrease one’s dependency on drugs and alcohol. Dollars for food!
How many employee assistance workers are on the provincial payroll? Yes, most would need accommodation, skills training, retirement bridging or notice of termination.
With the savings of salaries and a multitude of benefits, the Ministry of Social Development together with contemplated ICBC competition, we may be starting on a new positive financial roll.
Eric J. Ronse
Shawnigan Lake
Just let ICBC do its job
Of course ICBC’s affairs are a mess! The Liberals made sure of that. They decreed that ICBC must fund and run parts of government.
In addition to running claim centres, ICBC has to test and license all drivers. ICBC must also license all vehicles. All that licensing used to be done by the Motor Vehicle Branch.
ICBC collects fees and fines for the government.
They also have to enforce court settlements. They have to take government direction on how they do all this, as well as direction on purely insurance matters, like high risk drivers.
While ICBC funds and runs a part of government, private insurance freeloads on all of this infrastructure. That makes it a very uneven field on which ICBC must compete.
And then ICBC has to pay “dividends”; that is, pay the government for the privilege of funding and doing government’s job. And who knows what else ICBC has to pay for, that no other insurer would?
A number of possibilities come to mind, like direct payments to ministries such as Health, Social Development, and Transportation.
It’s almost as if the Liberals wanted to break ICBC. Could this all have been part of a Liberal privatization agenda?
It would be easy to lower ICBC rates. Let government do government’s job, and let ICBC do their job: insurance.
Terry Peace
Victoria
B.C.’s October nightmare
Unless both major parties have their own treasuries that print off currency, neither has said what existing programs or revenues will used to pay for their treats.
I suspect the trick will be imposing new taxes somewhere else or cutting some existing programs altogether; we will simply be paying out of our collective own pockets somewhere else for these Halloween goodies.
I am not sure many of us want the trick or treat under these circumstances.
John Stevenson
Victoria
Vaccine not political, must be free
When I hear politicians saying that they will give us something for free I am reminded of the saying that the government cannot give you something it hasn’t already taken from you or someone else.
And as for the promise of free COVID-19 vaccine, are the politicians saying that without “their” largesse we would have to pay to for something that has the potential to slow and possibly halt the spread of this lethal disease?
If they for one moment thought that people should pay for the vaccine they need to step aside.
Paul Laraman
Mill Bay
Worried about other provinces
I have just learned of a woman who has travelled from B.C. to Toronto. She was there for a month.
She travelled on planes and on the ferry returning to Victoria a few days ago.
She did not have to shelter in place for 14 days when she returned, so she has returned to work in a large department store and is in contact with hundreds of employees and customers. If it turns out she is symptomatic, we will have a totally out-of-control pandemic on this island.
What is the difference between people returning from a place like Toronto, which is a COVID-19 hotspot, or any other place outside Canada?
It makes no sense that people travelling inter-provincially do not have to self isolate for 14 days.
It is only a matter of time before someone will become a super-spreader here, or anywhere else in Canada.
On Vancouver Island, COVID-19 is well under control – but anyone who is returning to B.C could change that within days. Do we really have to wait until we are dealing with a disaster before someone does something?
I have contacted our governments both provincially and federally asking them to reassess this law and strengthen it so Canadians are protected by our government, as we all should be.
Sharon Wright
Brentwood Bay
Please, everyone, start wearing masks
I am tired of standing in lines inside stores waiting to be served being one of the few people wearing a mask. It is time to make masks mandatory inside buildings.
We can do this simple thing. Service workers are masked, the public should also be masked. Protect each other and start thinking of each other. It is time.
Gail Cresswell
Nanaimo
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