Victoria council does not have magic wand
Re: “Victoria council ignoring city’s demise,” letter, Sept. 1.
Assigning blame to Victoria city council for every challenge facing the capital region seems to be on trend with the populist ire we see rising worldwide. This reductionist approach to defining our problems and tracing their sources is a poor stand-in for a deeper understanding of interconnectivity, feedback loops and the debt created through the competing interests of nested systems.
To expect council to wave a magic wand and end the COVID-19 pandemic, eradicate homelessness (its root causes, not its visible effects) and facilitate a global demand for racial justice is comical at best, and corrosive to our comprehension and expectation of civic governance at worst. These are likely the same people who want to keep city councillors at part-time wages, because isn’t it a part-time job?
Victorians need to broaden their perspectives to see the complexity and intractableness of the core challenges we face today, manifest through inequality, injustice and the climate emergency.
Only then can we rise to meet these great crises of our times, rather than pointing fingers.
Kevin Ehman
Victoria
Council leaving legacy of mismanagement
Re: “Campers moving out of Centennial Square, dispersing to parks,” Sept. 1.
If the City of Victoria is concerned about levels of criminality in Centennial Square, including drug trafficking, violence, stabbing and assaults, how can it possibly be a good idea to relocate these people to tiny city parks where they will be right next to children’s playgrounds?
Do councillors (other than Geoff Young) have zero concept of the importance of parks for the physical and mental well-being of city residents, especially during the pandemic? How can the “Together Victoria” councillors and their allies have so little regard for the personal safety of everyone, from toddlers to seniors?
The legacy of this council will be that through their gross neglect and mismanagement of the issue of campers in parks, they will have turned this city into a place where we can no longer use parks and playgrounds, no longer walk in our neighbourhoods at night, and citizens will feel the need to bar their windows and obtain guard dogs.
Is there not some way we can remove grossly underperforming councillors from office?
Doug Johnson
Victoria
What’s needed to improve downtown
There has been a lot of conversation regarding our homeless situation in Victoria. Many people I speak with are no longer interested in going downtown.
Our streets have been taken over by the homeless. Where is the help they deserve?
Moving their tents from one park to another has proven not to work. Buying motels is just shifting the issue.
We need to convert some of these motels to wellness centres to rehabilitate the homeless who want the help.
Perhaps put the money confiscated from drug busts to help cover the costs of renovations.
Governments at all levels need to work together to help our homeless. Passing the buck is not an option.
Our downtown core is deteriorating before our eyes. Mental-health care is desperately needed.
Connie Freeman
Victoria
Witnessing the slow death of Victoria
Re: “Campers moving out of Centennial Square, dispersing to parks,” Sept. 1.
Our city has become very sad — I believe it is dying — from two causes. The first, COVID-19 and its terrible impact on our businesses (and their employees) that we have little control over, but the second, the impossible homeless situation, has been mishandled since before the virus.
A visit downtown to get a library book and accompany my wife to see her father in a nursing home showed a bleak, desolate, almost deserted weekday city. The breakup of the Centennial Square campers accomplishes nothing; with the city’s help they will just take up elsewhere, Central Park already the prime locale. Beacon Hill Park is still a mess.
Council refuses to stop overnight camping, a policy that has aggravated this destruction of our city parks and neighbourhoods.
I see a booming Langford/Colwood area; why would anyone choose to live in Victoria or start a business here?
I really fear that our city is dying. The present council seems interested only in their ideological dreams of bicycle lanes and treating the homeless “humanely.” The covid crisis, and the greater health of our city and its inhabitants, seems to evade their awareness.
Richard Volet
Victoria
Moving tent cities ignores real problem
Re: “Campers moving out of Centennial Square, dispersing to parks,” Sept. 1.
It is with complete disbelief that I contemplate city council’s decision this week to download all the problems of Centennial Square’s tent community to small neighbourhood parks used by children and seniors.
These parks are in communities that closely border the city core. As a senior living in and having kids and grandkids in the North Park/Fernwood/Oaklands neighbourhoods, I implore council (and, as council has had plenty of time and shown quite clearly that they cannot manage this problem, I further implore the Premier) to find more realistic, immediate and less-harmful solutions to this dreadfully chronic problem.
Does council really think that the drugs, crime and violence that has plagued our summer will not spread with these “tenters” to the neighbourhoods they have been encouraged to set up camp in? It is time that the “homeless” community be seen as more than a homogenous group. All need homes, but let’s put the criminals in jail, put the druggies in rehab and help the truly homeless find homes. I, for one, have had enough.
Suzanne J. Hillian
Victoria
Special treatment at Centennial Square
Re: “Centennial Square camp ‘untenable,’ mayor says,” Aug. 28.
How is the encampment at Centennial Square different from that in Beacon Hill Park or any other area?
Drugs? Violence? Theft?
The only difference is whose backyard they are in.
Let us hope the mayor will consider all areas of Victoria equally important and not just move the problem along.
Jan Murray
Victoria
Who’s in those tents at Beacon Hill Park?
How do we help those denizens of the tents in Beacon Hill Park when we don’t even know them?
Their faces, their names, their ages, their skills, their problems are all unknown to us. And for this reason, we cannot find a plan to help them, help the park, help the city.
Without personal data — Victoria city council has precious little — we shove them almost out of sight onto boulevards and into parks.
Without data, we can’t retrain them, we can’t help with personal issues (unless dire), we can’t make them productive citizens. Housing them and giving them meals is compassionate, but they still beg. Throwing money at the problem — pretending to be a solution — has solved precious little.
To the very smart people at city hall, a number with PhDs: Collect some useful data.
You must know who has been housed in purchased buildings and motels around the city. Each person given a home and given meals should provide a profile on who they are.
Without putting faces to the problem, you will find no solution.
Glenn Lindsey
Victoria
Painting all police with same brush
Re: “Artists defend anti-police slogan in mural,” Aug. 28.
As a retired police officer and one whose brother currently serves his community with great care and genuine, unbiased empathy as an officer with the Saanich Police Department, I have a simple response to those who would support the broad-brush, hurtful and completely inflammatory accusation, “ACAB,” in the so-called name of “art.”
NACAB: For those who are too busy spewing hatred and fuelling anarchy, and are unable to figure this out on their own, “Not All Cops Are Bastards.”
Kelly Dukeshire
Retired Saanich police officer
Treat overdose crisis with same care as virus
I am writing to express my compliments to the B.C. government and workers in the way they have been dealing with the pandemic crisis. They have been an example for other jurisdictions as to how to approach a difficult issue with a multi-pronged strategy that includes prevention, early intervention, treatment and follow-up support.
This is why the lack of a similar strategy in the overdose crisis, which has caused more deaths, is surprising. As the former minister responsible for mental health and addictions, I was able to implement such a strategy in Manitoba. One important component was prevention.
Manitoba searched the world for best practices, and chose to use the services of the Paxis Institute. Teachers used techniques in the classrooms to teach self-control vs. external control, delay of gratification and the ability to make good decisions. This then led to huge decreases in addiction, better mental-health outcomes, fewer early teen pregnancy and better school completion.
We cannot treat ourselves out of the overdose crises. We need to focus on the big picture, just as this government has on the pandemic crisis.
The government has shown it knows how to deal with a complex crisis in a strategic way. It now has to look at our overdose crisis: This would be true leadership. I am available to discuss my learnings and share best practices from other jurisdictions
Jim Rondeau
Retired Manitoba minister responsible for mental health and addictions
Saanichton
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