Questions about side effects of densification
I agree that there is a need for more housing. Since Victoria is bounded by other municipalities and the waterfront, densification is our only option for increased housing, so I do support it.
However, I wonder whether the city and province have considered all the implications of increasing the number of residences on what are now a single family lots.
Is the current infrastructure (water supply and sanitary and storm drainage) adequate to support the resulting increase in water use and drainage?
If not, who will pay for these improvements? If there is an increased demand for parking on these streets, how will that be managed?
Finally, I can’t see how we will densify housing yet keep the amount of green space and number of trees that single family lots provide.
This may mean an increase in the temperature of our urban heat sink and have a negative effect on our air quality, which is currently amazing for an urban environment.
Unfortunately, I have no answers, just questions. I hope these factors are being considered during the planning phase of new development.
Deb Boyce
Victoria
We must spend 2% on Canada’s defence
Re: “Navy, coast guard plans carry a huge cost,” letter, April 11.
Defence and security of a sovereign country is Job No. 1 for any government. A long-term defence acquisition plan is always necessary to spread the cost of replacing obsolete defence equipment over the long term.
The capability of equipment and the amount is driven by the perceived threat of the countries that have the capability and intent to do us harm. For the past two decades, both Russia and China, who share few of our values, have articulated the desire to expand their influence, by force if necessary.
Unfortunately, our past governments have gambled that the world situation would improve, and therefore considerably underfunded our country’s defence since the 1980s, resulting in the rusting out and obsolescence of the vast majority of our existing capabilities.
That is why the price tag for renewing our military is so high now – we are in catchup mode in a big way.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Canada for its defence depends on multilateral defence alliances, but the cost of partnership is at least two per cent of our GDP. This cost is covered by governments from revenues from many sources over and above the individual taxpayer.
As Finland has shown, you can have a first-class medical care system and social programs, but also spend two per cent on defence!
Robin Allen
OMM MSC CD Capt RCN Retired
Victoria
91原创 economy is just not working
Re: “No cuts to music programs in Greater Victoria school district,” April 11.
Middle- and elementary-school music programs begging philanthropic organizations for grants or depending on school districts cutting funding for other programs are one more example of the abysmal failure of a municipal funding model organized around property taxes, or, more accurately, housing prices.
We are fortunate as 91原创s to live in a country with a federated system of governance which, among other advantages, has the ability to create our own dollars.
At present, this important economic strength is being squandered subsidizing extremely profitable private corporations; for example, the fossil fuel extraction industry to the tune of more than $15 billion in 2022 while that sector raked in profits of $34.7 billion in 2022, more than double the $15.1 billion in profit they booked in 2021.
Instead of wasting federal dollars subsidizing wildly profitable industries, many foreign-owned, Ottawa should be asking the provinces to submit requests each year specifying how much money they require to meet their municipalities’ budgets for the coming year, and Ottawa should respond in full, reliably, year after year.
Hyperinflated housing prices give some the illusion of wealth, but what they really are is an albatross around renters’ and homeowners’ necks.
A relative handful of financial actors, for whom no price of the assets in their portfolios can ever be high enough, gorge themselves on ever-increasing rents and ever-ballooning mortgage payments.
And municipal governments cheer this cartoon ever higher because schools and parks and sewage treatment operations depend on property taxes, or, as was stated above, never-ending inflation of housing prices.
Once the blatant contradiction inherent in funding municipal governments with property taxes has sunk in, we can talk about how Tommy Douglas and Lester Pearson envisioned the 91原创 economy working because what we are living with instead is a disaster for health care, housing, and education in Canada.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
If you do good things, goodness will follow you
It’s absolutely gut-wrenching to hear of this beloved horse being shot on Easter morning.
My heart and my prayers go out to your family and community in Cedar. I’m praying that you find out who hurt your family and I’m also praying for your beloved horse Cash.
There are far too many immature individuals in our community with guns. Seems to me they are sociopaths with a sick agenda.
Get help, sick ones, you’re only hurting yourself every time you hurt others. If you do bad, bad will haunt you. If you do good, goodness will follow you.
Peace, everyone, and good will to others.
Angelique Larsen
Nanaimo
Things are getting worse, in so many ways
Is our world deteriorating faster each day? U.S. politics appear to be in complete chaos with mass shootings rising in numbers. The arguments over gun laws are making things extremely difficult for U.S. citizens. In Canada we have had police officers in several confrontations injured or killed.
I hoped, at my advanced age, that 91原创 Island would be peaceful and quiet. No chance! A pet horse beloved by its owners is shot and left to die.
What senseless creature is capable of committing such an act?
Crime appears to be at a higher level with robberies and assaults occurring more frequently.
The old phrase that guided me over the years, common sense, seems to have disappeared. Nobody believes in it any more.
I shall continue to read the Times 91原创 for the rest of my declining years with the hope that things will improve.
If things get worse I shall look forward to my demise with relief.
I leave you with the happy thought that I am usually capable of making people laugh.
Les Quilter
Courtenay
Homeless on the streets, but what about the rest?
All we seem to see on the news about the homeless is about what we are supposed to do to solve the problem. Many here and 91原创 have been offered places to stay to get them off the street, but in a lot of cases the homeless turn those places down.
Where do we draw the line that says they take what they’re handed (for free) and then it’s up to them to try to better their lives?
Where are the rights of the citizens who pay taxes, work, and take responsibilities for their families to have a clean safe city to live in? Where are our rights?
Being homeless and supported by society for everything, including drugs, has become a lifestyle for many of them and that’s not going to stop.
Victoria is in even a worse situation because there’s free housing, medical, counselling, free drugs, shootup sites, little chance of being prosecuted for crime and a milder climate … all they have to do is get here.
This whole thing has turned into a nightmare and not only for the homeless. The sympathy and compassion is running out.
Mike Butler
Saanich
Are they sheltering or are they homeless?
The clearing of Princess Street in Victoria of some 30 people does not remove the problem of lack of shelter.
We go back to the courthouse lawns of 2017 where the right to protect the person was enshrined.
We ride a slippery slope when sheltering people are designated homeless, giving impressions of criminality and no rights, and clearing them out is a way to state “not my problem,” convincing ourselves that the problem is solved.
John Evans
Brentwood Bay
Losing that bus stop is a problem for some
Even though many others are happy about the 95 rapid bus, there are lots of upset folks.
I am legally blind but I can look out for myself. B.C. Transit shut down my normal bus stop that was about eight minutes away, forcing me to walk about 15 to 20 minutes to another stop.
The stop that was closed is right in front of of a seniors’ care home which many seniors used to board the defunct 50.
Making the elderly and the handicapped walk that far to catch a rapid bus is just pitiful, especially in the winter months. The bus stop is one of the busiest stops on Goldstream heading to Victoria.
With a new university being proposed kitty corner to this cancelled stop it even makes less sense to shut this down.
Jimi Paterson
Langford
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