Staffing shortages at B.C. Ferries
Re: “What’s behind BC Ferries’ crew shortage?” April 1.
The palpable distress in B.C. Ferries has to be of concern to all Islanders. We rely on consistent service and we are not receiving it these days.
Conditions of service, including pay, are key to retaining trained staff who see career options in remaining with B.C. Ferries. It seems that too many temporary workers are being hired who have little loyalty to their jobs.
How else to explain the large number of cancellations during spring break due to staff absences?
Let’s hope that ferry management soon gets a grip on the challenges facing the corporation. The service is too important to Islanders to be left to chance.
David Collins
Victoria
Why do we need that City Hall doorbell?
Ringing the doorbell to gain entry to Victoria City Hall — hmmm — wonder if it has anything to do with increased downtown disorder, random stranger attacks, aggressive panhandling, open drug use, prolific thefts, the dearth of police on downtown streets?
If so, City Hall needs to fess up and acknowledge the real reason we can no longer go freely to the centre of our municipal government. And then immediately increase the police budget.
I’m happy to pay more taxes for that line item. Maybe I’ll feel safe enough to pay my property taxes in person again.
Beverley Bowes
Victoria
Thanks to everyone who picks up garbage
A big thank you to those who collectively pick up garbage at PKOLS-Mount Douglas on a daily basis, many of whom have been giving their time to the park for years.
These volunteers report that the most common items found in parking lots are cigarette butts and wrappers. After weekends, it’s beach-party packaging, packed in but not packed out, and on trails, it’s both bagged and unbagged dog feces.
They also report any sofas, tables and other dumped furniture, for Saanich crews to pick up.
Darrell Wick
President
PKOLS-Mount Douglas Conservancy
B.C. Housing needs to improve its focus
B.C. Housing is supposed to house people affordably, not facilitate plunder of the productive economy by financial speculators.
You would think the people running B.C. Housing would be fully conversant with the history of social housing in B.C. as reported by Greg Sutton in his 2016 book, Still Renovating, and the fact that no amount of “supply” of “market rate” housing will ever make housing affordable because “market rate” rents have no relationship whatsoever to what it costs to build and maintain housing.
B.C. Housing financing “market rate” rental housing is worthy of a no-confidence vote, but unfortunately there is no political party with more than two members that has the slightest understanding of why housing is so expensive in B.C. or how to correct this egregious failure of the political system in this province.
Managing health care, housing, or education as anything other than a public utility always leads to disasters like the one we are experiencing today because B.C. Housing has been captured by the speculator class.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
We need transparency in Saanich decisions
Re: “Saanich council nixes idea of lobbyist registry,” March 29.
There is no more important issue facing any elected government than transparency and public trust. Yes, Coun. Zac De Vries, finances are always limited and there will always be problems, but when council votes against a lobbyist registry, it erodes public trust that decisions are being made fairly and not the result of backroom deals.
If Coun. Karen Harper can’t tell the difference between a member of the public voicing a concern and someone whose paid job it is to influence her to vote in a way that favours their client, then we are all in deep trouble.
I thank you, Mayor Dean Murdock and Coun. Nathalie Chambers, for the motion to bring more transparency to council. For those who voted against it, my only conclusion is that they have something to hide.
Jim Pine
Saanich
Too many immigrants for the housing we have
According to Statistics Canada, there was record-high population growth in 2022, when the population of Canada grew by over a million people.
About 96 per cent of this was due to international migration. They also reported that Canada had the greatest population growth in the G7, which had been the case for many years.
Meanwhile, in the final quarter of 2022, the median price of both single-family houses and condos in Greater Victoria was slightly over $1 million. This is despite the fact that there has been a lot of development in recent years.
I really do think that this is a truly ludicrous situation.
No realistic amount of development will ever catch up with such incredibly high immigration rates.
I urge anyone who doesn’t think that this situation is sustainable to contact their MP and tell them.
I support family immigration and, to some extent, immigration from genuine refugees — although men of a fighting age shouldn’t be accepted from Ukraine — but believe that immigration numbers should be cut by 90 per cent. And no one who enters Canada illegally should be accepted.
Having said all of the above, though, I would encourage anyone who disagrees with me to explain why population growth and house prices are not linked. Or, alternatively, to explain why they care so very little for the people who already live in this country that they couldn’t care less however unaffordable property becomes.
Matthew Cousins
Victoria
Council members should go downtown at night
A couple of weeks ago it was announced that the City of Victoria was bringing back the free bike valet parking in downtown at a cost of $260,000.
Meanwhile, the VicPD late-night patrol on Fridays and Saturdays is expected to be cut, “saving” the city $220,000.
I would like the city council/mayor to explain the logic (if any) behind these decisions, because I am certainly missing their point here.
I wonder if any of these decision-makers are ever in the downtown core late-night on weekends.
Elaine Azevedo
Victoria
Crime and punishment, and our tunnel vision
Yet more stories about the Victoria crime scene: offices fleeing the downtown area, reduction of late-night police patrols, mindless vandalism at the downtown library.
The response? Bigger staff for “correctional” institutions also known as jails, more Crown prosecutors, and changes to the Criminal Code to make bail more difficult. At the same time we are labouring to honour “human rights” commitments, whether self-imposed through our bill of rights, or imposed on Canada by United Nations provisions.
What is so ironic is that we, at the same time, are less and less interested in the root cause of societal breakdown. It is as though we either do not care, or do not want to know.
Over the past couple of decades, interest in the humanities has waned. Study of the humanities, whether in schools or universities, has been discouraged by relentless promotion of STEM studies and equally relentless reductions in funding for those subjects.
The teachings of history, language or philosophy are now treated as a “nice to have” rather than essential to allow our society to function. We have lost all desire to discover who we are or what we are and why we are that way.
We welcome immigrants, but are not interested in their psychological and social baggage, as long as they assist our economic desires and needs. This is called tunnel vision.
Boudewyn van Oort
Victoria
Has food insecurity affected our MPs?
After listening to the sound bites of our Members of Parliament quizzing the CEOs of Canada’s three major grocery chains regarding the recent record profits their companies have posted, I couldn’t help but wonder just how much food insecurity has been affecting them and their families.
Given the vast differences between our MPs’ annual incomes versus what the average 91原创 lives on, posting all federal party leaders gross and net incomes for this past year would seem like an interesting place to start if they are truly interested in gaining credibility.
Bruce Cline
Victoria
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