91Ô­´´

Inefficient service invites competition

Re: “Canada Post is at a disadvantage” Dec. 2.

My most recent experience with Canada Post highlights the appeal of having other postage options.

I mailed a small item, not to some remote outlying area, but rather between two urban areas — Victoria and Calgary. After visiting the Post Office in person and inquiring about cost between express (one or two day delivery) and regular (five to seven day delivery), I was surprised to learn that the cost to ship my package express was actually significantly cheaper, which I opted for.

This was a Thursday morning before a long weekend with a holiday Monday. Despite the express postage, my package did not arrive until the following Tuesday, five days after being dropped off.

Thankfully I hadn’t paid extra for rapid delivery.

If this is the service being provided by Canada Post at a significant financial loss, then it is no surprise that other delivery companies are able to easily compete in this market and thrive.

Marlin Smyth

Saanich

Defence spending is like insurance

Defence spending is much like an insurance policy. The government comes to a decision on threats the nation expects to face and therefore how much protection (insurance) we need.

This in turn will determine what we taxpayers pay (the premium). Naturally, we look for a policy that gives us the best value for our money.

A well-trained and equipped volunteer military is expensive. But separate from the ability to protect us from external threats, having adequate military forces can also be of considerable benefit at home.

Just a few examples from our land forces alone include artillery firing into the mountains of B.C. to create avalanches in order to keep the travelling public safe, soldiers sent to replace federal prison guards in Ontario during a strike, and ongoing help with sandbagging dikes against overflowing rivers in Manitoba.

One notable example of our military’s value at home came during the 1990 Oka Crisis when a long and dangerous standoff took place between Mohawk warriors and soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment, a crisis which, thankfully, ended peacefully.

While there was never any doubt as to which side would prevail, it was left to General John de Chastelain, chief of the Defence Staff, to reassure 91Ô­´´s that our insurance policy was in effect when he said: “The government has now gone to the court of last resort, which is us. We cannot fail, because we are all that is left.”

It’s nice to have insurance when you need it.

Eric Ballinger

Victoria

Go slower to keep your vehicle on the ground

Re: “Car goes airborne on Mann Avenue,” letter, Nov. 28.

There are a lot of good points mentioned in this letter, until this: “Would it not have been courteous to the vehicle traffic to post a couple of signs warning of a speed bump?”

Is the writer referring to a speed “bump” or a speed “hump”? The latter are designed so that travelling at 30 km/h, vehicles can go across the “hump” very comfortably.

Travelling at 40 km/h, it will be felt. At 50 km/h the “hump” is significant.

To be “airborne,” the vehicle must have been travelling well over 50 km/h.

Can drivers, without direction from any authority, not slow down? Until recently and for many years, the default speed limit was 50 km/h, For those paying attention and realizing changes can occur, the speed limit on most streets is now 40 km/h. Change and learn it. What is the speed limit on Mann Avenue today?

Operating a car at such a speed that the car became almost airborne demonstrates that this motorist is close to being idiotic. That operator should be thankful that they were just airborne, and something much worse did not occur.

Should such people even be allowed to have a driver’s licence? The motorist described here has nobody to blame but themselves.

To safely cross a speed “bump,” one has to cross at a speed of less than 20 km/h.

Robert Townsend

Saanich

Special thanks for helping a stranger

I wish to give my heartfelt thanks to the lovely young gentleman who helped look after my husband on Saturday.

My husband was about to collapse outside Hillside mall and this young man saw that we were in trouble and supported my husband while I got the car.

Thank you so much.

Marie Stodel

Victoria

More politicians, more warnings please

I don’t like the look of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Pierre Trudeau or David Eby. Can you please warn me before posting any of their photos?

M.R. Burrowes

Oak Bay

Great to celebrate, but at what cost?

In response to the Stanley Cup returning to Victoria, I had sticker shock when the event budget was expected at $300,000 to $400,000.

It’s a little unclear, but it implied that the city and province would be sponsoring the event.

In light of all the budgetary complaints, it seems ridiculous to spend so much to celebrate a hockey team that hasn’t existed for almost 100 years.

Not that I’m a killjoy, I would love to celebrate our hockey history, but why does it cost so much?

Joel DeMeritt

Victoria

Bring wild salmon back to our waters

The recent article that says eliminating fish farms would cost B.C. taxpayers $9 billion is vastly overstated.

For example, they say there are 4,560 jobs across Canada. They used to say 7,000 in B.C. alone, but the B.C. government’s own figures say there are only 1,800 jobs. Industry overstates by 253% to as high as 390%.

The solution is for government to retrain workers to work on land, to offer government land, or $1 million toward its purchase and low licence fees for 10 years.

Fish farm research always has problems. For example, they say it is impossible for fish farms to come on land.

The reality is different. My list of on-land farms around the world is now at 481 farms, including Norway, where the big B.C. companies are from.

They say all the science is on their side. Not true. There is plenty of research out there that points out the problems with lice, diseases and so on.

The obvious people are Alexandra Morton and John Volpe. My site, fishfarmnews.blogspot.com, has lots of science, too.

One thing that really irritates me is vast, yet totally ignored by the industry: their sewage. My conservative cost of sewage to B.C. residents and GDP is, at the low end, $10.4 billion. The other end of conservative is $31.2 billion. We don’t want to pay these costs that they avoid as “free riders,” and make us pay.

Once fish farms are on land, the outrageous sewage costs are eliminated. This is because the farms collect and recycle their waste into revenue streams, not just a hidden cost that we pay for their releasing it into our ocean.

And then there are the effects on wild salmon and Atlantics spawning in their streams.

And saving billions of wild forage fish by making new food out of insects, and in due course, bacteria. Wood fibre holds promise, too.

I’m with Chief Bob Chamberlin and the 120 First Nations that want wild salmon back.

D.C. Reid

Victoria

A good argument for the McKenzie plan

A letter writer said he saw 274 passenger vehicles and three buses during the hour or so he was watching the traffic at McKenzie and Braefoot.

Let’s do a little math: the average passenger vehicle is usually carrying just one person. The average B.C. Transit bus carries around 80 people.

So he just saw 274 people in cars, and about 240 riding the bus, or about 50% in each mode. Seems like a pretty good argument for giving about half the road space to buses.

He does make good points about how buses don’t come often enough along the corridor, based on the crowd he saw waiting for a bus.

Good thing the proposed bus lanes along McKenzie are being built for a rapid-ride corridor that will allow buses to come more often.

As for cyclists, I’d suggest if he looks at the bike lanes east of Shelbourne, particularly after the bike lanes on Larchwood and Ansell feed onto McKenzie, he’d probably see quite a few more cyclists than he did at Braefoot, and that’s because the cycling network has been built up over there.

I’ve definitely seen huge crowds of cyclists that outnumber cars waiting to cross Gordon Head at McKenzie at the start of the day.

Will Owen

Fernwood

Want to reduce lanes? Try it, ask the people

Two simple asks of the Municipality of Saanich.

1. Reduce McKenzie Avenue and Quadra Street to single lanes in both directions for two weeks.

2. Put proposed changes to a referendum.

Gordon N. Bell

Saanich

Capitalism, democracy are arch enemies

Re: “Capitalist societies better for all,” letter, Nov. 28

It seems the writer doesn’t want to admit that capitalism is the arch enemy of democracy. But that’s not surprising; the last thing any good capitalist, particularly a well-off capitalist, wants is democracy.

Wealth-creating, happily-polluting corporations, which are anything but democratic, will willingly clean up their “environmental messes? Can you imagine?

A one-dollar, one-vote society is anything but democratic.

Ken Dwernychuk

Esquimalt

Ideas might work, humans might fail

Singularly, capitalism, and its antithesis socialism-communism can work in their purest forms. It’s the human traits and behaviours that cause both to fail their principles.

Bill Carere

Victoria

They want our money to erase our history

I was certainly not the only preservationist who was dismayed by the willingness of the Victoria council in 2021 to approve a building addition that crushes the Northern Junk warehouses.

Like many architects in the audience, I was surprised that the city’s heritage planners had never suggested solutions that are common throughout Europe. Since historic building preservation is considered important there, a standard response is to keep the new additional development away from the historic building so as to allow the antiques to breathe.

The proposal, which places three additional floors directly onto the roofs of the two warehouses — the oldest buildings remaining in the city from the time of mid-19th century colonization — does not give much space to breathe.

The west facades, which are “visible” from the harbourfront walkway, are in fact almost invisible as they are just one of the multiple design elements in the “new” west elevation. The historic east elevations are even less visible from Wharf Street, buried in that five-storey massing of the approved plans.

Not satisfied by crushing the two oldest buildings, the (re)developers have the temerity to ask for a partial property tax exemption based on “conservation of the historical building(s) known as the Northern Junk.”

The property tax exemption is valued at $131,063. Since the approved design makes the facades — and only the facades — of three-dimensional historic buildings almost disappear, why should I and other Victoria residents who pay property taxes dig into our pockets to cover this “$131.063” shortfall?

Perhaps if the city and its historic planners had approved a development which enhances, illuminates and ­emphasizes the preservation value of these last remnants of our colonial built environment, I might be willing to take up my share of the “$131,063” gift and shortfall being offered to the re-developers.

Sadly we are now being asked to help subsidize the veritable disappearance these unique reminders of how Victoria looked in 1860-1864.

Welcome to Victoria, sadly erasing Victoria’s architectural heritage, one building at a time.

Andrew Beckerman

Victoria

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