91Ô­´´

All that construction ­is hurting our city

I take the 27/28 bus to downtown to work. I was 30 minutes late one recent morning.

All this construction on Shelbourne is to make way for more development/people/traffic/tax money but with no improvements or expansion of road infrastructure, water availability, etc.

Very little of the many inconveniences are for current residents. The planners and decision-makers in this city appear to have lost all sense of reality.

Victoria is small and has always been in comparison to other cities. That’s a huge reason why we used to attract tourism.

But now, it’s turning into just another boring, ugly, congested place with little reason to visit here.

To literally cram as many ­buildings as possible into that small space, remove parking for businesses, make shopping downtown a nightmare, cause traffic tie-ups (never used to exist in Victoria), reduce roads with bike lanes, block many routes for construction, make our water supply stretch beyond what’s possible, the list goes on and on.

It’s as though the planners and decision-makers decided that current Greater Victoria residents mean nothing and we must build and they will come.

Everywhere you look now, there are road closures and building construction. Dirt, dust, noise and inconvenience everywhere.

Victoria and other municipalities in the region … you think you’ve made sound decisions, but you’re seeing the small picture and, sadly, some of us see the big picture where Victoria is no longer where people go except for street folks who end up in all the buildings others don’t occupy.

Who is going to pay taxes? You assumed too much.

Jan Firth

Saanich

Museum loses parking, cyclists get a new lane

I wonder whose bright idea it was to take away all the parking beside the Royal B.C. Museum and put in a bike lane? This is a major tourist attraction downtown and also gave easy access for those with mobility issues.

Every time I have passed that way those parking spaces were taken, so the city has also lost quite a money-maker. I wish there had been some consultation on this.

Gillian Bloom

Victoria

School is the best place to build understanding

The letter about “BIPOC students and their families feel unsafe having uniformed police officers around” is highly presumptive and imperially speaks out for other people-groups other than one’s own.

We do not have a right to perpetuate labelling with “BIPOC” selecting out certain children going to school, in a separate category from the others, perpetuating differentness into the dialogue.

Hark – I hear a dog whistle. Community policing is the healthy community way to go.

It is the politics of the United States and Canada that push back on the proactive measures that we have known for policing and have sought to use since the 1950s.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that there are children at school afraid of police officers. Then the school is the logical educational environment to usher in mutual understanding and respect.

The children, in the safety of the classroom and with the teacher present, can open up about strangers hanging around the school yard.

They find out that (a) other children may have a similar observation, (b) they weren’t imagining their concerns, (c) it was OK to speak out because they were being heard and respected.

The discussions are ideally children-led.

My assessment has always been that there should be a team consisting of an officer and nurse practitioner for occasions such as this.

Janet A McDonald, M.Sc. Appl. Intell.; Reg. N. (ret.)

Esquimalt

Change young males to reduce police killings

Re: “Do not dismiss other perspectives,” letter, June 13.

The letter suggests that “BIPOC students and their families … are unsafe with uniformed police officers around.” It says also that Indigenous people are 10 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than a white person.

The writer also says he doesn’t have all the answers. I suggest that’s because he’s not asking the right questions.

The best I’ve been able to discover is that around three dozen 91Ô­´´s are shot and killed by police every year. The majority of these are young males, around half are Indigenous, and more than 80 per cent are in possession of a weapon when they are shot.

So according to the letter, it would appear that the police are, first and foremost, sexist and ageist, then unfairly picking on people who are innocently carrying a weapon, and finally racist.

The data indicate that young males commit more crime than other demographic groups, and that this is particularly prevalent among gangs and Indigenous groups.

It seems fairly obvious to me that if you are approached by a police officer while you are carrying a weapon, your chances of being shot have just escalated significantly — especially if you don’t do exactly as you are told.

In short, it’s not the police who need to change, it’s young males. Don’t commit crimes and don’t carry weapons. If some demographic groups are “overrepresented” in our prison system, there may be a good reason for that.

M.H. Ward

Victoria

IQ effects of the moon and sun alignment

Over the past week I have read some very interesting stories in the Times 91Ô­´´ that, when the dots are connected, lead me to hypothesize that the relatively rare moon and sun alignment of last week not only created extremely low tides, but lowered IQ as well.

As support for my theory, consider the following three pieces of evidence contained in the June 14 story “Drunk drivers keep Saanich Police hopping,” about a rash of drunk driving arrests.

1. An intoxicated man drove around town on three wheels, presumably sending sparks flying in all directions the entire time, until pulled over and arrested by police.

2. An intoxicated man, whose intoxicated female partner was driving, ran back to his truck while she was being processed at the roadside to flee the scene and promptly ran into a tree, destroying his beloved truck.

3. An intoxicated man was pulled over and gave the police officer his licence then suddenly fled the scene leaving all of his contact information with the officer.

Of course, these three pieces of evidence on their own are insufficient to prove my hypothesis about a moon alignment and IQ, but also consider the botched handling of the foreign interference fiasco by our federal government, the rally of rabid Trump supporters outside his arraignment on federal criminal charges, and oh so many more of the stories noted in the TC this past week.

For now, I am going continue hiding in my basement with my tinfoil hat on until the moon moves further away from our planet and the tides and, hopefully, IQ levels return to normal.

Howard Brunt

North Saanich

Taxi companies have more accountability

There are many reasons Uber is a bad fit for Greater Victoria and surrounding communities.

Taxi companies have higher operating costs because they are held to strict legal requirements, as they should be for public safety and accountability.

Uber should not be allowed operation without the same requirements. Uber also is able to raise or lower prices arbitrarily, depending on demand, whereas traditional cab companies have a standard going rate that can be relied upon.

Taxi companies provide steady work for their employees as well as benefits, and properly supported employees who are trained to provide a safe environment for their drivers and passengers.

Uber does not have the same standard of accountability, and should not be permitted to undercut legitimate small businesses that are already struggling in this difficult economy.

T.L. Wright

Sooke

Minister’s hospital tour is an empty gesture

Health Minister Adrian Dix announces that he will tour B.C. hospitals to get a close-up view of what happens in emergency rooms as if to give us the impression that something is about to be done.

Like so many “actions” that he takes to improve our dire heath-care system, this is merely a gesture.

There is, and has been, a plethora of media coverage on the ER crises for years, from patients relating their ­harrowing stories to ERs closing for want of staff, from direct appeals from ER doctors to organizations like ours publicly criticizing the current situation.

Furthermore, his own department gets regular objective and comprehensive information about each and every aspect of our hospital system including wait times to be seen in ER or to get a hospital bed.

In spite of overwhelming evidence that ERs are on the brink of collapse, nothing has been done for years to ameliorate the crisis while under the control of Dix.

Appeals for help have been ignored. His pet creation of urgent primary care centres has been a fiasco and has had no effect in reducing the pressures on ERs.

No one should be impressed by his visitations and, given past performance, nor should we have any expectations of meaningful action.

Dr. Adrian Fine, MD, FRCP

retired medical specialist

Victoria

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