Listen to community to guide Victoria’s future
Re: “Victoria council needs to be selective about housing it approves,” commentary, Aug. 12.
I applaud the writer for using the City of Victoria’s own data to reveal what many residents already know — we have over-development and in the wrong places.
In its zeal to address the housing shortage, council is approving a myriad of ever higher and ever denser developments concentrated in specific residential areas like James Bay and Vic West.
The majority of council has ignored community concerns about the disproportionate and disastrous effects on the character of these neighbourhoods and the damage to quality of life of its residents.
Council has overridden bylaws, displaced longtime residents from affordable housing, destroyed trees, blocked sunlight, created congestion, changed the socio-economic diversity of communities and allowed developers to drive up prices and exploit neighbourhoods for profit, with little or no contribution to amenities or infrastructure.
I take no comfort in council “finally finding” a development that did not meet their already low standards. It is not encouraging when calls for the reduction of a 17-storey proposal suggest this be achieved with the same number of units.
I would not be surprised if council approves an alternative of 15 stories – without community input or public hearing. Also not encouraging when other high density proposals elicit comments from councillors that residents should be grateful for the proposed height and density as they could have been worse.
Some councillors are confident that issues of over-development and inequity are mere policy glitches that will be resolved by the Missing Middle and an updated Official Community Plan. I do not share this confidence.
Facilitating the development of townhouses and houseplexes is little incentive for developers to forego the greater profits of highrise developments which council continues to approve. As for the OCP, council intends to fast track the process by significantly limiting public input.
It is not too late to build housing that responds to need, respects the character of communities and is distributed more equitably. Just follow the data and listen to community input.
Mariann Burka
Victoria
A ‘mixed’ economy is the best solution
Interestingly, a recent letter attacking “collectivism” framed publicly financing societal goods as “redistribution.”
Popular governments that come to power democratically always move to socialize — that is, share the cost equitably across the entire population and administer publicly on a not-for-profit basis — three fundamental necessities of life: housing, health care, and education, all of which are too expensive for individuals to purchase for themselves.
Leaving “capitalism” and “communism” aside, certain free-market fundamentalists seize on precisely these three necessities of life to privatize, commoditize, and exploit to extract profit from the productive economy (sectors that produce commercially valuable goods and services).
Modern macroeconomic thinking centres on the concept of a “mixed” economy: a commercial sector that is driven by market forces and a public sector whose purpose is to minimize the prices of necessities of life.
There is a reason to organize economies this way, and we can see it right here in Victoria.
Keeping housing, health care, and education prices low improves the efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness of private enterprises.
Wages, and thus prices, in a mixed economy do not need to chase ridiculously inflated housing, health care, and education prices.
This keeps prices of locally produced goods traded in global markets competitive, thus strengthening Canada’s current account and the Canadian dollar.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
Traffic lights are not as safe as a flyover
A recent letter about the Keating flyover project stated that “an inexpensive traffic light would alleviate safety concerns at Keating.”
The opposite is true. Visit almost any municipal office that has a map of their municipality on the wall, and you will see red dots at intersections. The more dots, the more accidents.
In some cases, the hundreds of red dots blend into one big red blob. These are at traffic light-controlled intersections.
Barry Jensen
Brentwood Bay
Barbie could answer our medical needs
Due to the shortage of physicians, some hospitals have announced that nurses will be asked to fill in when no emergency room doctors are available. This is all well and good, but suppose there are insufficient nurses to staff the ER?
It may be time to get creative. Perhaps hospitals could recruit plumbers to fill in for gastroenterologists, and carpenters to sub for orthopedic surgeons.
Watchmakers might do well to administer cardiac care. Where there are no pediatricians, hospitals could simply hire experienced aunties and grandmas.
If all else fails, we could call Doctor Barbie. Mattel says she’s been practising medicine since 1973 and is a real doll.
Cheera J. Crow
Brentwood Bay
China coal power plants cause more concern
Re: “There’s a dashboard, please learn to read it,” letter, Aug. 17.
The letter writer earnestly requests that Canada and B.C. should stop any further oil and gas production based upon recommendations of the United Nations and the International Energy Agency, as well as upon a recent court decision in Montana against fossil fuel development.
However, most western nations have aggressively decarbonized their economies for decades to an extent that has caused their economies to slow or even to contract.
The letter writer ignores the elephant in the room, coal usage by China and other southeastern Asian countries. In 2022, two coal power plants per week were issued building permits in China with no end in sight.
Climate change protests in China are not likely to change fossil fuel usage there. Perhaps the recently announced visit to China by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, may cause some reconsideration of Chinese coal usage.
One hopes for the best.
David Morrow
Victoria
Fallow deer can’t swim between those islands
Certainly a lot of the true nature and actual history of the fallow deer on Sidney Island appears to be not known, researched or taken from reliable personal observations.
Many comments made about their behaviour are merely assumptions.
A recent letter writer states that a friend of his living on a bluff on Sidney Island has watched “deer” swim between James Island and Sidney Island many times. I would state what the friend observed was black-tailed deer swimming not fallow deer.
Having been involved with the commercial hunt for fallow deer on the island for a number of years I had never seen a fallow deer ever take to the ocean and swim when hard pressed or wounded, unlike a black tail deer which took readily to the ocean to escape when in a similar situation.
The reason being is the fallow deer’s coat of individual body hairs are solid, providing no buoyancy and in a short distance the Fallow would tire and sink like a stone.
The majority of the black tail deer’s coat of individual body hairs are hollow providing extreme buoyancy aiding the black tail to swim long distances and inter-Island hop.
If fallow deer are swimming between James Island and Sidney Island, why haven’t they swam to neighboring islands or to Vancouver Island and established “invasive” herds there?
Given my observations and experiences with the fallow deer on Sidney Island I put myself in a position to “surmise” that the proposed cull is based on a lack of actual knowledge of the fallow deer.
However, I agree with the letter writer that the proposed $6-million cull is a complete and absolute waste of taxpayers money.
Weston Cox
Nanaimo
Rental shortage in simple terms
The current rental shortage is fuelled by the following factors:
1. Unreasonably long time to obtain municipal building permits.
2. Restrictive tenancy legislation for landlords.
3. A growing population.
4. Restrictive municipal development and building bylaws and policies.
Terrance Swan
Victoria
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