A long life of hard work, sacrifice
Re: “Reconciliation grant is a tangible gesture,” letter, Feb. 3.
This phrase “old white men” is a discriminatory racial stereotype and in this context it was used as a hateful slur as well.
I am an elderly Caucasian male who does not have a racist bone in my body nor bias against anyone based on their gender, race, orientation, etc.
I do not come from privilege. I come from a background with no money and where my “privilege” was to work hard and sacrifice my whole life to earn what I have.
I come from the Mennonite people who were persecuted, murdered and driven from their ancestral home. This was real genocide.
My “people” lost all their land, history, artifacts, cultural connection and countless slaughtered ancestors. Rather than dwell on what an awful world it was 100 years and more ago, we pulled up our socks and worked and sacrificed to better ourselves and did not have our hand out for sympathy nor for someone to compensate us for what we lost.
I feel we are all equal. The Indigenous people add tremendously to our country and their culture and wondrous talents as artisans enrich us all.
But so do so many other cultures that were wronged. The world has been a colonial hell since history started and all races have both endured and caused hardships at the hand of others over the eons.
R.N. Kroeker
Victoria
Old white men have rights to opinions
Re: “Reconciliation grant is a tangible gesture,” letter, Feb. 3.
The writer supports the reconciliation grant, and stated that she knew who would be against it even before reading the article — “old white men.”
As a 69-year-old white male, I am going to call out the writer’s racism, sexism and ageism. Like it or not, I still have a right to my opinion.
Ian MacDonell
Victoria
Money in the game makes a difference
Victoria’s mayor and council should focus on running the business of the city and stop making donations/grants with property tax revenues.
How many of those on council who voted for the reconciliation grant to the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations enjoy the so-called privilege of paying property taxes in the City of Victoria?
Likewise, of the reportedly 40 per cent who strongly supported this action, how many are property owners paying taxes in the city, versus renters?
As a retired banker, experience confirms having financial equity or as some say, “money in the game” makes a difference to the way you see things and act.
Mark Appleton
Victoria
Thanks for noting the old white men
Re: “Reconciliation grant is a tangible gesture,” letter, Feb. 3.
I would like to sincerely thank the reader who shared her view that the dissenting opinions regarding the reconciliation grant originated from old white men.
She is so right, and her support of the power and wisdom provided by perhaps the least appreciated segment of our society is to be commended.
I imagine that many of my old white male colleagues sat up a little straighter and felt a twinge of pride to be recognized for providing clear, practical and thoughtful analysis on the topic of handing out gobs of free public money that mostly benefits the egos of our elected officials while ignoring the real needs of society as a whole.
So, thanks for the shout-out sister, so nice to be appreciated; if only our children and grandkids had your ability to recognize where true wisdom resides.
Michael Butler
Victoria
Arrogance, hubris — and we all suffer
This country has been in a crisis of a grossly insufficient number of family physicians and other specialties for decades.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens across this country, and at least more than 100,000 citizens alone in Greater Victoria, have no family physician.
Family physicians are the bedrock and foundation of our health-care system in suspecting possibly lethal illnesses, maintaining chronic illnesses, referring patients to specialists for assessment, receiving specialist assessment and informing patients, carrying out followup and many more issues.
The COVID crisis has considerably worsened everything, which is another story. Simply put, patients are not getting the attention and care they need, the mortality and morbidity are getting worse and surgeries are being cancelled, to the detriment of patients.
Similar crises have occurred in other countries, and authorities took appropriate action.
They recruited retired physicians, they recruited retired nursing staff, and they recruited other qualified physicians to help alleviate the problem.
They did not bicker about “qualifications” and experience and licensing, as long as they could get the job done and people weren’t dying. The B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons, the regulatory and licensing body, has done nothing along these lines, so citizens are not being seen appropriately and as needed, so morbidity is getting much worse.
Citizens are dying inappropriately and mortality rates are skyrocketing.
In my humble opinion, this is immoral, unethical and just not right. This may constitute a dereliction of duty.
Important tenets of the Hippocratic Oath are (1) The patient comes first, not money or ego, and (2) First, do no harm. These are not being adhered to at all, so what is happening to the basic principles of health care?
The belief that Canada educates and trains physicians who are incomparably superior to all others worldwide is rubbish, with no evidence to support such a claim.
It is a manifestation of arrogance and hubris that should be unacceptable and not tolerated, but our fellow citizens are suffering because of it.
Dr. Paul Fenje Jr.
Victoria
GP compensation has fallen short
Re: “Fees for physicians have not kept up,” letters, Feb. 2.
Writer Peter Houghton provides an interesting comparison of GP fees, gasoline prices, Victoria house prices and other items in 1984 versus today.
However, because of inflation, the value of a dollar today is less than what it was last year, and the year before that, and so on — all the way back to 1984. So a better way to do this comparison is to adjust prices to take account of the inflation that has occurred over the past 38 years.
This exercise shows that the price of all but one item on the list has more than kept pace with inflation over the period.
Most notably, the average price of a house in Victoria today is more than double what it would have been had house prices merely kept up with inflation.
The glaring exception is the fee-per-patient-visit for a GP in the province. Adjusted for inflation, the $19 fee in 1984 would be nearly $50 today. The actual fee paid today is $32.
Judith Dwarkin
Cordova Bay
‘Reconciliation’ grant prompts questions
Re: “Victoria to provide $200,000 reconciliation grant to Songhees and Esquimalt Nations,” Feb. 1.
The precedent-setting decision by city council to grant $200,000 this election year to two neighbouring First Nations raises a number of important questions for taxpayers.
Has it been confirmed in policy that the first $500,000 of new assessment revenue be directed annually to the infrastructure reserve fund? In future years how will a $200,000 reconciliation grant be funded if there are insufficient funds from new assessment revenue? Does the $200,000 go to each nation or will that total be divided?
It’s our understanding from city staff that the reconciliation grant “would be outside of the various grant programs and any reporting requirements would be as directed by council.”
Of note, current grants doled out by council to supporters and others include cultural infrastructure grants, strategic plan grants, micro grants, growing in the city grants, volunteer co-ordinator grants, My Great Neighbourhood grants, festival investment grants, direct award grants, emergency services grants and everyday creativity grants.
Since all city grants have reporting requirements that include financial ones, what are those associated with the reconciliation grant?
In order to fulfil its fiduciary requirements to the taxpayer, when does council plan to direct staff to include reporting requirements?
Stan Bartlett, vice-chair
Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria
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