Don’t trust Trump with the next election
It is naive and foolish to assume — as a recent letter writer did — that the United States will have another election in four years.
One need only look back at the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021 to realize that Donald Trump will not leave peacefully when his second term ends in January 2029.
He is already laying the groundwork for seizing presidential power for a third term, in spite of the two-term limit defined in the 22nd Amendment.
Trump has consistently demonstrated he has no regard for any laws or rules that do not serve his purpose.
Make no mistake, he is a serious and very real threat to democracy.
Stan Davis
Saanich
We are trapped in this climate change
Re: “Financial strength thanks to AI, LNG,” letter, Nov. 16.
B.C. must use and sell LNG, sourced from its vast natural gas reserves. This will rescue the province from the NDP’s thoughtless billion-dollar spending sprees. Really?
This is being suggested despite the science telling us that in order to prevent more catastrophic environmental consequences, 60% of the remaining oil and fossil gas reserves must be left in the ground.
The costs of climate change require no speculation. We are seeing and feeling its impact everywhere: flooding, fires, warming oceans, rising sea levels, heat domes and atmospheric rivers are destroying communities and lives, human and non-human, at an ever-increasing rate.
Unfortunately it looks like this fossil-fuelled buffoonery, offered by shameless fossil-fuel snake-oil salesmen, has us trapped.
We’ve reached the point where we can’t afford to stop further warming and its consequences from happening. This means the lucky survivors must learn to adapt and live with it.
The less lucky, the billions of people that don’t have the means, financial and technological, of adapting to climate change that is destroying the Earth’s survival systems will have a different problem.
But not to worry, natural gas-powered AI will come to their rescue. In the meantime, let them eat carbon.
Ken Dwernychuk
Esquimalt
Major changes needed to encourage transit use
When I worked in downtown Victoria, I encouraged my colleagues to use transit. The “bus game” went like this:
If a bus were available outside your home every five minutes, and took you directly to your destination, would you use it? Almost everyone answers “yes” to this equivalent of taxi service.
If a bus stopped at the end of your street every 10 minutes, made only two other stops, then took you straight to work, would you use it? Again, mostly “yes.”
If a bus stopped every 15 minutes three blocks from your home and dropped you three blocks from work, would you use it? Um … some uncertainty creeping in: Is that in summer? How many other stops?
And so on, until:
If the bus stops were four blocks from your home and your work, every half hour, in cold rainy weather, so full that you had to stand, and made stops all along the way … in this scenario, few people would use transit willingly.
I did, for lack of an alternative. If you add unreliable service, changing buses, and high fares, the resistance grows.
The bus game gives a sense of what it would take for people to use transit.
Many routes are needed. Pick up where people are. Buses must be either frequent or punctual. All “local routes” should become “frequent routes.”
Changing buses must be easy. A 25-minute wait for another bus is unacceptable. It must be virtually “step off one and climb aboard another.” There must be a seat, too. Plus, having to pay a second time because you are forced by the routing to change buses is discriminatory.
Fares must be low, no stretch for any rider. How about “This is the cost to transit; the fare is what you can afford and what it is worth to you.” But “free” eliminates all the costs of collecting fares.
Buses must be safe for drivers and passengers. Safe buses will also reduce the perceived need to drive children to school.
How do we make all that happen? That’s a different game, a political one.
Alanne Gibson
Victoria
Canada Post needs financial support
Our world has changed and with internet, cell phones, etc., the mailing of letters, cards, parcels it is not as it was years ago.
It needs to be a public service for Canadians with financial support by us taxpayers. There can still be post offices and we buy postage.
But expecting that to cover all the costs of a postal service such as ours is a fantasy.
Toni Blodgett
Victoria
No ‘evaporation’ in the near future
Though I applaud the letter offering a student’s point of view on the McKenzie proposal, and I agree that the province, nay, the world, can do more to undo a large carbon footprint, I would like to write from a senior’s perspective.
I would love to be young and able to ride a bike or walk everywhere I go, however, age does not permit something that came so easily 20 years ago. I still must travel to and from work, as well as go to doctor appointments, and do general chores such as grocery shopping, on my day off.
Have you ever tried to time a bus to get to an important appointment? Or get on a bus carrying five bags of groceries, two of which are paper, and the other three reusable cloth bags?
Half the time people do not give up their seats to an older person, so one has to set their grocery bags on the floor of the bus and hope that the contents (foodstuffs) do not get contaminated by whatever is on the floor or by any number of passengers trying to move past.
Need to get to the Pat Bay Highway to catch a plane or a ferry on time? Nigh impossible.
As many have pointed out, commercial vehicles also use these major arteries. Many drivers are on contract, and there is a need for them to deliver goods on time.
And too, Quadra and McKenzie, being major arteries, are used by other communities, such as West Shore, Victoria, and Esquimalt.
Perhaps their municipalities should also have a say as this will surely impact them. Lastly, I have been to Europe several times, and can tell you that their cities, unlike Canada, are largely compact.
They do not have to worry about travelling several miles to get somewhere as everything is within a few blocks, so yes, the European model works well, for Europe.
But it does not work well for Canada. Until someone develops a light-rail system/subway then I truly do not see vehicles “evaporating” from our roadways any time soon.
Darlene Wood
Saanich
Let AI tell you what to do about climate change
So, I fired up my trusty computer the other day — and by deploying some AI (i.e. ChatGPT), I asked the following question: “What can mankind do to slow the advancement of human-caused climate change?”
The answer that was returned was quite detailed, but in short it stated: “Stop burning fossil fuels — switch to renewable energy sources.”
So there you have it, Gwyn Morgan — and as I suspected, we must be mindful going forward that all intelligence can be perilously artificial!
Phil Smith
View Royal
Work together to reduce deer totals
I agree with letter writers who say that the deer population has gotten out of control. Someone is going to get killed, and possibly in their own backyards.
The argument “they were here first” applies to our entire natural world — including all the vegetation that we’ve paved over or chopped down for our use. And yet we continue to do it.
The cougars were here first, but when they pose a danger, they’re immediately captured and relocated or shot dead.
This summer, my dogs and I were chased for two blocks by a mother deer flaring her nostrils and stomping her feet — as we tried to escape as fast as we could (yes, I understand her babies were nearby).
It took a woman on her front porch to help chase it away so we could escape. That’s not OK.
I have a yard for the dogs that looks like a prison, and yet this summer the deer managed to squeeze through a small gap in the tall, prickly rose hedge to gobble up the plants.
I don’t mind losing some plants, but the thought of the dogs getting attacked on a walk or at home is another thing.
And I have young grandchildren who play with the dogs in the yard to worry about.
The municipalities need to work together to either relocate the deer or do a cull before someone launches a class action lawsuit.
The contraception project is not working well enough.
Bob Turner
Victoria
Finally, Victoria is saying it’s enough
I applaud Victoria’s mayor and council for reaching out to our region’s municipalities to assist with providing shelters for the homeless over the wet, cold winter months.
The only response thus far is the homeless being put in a taxi to Victoria with the fare being charged to our municipality.
Victoria shelters/houses about 87% of the homeless in the region. It is high time for the closest communities such as Oak Bay, probably the wealthiest, to do their part and for the provincial government to stop expecting Victoria to shoulder the majority of services for our most vulnerable constituents.
For the most part in life, you only get done to you what you allow; finally our local officials are saying “enough.”
Elizabeth Kozak
Victoria
Remember the call for amalgamation?
With the swearing in of a new government, perhaps this is one of those rare occasions to remind newly elected NDP members that citizens of the capital region overwhemingly spoke at the same ballot boxes that just gave them their jobs on how they wanted to study an amalgamated regional government.
That was a decade ago. Today, the Greater Victoria community awaits return of their regional democracy as they sit alone as the nation’s only municipal citizens where the province can just intervene and hijack South Island democracy.
John Vickers
Miramichi, New Brunswick
Politics are better on this side of the border
The political situation in the United States resembles the fictional story told in the movie A Handmaids Tale more every day, heaven help us.
And some people dislike Justin Trudeau and the Liberals for what reason I can’t fathom. Compared to politics across our southern border we look like we’re having a tea party.
Mike Wilkinson
Duncan
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