B.C. Ferries should take a lesson from the City of Victoria about Chinese workmanship.
PCL Construction, the general contractor for the construction of the Johnson Street Bridge, awarded the contract for the fabrication of the steel to a Chinese company.
The steel was rejected right at the beginning for substandard workmanship, poor steel quality and poor welding quality.
This caused major delays in completion of the bridge. Buyer beware.
Tom Sims
Victoria
Re: “Undervaluation of sites could be costing B.C. millions in taxes,” June 14.
The article points a finger at municipalities for not appealing under-assessed properties on the premise that they are losing out on millions of property taxes.
The truth is that most often a municipality could not care less about an individual property assessment.
Here is why: A municipality determines their spending budget and then their revenue sources. Property taxes make up the largest portion of their revenue.
Then, council determines the amount of property taxes they wish to collect from each property class: residential, business, industry, etc.
The finance director will go through elaborate calculations to establish the tax rates, but at the end of the day, the council decides or at least is aware of the percentage of tax to be collected from each class.
So now the desired dollars from each class is known, it is then divided by the total assessed value as provided by B.C. Assessment to produce the tax rate for that property class.
It does not matter if that total B.C. Assessment is low because a property is under-valued.
The municipality will get the desired dollars from that tax class by simply adjusting the tax rate.
Municipalities typically have no interest in an individual property assessment and will not waste time and money and staff resources to file an assessment appeal.
Bob Kanngiesser
Port Alberni
Re: “Langford to help fund new clinic for 10 doctors,” June 17.
Great news for Langford as that city is going to spend $1.7 million to attract and keep 10 doctors.
Here in Victoria, our council is building more bike lanes, this time on Blanshard Street, and also pledges at taxpayer expense to fix Pandora Avenue.
Yet many (most?) of these same taxpayers don’t own bicycles or have access to a family doctor.
Most avoid Pandora; the province should fix that one anyway.
Amalgamation looks better every day.
Steve Kishkan
Victoria
After wearing out her welcome in the BC Conservative party, I see that Dallas Brodie has formed her own political party, and made herself leader.
The party platform has four main pillars, and it’s notable that two of the four come from a place of intolerance.
They target Indigenous people and recent immigrants. All four of the pillars are straight out of the U.S. political playbook of division and grievance politics.
I can wrap my head around intolerance in individuals — we’ve all had a past and that shapes who we are.
But starting a political party based on intolerance has no place in Canada. These divisive policies might work south of the border, but I can’t imagine they will work here.
Brodie seems to have a real issue with the concept of reconciliation with Indigenous people.
Her views on it got her kicked out of the Conservative party, which you would think would be difficult to do.
It is natural for people to want to reconcile with the First Peoples of this land when we know they have been wronged in so many ways.
Especially when our government was involved in many of those wrongs, and attempted to cover up some of them.
People want to learn the truth about our past, reconcile with it and move forward. That is a normal human response.
To push back on it and refer to it as the “reconciliation industry” says a lot about who Brodie is as a human being.
Perhaps having to set up and run her own political party will distract her from doing any real damage.
Colin Fowler
Courtenay
The news media right across our country has been under-reporting the scale of social protest around the world.
People everywhere are upset about the mass killing in Gaza and the profiteering by the military industrial complex, and they’re showing it.
Now we’re experiencing the end of attempts to mitigate the climate crisis with our increasing exploitation of non-renewable energy sources.
Plus the ever-expanding polarization of wealth has moved into high gear.
All this grief is being encouraged not just by authoritarian governments, but also by many so-called democracies.
These governments and their corporate friends are the targets of protests everywhere.
We are fortunate to be shielded somewhat in Victoria from the rapidly growing avarice worldwide that is turning billions of lives into bad dreams.
Whether you believe it or not, this same avarice will soon begin having a detrimental effect on your life, and many sacrifices are going to have to be made.
If you care about your children, grandchildren and future generations, get involved. Apathy or feeling helpless is simply selfish.
It’s not always up to your governments to do something, it’s up to you.
Ivan Olynyk
Victoria
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