Re: “Victoria mayor unveils plan to reduce street disorder,” June 17.
If your home is on fire, before you escape, do you first ensure your teeth are brushed and hair combed? No.
Yet, as all Victorians who still venture downtown know, it has been on fire for some time.
No surprise that the recent Downtown Victoria Business Association annual report noted downtown retail vacancies increased to 11 per cent from three per cent in 2019 and that 48 per cent of businesses said they would not renew their leases based on current conditions downtown.
Its two calls for action for the City of Victoria were for: 1. the strict enforcement of the city’s sidewalks, streets and boulevards bylaws; and 2. an increased police presence downtown.
Meanwhile, after almost two years in the making, the City’s Community Safety and Wellbeing report was endorsed Thursday which, as Mayor Marianne Alto pointed out, “only gives the city permission to start” taking action. The comprehensive plan covers hair-combed and brushed-teeth issues such as having access to activities that positively affect spiritual health. As for the downtown fire, not so much.
Although the City of Victoria is the lead on seven of the eight downtown targeted actions in the CSWB report, there’s no mention of the contents of the DVBA’s two calls for action.
The closest we get is for the city to recommend a police operational priority of an increased emphasis on community resource officers and foot/bike patrols in the downtown core and to expect city safety and well-being leadership to create a plan to manage current and potential encampments in the city.
Sigh …
John Farquharson
Victoria
Re: “Victoria mayor unveils plan to reduce street disorder,” June 17.
We live within walking distance of downtown and seldom venture there anymore. Too much open drug use, people sleeping on sidewalks, obstructions on sidewalks and being spit at too many times. Added on to this are the many empty storefronts, so much less to attract us.
This has been getting progressively worse for the past 15 years, along with empty promises to fix it. It will take years to turn around.
Let’s hope the city means business this time, but I have serious doubts.
Paul Brown
Victoria
Heads should roll at B.C. Ferries for the ignorant decision to award the contract to build four ferries to China.
The narrow-minded focus on “cost” does not take into account wider societal values that B.C. should stand for. These include: standing up for democratic values, China’s jailing of the two Michaels, China’s poor record on human rights and worker rights, China’s surveillance of China’s residents in Canada, and environmental degradation.
Surely, bids from other contractors in Asia and Europe could have been solicited.
Have we learned nothing from the Johnston Street Bridge debacle which was grossly over-budget and over-time, not to mention its shoddy construction materials.
The reputation of the B.C. government has taken another knock and tarnishes the crown of King David Eby.
And Xi Jinping is laughing all the way to the bank.
Bruce Brady
Retired B.C. government economist
Colwood
The discontinuation of funding for the infusion for Charleigh Pollock for Batten disease is heartbreaking. Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry in B.C. for 25 years, I have seen the challenges of cost versus benefit in drug reimbursement many times. It is especially difficult in rare diseases when the numbers of treated patients and clinical-trial sizes are limited.
The B.C. government is overly reliant on detached, arm’s length expert committees. The Ministry of Health’s decision to end drug coverage for the Pollock family is flawed in that it seems they are not actually listening to the input of the family and the medical team looking after Charleigh.
From my experience, families and medical practitioners are the first to recognize the value of treatment. They don’t want millions of dollars of public funds being spent on a medicine that is no longer working. Health Minister Josie Osborne needs to listen to them.
Bob Dawson
Sidney
While it is disappointing to hear that four new B.C. ferries will be built in China, we must remember that in 2022 Canada bought $100.2 billion, in 2023 $89.2 billion and in 2024 $64.01 billion worth of goods from China, ranging from food to metals. Most everything we buy from our merchants is made in China. Very little is now manufactured in Canada and this has been going on for years.
Barb Waldner
Victoria
Re: “The lost and damaged of Pandora should be in involuntary care,” comment, June 22.
We have to come to terms with the obvious, as did Gene Miller in the June 22 Islander. Involuntary care is not jail, it is care.
As a society, if we don’t care for members of our society who desperately need intervention, we are doomed.
Why not go after the kingpin drug lords and dealers, the majority of whom do not take drugs but reap monetary rewards off of the backs of our vulnerable citizens who need care?
Where is the fentanyl czar in all of this? Were we not promised help?
We need more psychiatrists to diagnose and administer medications to citizens dealing with trauma, often on their own through illicit drug use.
We need our governments, both federal and provincial, to fund psychologists to help citizens who, after involuntary care trying to live drug free, live in housing where there is absolutely no illicit drug use whatsoever.
We need identified housing for all the different levels of care for our citizens.
After all, as citizens we have caused these problems and, now, we as citizens must fix them.
Linda Miller
Victoria
Victorians, please learn how to use roundabouts safely.
I regularly take my life in my hands when I dare to drive on the roundabout at the Southgate Street entrance to Cook Street village. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has nearly barrelled into me travelling north up Cook when I’m already on the roundabout. Or aggressively driving in front believing it’s their right of way.
There are yield signs at each entrance to the roundabout but so many people don’t see them or don’t understand them. People will be killed or badly injured.
Please put flashing lights on the yield sign or maybe find another solution. Oh, and bless the good people who unnecessarily stop to let me enter the roundabout in front of them on the right as if it were a four-way stop.
Tim Stockwell
James Bay
I lived in Victoria decades ago and have visited friends since. Reading the paper and following nightly news, I feel too vulnerable as a less able senior now to walk downtown anymore, an activity I truly enjoyed in the past.
I have to agree with those who think Centennial Square perhaps needs a few more benches, boxes of flowers or trees, but that $11 million would be better spent dealing with problems. The addicted, the mentally ill, and those who simply can’t afford anywhere else to live should not be housed together but their needs dealt with separately.
Put the money where it will do the most for people.
Kay Kennedy
Courtenay
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