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Barring an LNG plant came at a high cost

Re: “Physician group fighting for health and planet marks 30 years,” column, June 23.

It is interesting to note that Trevor ­Hancock sees one of his proudest accomplishments as shutting down an LNG plant in Quebec.

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this.

First, he deprived the Quebec government of billions of dollars in tax revenue that could have gone to social programs.

Second, he deprived Germany of Canadian natural gas, which is conflict free, relatively clean, and would not have forced Germany to re-open coal-fired electricity plants and continue to mine lignite, the dirtiest form of coal.

Brian Russell

Calgary/Victoria

The more citizens vaccinated, the better

Re: “sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ ignores evidence with its health decisions,” commentary, June 26.

In no way did sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ misunderstand the evidence from research regarding the importance of COVID vaccinations.

Alan Cassels writes that COVID vaccinations weren’t tested to prevent “transmissions.” They were tested to prevent infections.

More infections among the public lead to more transmissions. Especially in hospitals and care homes, that was certainly evident.

His opinion that doctors and nurses need not be vaccinated if they did not wish to be is absurd — they would be close to infected COVID patients throughout the day, and close also to uninfected patients who could therefore easily pick up the infection if they were not vaccinated.

I certainly would not want to be in a hospital during a pandemic where staff were not vaccinated against the infection.

Whether a fully vaccinated person could “transmit” COVID to another person (who was not vaccinated) is an interesting question.

Since the virus is airborne and found on surfaces, presumably it could be on a vaccinated or un-vaccinated doctor’s or nurse’s hands or medical gloves or clothing, and infect an unvaccinated patient.

Therefore, the more citizens in all of life’s roles who are vaccinated during a pandemic, the better.

Janet Doyle

Victoria

Victoria council’s misguided spending

Victoria’s last and present city council lack any notion of financial prudence. They want the citizenry to decide whether to build a new pool after years of discussions and expenditures that they wasted.

But when it comes time to spend millions of dollars on issues beyond their purview they imagine that the city’s limited resources can manage impossible demands.

Buying Hermann’s for $3.95 million and Romeo’s on Blanshard for $13 million for a park are examples of their financial acumen.

Ten million dollars are spent annually on adding bike lanes often where they are clearly not needed. But to make sure bike roads are honoured, why not build concrete barriers and bollards everywhere to stop the evil four-wheeled vehicles?

Now they want to build a new parking garage by tearing down an existing one whilst advocating new housing with no parking spaces.

Even with burgeoning tax revenues they could not find their way to plan and set aside funds for a new public pool. Ideology has driven their misguided priorities and expenditures. We are the poorer for it.

Patrick Skillings

Victoria

Victoria can’t have a failure like Calgary’s

Re: “Think about water before community plan,” letter, June 26.

The writer suggests that we’re fooling ourselves if a failure like the one in Calgary can’t happen here.

Unlike Calgary, where the city is responsible for supply, treatment and distribution of water, the City of Victoria is only responsible for the distribution of water, using a network of small diameter pipes.

A failure on the scale of the one in Calgary cannot occur in Victoria.

The point about aging underground infrastructure is well taken.

Jack Hull

Victoria

Planners, take long view with potential growth

As part of a complete regional transportation plan, all municipalities within the Capital Regional District should agree to take immediate action to reduce traffic jams and congestion.

Many cities actually have long range transportation plans (50-100 years) so that provisions for efficient corridors can be put in action. Initially, agreeing to install a computerized traffic flow system to coordinate traffic lights according to volume would be a good starting point.

Land acquisition is a primary purpose for long-range planning as it is much more expensive to purchase corridor land after it has already been infringed upon by commercial and residential development.

Piecemeal transportation projects seem to be all that we see within the CRD, then we have to live with the constraints of expensive projects that barely meet current needs if they do at all.

For example, the Trans-sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Highway junction project with McKenzie Avenue suffers from peak period congestion simply because it was underscaled with no third lane to take the added volume of traffic at least as far as Helmcken Road or a dual ramp coming off the highway to load onto McKenzie at Admirals Road.

Included in that project should have been a proper interchange at McKenzie and Burnside West.

Likewise the overpasses on the Trans-sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Highway and on the McTavish interchange with the Pat Bay Highway are underscaled with no provision for future added traffic lanes to accommodate population, commercial and tourism growth.

Our population does grow and with it housing and commercial growth occurs.

Denial of these realities is foolish, but that seems to be an obvious reason that planners and their political controllers are not taking the long view and this will be to the detriment of future residents and businesses.

R.D. Kinloch

Shawnigan Lake

ICBC should scrap its artificial limit

Re: “ICBC’s payment likely to exceed previous system,” letter, June 25.

Jason McDaniel, vice-president operations for ICBC, states: “The Enhanced Care insurance model is designed to help anyone injured in a car crash with ongoing medical and rehabilitation support.”

If that is the case it’s a poor “design” for catastrophically injured people like quadriplegic Tim Schober.

Why is there an upper limit on monthly benefits with the result that Schober unjustly does not get full payment for needed 24-hour caregivers? What is so “enhanced” about that?

McDaniel states: “We take concerns about the Enhanced Care model and our organization’s commitment to supporting crash victims seriously.”

If that is the case one would hope upper management at ICBC would urge lawmakers to do away with the artificial upper limit on monthly expense benefits.

Removing that ceiling would result in payment of all accident-caused costs for extremely badly injured people like Schober. That is only fair.

F. Kenneth Walton

Victoria

We’ll ride our bikes, just not in Central Saanich

My wife and I have taken the advice of many health-care professionals who advise that exercise improves health and well-being.

With our e-bikes, we ride up to 50 kilometres for recreation and transportation almost anywhere in Great Victoria. Anywhere but Central Saanich.

We would love to ride to Butchart Gardens (rather than suffer the drive on Benvenuto Avenue), to shop at many of the excellent boutique businesses, and to visit our family in Brentwood Bay.

Unfortunately, it is too dangerous for us to ride in Central Saanich. What’s worse is that there seems to be no intent to improve this problem.

We understand that Verdier, the primary road to the ferry, was resurfaced without bike lanes. Further, the half-solution Keating Cross flyover does not provide for a bike/or pedestrian connection to the Lochside Trail.

The mayor recently announced that bike lanes won’t be provided on Wallace Road, because no one rides a bike on Wallace! Wallace is simply too dangerous for cyclists without a protected bike lane, in our view.

We would love to ride our bikes to Central Saanich but will only do so when it is safe.

George Barnhart

Victoria

Hundreds of hotel rooms taken off the market

The statement in the June 19 edition that the ban on short-term rentals has made it difficult for sporting events in Victoria is wrong.

The shortage of suitable accommodation for sports teams is a result of the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ government purchasing hundreds and hundreds of hotel rooms in Victoria for the homeless.

These moderately priced hotels were well within the budget of the teams and families wishing to come to the city.

They were not renting overpriced short-term rentals.

Tim Hackett

Brentwood Bay

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