Opinion

My heart goes out to Dave Connell, whose letter in the May 5 issue of the Oak Bay News describes the loss of his grandson, Derek, to fentanyl poisoning. I support Mr. Connell’s call for the passage of Bill C-216 in order to help prevent more unnecessary and tragic deaths.

It is rather plain to see that few of us amongst the public or the political and financial elite care enough about the future of humanity on the planet to make the moves that will keep the planet below 1.5 C warmer than our baseline, and what is considered able to be managed to prevent a great catastrophe.

A number of non-profit agencies around Greater Victoria are in need of volunteers.

I was recently waiting for the bus across from Central Park. For about 10 seconds. I practically sprinted to the next stop at Caledonia to get away from the pernicious ping ping of pickleball.

I have been visiting a sick friend at Saan Pen Hospital every day for a couple of weeks and have noticed that when you buy a parking ticket you are required to enter your licence plate details. The only reason I can see for needing my licence plate number is to stop people giving their unexpired ticket to someone who’s just arrived, thus saving that person the cost of parking.

I am writing this letter in regard to the District of Saanich’s efforts to curb climate change by implementing a program which would incite homeowners to upgrade their oil furnaces or boilers to electric heat pumps.

Now that the results of the online “community survey” regarding the draft of the Cadboro Bay Local Area Plan are in, it is not a surprise that the ‘results,’ as elsewhere in the CRD, seem to support development and densification, given that the wording of the survey seemed to point the person filling out the survey in that general direction.

The missing middle housing staff proposal is disappointing. The description presented during the public engagement process spoke of zoning changes that would allow, “duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, etc…” Thus folks responded to the survey with this in mind and apparently looked on the plan with some favour. As described, missing middle sounded like it could gently increase density in my neighbourhood – and that’s a good thing.

In response to “Densification addresses concerns of modern world.” Sidney shares land with North Saanich, so factor this in when saying densification in Sidney is confined to downtown. Sidney had to restrict reno-evictions so the not-so-wealthy baby-boomers could remain in their apartment/condo rentals, so it’s misleading saying the older generation are “rich.”

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