Opinion

Slowly they come, marching steadily, their eyes fixed forward on a day they would summon all their waning strength to take part in.

North Saanich residents who are concerned about the process, and impartiality, of the official community plan (OCP) review have been labelled a populist NIMBY element and more recently a mob. However, here are a few facts:

Container losses, ship fires and the overarching trend of increasing vessel sizes – which makes ships harder to control and rescue along with more cargo and vessel to lose or damage – have conspired to create greater exposure for disasters.

In the 2017 election, access to affordable housing was a ballot box question. Going back a decade, when I was a councillor in the District of Central Saanich, the Saanich Peninsula Chamber of Commerce was sounding the alarm bells that there was a lack of affordable workforce housing in our communities.

During the public participation portion of the Oct. 18 council meeting, Mayor Stew Young cut several people off.

Having lived on the Saanich Peninsula for over two decades, the debate over North Saanich’s review of their official community plan (OCP) is both informative and interesting.

There is no debate that about 20 per cent of returned merchandise finds its way to landfills, according to BBC Earth, and it is significant. It is estimated 5.8 billion pounds worldwide of this stuff goes into landfills annually but it is not fair to single out Amazon because all large online retail outlets do it.

Thank you for your front-page story, Residents want more done to protect aquifer, in the Oct. 20. Groundwater is a critically important issue on southern Vancouver Island but remains almost invisible to most residents (out of sight, out of mind).

I wonder if there are more people like me out in COVID-land.

There is still one captive orca left in Canada. Her name is Kiska.