Access to the beach in White Rock has been cut off in certain areas, such as the boat launch, by Transport Canada, citing safety issues.
Re: City to fight federal order restricting beach access, June 12
I understand Transport Canada has begun fencing off even more beach access to White Rock beach. It is not fair to residents and businesses of White Rock, nor to visitors and tourists. I am neither a White Rock resident or business owner, but I do enjoy going to White Rock to enjoy a meal, and visit or shop at other businesses along Marine Drive or to enjoy the beach.
It is of course a tragedy when people are killed on the tracks, this is a rarity though. You can’t fence everything off to protect the public. People have to take some responsibility for themselves, and not jog along the tracks wearing ear buds, or run across the tracks when a train is approaching sounding it’s horn. It is not Transport Canada’s job or Burlington Railway’s to prevent stupidity. There are enough safety measures in place now without fencing off people’s access to the beach.
LORAINE JACKSON, Langley
Time to talk economy
Re: Pipeline fatigue a serious malady, Opinion, June 13
Thank you, John Winter for a good overview of the economic impact of the resource industry on B.C.’s economy. I too am fatigued by the everlasting monologues. We need dialogue where a mutually beneficial compromise position develops.
We need jobs, transportation, clean water and air, housing, education, clothing, health care, food, safety, and a viable future for all of us. We do not need grandstanding, playing to your constituents, failure to address known problems/shortfalls, kicking the can down the road, or ignoring the consequences of our actions. Jobs and the B.C. economy are only a small part of the full picture. Let’s reinvent the art of compromise.
DEAN GINGRICH, Vancouver
John Winter’s plea for easy profits and taxes (jobs?) from accelerated export of Canada’s resources reeks of mid-20th century thinking. Canada’s future lies in ramped-up agriculture (California is fading), value-added manufactured goods, innovation in electronics, logistics, transport etc.
This requires difficult decisions, innovative thinking, entrepreneurial risk, but will ensure our kids can go camping, drink the water, swim in our oceans and look forward to diverse jobs. The time for blinkered heavy reliance on raw resource export, at prices we cannot control, is over.
PAUL BAUMANN, Vancouver
High cost of cheap food
Re: Agricultural Land Reserve makeover guarantees controversy till cows come home, June 9
I hope the BC Liberals allow farmers, including organic farmers, to provide input into developing the enabling legislation for Bill 24.
Bill 24 does nothing to address the main reason farmers struggle to make a decent living, namely the low price of food. Our cheap food comes at a cost to our farmers. Consumers in B.C. and Canada need to pay a fair price for wholesome food, preferably purchased from local food grown by organic farmers.
LOUISE TAYLOR, Grand Forks
All MP post is partisan
Re: Minister vows NDP will pay for mail costs, June 13
Lisa Raitt’s accusations that NDP mailings were illegally partisan are simply ludicrous.
I retired from Canada Post a few years ago. When local MP mailings came through the Abbotsford office (in this case, Conservative), it was obvious to everyone who worked there that these mailings were blatantly partisan. They had almost nothing to do with “information.”
Lisa Raitt’s actions are clearly vindictive. And I am not, nor have ever been, a member of the NDP.
ROBERT MARTENS, Abbotsford
Prevention is power
Re: Accused cop killer’s family tried to get him help, June 9, and Mounties need more fire power, Letters, June 9
A letter writer with two relatives in the RCMP suggested the best way to respond to “a nut with a rifle” is to arm RCMP constables with automatic assault rifles.
On the other hand, the parents of the alleged Moncton shooter told the media that they had tried to get help from the RCMP after they realized their son had “gone off the rails … but they said they couldn’t do anything about it and that their hands were tied.”
So we have a choice. Will more resources be put into the diagnosis and treatment of mentally ill people; or will we arm to the teeth for more shootouts on our streets? The decision is clear: an ounce of prevention’s worth a pound of cure.
DEREK WILSON, Port Moody
Trinity’s gay policy anti- Christian
Re: All lawyers abide by religious covenant, Opinion, web only, June 12
Defending Trinity Western University against recent Law Society of B.C. efforts to withdraw recognition, Mark Penninga writes, “The difference between a Christian understanding of law, and the new secular version we are seeing with this vote, is that the Christian tradition recognizes freedom while the secular version requires strict conformity to its narrow-minded views of morality.”
The cognitive dissonance embedded in this statement is astounding. Surely Penninga is aware the Community Covenant he seeks to justify — one that the university requires its administrators, faculty, staff, and students to abide by — explicitly bars “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman,” on and off campus.
Nobody cares that Trinity Western is a Christian school. What bothers the wider public is its practise of blatant discrimination against gay people.
Does Penninga mean to imply that equal respect and dignity for all is incompatible with the Christian faith? I can scarcely imagine a belief more anti-Christian than that.
DAVID TAUB BANCROFT, Vancouver