Dix should explain why the costs are higher
Health Minister Adrian Dix says the original cost of the new Cowichan District Hospital was to be $350 million, but now is estimated to be $1.4 billion.
He says the reason is the pandemic and rising construction costs.
He fails to mention the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Community Benefits Plan. This is the plan that the NDP government put into place for all workers in regard to wages paid.
All contractors with winning bids on construction must pay these wage rates. Also after 30 days, all workers must join a union.
The rates of pay are outrageous and the plan was developed to buy votes in a provincial elections.
Why are the rates outrageous?
An example is a journeyman carpenter. Rate of pay in July 2023 was $44.81 per hour and in July 2024, the hourly rate will rise to $45.71 per hour.
Vacation and holiday pay is paid at 10 per cent, regardless of time worked. In a regular job, vacation and holiday pay is four per cent and you have to be employed for one year.
Dix is paid a taxpayer-funded salary of $179,298, and not reporting about the added cost of the Community Benefits Plan is unacceptable.
Joe Sawchuk
Duncan
Try a think tank to solve health crisis
I am one of the many unfortunate people in Victoria without a doctor.
My doctor retired six years ago and I fought for three of those years to finally get a nurse practitioner. That service began well but particularly in the past year has become difficult to access.
I have been told the earliest I could get an appointment would be in one month. What?
Although I was initially assigned to one NP, the service is in such high demand that now I see one of five possible NPs (no choice), which means no continuity, no chance for rapport.
Particularly as a senior, I feel unsupported and uncared for. That is scary.
This health crisis has been evident for at least 10 years and is growing larger, yet nothing serious seems to be getting done to improve it.
Medical people (current and retired) have been writing letters to editors for years, proposing what sound like practical and inexpensive solutions.
Why hasn’t a think tank been struck of these experts?
Barbara McDonell
Victoria
Overpopulation causing many of our problems
With the overwhelming number of problems faced by our society, it seems impossible that there could be a single root cause. Yet it can be argued that human overpopulation is the primary issue of our time.
The influx of huge numbers of people into ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ with no plan for infrastructure has caused a housing crisis, a doctor shortage, a teacher shortage and the despair of thousands who are homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill.
Valiant efforts to build houses, hire health-care workers and teachers, build new hospitals, new schools and new housing are inadequate, have driven taxes up to the breaking point and increased the national debt to unprecedented levels.
We are over-consuming natural resources to the point of unsustainability. And because we live in a capitalist economic system, when demand outpaces supply, it drives costs and inflation through the roof.
We are faced with difficult choices. We have come to a tipping point. Our very quality of life is at stake. Yet governments seem blind to the central issue.
We must begin to control our population numbers and develop immigration plans that are based on reality.
Richard Smith
Saanichton
Better funding for schools, not more police
Re: “Education ministry should intervene on police issue,” editorial, May 17.
Surprise! Once again a ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ editorial is taking the side of police departments, this time barely trying to understand why our school board doesn’t want cops in schools.
Do ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ editors really know what’s right for our kids, even better than teachers do?
Fact is, some students and staff are right to feel unsafe around police.
ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ cops kill more than six citizens a year.
That’s more than all the U.K.’s cops kill — and the U.K. has 13 times more people. Worse, our cops’ kill rate keeps going up, more than doubling over the past decade. And way too many of their victims are Black or Indigenous.
Another fact: Gang activity in and around schools is not on the increase.
The editorial quoted Public Safety ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s 22-year-old numbers as if they were current. That report actually says, “a precise measure of youth gang involvement and the occurrence of youth gang activity in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ is not currently available.”
Our own ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Public Safety Ministry says fewer than one in 200 kids may be in a youth gang, and stresses that “Groups of youth are not the same as youth gangs.” Statistics ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ data show that ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s youth crime, both violent and non-violent, has dropped dramatically over the past quarter-century.
The school board is right about cops in schools. The editorial claims that police liaison programs reduce crime in schools “beyond any dispute” but show us that evidence.
Especially when StatCan says youth crime keeps going down, not up.
One last truth: ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ needs to fund our schools better. Police liaison officers make about $50 an hour, public school counsellors just $26. It is neither prudent nor cost-effective to take officers away from where crimes are really happening.
Bill Johnstone
Victoria
Lionel Messi’s no show at Vancouver game
What a pathetic league the North American Soccer League is. Leaving one of the league’s star players at home to rest is no a way to promote the league.
With 50,000 tickets sold in Vancouver, the Miami team should be ashamed of itself.
Could you imagine if the Pittsburgh Penguins were in Vancouver for a game and left Sidney Crosby at home to rest?
There would be riots in the streets.
Donald Boyce
Victoria
Testing shows tennis is quieter than pickleball
As an audio engineer I was interested to see the audio test gear being used to measure the sound generated by pickleball, and applaud the use of science to assess the issue.
The reported “25% reduction in sound” due to the noise abatement fencing corresponds to a 3dB (decibel) reduction. Due to the non-linear nature of human hearing, 3dB is typically cited as a “just noticeable difference” … not as much of a difference as the percentage might suggest.
Information from U.S. based Pickleball Sound Mitigation LLC suggests that the sound pressure level at the nearest house needs to be less than 50 dBA to prevent complaints, and that pickleball is up to 30 dB louder than tennis.
An interesting challenge.
Mark Pocock
Saanich
Beware Conservatives, with yesterday’s ideas
Re: “Unite the right idea is still on the table,” column, May 17.
Columnist Les Leyne is so excited about the prospect of a Conservative win in the next provincial election that he practically leaves drool on the page.
By a coincidence, I had just finished New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie’s broiling of “Stop the Steal” Trumpublicans. He noted that Republicans had long viewed Democrats as somehow not quite legitimate or fit for political leadership, but only as a passing annoyance.
Beware any sign, here in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, of a Conservative surge. Conservatives are yesterday’s party with yesterday’s ideas and values and the same repressive, failed worldview they’ve been peddling forever.
Gene Miller
Victoria
SEND US YOUR LETTERS
• Email: [email protected]
• Mail: Letters to the editor, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, 201-655 Tyee Rd., Victoria, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ V9A 6X5
• Aim for no more than 250 words; subject to editing for length and clarity.
