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Opinion: Letters to The Vancouver Sun.
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Unlike many municipalities, here in Port Coquitlam we receive terrific snow-clearing. We live on a small cul-de-sac with only eight homes and yet our street was plowed and salted by 8 p.m. on Wednesday. This just shows that it’s possible to supply the basic services to taxpayers when they’re needed.
J. Inglis, Port Coquitlam
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Unlike much of Canada, 15 centimetres of snow brings things to a screeching halt in the Lower Mainland. I got an hour of exercise this morning clearing snow from my parent’s yard.
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My wife said, “Just hire a service.” My thought was, “Like hiring an electrician, good luck.” Odds are the workforce lives deep in the Fraser Valley, on Vancouver Island or in the B.C. Interior.
Many essential, often poorly paid jobs can’t be done remotely. Due to nosebleed housing costs, many people live long distance from their work. Even remote workers depend on B.C. Hydro and telecom-line work crews to keep utilities operating.
Many of our essential workers, even reasonably well-paid ones like police officers and nurses, can’t afford to live near where they work.
After a snowfall, homecare aides are unavailable for days. Retirement homes and hospitals are short-staffed. The B.C. Ambulance Service must be struggling to staff its ambulances with paramedics. Hospitals are hard enough to staff even at the best of times.
What if there is a genuine disaster, such as a flood, earthquake or wildfire?
Emergency response personnel, ranging from police to firefighters to B.C. Hydro line technicians live dozens of kilometres from the communities where they work.
In the case of a disaster, it might be better for a person living on the 23rd floor of a downtown Vancouver condo building to drive if the roads are intact or walk to safety, instead of waiting for emergency crews to arrive.
Informed Opinion
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John Shepherd, Richmond
Re: B.C. government should show some modesty
Vaughn Palmer states that B.C. Hydro, and the government, shouldn’t be so self-congratulatory about their success during the recent cold snap. Of course, they will brag when they have the chance. That’s politics.
But Palmer is right to say that they need to do more. Electricity will be needed to replace fossil fuels for transportation and heating. It will be needed to produce hydrogen for use in cement plants, steel mills and long-haul trucks. The drought conditions that reduce available hydro power might become frequent events due to climate change.
Site C will not be enough. We need to boost installation of solar for homes, industry and neighbourhood smart grids. And we need to reduce consumption wherever possible.
Thanks to Palmer for that report.
Bill McConnell, Surrey
Front page criticism of Bay out of line
Re: ‘Challenging environment’: Shoppers decry state of disrepair at Vancouver’s flagship Bay store.
Perhaps the Granville and Georgia Street location of the HBC store could use new escalators or elevators but the criticism on the front page of The Vancouver Sun was out of line.
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We never read about the elevator in the new food chain store in Coquitlam, for example, not functioning properly at times but we continue to use the store without making comments to the media.
The downtown Vancouver HBC store has always been our family’s “go-to store” for at least the past 60-plus years and there is no argument that things have changed but so have times. It’s now not Canadian-owned and a talk with the merchandise buyers may be necessary in order to again attract the people and their families who have been their long-standing customers.
It’s these people that merchandise should be geared to as they shop in the store looking for the quality goods that the HBC was always known for.
Let’s encourage them, not belittle them.
L. Newsome, Coquitlam
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Letters to the editor should be sent to sunletters@vancouversun.com. Click here to report a typo.
Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.
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