I am very annoyed at the way the public hearings have been portrayed in the media lately and the subsequent announcements by Mike Hicks and Dave Saunders regarding their respective votes.
I am in favour of the development because it preserves the vast majority of the land while still contributing positively to the local economy. You can’t ask for a better deal than that! Just because a bunch of environmentalists managed to pack a public hearing by chartering buses from UVIC out to Sooke does not mean that the majority oppose the development —it’s just that the rest of us are hard at work at our 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. jobs and not able to make it out to the hearings — hence I find myself losing sleep emailing the members of the LUC at 1 a.m. on a Friday night in order to try to correct this ridiculous notion that a great majority oppose this development.
I urge the LUC members to vote in favour of the development as it is all positive for our local community here in terms of preserving greenspace as opposed to clearcuts, creating economic activity and creating a sizeable tourist draw to expand our tourist industry (what we need to do in terms of long-term economic sustainability). I am tired of those people who seemingly have little else to do other than to oppose all developments regardless of their merit. Sometimes politicians must realize that the right decision is not always going to appear to be the most popular one - but if we held a referendum on this and the voters understood the benefits and realities of the proposal - I am confident it would pass.
Kyle Topelko
Sooke