I have to apologize to a bunch of people who I have had bad thoughts about for the past few weeks, over two things; the tanker issue and the local municipal election.
On the tanker topic, the vote ‘yes’ folks seem to just be somewhat naive. If we were actually able to stifle the tanker traffic along the B.C. coast, at least a couple of things would happen; thousands of jobs would be lost all over B.C., Alberta and the rest of Canada. And oil would continue to be moved, probably by increasing rail transport and therefore every community that trains go through will become potential disaster areas. Increasing rail traffic with long, heavily laden trains dramatically raises air pollution as they chug through communities.
I don’t understand why we aren’t championing policies like having B.C. marine pilots on all tankers in B.C. waters; only double-hulled, safety designed tankers traversing our waters, and have adequate levels of Canadian naval vessels patrolling along our coastal waters.
With regard to the local election, it surprises me that many people think our community only needs and/or deserves a leader that isn’t available on a full-time basis. Trying to run a business (yes, Sooke is a business) when you are an hour away four days during the week, might work if our town was mature and running smoothly. But it is not, and after so many years of really accomplishing very little I don’t see improvement on the horizon by managing our affairs by cell phone, text messaging and video calls.
But I’m over all that now, I have let it go and am back to thinking nice about everyone in our great community, well almost everyone.
Shaun Welters
Sooke