Letters to The Vancouver Sun: If we are to take climate change seriously, we need more passenger trains

Opinion: Letters to The Vancouver Sun

Published Aug 30, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

It took 5 1/2 days for a B.C. MP to travel by train from Toronto to his hometown of Smithers. That's slower than 70 years ago, writes Doug Todd. PRV

Re: It’s past time to revive Western Canada’s dying passenger trains.

Douglas Todd’s column rueing the demise of passenger trains in the West hit a nerve for me. We are constantly being reminded of climate change and yet we have very little choice or no choice in the West but to use hugely polluting air travel if we want to connect with Canadian cities in the East in a timely manner.

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We need government support to reinstate passenger train travel as an environment friendly form of transportation if we’re to take climate change seriously.

Lorraine Hardie, Vancouver

Cost of running house is increasing much higher than inflation rate

Re: Maximum allowable rent increase in B.C. will be three per cent in 2025.

Someone needs to point out to NDP MLA Ravinder Kahlon that although the inflation rate is down, that doesn’t correlate with the cost of running a house. In fact, the cost of running a home has been increasing by a lot more than the cost of inflation.

In 2023, Vancouver home taxes went up 10.7 per cent. They will go up 7 1/2 per cent this year. In Kahlon’s city of Delta, property taxes will go up 5.75 per cent.

My insurance this year went up a whopping 25 per cent, and I  suspect most people’s did also.

I’m not suggesting that tenants pay for all of the increases. I think it should be shared with landlords paying a heavily weighted majority.

But I don’t think it’s fair that the allowed rent increases don’t somehow  even come close to reflecting the increasing costs of running a house and suites as opposed to the rate of inflation.

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Peter Silin, Vancouver 

Dressew will be missed

Re: Longtime Vancouver fabric store Dressew calls it quits.

So sad that Dressew is closing. It has always been a treasure trove of the items I needed to make an item or repair it, and a source of inspiration for the crafty things I didn’t yet know I wanted to create.

I particularly remember a sweater I was knitting with the yarn I had bought during an amazing sale. The pattern called for two yarns to be worked as one: a mohair and a ribbon. Close to completion I realized I was going to run out of ribbon before the other one and before the garment was finished. I called Dressew. Sorry, no more left, but leave your name in case of a return.

Days later I got a call from a saleswoman who told me she has one skein left from her own project and would make it available to me. Such was the service that makes Dressew so special.

I will miss it.

PS: The sweater turned out well.

Lynn Kagan, Vancouver

Simple solution for sticky situation

Re: Why this B.C. municipality wants to ban stickers on fruits and vegetables.

I just take the sticky off, and stick it to the outside of my small kitchen green bin. Needless to say, I have quite a collection.

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No stickies go out from my house into the big green bin to contaminate any kind of recycling.

Elaine Godwin, Surrey

Revealing details of security agencies’ use of AI would hinder their work

Re: Security agencies urged to detail their use of AI.

I’m distressed to learn from an article in last Saturday’s National Post section that Canada has a committee dedicated to shining a light on the activities of our country’s spy agency. I’m usually not a hawk on these issues but I value our national security apparatus as the main means we will avoid costly and damaging wars by finding out what our enemies plan, and dealing with those issues with police work and diplomacy rather than arms.

The National Security Transparency Advisory Group wants our security organizations to reveal to the public the ways they use artificial intelligence. To tell our state enemies what we’re doing and how we’re doing it is both dangerous and irresponsible. There are numerous recent examples where our security forces, in collaboration with those of other friendly nations, have captured terrorists who were planning attacks on Canadian soil.

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We hinder this important work at our peril.

John Lynn, New Westminster

Puzzled by Falcon’s assumption

Why does Kevin Falcon assume that B.C. United followers will want to vote for a party, the B.C. Tories, that has strange ideas about climate change?

Denise Goodkey, Vancouver

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