Healthy Disagreement #2

31 October, 2008

Editor:

David Berner! As one so skilled in the art of theatre, you well know that gift of the gab does not a good politician make. And many a bridge has been sold by "self-assured" salesmen who later ended up mired in controversy, even scandal.

I, too, enjoyed the scripts played out by Kennedy and Clinton, but I also recognized that any truths they, and other such eloquent politicians, spoke, was often one they created themselves; and so it is with Peter Ladner and his provincial mentors. To cite but two expensive examples --

His record on TransLink and Council has been of the usual GVRD/Metro variety; go along to get along. Vote, not just with fellow committee members but, far worse, to validate the SkyTrain-Canada Line and Convention Centre dicates of the provincial government - the overruns on which would pay twice over for solutions to the real problems of the city, albeit they are problems without "heft."

Furthermore, Ladner's council, rather than standing up for the "economic welfare of its community," allowed the Campbell government to download the cost of a SkyTrain station onto property taxes.

Yes, Robertson seems to favour a continuance of Insite. But in the media interviews I saw, he also stressed it was only one of ten pillars - the need for treatment being paramount. If it's theatre that's required, then I'm sure the super-bowl of the Downtown Eastside can supply it in spades - and the eloquence of the mentally-ill on those streets will bring tears to your eyes.

Me? Were I a Vancouver voter, I'd rather see a little honest hesitancy about the enormity of the clean-up that's required, than the same old self-assurance of the status quo.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth James

Box 16090, RPO Lynn Valley,

NORTH VANCOUVER, BC

V7J 3S9