Dear Editor:
Port Metro Vancouver must be another privatization initiative by our Liberal masters, like B.C. Ferries, Translink, B.C. Hydro, B.C. Parks, B.C. Medical, B.C. Lotteries, B.C. Forests, and no doubt others not as much in the public eye. Waste-to-energy incineration and Multi-Material B.C. privatize our waste stream, turning over our lucrative recoverable resources to corporate control, maximizing waste, pollution, and our climate change impact.
Our taxes no longer pay for essential services at cost. Now we pay cost plus corporate profit-and lose our commons.
Liberal legislation establishes corporate boards (or contracts out) and gives them control of our public services while maintaining the fiction that these are still crown corporations or government entities. This lets people blame government for rising prices, furthering cries for private services.
How many fishers, boaters and floathome residents can afford a 300 percent increase in moorage? If they get rid of the people on the river, where can we go, and who can afford to replace those of us using our river, and every waterfront commons? Do they imagine enough billionaire foreigners to keep our economy happening?
Low minimum wage and a rapacious welfare system escalate child poverty, homelessness, and social stress. Tax and user fee increases, rising home prices – we all know the list – amplify economic pressure and social disorder.
Liberals and their corporate masters don’t seem to realize that pricing citizens out of existence puts their economies at risk as well as ours.
Hilda Bechler, New Westminster
