Editor:
Some 250 people filled the Seniors Centre in Sechelt June 29 to hear a litany of concerns about plans to replace existing extended care facilities with a single new one that will ostensibly add 20 beds. This while an entire floor of Sechelt Hospital sits vacant in the wake of a major overall renovation.
But the central concerns were to do with the private-public financing model. Oh, the absent Vancouver Coastal Health people printed up some facile denial that this is so, but nobody, quite rightly, gave that any credence. You could easily envision Christy Clark’s thumbprint on the heads of VCH bureaucrats.
There were many concerns expressed, among them the inevitable net cost to the community via the lower wages and firings. They will be called something else, but firings are what they will be. Make no mistake – this is an attack by corporatist Christy on the people of the Sunshine Coast Regional District.
Our NDP MLA Nicholas Simons was there, delivering the obligatory warm welcome and humane bromides but zero leadership. I know he’s a pleasant fella and ostensibly there to listen, but it would have been useful to hear what he himself planned to do to fight this conniving piece of politics.
My suggestion, clearly directed in part to Simons but generating no response, was that our MP, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, might be drawn into the issue. After all, federal transfer funds go a good way to paying the provincial health-care piper, and the feds, in that respect, have the right to some say in the tune – and in this instance should exercise it.
It struck me too that if, as is usual, our property taxes will contribute to the costs of the proposal, then surely the chair of the regional district board should have attended the meeting. The province regularly rolls right over local government input, but that doesn’t relieve the latter of the obligation to represent, as they are elected to do. No sign either of Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne.
This arrangement is far too suspect for any government with the public interest in mind to have even contemplated, let alone sanctioned. Two hundred and fifty people make for an impressive public protest against this entirely regressive decision. I wonder how hard we and our representatives will be willing to fight it.
John Marian, Halfmoon Bay
