Editor:
I would like Keith Maxwell (“String, misguided signal,” Letters, July 28) and others of same mind to remember that the primary purpose of government is to take care of and protect its citizens. And this is no truer than with seniors who, after a long life of building their community and contributing to society, become elderly and infirm and require that same community and group (government) to take care of them.
It is sad and embarrassing that we allow corporations to profit on our seniors’ inability to completely care for and house themselves. Talk about a captive client. Wow!
As a society we should naturally assume the care of our elders and do so with grace and dignity, as opposed to arguing and profiting from it.
We should be proud to be able to do so, and as an extremely wealthy and affluent society we are certainly able to do so, given the political and social will.
One only has to look a few miles south to see a country that thrives on profit in health care – private insurers, private hospitals and lawyers eat up every cent available and leave a disgusting number of their citizens out in the cold and seriously wanting.
I would like to feel that we as Canadians are better than that and would take a different tack when it comes to honestly caring for each other.
It is not Sechelt (or Gibsons) that needs a wake-up call; it is those who would make an issue of respectfully caring for one’s fellow citizens, regardless of circumstance. That sort of thinking would leave infants on the doorstep.
Jeff Olsen, Christina Lake, B.C. (previously of Gibsons)
