Editor:
I want to commend Cathie Roy for her sensitive and insightful opinion piece in last week’s Coast Reporter on our new government’s decision to take in 25,000 refugees from war-torn Syria (“Painting the truth about us”). The letter written by John and Frankie King of Garden Bay (“Rethink refugee promise”) attaches the spectre of “fiscal suicide” and warns of “even greater danger” as the intention to welcome Syrian refugees proceeds.
But, as Ms. Roy points out, it is a bit late now to agonize over the social and mental health needs of Canadians, which have gone unmet for so long. We have elected governments in Ottawa and Victoria that have chosen to neglect the needs of the vulnerable in our own population. The increase in the number of food banks, the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-a-School Program, the yearly struggle to fund homeless shelters are all evidence that governments have deliberately left “the homeless, the elderly, the sick and veterans” on the sidelines in our society long before 25,000 Syrian refugees appeared. Caring both for our own citizens and refugees from overseas is not an either/or proposition.
Well done, Cathie Roy!
Dave Diether, Gibsons
