Re: Pro-treatment candidate outvoted by others (Letters, Nov. 30)
Writer Ron Johnson is what I would call a cherry picker – someone who will pick any minuscule detail and exploit it to the max to try to make a case for a weak position.
He claims that the Victoria byelection was a referendum on secondary sewage treatment, and that more electors voted against it but their votes were split between the five unsuccessful candidates. Sorry Mr. Johnson, it was not a single issue byelection.
Both the Green Party candidate and the NDP talked about the homelessness issue and the need for a national housing strategy. Anyone in Victoria would have to be living under a rock to not know the city has a homelessness problem and that many more people are one paycheque away from joining the homeless.
There are no doubt lots of people angry at Stephen Harper for his recent changes to Old Age Security. You would also be hard pressed to miss the massive opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline and business dealings with China, with its poor human rights record.
The Green Party campaigned on the byelection advantage that people can vote for who they feel should win, not vote strategically.
But no, Mr. Johnson argues, voters ignored all these other issues and voted based on who was for, or against, building a secondary sewage treatment facility.
What about the 56 per cent of eligible voters who didn’t even bother to get to the polls at all on Nov. 26?
Despite what Ron Johnson states in his letter, sewage treatment in Victoria did not become a national issue. The whole darn country is not concerned with issues here. Nobody in Medicine Hat, Alta. or Killaloe, Ont. or Saint John, N.B. are losing any sleep fretting over whether the treatment centre is built or what it will cost.
Andre Mollon
Langford
