Decisions made in the warm offices of Ottawa bureaucrats to continually degrade the safety services of the communities of the B.C. coast show negligence of responsibility to the citizens of this area.
Reductions intended in Marine Communications and Traffic Services have a very real potential to cost the government more, not less, as response times to incident – vessel accidents, potential spills, etc., will be lengthened.
While this will manifest itself to our government in dollars, we on the coast will bear the real cost in loss of lives of our relatives and friends working and being transported on the water and in the air, and we on the coast will bear the loss of habitat affected by spills, etc.
MCTS officers are on the front lines of response to marine incidents, listening for distress calls, alert for potentially devastating situations. They transfer information to provide the communications needed on this wild and remote coastline.
Once again the citizens of our coast must stand up and speak loudly across thousands of miles that separate us from the bureaucrats that erase essential safety services without regard or understanding of their impact.
Please write your MP and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and put a stop to short-sighted reductions to the services that we need.
Alice Woods,
BC Lightkeepers Union
