Hope Furstenau can look for solutions
First I must congratulate Sonia Furstenau on her being elected as the MLA for this area.
I recognize this has mostly due to her work in having the landfill for the contaminated soil shut down near Shawnigan Lake. I only hope she puts as much effort into finding a new place for the contaminated soil, as she has only succeeded in throwing the garbage from her/our backyard into someone else’s, yet to be determined.
Now her duties will require her to not only listen to her constituents, even the ones that need and want something she might not personally agree with, but find solutions for the issues they bring up. The solutions need to be affordable as well, as I do not want to see the tax rates going up continually to pay for complicated solutions.
One cannot make a problem go away by banning or legislating it out of existence. As long as there is a demand, or need, for anything there will be a supplier. The key is to convince everyone they do not need/want something to make the demand for it to go away, and the supply will go away too. Convincing the majority isn’t good enough, as the demand of the minority will still be meet one way or another.
This has to do with everything whether we like to admit it or not. The more complicated and limiting the solution is, the more expensive, and this burden then falls on all of us directly and indirectly. E.g. The more expensive it is to deal with contaminated soil the more that property it came from’s value will be raised to pay for its removal. The higher the property values rise the higher housing, taxes, and living expenses rise as well.
Steven Kostamo
North Cowichan