Time for some real engagement

Dear Editor: At the start of the budget deliberations for the taxation year 2017, this would be a perfect time for the mayor and council to do some serious engaging with the citizens of Penticton on the current infrastructure deficit.

Possibly, each member of council could explain how they propose to fund the infrastructure deficit and to detail cost allocation requirements as to how the business and residential communities will be impacted.

Each member of council could spend 10 minutes at the start of budget deliberations and explain the steps that they personally believe need to be taken to tackle the infrastructure deficit. Council members could also discuss steps they have undertaken in the 2017 budget discussion papers that will start the painful increases in property taxation and utility rates.

Most taxpayers would be appreciative if their discussions covered property tax increases and utility rate increases required to be implemented over the subsequent 10 years of the operations of the City of Penticton.

Coun. Max Picton is looking for engagement from the public and the public is looking for engagement by the mayor and council.

On behalf of all citizens, I am thanking council in advance for your engagement on the pending infrastructure deficit discussions that needs to be finalized in the near future. Ted Wiltse Penticton Canadians diagnosed every year with a disease for which there is presently no cure, and no cure on the horizon. According to Taylor, over 50,000 dementia patients currently live in hospital beds throughout Canada, clogging the hospitals, at a staggering cost.

Based on these statistics, what could have possible motivated the federal government’s decision to not include this incurable, debilitating, and totally humiliating disease in the list of conditions eligible for legally assisted suicide? Only those pre-disposed to the concept would take advantage of it, with no impact on any other Canadian.

Let us remove the human factor for a second, and just consider the inescapable facts. Based on the numbers quoted above, how long do you think it will be before the number of patients who are long past the point where they can make an informed decision on legally assisted suicide, totally overwhelm the available medical resources and funding to take care of them?

Now considering the human factor, if we have approximately 50,000 of the 700,000 afflicted people taking up hospital beds, that means there are 650,000 others with various stages of this disease, being cared for at home by family members and friends.

As all of us know, as their condition deteriorates, they will require full-time care, 24/7 from these people, with a significant loss of quality of life for many years for their caregivers.

As indicated above, not all dementia patients would choose assisted suicide to be administered when they got to a point that they could no longer control their bodily functions, but I am sure there would be many people who would.

I am one of those people, as is almost everyone I discuss this with.

Why should we be left with no other option than to have to make a pact with each other to provide whatever assistance we can to fulfill the wishes of the dementia sufferer?

The government’s decision is taking us back to the time when women had to have abortions in back alleys, due to the religious and moral objections of male politicians.

We elected the Trudeau government to follow the wishes of the majority of the people. The Supreme Court of Canada ordered the government to make medically assisted suicide a full and reasonable reality, and it have failed miserably.

The Trudeau government should do its job and amend the existing restrictive legislation to give all dementia patients who so choose, the right to die with dignity, in a controlled environment.

Give them the right to choose not to destroy the lives of family members or friends, and when their minds are gone, let them know that they don’t have to be subject to the humiliation which is part of the end stage of this disease. Steve Harrison

Vernon