Vancouver’s ‘Propaganda Department’ is getting bigger
The City of Vancouver is now spending about $3.5 million per year on the 33 people in the communications department compared with the seven employees costing $600,000 under previous administrations.
What we as taxpayers should fully understand is that all these additional people are really working on behalf of the Vision party in what has become the Propaganda Department. Large-scale propaganda efforts are undertaken by all totalitarian governments so that the government can control the narrative.
The reason that even more people are now being hired in this ever-expanding department is because more and more citizens are becoming disenchanted with how Vancouver is being misgoverned and therefore the Vision command-and-control system realizes that a greater effort must be put into further message enhancements all meant to misinform and delude us into thinking the government's numerous failures are actually in our interest.
Robert J. Macdonald, Vancouver
NDP-Green deal is two-faced
The NDP-Green agreement as it relates to fossil resource development is a classic example of 'carbon' doublespeak.
Section 3, 2 a (1) says: Implement an increase of the carbon tax by $5 per tonne per year, beginning April 1, 2018, and expand the tax to fugitive emissions and to slash-pile burning.
Section 3,2 a (3) says: Implement a climate action strategy to meet our targets.
Section 3, 2(c) says: Immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the seven-fold increase in tanker traffic on our coast and the transportation of raw bitumen through our province.
Yet there is no reference to fracking for natural gas or the many proposed LNG plants and pipelines. Last time I looked, natural gas was a fossil fuel.
B.C. natural gas passes by pipeline through two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, and four states, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and into Illinois. Imagine if one of these jurisdictions took the same approach on natural-gas transmissions as B.C. is taking on Alberta's oil?
And no mention of the coal mines in the Interior. Often described as the worst of the fossil fuels, over the last 20 years B.C. has exported 20 to 30 million metric tons annually, according to B.C. government figures.
Now, I support all this resource development.
But I reject the hypocrisy of those who pretend environmental purity by promoting excessive environmental regulation, increasing carbon taxes, rejecting a neighbouring province's ability to prosper through oil transmission, all the while ignoring their own coal production and transmission by rail and ship, and their own natural-gas production and fracking with pipelines carrying it through two provinces and four states.
Brian Peckford, Nanaimo
How will they pay for it all?
It was interesting to read that John Horgan and Andrew Weaver have plans to eliminate MSP premiums, increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour and eliminate tolls on all bridges, just to name a few.
I would like to know where the money is supposed to come from to fund these and future projects? Knowing the history of the NDP in this province, I can only assume that the money will have to come from taxpayers.
Yes, the voters have spoken (sort of ), but I don't believe that gives these two parties a licence to bankrupt our province and its residents.
Eileen Loughran, Richmond