Council should focus on core mandate

Re: “Victoria riles Alberta with support for oilpatch suit,” Jan. 30.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is right. If Victoria sues big oil and gas companies for past practices that allegedly contributed to climate change, it is only logical that others should sue Victoria for its past practice of flushing raw sewage into the ocean for decades.

By belatedly embarking upon an $800-million wastewater-treatment plan, the region has acknowledged that its past practice was wrong and contributed significant damage to the marine environment to the detriment of all Canadians, and indeed to all world citizens. Otherwise why would it be spending this money?

Failing to acknowledge past wrongs and then paying significant reparations, as Victoria is asking oil companies to do, would only make Notley doubly correct when she says that the “hypocrisy” of Victoria’s proposed lawsuit is “astounding.”

On the other hand, maybe the mayor and council should lower their sights a little and begin to focus on their core mandate, which is to provide appropriate services to the citizens of Victoria, such as cleaning up the hundreds of cigarette butts in front of the Salvation Army residence on lower Johnson Street, and leave more worldly matters to higher levels of government.

John Amon Victoria