Editor:
I found Vince Cavaliere’s letter of Nov. 6 distressing (‘Ajax cannot be only civic-election focus’) and I hope he is wrong in his belief people don’t vote because they are happy with the existing state of affairs.
In my world, the existing state of affairs — the extinctions, pollution, climate change, downward mobility, etc. — leaves me feeling disheartened, disillusioned, embarrassed and betrayed.
I feel the ones who don’t vote might be living their lives out in a noisy, frantic, hectic manner that seems out of control.
I think they have simply lost faith in the system and feel it is not delivering on the social contract.
On election day, they simply cave into the temptation to switch off, tune out and escape.
I feel Cavaliere is being disingenuous in attempting to trivialize the importance of the Ajax proposition.
Ajax is the elephant in the room this election and it is directly connected to many of the other important issues Cavaliere goes on to list — in particular, his notion that we need to attract more doctors.
I’m no medical expert, but what I do know is that, even though I may not have liked it much when my doctors would point to my bad habits, they always did it for me and my health, not for themselves.
Today we have almost the entire Kamloops medical community standing up as one, telling us Ajax will be bad for community health.
A significant number of our doctors have made it clear they are unwilling to compromise their own health and they will be leaving the community if we allow the mine to proceed.
I am a senior and most of us seniors know how important it is to have easy, ready access to a regular family doctor.
I believe the doctors’ situation as it relates to Ajax should be deeply concerning to the entire community.
A question city council could have bandied about the last three years is: Do the rights of a small number of individuals to profit from the mine outweigh my rights and the rights of thousands of others to have a regular family doctor?
Three years ago, we elected a council that wouldn’t make a call on Ajax. Council wanted more information. What more does this council need to know?
I’ve yet to hear its questions.
The not curious do not want to hear answers that might not suit their agenda. Curiosity is a crucial core value in any leadership that inspires me.
Moving forward, I’m looking for leaders whose survival instinct has kicked in, leaders who know the material economy is embedded in nature, that nature is our life-support system and that nature has her limits and we must not exceed them.
These will be leaders who will approach the city’s business on the assumption we have only one planet on which to live.
Rick Duggan
Kamloops
The post Actually, Ajax is the elephant in this election appeared first on Kamloops This Week.