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The provincial health ministry should reconsider its decision to reinstate pay parking at hospitals as of March 4. A person, other than a hospital employee, goes to the hospital when it is essential and there is no other choice. Similarly, a patient’s relatives, friends and caregivers visit him/her when they have to. To make the hospital staff, patients or their relatives and friends pay for parking at the hospital is totally unfair.
One of the reasons given to bring back pay parking to hospitals is the misuse by non-hospital users. This problem can be easily addressed by other means, such as registration of vehicles’ license plates, patrolling and monitoring, etc. Incidentally, it is possible that the misuse of this privilege may not be as prevalent as the ministry assumes. As the lost revenue of some $78 million is concerned, surely the government can find other ways to make up for it.
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Balwant Sanghera, Richmond
We remember our childhood, when some of our friends were catching polio
My wife and I view the newscasts of the truckers protesting in Ottawa with some perplexity. The placards shout “freedom”. We have to wonder what freedoms are being lost?
We are old-timers, but can clearly remember our childhood panic days when some of our friends were catching polio, which often resulted in death and invariably in permanent disability. Too late for tens of thousands, the Salk sugar cube arrived in 1957. Too late for me, the measles vaccine came — I have been left with serious disabilities. All the children of our generation were vaccinated at birth for various diseases that have now vanished. We had the scars on our arms left by the smallpox scratches. We were required to have recent smallpox vaccination before being allowed to immigrate into Canada in 1969.
Scientists believe that if we can achieve 100 per cent COVID vaccination, the number of infections will dwindle to a mere handful. Would it not be possible for protesters to believe that universal compliance to this request will save tens of thousands of people from becoming infected and hundreds from a wretched death?
Ed Monro, Agassiz