YOU SAID IT: Housing hypocrisy


Here are today’s Ottawa Sun letters to the editor.

Article content

HOUSING HYPOCRISY

Advertisement 2

Article content

Re: Green light; Council’s new standards will push up home costs 10%, April 14

With its never-ending penchant to know, say, do and tell Ottawans what’s best for them, city council has approved new and costly development standards. It’s estimated they will increase the cost of new homes as much as 10 per cent.

Not a smart, hypocrisy-free vote for a council that not long ago decried the unaffordability of houses to the point of declaring a housing emergency.

According to the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association, some of the new standards are impractical, perhaps even unachievable. They cited a requirement for 30 cubic meters of soil for street trees in new subdivisions. Consider the tree centered in a plot four meters by four meters; that soil would need to be almost two meters deep! That’s a lot of clay and usually buried construction debris to haul out and replace with soil — and not cheap! That doesn’t account for space to accommodate buried infrastructure.

advertisement 3

Article content

Kudos to councilors Chiarelli, Darouze and Hubley for dissenting from plans that will exacerbate the affordable housing shortage. Contrary to woke councilors like Kavanagh, Menard, Brockington, Curry and Mayor Watson, these standards do no favors to future homeowners.

May the hypocritical councilors be remembered on election day.

MIKE ALAIN

OTTAWA

(Don’t hold your breath.)

WAIT AND SEE

We are in deep trouble! With Convoy Pete favored to win the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and Dougie Do-Little in denial, not understanding why the majority of people in his province are having to live with a serious disease, many also in denial, we have no idea of the extent of the long-term ramifications of prolonging the virus.

advertisement 4

Article content

I guess we have to wait until our now-children are suffering from results of having caught the disease: breathing problems, infection of vital body parts and God knows what else. Haven’t two-plus years been enough when we know what we have to do to eradicate this disease?

MICHAEL NIHMEY

OTTAWA

(It wouldn’t seem so.)

SAT BY, LET IT HAPPEN

I found it incredible that we in the free world, on Easter Sunday, sat by and allowed Putin to slaughter and commit all types of atrocities against Ukrainians. The free countries of the free world should have bowed their heads in disgust for allowing this to happen.

BOB MORRIS

OTTAWA

(It is atrocious.)

TIME TO STEP UP

It has been about eight weeks since Ukraine was invaded and yet no Western armies have come to its defense. Although Russia’s nuclear capability is being used as a trump card, held in reserve to intimidate its Western adversaries, this should not excuse the NATO alliance’s inaction.

Allowing Western democracies to be bullied by an inferior military power with nuclear capability sets a dangerous precedent that is being carefully watched by the non-aligned nuclear nations. Now is the time to make perfectly clear that this will no longer be tolerated by refusing to back down from Putin’s bluff. Now is the time to enter the fight.

Dave Langdon

OTTAWA

(But are you sure it’s a bluff?)

advertisement 1

Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user follows comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your e-mail settings.


Leave a Comment