The Ministry of Transportation and ­Transit’s plan to widen the highway at Goldstream Park has received little ­profile in the media, although the impact will be huge.

The $162-million project will widen the road in order to install cement barriers in the middle. Supposedly this is to increase safety, but the bollards installed a few years ago are quite effective in ­reducing speed through that area. The only ­accident after putting in the bollards was due to a driver’s poor judgment, nothing to do with the road.

The impact of this project is enormous — cutting down more than 700 trees and sinking concrete footings into the salmon-spawning river. The salmon might never come back.

Currently, it is at the stage of consultation with the W̱SÁNEĆ people, but in spite of that the ministry has let a contract to start the preliminary work. This project is a waste of money and will do irreparable harm to the environment and to the relationship with the W̱SÁNEĆ people. I’m pleading with the minister to reconsider and shelve the project.

Pieta VanDyke

Saanichton

I’ve just finished reading The Haves and Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos.

Osnos claims there are 800 billionaires in the United States now. While Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have always thought that it’s important to use a large ­portion of their money to help other people, it seems many of the newer wealthiest ­people spend their time simply finding ways to make more and more money and preserve what they already have from being taxed.

Twenty years ago, the CEO of a company would traditionally make anywhere from 20 to 50 times what the front-line worker in his company would take home. These days, a CEO will make at least 350 times more than his employee.

If workers around the world are ­pleading for a living wage and improved working conditions — well — we wouldn’t want to interfere with that bottom line now, would we?

In 2024, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, had $400 billion. (Mind you, he has since lost a bit because various share prices have fallen. Awwww, poor guy!)

He puts most of the money he earns back into investments with his companies — Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink........

© Times Colonist