Round two of the Wal-Mart saga begins with SmartCentres flagrantly ignoring the wishes of most Salmon Arm residents by proceeding to put fill on their site.

Following the letter of the law rather than the spirit, they chose to start dumping on the Friday of a long weekend, knowing that city council would not be meeting on the following Monday and that any complaints to regulatory bodies would take a longer time to be checked out than it would to finish dumping. This is the corporate spirit we wish to come to Salmon Arm?

A “Pro Development Association” forms supporting SmartCentres coming to town; the implication being that if you are against SmartCentres, you are anti-development? I think not.

There are many developers, who have brought high-paying jobs to this town, who are horrified at the thought of Wal-Mart coming. Initially, Wal-Mart will infuse a lot of money into our local economy but their business is not an economically sustainable one. They pay low wages and source most of their products overseas. The long-term effects of buying cheaply is starting to become apparent.

One of our neighbours in the industrial park has been shut down for close to a year because his longtime client is now ordering from China. A dozen well-paying jobs were lost. An omen of our future?  

A Wal-Mart in Salmon Arm will contribute to the undermining of the local economy. And the fact that they want to locate so close to the lake shows they are also not interested in being environmentally sustainable; but that’s an issue I’ll leave others to debate.

What we need in Salmon Arm is another business like Newnes or Dinoflex; not a Wal-Mart.

I am pro-development so please don’t hijack that name because the kind of development you want will, in the long run, be detrimental to Salmon Arm.

Vivian Morris