I feel upset at the changes happening over the last 15-20 years in provincial and national political ethics. Here’s the latest example:

I live in New Westminster and just received some PR and questionnaires from John Weston, MP for West Van-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, extolling the virtues of all that’s been done for business. It then provides a return questionnaire.

What alarms me about this, other than the paper waste (two sheets of paper in an envelope, sent twice), and that these seem to come from people I’ve never heard of and that don’t represent me; is that each return questionnaire comes with individual bar codes that just happen to match the barcode across from my name and address.

The reason I know the bar codes trace my name and address is that I received two: one for me, and one for my family.

The return address portion is left blank on the return form giving the illusion of potential for privacy. However, logic dictates that personal, seemingly anonymous opinions people may wish to express, can be traced back to the name/address of the recipient and possibly compiled for later use. Do they really want honest opinions? I suppose they can state any number of reasons for marking the potential ‘test ballots’. But do we really want to trust them to do the right thing with something unofficial, when even official promises get ignored nowadays?

If anyone wishes to give completely honest feedback without fear of possible future consequences, they should know this, and make an effort to cut out the barcode before folding and posting. But first, they need to know about the bar code.

L. Redmond

New Westminster

Stopping Burrard Thermal right move

Hats off to the provincial government for stopping the British Columbia Utilities Commission’s plan to massively increase the use of Burrard Thermal.

Time, climate change and public awareness rendered Burrard Thermal obsolete long ago. And BC’s abundance of clean, renewable energy resources, combined with the low impact technologies now available to harness these resources, are the order of the day.

Pressing a gas-fired 1960s relic like Burrard Thermal into service to produce electricity in the 21st century should never even have crossed the minds of the commissioners. It was a bad idea and the commissioners should have recognized this as easily as the average person on the street does and then acted accordingly.

Michael McBratney

Port Moody

Tuesday’s Throne Speech in the B.C. Legislature contained a welcome obituary for Burrard Thermal. We can all be thankful for the swift action taken by the province to rectify what can only be described as a serious error on the part of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.

It’s still a mystery how the commission managed to confuse a pile of scrap metal near Port Moody with a sensible solution to British Columbia’s electricity needs. But they did, and the words “questionable judgment” are the mildest ones I can think of.

Kevin Lee

Vancouver