Long-term care beds promise not being made

When it comes to obscuring the truth, the B.C. Liberals are masters and Health Services Minister George Abbott is an Olympic gold medallist.

In claiming they have met their target of providing 5,000 new long-term care beds, Abbott lumps in all the assisted living units that either have been built or will be built by the end of the year.

Anyone who knows what is really going on will tell you that assisted living residences are not long-term care facilities for seniors.

They provide housing and food services at a commercial rental fee – some as high as $5,000 per month.

All other services a resident might require, which once were provided in all the public LTC facilities, must now be paid for by the residents. In fact, most private assisted living facilities have a small percentage of their units designated as subsidized seniors’ units, while the rest remain commercial rental spaces.

And yet assisted living corporate owners receive the same amount of rent for all of their units, including the small number of subsidized ones.

What happens is the designated, subsidized units have the balance between the commercial rental rate and the rent-geared-to-income rate the government establishes covered by the government and handed over to the private corporate owners.

Now Mr. Abbott and the government he represents have the temerity to boast they are meeting their goal of providing 5,000 new long-term care units. What a cruel joke, and a serious travesty to the senior population in this province.

Dale Perkins

Victoria

Plastic bag removal creates quandary

Re: Our View (News, Sept. 19)

I am all for less plastic going into our landfills.

And, I also understand that using paper will only cut down more trees.

So, once again, I ask, what are apartment/condo dwellers to do to get their garbage to the garbage bins that are a fair distance from their apartment or condo? I keep asking this question to anybody and everybody and nobody has an answer for me.

I looked in various stores; although, not all, and do not see where I can purchase some sort of biodegradable bags in which to carry my garbage. Your write-up talks about the corn starch variety not being sustainable, either.

So can anybody out there offer some kind of advice, before we make the move to remove all plastic bags from existence? I personally do not think it would be very sanitary to dump my garbage container straight into the dumpster, do you?

We also do not have composting at my building. So what are we to do?

Angela Cooper

Victoria

Lack of rugby funding naked for all to see

Re: Valkries part of ‘bolder, sexier’ national team (News, Sept. 26)

The key line of your article about the national women rugby players was that the women’s program “receives a fragment of the funding the men’s program does” and the women on the team pay to play. We should be proud to live in a country that has a women’s and men’s national team.

But surely both teams should be funded well enough that members of neither feel they have to take off their clothes to fund their play.

Andrew MacLeod

Oak Bay