Letters to The Vancouver Sun, Feb. 8, 2020: Sex trade workers deserve equal protection
Credit to Author: Carolyn Soltau| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 02:00:30 +0000
I felt sick to my stomach when I read Ms. Bramham’s column (on the death of Marylène Lévesque and the arrest of murder parolee Eustachio Gallese). I was shocked and saddened that, even in the era of #metoo, that authorities like Canada’s parole board are endorsing a violent criminal’s access to prostitutes to satisfy sexual needs.
What makes me even more upset is that the parole board implied that sex trade workers are a good alternative for a high risk offender who may hurt or kill a partner! Sex trade workers are no less worthy of protection than any other woman and perhaps, even more worthy considering their line of work.
Bonnie Gillis, Surrey
Re: Public Sector Salaries Database
Thanks for such a thorough compilation.
It’s good to have it as published knowledge on a regular basis.
It brings to mind, though, we are long overdue for a companion story on Canada’s Big Five banks. What about their CEO’s yearly compensation packages and annual profit reports? It seems to me those used to make the front pages every year, but now it’s as if the banks, or the paper, are intentionally burying an even better lead news story?
Could it be to distract us rabble with pitchforks by pointing at government compensation instead?
When my 24-year-old, university grad, gig-worker daughter with no money to her name gets dinged crazy bank fees (even ATM non-branch fees are insane when you think of the millions of daily transactions), you can guess the response to news of the banks’ latest several billion dollar profit announcement. Forget senior government managers, the weasels in the henhouse have always been the banks.
Thanks again for still working in journalism. I believe in you!
Ken Gurr, Gabriola Island
Canadians lose almost half of what they earn every year to taxes and half of this sum goes to government sector salaries. Most of your readers would agree that everyone deserves a fair wage, and as a government sector worker I sure do. What I cannot understand is the obscene salaries diverted to people at the top who often have easier, less productive jobs.
Jim McMurtry, Surrey
The article on high paid public employees misses a much bigger problem than the glass ceiling. The real problem is severe disproportioned tax money going to high ranking public employees. Some are getting 10 or more times what the average person makes. Do these people work 10 times harder or more productive than average people? I don’t believe so.
However, all levels of government seem to think average people have fountains of wealth and limitless bank accounts to pay for budgets and expenses that are beyond the limits of financial sensibility.
Vincent Lizee, Coquitlam
Re: B.C. pipeline issue raises important question— who speaks for First Nations?
Columnist John Ivison believes hereditary chiefs are nothing more than “self anointed Indigenous aristocrats” who do not represent the Wet’suwet’en people.
It’s an old colonial attitude personified in the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869, which was designed by the federal government to replace Indigenous hereditary governance systems with elective band councils, a system that not only completely shut out Indigenous women but also gave Ottawa the authority to depose Indigenous leaders according to their own terms.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission considers “reconciliation” to be an ongoing process of establishing respectful relationships. As well, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that Indigenous peoples have the right to access and revitalize their own laws and governance systems. Moreover, as scholar Shiri Pasternak points out, the 1997 Supreme Court Delgamuukw decision recognized the legitimacy of Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership.
Indigenous peoples are not interested in unilateralism on either side. But to smear hereditary leadership, widely respected and supported in Indigenous communities, is an insult.
Bob Burgel, Fisher River Cree Nation
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