Commerce means something and we need it!

We are barely in to the New Year yet I see a clear frontrunner for the lame idea of the year award.

This paper and the South Delta Leader both published net outcomes from a Delta Chamber of Commerce survey regarding support for the Tsawwasen Golf Course expansion. In the survey, the majority of Chamber members supported the idea of the golf course expansion. In a recent letter to the editor at the Leader, Liz Gough suggested that the community should boycott businesses that support the idea of the Shato Holdings Golf Course expansion project. She went on to suggest that the community should further boycott these businesses based on the idea that the Chamber generically supports the idea of port expansion.

A couple of things - commerce means business and the idea that local business may benefit from increased population in the local market should not be viewed as some sort of diabolical concept. That is why the Chamber is not called the Chamber of Depression.

Generally, business likes a growing market. This helps them to increase sales and to hopefully make more profit.

This profit is used to hire more staff, offer more services and to pay for the owners’ mortgages to have the privilege of living and working in this area. Taxes garnered from this activity go on to pay for infrastructure and improvements in our community.

Most retail businesses acquire their products from the market. The market is served from Ports, transportation infrastructure and is facilitated by trade in general.

I know that these are tough concepts to justify for some but they should still make best efforts to do so.

In regard to the Shato holdings proposal, I attended the meeting this past Monday. I have attended all of the meetings.

For the most part, I hear detractors (including two of our councilors), expressing concern for habitat compensation to the nth degree.
I appreciate habitat and environmental concerns…I really do. I think most do.

Every once in a while I would like to see some discussion about our habitat. You know…our human habitat? What about our environment? The one that enables us to be able to look after our families and their housing needs, their social needs and their transportation needs?

If we instead spent half the time looking after our human needs than we do over- analyzing riparian habitat, I am telling you, we would all be in a better way. I am not being condescending…I am really, really serious.

Rather than get all giddy and frothing at the mouth over interpreting what the name Audubon should mean, maybe we should just get over ourselves for one second to appreciate ideas that may well benefit our community as a whole.

We are beginning to understand concepts such as sustainability and we are working toward affording a better balance between the nature of our human activities and their effect on the overall environment.

Suggestions that we ignore base human related concepts such as trade and commerce and to invoke the cone of silence on economical and social growth is ridiculously naïve and arrogant and does little to serve the needs of people and business attempting to move in to our region nor does it bode well for our collective future.