Dear Editor,

We received a plain printed one page letter with no envelope and no return address or contact info in our mailbox yesterday from the Comox Valley Taxpayers Alliance (CVTA). It contains information, and what I believe is disinformation, about two (of the four) Comox Valley Regional District's (CVRD) bylaws that are up for consideration using the Alternative Approval Process. It beseeches us to download the CVRD forms to vote no to the two bylaw initiatives that would allow the CVRD to provide municipal money for supportive housing and other supports for homeless people. I suspect from the little information I could find about them that they are a small group of vociferous activists who think they are more important than others who are less privileged than they.

I want to know how the heck something like this is placed in a Canada Post mailbox at all, with no way to contact the sender? I could find no online presence of this CVTA organization, and only some very vague and dated information about it online from 2018, which loosely connects it to some other far right-wing activist organizations. The website that this outdated information gives for the CVTA is no longer functional.  

This one-pager is clearly an effort to stop municipal support for homeless people, in an effort to keep them stigmatized, marginalized, without a roof over their head or adequate support services, and hopefully get them to leave Courtenay altogether. They say "there is strong evidence that they [the homeless in Courtenay] are being transported here". Really...what evidence? They don't say. They say that the homeless shelter recently opened in Duncan "destroyed the neighbourhood where it was placed and more homeless than ever poured into Duncan".

I have news for the Comox Valley Taxpayers Alliance. There are more homeless people everywhere as the cost of living and lack of availability of affordable housing increases and supports for homeless, addicted and mentally ill folk continue to be so difficult or impossible to access. If you and your privileged neighbours don't have to worry about such things, perhaps you could recognize your privilege, be grateful for it, and have some empathy and compassion for those less privileged than you. And keep your letters full of misinformation to yourself; I certainly don't want it in my mailbox!

And Canada Post...what the heck happened here? Is it your policy to take any flyer and distribute it even when there is no way to return address or way to contact the sender? If so, YOU are part of the problem!

Haley Argen

Merville