{"id":19851,"date":"2020-09-02T09:46:29","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T16:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19851"},"modified":"2020-09-02T09:46:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T16:46:29","slug":"student-editors-letter-we-need-better-provincial-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/09\/02\/student-editors-letter-we-need-better-provincial-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor’s Letter: We need better provincial leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun is 100-percent open. Well, 100-percent open, but mainly remotely. Students are being directed to stay off campus unless they have a class or an appointment. It\u2019s the smart thing to do; it\u2019s the healthy thing to do; it\u2019s the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the right thing to do, the political manoeuvre of the government being able to claim they tried to send kids back to K-12 classes is an atrocious failure of governance and public health working cohesively together. The former has squashed the latter.<\/p>\n

Properly sending kids back to school would take even more time, money, and resources, but they\u2014the people we listen to every day at 3 pm for the daily update\u2014know it won\u2019t work. They know that within a month of the start time, case numbers will be too high. So why spend even more money?<\/p>\n

As someone who was born and bred in British Columbia, it\u2019s been really hard\u2014it\u2019s been heartbreaking\u2014to observe the shift that\u2019s been happening. It wasn\u2019t that long ago that BC\u2019s public health officer was profiled by The New York Times<\/em>. But recently, Bonnie Henry been turned into a puppet by those above her.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun’s empty Lansdowne campus in July 2020 (photo by Greg Pratt\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We cannot go back to phase two. Don\u2019t even ask about phase one\u2014our economy simply couldn\u2019t handle it. We need to be where we are, in phase three, so that people can pay rent and put food on the table. Food-distribution programs have ramped up across the province because the long-term ramifications are being felt more every week\u2014even more so than the government, we citizens ultimately have the power to push us back a phase.<\/p>\n

And the decisions we make as citizens\u2014to not go out for dinner, to not go to the store if we don\u2019t really need to\u2014result in a huge amount of lost revenue every week for these businesses. But these are the decisions citizens make when we don\u2019t feel safe; the government has the power to make us feel safer. That\u2019s the power of words strung together properly and charismatically, and the power of good, decisive, public policy.<\/p>\n

Empty streets; lost revenue; distrust; anger; arguments; heartbreak: this is what happens when we are not given clear, reliable, and sensible public policy.<\/p>\n

The psychological effect will be even worse when we have to pull everyone out of class and workspaces in a month or two.<\/p>\n

More important than the government pretending it\u2019s okay so that revenue stays up for another week\u2014maybe two\u2014is acknowledging that it\u2019s not okay, and acting in a way that will result in half the revenue for four times as long. That will result in us all feeling a little safer, or at least safe enough to spend.<\/p>\n

I heard our provincial health officer say last week that things are okay, because we know where some of the new COVID-19 cases came from. But that makes no difference to me, Bonnie, when I\u2019m deciding whether or not to eat at a restaurant that none of the cooks are wearing masks at, nor does it matter to most of us British Columbians who spend large portions of our paycheques on gas, at restaurants, at shopping malls.<\/p>\n

Acknowledge the reality: that complete, total, and far more permanent economic ruin is coming unless we are told not necessarily stricter but clearer measures, and our provincial leaders actually lead the citizens of BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun is 100-percent open. Well, 100-percent open, but mainly remotely. Students are being directed to stay off campus unless they have a class or an appointment. It\u2019s the smart thing to do; it\u2019s the healthy thing to do; it\u2019s the right thing to do. Speaking of the right thing to do, the political manoeuvre of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19852,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19851\/revisions\/19852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}