Re: City says no to retail cannabis stores (Jan. 16)

I feel the first priority of city councillors should be to apologize to the residents of Brantford, who completed a survey on the issue of retail cannabis stores as requested by the municipality. It is obvious that this survey was a waste of time.

Remember this when the city asks for your opinion on other issues. It doesn’t matter.

They will vote based on their own bias. Not one councillor provided a valid reason for ignoring the survey.

Bill FitzGerald

Brantford

System is flawed

My generation is often accused of being apathetic at the voting booth.

Maybe it’s not that we don’t care; maybe it’s that we don’t think it matters.

Those are very different ideas.

If anything else, watching the majority of city council flatly ignore the majority on the heels of a survey the city itself conducted, I see one thing – if the system as it stands should continue, it requires informed, intelligent conversation from both sides.

For me, this has become less about cannabis stores in the city – I truly don’t believe their existence would prove any more or less impactful than another LCBO or Tim Hortons. For me, it’s a matter of a system that doesn’t accurately represent the functions of our society anymore.

Until my son’s generation can build an online platform to get the public to just directly vote on these matters, we have (continued to) entrust a select few to represent us. The outcome of this vote clearly demonstrates the flaw in this system.

They asked, we answered. They surveyed us, we replied. The overwhelming majority asked our municipal leadership to opt in. They just didn’t.

Councillors Dan McCreary and Richard Carpenter created the motion to survey the public. Then, they just ignored the results, turned their backs on the campaign promises they made and voted against the very public they sought to consider.

How much did it cost us, the taxpayers, to have this survey created and completed?

Bill Dungey

Brantford

More buses please

We need more buses to cover the routes. How about every fifteen minutes?

There is no time between buses to fill my bus pass. If I miss my connection, I wait for 30 minutes for the next one and, when I have to use coins instead, I spend more money.

Sometimes the buses are not meeting at the terminal.

Our excellent, friendly bus drivers try their best to get in on time but i wonder if anyone has considered the large amount of recent new citizens in Brantford.

Catherine Teichmann

Brantford