Editor, The News:
Re: Province to scrap AirCare for regular vehicles (mapleridgenews.com).
Did I hear/read this right?
Is AirCare really going to be phased out?
Finally.
But the province is going to wait until 2015. I suppose that is a political decision.
It should have been phased out a couple of years ago.
Now, I don’t want all these working folks to lose their jobs, so maybe in the settling dust of a bad idea we could finally do something that makes sense in the 21st Century.
Let’s re-task those workers and re-re-tool all those AirCare facilities, accept bids from Canadian companies to manage them, and go back to the old days, when annual checks had to do with the important stuff: brakes, tire treads, hi-low beam headlights, brake lights, seat-belt function and exhaust system integrity.
Truthfully, I would be happy to pay such a facility the same fee for this vital stuff if it is Canadian, rather than export money for the boondoggle that AirCare has always been.
Air quality is important, of course, but the auto industry will take care of that, as it has always progressively done and will continue to do if for no other reason than its own interests, as consumers become more aware of the environment and discretionary in the choices offered.
We already pay for that in the price of new cars.
Safety is a far more important consideration for ICBC and the rest of us.
Let’s at least make sure cars can stop when they need to.
That’s something I would pay $50 a year for.
Wait for 2015? No, let’s kill that U.S. cash cow, and start the conversion right now.
Greg Wilmot
Pitt Meadows