Check Your Prejudices, Jeff Leiper: BENN

09/17/2024

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Kitchissippi Councillor Jeff Leiper would be well served to understand that diversity involves more than pandering to a select array of high-profile segments of society.

Diversity includes those who maintain a quiet, low-profile existence. People who ask for little from the city, province or federal governments. It includes people such Adrienne Stevenson, who posted on X, regarding how insulted she was (my terminology not hers) that Leiper is offended that she lives in a bungalow. Stevenson was fortunate enough to find a bungalow that meets her mobility-challenged needs. Diversity includes people who manage, day after day, to live low-maintenance lives. It includes people who do not ride bicycles, or drive electric vehicles, or decide to not eat meat, or animal products. It includes the full breadth of the general population.

Diversity includes people who choose not to lecture others on how their lifestyles need to change. It includes people who neither need nor wish to be lectured on how their life choices are unacceptable to a small minority of ideologically driven whiners who cannot countenance anyone who doesn’t meet their narrow minded definition of ‘diverse’.

In short planning committee chairman, your attitude towards the people who live in existing, lower-density forms of housing is one indicative of a deep-seated, inherent prejudice. Yes, prejudice. Your tone is one of arrogance. Of how your choices are superior to the choices of anyone who choses not to drink your Kool-Aid. That you and your acolytes and sycophants are incapable of recognizing this is prima facie evidence of your built-in prejudices.

To adapt the parlance of the day councillor, it is time to check your prejudices.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.