Readers have tough talk for government grinches, academic brainwashers, Canada's national broadcaster, and more
Re: FIRST READING: Federal commission declares Christmas holiday is ‘religious intolerance’ — Tristin Hopper, Nov. 24
Despite 92 per cent of Canadians who grew up non-Christian saying in a poll that they were not offended by the greeting “Merry Christmas,” and despite the protection of freedom of religion in our Constitution and charter, the grinches at the Canadian Human Rights Commission insist that we must be offended by Christmas and Easter as statutory holidays because they are evidence of Canada’s “colonialist” religious intolerance.
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What is it that the CHRC wants? To pick at old wounds, to divide our country? Every country has dark historical times, the memory of which bring sorrow and regret, but most have learned from them and been better for that knowledge. Thankfully we have learned and changed.
However, the CHRC would have us live in those darkest moments forever. May our Indigenous people continue to forgive the sins of the past as we learn from them and may people of all faiths live in peace and friendship in this beautiful Canada. And a Merry Christmas to all, including the CHRC.
Jakki Jeffs, Guelph, Ont.
As many organizations evolve over the years, there is a tendency for their original mandate to morph into inconsistent actions to justify their continued existence. Such would appear to be the case with the direction of the various human rights commissions now lurching into interpretations of reality well beyond the scope of providing protection for the abuse of the citizenry.
In a search for a continuing justification for their existence, human rights commissions have abused the powers they have been given to attack the foundation of Canada’s support for those whose rights may have been compromised by accident or design. It is time for the Canadian Parliament to review the mandate and ideological bias being increasingly demonstrated by these commissions. While legislative action should not be guided exclusively by poll results, it is clear that human rights commissions’ endorsement of leftist notions of colonial oppression, manifested in an attack on Judeo-Christian religious traditions, is well outside the mandate limitations for which they were initially created.
Raymond Foote, Ottawa
Re: FIRST READING: York University’s brave fight to vandalize bookstores without consequence (for Palestine) — Tristin Hopper, Nov. 30
So the aggrieved York University faculty members and students demand that York reinstate the people who, cloaking their actions under cover of night, vandalized Indigo’s flagship store in downtown Toronto because they don’t like the owner’s stance on Israel.
It must be challenging for those who spend their days insulated in the ivory towers of academe, where the culture of snowflakery reigns supreme, to understand that in the real world, actions have consequences, and that vandalizing the workplace and attempting to disrupt the livelihood of people you don’t agree with, is nothing other than just that — vandalism and thuggery, and should be treated as such.
York’s administration should stay the course, not reinstate the miscreants.
E. Joan O’Callaghan, Toronto
Re: AI divides humanity into two camps — doomers vs. accelerationists — Colby Cosh, Nov. 24
As a senior I am bemused by “the sudden” appearance and viral spread of a “new technology” that will make Earth a paradise or bring on the end of days. AI is the latest face of this phenomenon.
If we look back to 1995, the dawn of the dotcom bubble, internet commerce was going to replace traditional business models. Clicks not bricks was the new credo. By 2000 this business was worth US$5 trillion. Then the bubble burst. Ironically, by 2002, investors had lost US$5 trillion. Today internet commerce is valued at over US$6 trillion per annum.
Modern AI began in 1956. It was going to upend everything. Millions of dollars in research funding was thrown at it but with little initial result. Its history resembled that of the Liberal Party of Canada — over-promising but under-delivering. But on Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT was released to the general public. Suddenly it was front-page news.
AI is not really intelligent. It does not understand the concepts that it manipulates. Thus it must be controlled and filtered by people to rein in its “biases” and other weaknesses. AI is a valuable servant, but would be a destructive master.
Moses Shuldiner, Toronto
Re: Yes, CBC, ‘From the river to the sea’ is in fact an anti-Jewish chant — Michael Higgins, Nov. 23
Michael Higgins’ commentary raises again the issue of the legitimacy of the CBC’s continued existence.
The CBC continues to push a far-left political agenda and proselytize as a matter of regular policy. Any views contrary to its polemics are broadcast only to blunt criticism and are aired so infrequently, so unfairly and with so much bias as to be useless as counterpoints to the barrage of “progressive” views.
The fact that the CBC is the only broadcast option in some communities is its only supporting feature.
If the entire CBC is not to be disbanded, its news department must be. We have alternative broadcast entities in this country and the CBC could, if necessary, broadcast the news features of those independent entities while maintaining its own non-news (arts and entertainment and sports) programming.
It is simply beyond the point in time that any government can justify using tax dollars to massively push a political agenda of a minority of Canadians. We should not be forced to pay for a service that is so completely unrepresentative of the whole Canadian community.
Bill Kaplan, Vancouver
Re: NP View: Congratulations, academia, you’ve gone and radicalized the students — Editorial, Nov. 25
Cultural Marxism or neo Marxism (whatever you wish to call it) has introduced and fed the propaganda of critical theories (race and gender) to college students for decades, without any pushback from moderate liberals and conservatives. This had led to the proliferation of identity politics, political correctness, intersectionality and woke ideologies everywhere from college campuses to high schools, boardrooms, media and government institutions all over the country, even to the staggering increase in antisemitic Jew-hatred that is an offshoot of identity politics and which considers the Jew as both white and oppressor.
This could ultimately destroy western civilization and we must do our best to support advocates, institutions and political parties that seek, even at this late hour, to counter this destructive ideology head on and defeat it. If we are not doing at least that, we are surrendering to the hoards of tribalism and barbarism that will certainly take modern civilization back centuries.
Jack Shore, Toronto
The taxpayer funds most of the cost of a student’s university education. Public dollars are used to fund post-secondary education because the public believes the investment will benefit society later on. We need engineers, doctors and other professionals.
Some students view their attendance as an investment in their future. To become an engineer, a doctor, a scientist, an accountant or another professional a degree is required. However some students attend university because of a love for medieval studies or the German language or whatever. They do not see university education as an investment but as doing something they enjoy, something that is subsidized by the taxpayer.
But what return on investment can the taxpayer expect from much of the money going to today’s universities? Areas of study such as settler-colonialism, DEI, white supremacy and others are not going to educate students in a way that will give the taxpayer a decent return on the investment.
If the funding model was changed, with more taxpayer funding going to professional studies and less going to others, many professors whose goal is to “brainwash” may find they have no students to teach and no job.
Rick Hird, Whitby, Ont.
Re: Ontario woman says her dying grandma was asked to leave the hospital after she outlived her cancer prognosis — Sam Riches, Nov. 21
It is not infrequent that the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly is contacted by patients or family members about patients being discharged from palliative care because they did not die by an arbitrary deadline.
Despite what patients are told, there is not, in fact, any legal limit to a patient’s entitlement to palliative care. Patients cannot be arbitrarily discharged from hospital because the hospital wants to replace them with someone else: it is only that patient’s needs that are of concern.
It is the sole legal responsibility of the most responsible physician to make a discharge order, not the patient care/flow/discharge co-ordinator or social worker. Further, that physician owes the patient a duty of care to ensure that the patient is ready to be discharged based on their health needs and that the discharge can occur safely.
The More Beds, Better Care Act did not change that situation: when a patient is ready to be discharged, if they continue to require care which is not yet available (for example long-term or hospice care), that must be put into place before the discharge occurs. In this case, it appears that not only was no plan in place (hospice care), but the reason for that was the hospital staff failing to submit the appropriate paperwork — yet they still tried to discharge a dying, elderly woman. Neither had they made any plans for homecare, or a place for her to go, should those have been acceptable, and they have no authority to force family to provide that care in their homes. And to top off their blunders, they recommended that she go to a motel!
I wish I could say that this situation is unique — but it’s not. Patients and families must push back at hospitals and demand more of our government to provide high-quality health care in Ontario without the fear of being thrown out on the street.
Jane E. Meadus, Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, Toronto
Re: Rapist, murderer Paul Bernardo can be safely handled in medium-security prison, insists Corrections Canada — Ryan Tumilty, Nov. 27
The question is not, “Can Paul Bernardo be safely housed in a medium-security prison?”
Rather, since he is still considered to be a high risk to the safety of the public, then the question should be, “What problem is Corrections Canada trying to solve by moving him to a medium-security prison?” If the problem is cost or overcrowding of maximum-security prisons, then those prisons must be virtually empty for them to stoop to accommodating Bernardo’s request.
The Commissioner of Corrections Canada, Anne Kelly, testified that this move will allow Bernardo “more time out of his cell with other prisoners and to take part in more programming.” Given the scale and depravity of his crimes along with his continued absence of remorse, I personally don’t care about his comfort or accommodations.
Lloyd Vinish, Kelowna, B.C.
Re: Trudeau tries to loot charitable sector to fund his high-spending government — Diane Francis, Nov. 27
Perhaps without realizing it, Diane Francis is saying that large numbers of major donors to Canadian registered charities would not donate to these charities were it not for the tax credits and capital gains exemptions they receive.
I suspect that these donors are not as uncharitable as this sounds and that in the absence of these tax benefits, these wealthy donors would simply give more to unregistered charitable causes like the homeless people on our streets and in our parks.
The whole regime of registered charities diverts money away from people and causes that cannot afford the significant cost of registration and rewards some causes like orchestras and private schools that do not serve people who are truly in need.
Conservatives in Canada, if they believe in the ability of a free economy to allocate resources efficiently, should refrain from crying for their pet causes to receive taxpayer support. If they want to help their church or their alma mater, they should do so gladly without demanding that their fellow taxpayers pony up 15 per cent.
Patrick Cowan, North York, Ont.
Re: Trudeau, please take a walk in the snow — Derek H. Burney, Nov. 28
Thank you to Derek Burney for summarizing what is wrong with our country and how to solve the problem. Sadly, Justin Trudeau has never demonstrated the savvy required to read the political landscape or the astuteness to realize when to exit centre stage, skills his father displayed.
But fear not; another way to expedite the healing of our land would be for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to put the good of this country first and stop enabling Liberal government incompetence through his continued self-serving support of it. Otherwise, Singh is merely helping rearrange the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic and should be recognized for this unfortunate decision come election day.
John King, Surrey, B.C.
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