Readers weigh in on the proliferation of homeless camps, our inadequate national defence, sentencing for serial killers, and more
Re: Tent City Nation: Are Canada’s homeless encampments here to stay? — Andrew Duffy, Feb. 23
For obvious reasons — including increased income taxes and reduced wages, not to mention the tax on transporting anything in the second-largest country in the world — many people have given up on the “tent city” definition and have started calling them what they are – “Trudeau towns.”
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With two million Canadians now using food banks, and a federal government that has to spend $46.5 billion annually just to service the massive debt they have incurred, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland have introduced a different type of “Hunger Games” to our country.
Doug McLeod, Victoria, B.C.
Re: Canada Undefended: Our military isn’t prepared for a new era where geography doesn’t shelter us — Michael Higgins, Feb. 15
Michael Higgins cites the Arctic as the most dangerous direction of threat from Russia in the event of a war. However the Russian submarines that patrol our Atlantic coast are just as great a threat.
It’s an ominous echo of the German U-boats that penetrated the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf during the Second World War. Today, Russian subs just outside the 12-nautical-mile limit could launch both ballistic and cruise missiles to cripple the St. Lawrence Seaway, striking the locks upstream of Montreal, those along the Welland Canal and the Soo Locks that connect Lake Superior with the lower Great Lakes.
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The Great Lakes-Seaway system moves almost 136 million metric tons of cargo per year, critical to both the internal and overseas trade of Canada and the U.S. Its loss would be devastating to our economy and our ability to finance a war. So, too, would be the loss of the steel industry in Hamilton, Ont., which, as in 1939 to 1945, would be crucial to arms manufacture.
Canada’s first Boeing P-8 Poseidon sub-hunting aircraft to replace the RCAF’s aging Aurora fleet will not arrive until 2026 and the fleet will not be fully operational until 2033.
Yes, we’re not ready for war and our geography won’t save us. The Hamilton steel mills can be seen from my hometown of Burlington. For us, the front line could be just across the bay.
Thomas Kelly, Burlington, Ont.
Re: Liberals announce new name for carbon rebates in effort to rebrand unpopular policy — Ryan Tumilty, Feb. 14
The theory behind the carbon tax is quite simple. Raise the cost of CO2-emitting materials to make it unattractive to use them. Unfortunately, using the carbon tax as the sole means of control would necessitate a tax so punitive that it would become politically lethal to the government imposing it.
In consequence, the federal carbon tax accounts for less than one-third of the measures the federal government is using to combat climate change. At this level, it is highly questionable whether it has any significant effect on people’s habits. This is true even without a rebate, as was demonstrated in B.C. some years ago.
The current federal government’s practice of applying the tax at a low level, with significant exceptions (mostly for political reasons), and then combined with a systems of rebates, means that the much vaunted carbon tax serves no useful purpose apart from providing jobs for civil servants to collect and rebate the money.
John Sutherland, Calgary
Re: Locking up murderers is a slam-dunk issue for Poilievre’s Conservatives — Chris Selley, Feb. 25
Chris Selley’s column on the Robert Pickton case and the need to lock up serial killers for longer than solo killers, even forever, is devastatingly correct on all counts.
He rightly calls the Supreme Court’s unanimous rejection of stacked sentences for serial killers “deranged.” But while he is correct in noting that fundamental justice should not be based on majority opinion, it should be also be noted that the governing doctrine of the Supreme Court in constitutional questions is “the living tree.” This frees the court from the original intent of the Constitution’s framers to reframe it to suit what amounts to the current majority opinion in the legal community. Hence the Supremes ruled Trinity Western University can have a Christian teachers’ college two decades ago but not a Christian law school today, and ruled assisted suicide illegal three decades ago but allows it now.
Selley is also bang on identifying Pierre Poilievre’s championing of the issue as opportunism, knowing majority opinion supports him, not the Supreme Court. And he is even banger on wishing for political leaders who are willing to promote causes they believe are in the public interest, even when these are unpopular among the elite, or even the public.
Steve Weatherbe, Victoria, B.C.
Re: FIRST READING: Education is white supremacy, Toronto teachers told in official guidebook — Tristin Hopper, Feb. 22
Education is “a colonial structure that centres whiteness” and therefore “it must be actively decolonized.” So states a handbook produced and distributed by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).
Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce needs to use the power of his office to fight back against this divisive, bigoted tripe from the TDSB, and whoever penned this insult should be sent packing.
There is more than enough hatred and animosity in the world without people who really should know better adding to it. School boards should be there to promote education and the betterment of society as a whole rather than trying to tear it apart with someone’s racially charged agenda.
Ted Mead, Winchester, Ont.
Re: Canada wavers on military exports to Israel under pressure to suspend shipments — John Ivison, Feb. 22
It’s interesting that Canada’s friends and non-friends are pressuring our government to cease issuing export permits to companies looking to sell military equipment to Israel.
I wonder whether there is equal pressure on Iran and other like-minded nations to cease supplying military equipment to the Hamas terrorists in Gaza?
We keep hearing about our world but not theirs.
Bill Gruenthal, Burnaby, B.C.
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