Re: “No one likes being told what to think,” commentary, Dec. 31.

Firstly, enforcing orthodox thinking turns society into a collective of liars as they repeat the statements without believing in them. This occurred during the days of the Soviet Union, when the Communist ideology and rule were imposed across Eastern Europe.

Dissident and later Czechoslovak president Václav Havel wrote about this phenomenon in his book, The Power of the Powerless, and his story of the greengrocer. I doubt his book is on the B.C. high school curriculum.

Secondly, the repetition of Indigenous land acknowledgements not only enables the first point, but it runs counter to the principles of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) by way of enabling Victor’s Justice.

What I am here referring to is the Republic of South Africa (RSA) model pioneered by the late Bishop Desmond Tutu. When I benchmarked the TRC process in the Solomon Islands back in 2008, there had been by then about 40 TRC processes worldwide, all of which, save one, followed the RSA model.

The outlier was Canada.

Victor’s Justice refers to the ongoing cycle of mutual abuse and accusations of grievance. The religious and psychological point of TRC is to let it all go and move with the business of living.

Dan Kyba

Victoria

Re: “Thank Trump for targeting ­supply management,” commentary, Dec. 30.

Less than one year ago, Canada’s supply management system’s poultry, eggs and dairy products were to be permanently shielded from trade competition by the Bloc Québécois Bill C-282, which........

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