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Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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High gear on transit

Konrad Yakabuski cites examples of misdirected infrastructure spending around the world to question investing heavily in our own (Infrastructure Spending Is No Miracle Cure – April 23).

That's like writing off democracy because it hasn't worked in Iraq. He could have instead looked to transit success stories, like the U.K.

The reality for those of us who actually have to commute to work is that we are spending more and more time either in our cars or in cramped and inadequate public transit because infrastructure spending in Canada has not kept pace with our population growth.

Ottawa has one east-west highway with no serious public transit alternative. The afternoon drive home has become a nightmare. Not only does the Greater Toronto Area have Ontario's longest commute times, but most people in the GTA who don't work downtown have no choice but to drive.

Vancouver and Montreal have invested in public transit, yet the arduous commute over the regions' bridges is still something citizens of a developed country should not have to endure.

Canada has numerous places where infrastructure spending is not just needed, it's essential.

We need to stop dilly-dallying and actually get stuff built.

Jason Shron, Markham, Ont.

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Speed is relative

Jody Thomas, Canadian Coast Guard Commissioner, is proud of managing to recover in only 36 hours, under ideal conditions, a tiny oil spill – leaking at the rate of 112 litres per hour – in Vancouver's English Bay (Spill-Response Speed – letters, April 22).

A significant spill, perhaps the result of a ship collision, can easily involve 11.2 million litres. Assuming there is no wind, fog, snow or current during that time, recovery operations usually manage to reclaim about 5 per cent.

She further states that they have to take a look-see in order to understand what they have to do with a spill. So, while it takes a lot of valuable time, should fire departments first do a drive-by to see the flames before sending the truck? Why send too much equipment or get people out of bed for nothing?

The fact that Transport Canada allows six hours to respond to an oil spill, which can spread at the rate of one square kilometre per hour even without the benefit of wind and current, demonstrates the level of competence at work at Transport Canada and the Coast Guard.

David Prior, CEO, Extreme Spill Technology; Halifax, Beijing

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Harper was right

Re Our Risky Game In Ukraine (April 23): It was Vladimir Putin who organized the annexation of Crimea, in violation of Russian obligations to respect Ukrainian sovereignty under the Budapest Memorandum; who funds, arms and supplies separatists in Eastern Ukraine; who is presiding over a huge buildup of the Russian military, which is increasingly engaged in provocative actions, often accompanied by dire reminders Russia is a nuclear state; and who uses a suppressed and compliant press and richly funded state media to spread half-truths and lies at home and abroad.

Yes, there was a bully in the room, but it was Vladimir Putin. Stephen Harper was right to remind everyone of that.

Boris Balan, Toronto

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PM's payment plan

Stephen Harper's attempt to take credit today for additional funding of various departments and programs two years from now has given me a model for paying my 2014 taxes (Balancing Act – April 22). I'll just budget my payment to begin in 2017 when my finances will be in a much better shape. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Marlene Schellenberg, Winnipeg

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It's Canada's Passage

Canada's position that the waters of the Northwest Passage are internal waters of Canada is not based on sentiment or polls but on international law (Survey Finds Fewer Canadians Support Arctic Claims – April 23). Part III of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea deals with the legal status of straits but only those "used for international navigation." The ice-bound Northwest Passage is totally different from the Strait of Hormuz referred to in the article.

Canada has an historic claim over the Passage and the surrounding islands embracing the land, sea and ice where Inuit have interchangeably occupied both the land and ice for centuries.

You write that there is "dawning realization that no other country" accepts Canada's claim to the Passage. When Canada drew straight baselines around the Arctic islands in 1985, it got two protest notes: one from the U.S. and one from the U.K., which purported to be on behalf of the European Economic Community. No other state has since protested.

It might be time for the U.S. itself to consider its own national interest. Does it want an unregulated international strait across the top of North America or one controlled by a friend and ally?

Robert Hage, former director general, Legal Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa

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Korea: walking united

Re Women To Cross Demilitarized Zone (April 22): When finished, the planned walk across the DMZ by 30 women, including Gloria Steinem and two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, will become one of the most remarkable events in the history of divided Korea.

The women might be motivated by "Pollyannaish thinking," but does it really matter why they are doing it? What is important is that such an unprecedented march is about to take place.

These women not only raise the topic of unification, but bring it to the attention of the wider world. That in itself will be a small but significant step toward unification. As a key walk organizer said, to find a way to unite, "you have to do the best you can do" to bring both sides together.

Chang Yun-Shik, former director, Centre for Korean Research, University of British Columbia

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Rubber-duck panic

As someone who has frivolously had a shower pretty much every day of my adult life, I don't think I have read a more disheartening column than André Picard's When Does A Bath Become A Necessity? (April 22).

While I confess that I have found aging not to be all that it was cracked up to be, I fully expected to stay clean and perky until the day I left this mortal shower stall. As a boomer, I have been spoiled with sufficient water to drink – and to play in with my assorted rubber ducks. To discover that when the day arrives and I am compelled to enter a nursing home, my bathing routine will be, at best, a Saturday night dunking, much like it was in the old and possibly fictional Wild West, well, you can appreciate my shock.

I would suggest to Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette, a key defender of the one-bath-a-week standard, that he give it a go for a few years. I suspect friends and family will soon suggest he improve his ablutions.

I'd hate to have to resort to "black-market baths" – a term new to me and sounding not a little grungy.

Bill Engleson, Denman Island, B.C

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