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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

................................................................................................................................Mental health background checks

Re Mental Health Data Nixed From Background Checks (May 28): Are mental health incidents not exactly the type of information future employers should be probing for in a background check? If previous incidents were known, perhaps tragedies like German Wings Flight 9525 might have been avoided. Censoring the release of this information is wrong. Leave it to the employer to determine the impact of the risk to customers and employees.

Cindy Hill, Toronto

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I'm gratified to learn that the Toronto police decided to update the force's mental health information disclosure policies.

A person experiencing a mental health crisis may be extraordinarily vulnerable. It is unfortunate that the "vulnerable sector screen" background check exposed this vulnerable moment to schools, jobs or volunteer programs. Police officers are often the first responders to a person experiencing a mental health crisis. It is crucial for the public to have the confidence that a call to 911 for a friend in a moment of dire need will not have repercussions on that person's future.

Phillip Gregoire, Toronto

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Pass the bill

If the Senate does only one thing to right matters, it would be to pass this private member's bill immediately to give MPs more power in the Commons (Dear Senators: Please Don't Delay – editorial, May 28). Our political system is in an abysmal state. Without the leadership review provision the bill affords, we have nothing more than an oligarchic tyranny. A vote once every five years doesn't make a democracy.

Leslie Martel, Mississauga

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Kick out corruption in FIFA

Kudos to the U.S. and Swiss authorities for trying to stop the corruption in the FIFA organization (FIFA In Crisis: An Ugly Day For The Beautiful Game – May 28). This is long overdue and, once again, it took American leadership to move on the issue.

Vladimir Putin's criticism of the U.S. initiative is a predictable cheap shot from someone whose very regime is a corruptocracy.

Andrew Kavchak, Ottawa

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Greedy men with lots of power. Same old, same old; it gets boring very quickly. There's nothing even very clever about it.

Lee Handel, Nanaimo, B.C.

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Weapons under fire

Re Ottawa Aims To Keep Lid On Details Of Saudi Arms Deal (May 27): When people are beheaded in Syria and Iraq, the Harper government puts on its best show of righteous indignation and sends jets to battle the perpetrators.

Yet when Saudi Arabia stages public beheadings of women and men – 90 last year according to Amnesty International and 85 so far this year, according to the official Saudi press agency – the Harper Conservatives reward the Saudis with a $15-billion sale of armoured vehicles.

Given our Prime Minister's disregard for human rights in pursuit of a buck, and given that Islamic State is rumoured to have $8-billion at its disposal, Canadians shouldn't be surprised if the next Canadian trade mission is to the Caliphate.

Roy A. Derrick, Vernon, B.C.

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Solar's sunny side

Re The Darker Side Of Solar Power (May 28): Do solar photovoltaics have any negative environmental impacts? Yes. But they pale in comparison to the global environmental damage left in the wake of the fossil fuel industry's entire life cycle (e.g. exploration, extraction, distribution, refinement and especially burning), even when normalizing for energy output.

Suggesting otherwise is disingenuous. It's like warning obese people about the drawbacks of exercise and whole foods. Yes, one could find some drawbacks, but to highlight them completely obscures the consequences of continuing with the status quo.

Let's keep things in perspective.

Mark Bessoudo, Toronto

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While it's true that solar panels require several metallurgical inputs in fabrication, photovoltaics produce energy for 30 years, and are usually emissions-neutral by year two. As for pollution from mining, that's up to regulators to enforce, it's not an unpreventable outcome. Given that photovoltaics can be recycled, we are fully capable of modernizing solar to be ecologically neutral (unlike petrochemicals or nuclear).

Eric de Vos, Canmore, Alta.

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Pension risks

After years of relying on conventional responses to a severe economic downturn, the prime minister took to the radio waves to announce a radical shift in pension policy. Decried as a deathbed conversion, the change in strategy didn't improve the Conservatives' electoral prospects and they went on to a shattering defeat in October.

Stephen Harper's Conservatives in 2015? No (Tories Propose Voluntary CPP Expansion – May 27).

This was R.B. Bennett's bid in 1935 to stave off electoral defeat. Central to his plan were pension reform and other measures that mirrored Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States. The public rejected the Tories in October, 1935, and Bennett fled to Britain where he lived in self-imposed exile.

Any chance of history repeating itself? Stay tuned …

John Ferguson, Ottawa

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An Easier Solution To CPP Reform (Report On Business, May 28) is accompanied by a chart that refers to the CPP Investment Board reference portfolio with the title, How CPPIB Invests. The reference portfolio is in fact our benchmark and expresses our prudent appetite for total risk within the investment portfolio. It is not how we invest, nor is it the actual investment portfolio that we manage on behalf of contributors and beneficiaries.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's actual investment portfolio is significantly more diversified to include a wide range of asset classes, including global public equities, private equity, bonds, real estate, infrastructure, farmland, intellectual property and debt.

The result is a highly resilient fund designed with a view to our exceptionally long investment horizon and to contribute to the sustainability of the CPP.

Michel Leduc, head of Public Affairs and Communications, CPPIB

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The neighs have it

A letter writer this week seemed very pleased to have moved beyond horse drawn transport and hitching posts (Mail's In The Cheque – May 27).

Well, we are very happy to live in a busy agricultural community with a large, centrally located horse barn; even a major fast food chain here has hitching posts. This helps serve many members of our hard-working farming community. Horses are as common as tractors in the fields and regularly travel on the shoulders of the roads.

One of the many pluses of horses in town is readily available garden fertilizer – perfect for roses. Bet your subways can't do that.

Bruce Finn, Elmira, Ont.

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