Dump sites, indeed
Re Toronto City Workers Strike (July 28): With the technology so readily available, isn’t it about time that we, the public, get to ratify the agreements our elected representatives are so eager to foist on us? Why should union members have all the fun?
Malcolm Marcus, Toronto
Save the trash talk, Sid
Sid Ryan (‘Public-Sector Monopoly’ Is A Classic Misdirection – July 28) is the illusionist extraordinaire, who tries to distract the reader by mixing up a bunch of loosely related issues (recession, credit crunch, bailouts, labour rights). Yes, unionized workers have a right to strike. But, for fair bargaining to take place, both the union and the employer must be free to take their business elsewhere. Otherwise, we have a monopoly by definition.
Elected officials have an obligation to deliver public services efficiently and to prevent citizens from being held hostage by a union. That means considering privatization, but also looking to temporary replacement workers in times of strike.
Peter Miasnikof, Toronto
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Here’s my response to Sid Ryan’s article: What a load of garbage. With Toronto having been held hostage over CUPE’s demands for a generous pay raise and an absurd sick-day bank, Mr. Ryan plays the victim card by claiming we’ve all been “misdirected” by a coven of economic magicians. It has been painfully clear from the outset that this strike was a cash grab. Ask any child whose daycare or summer camp was cancelled, or anyone forced by CUPE workers to line up just to drop off garbage. We citizens are the victims, and we know exactly where the blame lies.
Brock Criger, Toronto
Understanding privacy
Your editorial Cyberspace Is No Place To Be Private (July 20) is absolutely right in underscoring that people who choose to be part of the Facebook social network bear a significant responsibility for their own privacy. At the same time, as a company operating under Canada’s private-sector privacy law, Facebook also has obligations to safeguard the personal information of its Canadian users.
In most aspects of its operations, Facebook is meeting those obligations. But, as a comprehensive investigation by our office confirmed, there are certain elements of the site that are not currently in line with privacy law. We hope Facebook will remedy those issues. But what happens if it refuses? While your editorial suggests there would be few consequences, it is important to clarify that the Privacy Commissioner has the power to take the matter to Federal Court to enforce our recommendations.
We’re confident it won’t come to that. We understand the popularity of the site, and have had positive discussions with Facebook to date. There’s no reason to assume that the company’s commitment to user privacy will falter now.
Elizabeth Denham, assistant privacy commissioner of Canada, Ottawa
Understanding obesity
According to your article Get Fat, Live Longer (July 25), “being obese was associated with a 12-per-cent lower risk of dying” and “people who are classified as significantly overweight also live longer.” None of the analyses reported in our paper, BMI and Mortality: Results From a National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Adults (published in the journal Obesity), to which the article refers, showed that obesity (a body mass index ranging between 30 and 35) was associated with lower mortality.
Rather, our results showed that obesity was never associated with lower mortality compared with those in the “normal” BMI range (18.5 to 24.9), while “morbid obesity” (BMI 35) was associated with a 36-per-cent increased risk of death. Our results found that “overweight” (BMI of 25 to 29.9) was associated with lower mortality risk.
Our study also found daily smoking and physical inactivity were strongly associated with increased mortality risk. So don’t smoke, stay active and live longer while the science of determining risky levels of body weight continues.
