News

Attention-getting tips for MPs

To judge by the eye-glazing mailings I routinely receive from my MP (Tory MPs Assailed Over Mailing Costs – Nov. 17), Conservative Central could use some attention-getting help.

Here are three samples to begin with: Do you approve of the way we are digging the country deeper and deeper into debt? Do you approve of our cuts to foreign affairs budgets to minimize our dealings with other countries? Do you approve of our sustained foot-dragging in dealing with climate change?

P.J. Robertson, Morrisburg, Ont.

Climate thrills, climate ills

Given Stephen Harper’s relentless campaign to lower public expectations for strong leadership on issues he believes fall outside his populist, decentralist notion of federal responsibility, one might think it wildly optimistic to keep hoping for an about-face from this government on climate change (No Need for Defeatism – editorial, Nov. 17).

But that ignores the fundamental fact that climate change is a deeply personal issue. It requires us to look inward for answers. Mr. Harper can kill his Copenhagen but he can’t kill mine. I say long live Hopenhagen!

Ruth Edwards, Ottawa

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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2007, the 6.6 billion people who then shared our Blue Planet accounted for, on average, 4.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person. In 2007, the average level of CO2 emissions by Canadians was 17.9 tonnes per person, about four times the global average.

That was comparable to those per person in Australia and the U.S., but about twice the emissions in South Korea, Germany, or Japan – and about four times more per person than those in China, and 15 times more than those in India or in the whole of Africa.

The high levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are mainly the responsibility of the industrialized nations, not the developing nations. To stop and reverse continuing rapid growth in the accumulation of greenhouses gases, industrialized countries such as Canada, the U.S. and Australia must drastically cut emissions, without demanding comparable reductions in countries such as India and China, as advocated by the Harper government.

R.A. Price, Kingston, Ont.

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I applaud Stephen Harper’s principled stand on climate change. Canada should refuse to make any more promises we won’t keep, until the developing nations agree to make promises they won’t keep. We need to stop being the only disgrace on the planet.

Andrew Hodgson, Ottawa

Don’t milk the bovine porn

As someone who has breastfed, my first response to the photo of Missy the cow with her huge udder was sympathy for the poor beast (Canada’s Cash Cow: Meet The $1.2-Million Holstein That Will Boost A Struggling Industry – front page, Nov. 17).

Imagine my surprise, not to mention incipient nausea, when I read the phrases describing Missy: “long, leggy and classy”; “smooth lines and voluptuous curves”; “walks on great feet and legs”; “tall, long and stylish.” Must we be subjected to bovine pornography over our morning cereal?

Lisa Matthewson, Vancouver

Rights and the India trip

A statement from Stephen Harper condemning the violence against India’s Christian, Muslim and other religious minorities would have gone a long way in making the Indian state realize the international community would not take violations of the right to religious freedom lightly (PM Reaches Out To India, And To The Diaspora Back Home – Nov. 16).

By excluding any visit to a Muslim holy place in his tour, Mr. Harper has again ignored the sentiments of thousands of Canadian Muslims of Indian origin. Even from a purely political sense, the exclusion wasn’t wise as Canadian Muslims of Indian origin, especially from Gujarat province, which saw large scale anti-Muslim violence during 2002, form a sizable chunk of the electorate in several key Toronto ridings.

Mohammed A Khan, Mississauga, Ont.

And plod and plod and plod

Susan Safford’s paean to non-retirement (Retirement? It’s Not For Me – Facts & Arguments, Nov. 17) reminded me very much of the tale of the mine ponies. Ponies were once used in Welsh coal mines to move the coal from the face to the shaft, pulling carts along rails laid for the purpose. They were worked until they could work no longer, then sent to the knackers.

One well-meaning woman appealed to the miners to allow her to let the old ponies retire to some pleasant last years. Released to the pasture, the ponies continued to plod back and forth in straight lines until they died. There is little merit in being an unretireable mine pony.

Eric Mendelsohn, Toronto

Lucky No. 3?

Jacques Parizeau mimics the tendencies of other blowhard prognosticators (For Quebec, It’s Third Time Lucky, Parizeau Says – Nov. 17). Assuredly sovereignty awaits Quebec after the third referendum.

Failing that, after the fourth, or fifth or ...

Brian Dust, Toronto

To boldly go ... over the air

Missing from The Globe’s view of a “bold, broad new framework” for broadcast television (Time For A Bigger TV Picture – editorial, Nov. 16) is over-the-air (OTA) digital TV. Local broadcast using the new digital standard (ATSC) is a technology marvel, providing robust, high-definition TV at no cost to consumers. In the U.S., broadcasters were required to shift this year. In the U.K., more than 70 per cent of homes have OTA – Freeview. Many consumers don’t want to choose between paying the carrier $40 per month or paying carrier+broadcasters $50 for basic TV. Free access to OTA digital broadcast by the major networks is sufficient – and the right cost.

If broadcasters get significant revenues via fee-for-carriage, why would they invest in OTA digital broadcast? Consumers are best served if broadcasters commit to, and accelerate, the August, 2011, shift from analog to OTA digital broadcast. At a minimum, the CRTC must find a solution to the fee-for-carriage debate that doesn’t discourage OTA digital broadcast and bind consumers to ever-higher cable/satellite fees.

Paul Roddick, Ottawa

‘I’d pay to watch that’

I think I’ve got a solution for ending the cable/broadcast war (Regulator Warns TV, Cable Firms: Turn Down The Volume – Nov. 17). Let the senior executives fight it out in the ring.

I’d pay to watch that.

John Peck, Toronto

‘I’d pay a buck to see that’

Perhaps as an alternative to a national portrait gallery, we should open a small kiosk across from Parliament Hill and call it the Anti-National Portrait Gallery of Canada (Turmoil Preceded Collapse Of Portrait Gallery Plan, Report Says – Nov. 16). It would consist of one portrait only – Stephen Harper’s, hung with his face to the wall.

I’d pay a buck to see that.

Sebastian Grunstra, Ottawa

Royal conundrum

When giants contend – letters to the editor by John Fraser (Royal Row , Nov. 16) and Michael Bliss (Canada And The Crown, Nov. 17) – the rest of us are prudent to stand aside. Let me, nevertheless, be rash.

Born in one constitutional monarchy, raised in another, I have no problem with Canada’s status as a monarchy, and I don’t think, as Prof. Bliss seems to, that it offends against democracy. Last December’s political imbroglio, however, made clear that the constitutional position of the monarch’s representative requires clarification.

Might a solution be a constitutional change that gives the governor-general the same limited powers as a “weak” president, such as Germany’s? The method of selection might be a nomination requiring the support of two-thirds of the membership of the House of Commons, or of the combined membership of the Commons and Senate. Canada would continue to be a monarchy, and the governor-general would have an augmented status.

Michiel Horn, professor emeritus, history, York University

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As far as the debate over the role of the monarchy and the governor-general goes, those who think elections produce “legitimacy” in the elected, along with diversity and representativeness, obviously haven’t taken a good look at the papacy lately – to say nothing of Canada’s prime ministerial lineup.

Inheritance and inbreeding could not produce a more stultifying array of Euro-ancestry suits.

People with nothing better to do than brood on the oppression of a modern constitutional monarchy should get out more and observe the servilities that attend other heads of state. I’ll take our current monarchy – with its adulterers, crackpots and assorted horsy nitwits – over the proposed alternatives. At least the lead actors in our system seem to recall occasionally that they haven’t actually earned their privileged status – a truth that still eludes most of our business and political elite.

M.J. McKenty, Winnipeg

Boys are born that way

As a long-time mother and teacher, I am sure of two things (My Home Is A Battle Zone – Facts & Arguments, Nov. 16): (1) boys are born already knowing how to drive; (2) they can make a gun out of anything.

Alana Birt, Markham, Ont.