No to Royal vestiges
Kudos to Victoria's new mayor for declining to swear an oath to the Queen (Mayor Apologizes For Queen's Oath Flap – Dec. 9). We no longer allow Britain to use our troops as cannon fodder in Imperial wars. We have replaced the Union Jack and the Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf. It's time to cast off the vestiges of class distinctions and the feudal system.
Quebeckers don't need a continual reminder of what happened on the Plains of Abraham and new Canadians shouldn't need to swear an oath to the Queen. Let's become a real nation and appoint or elect our own head of state.
James Nightingale, Delta, B.C.
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'Cruel and wrong'
Re Britain Shuns What Canada Won't – Solitary Confinement (Dec. 9): I am grateful for your insightful articles about solitary confinement in Canadian prisons. Most impactful was reading the quote from Charles Dickens in 1842, in which he describes its effects as "cruel and wrong."
The effect of your articles is visceral, a gut-wrenching revulsion and sadness that our Canada is so cruelly punitive. I wish we would be led by Britain's striving to be more civilized in this regard.
Ruth Mossop, Victoria
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My idea of a prison is a place with individual cells that house criminals. There are no classes, no computers, no TVs, no radios, no movies, no books, no magazines, no exercise rooms. You may sit in your cell and think about your crimes. Privileges like a walk in the prison yard may be earned. Now let the years and years go quietly by and let's see nature's rehabilitation take place.
Richard Chiasson, Ottawa
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Elizabeth Renzetti's column about the disastrous effects of segregation on inmates is absolutely accurate (No End And No Beginning – Dec. 8). I taught for 15 years in Alberta prisons and observed this fact nearly every day I was there. The real problem is that these inmates can't function safely in regular Units and there is currently no other place to put them. This usually means segregation of one kind or another.
Most have serious mental-health issues and adequate help or treatment just does not exist in our prison system. Over and over again I heard correctional staff say, "They've downloaded them from Health to Justice."
The system isn't working.
Mental-health needs of inmates and Canadians in general are crying out for attention.
Diana Savage, Calgary
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Not a 'terror strike'
Re Liberals Are Sagging, But Not Panicking – Yet (Dec. 9): Lawrence Martin's otherwise excellent column ended with a terror reference that worked against much of his own message. I'll respond with a plea: Please stop grouping the attack on Parliament in with "terror strikes."
Until Stephen Harper started seeing terrorists around every corner, we generally considered "terror" attacks to be co-ordinated efforts from cells of politically motivated gangs with deliberately limited interconnections, benefiting from training of some kind in terrorist tactics. That was hardly the case in Ottawa on Oct. 22.
If the assailant had left a video saying he did this on behalf of TV repairmen, would we suddenly start scrutinizing the actions of all technology service people?
Or would we say this is a disenfranchised individual with serious mental health issues?
The response needed to the criminal acts of an individual, versus that needed to calculated terrorist attacks, is vastly different.
We confuse the two at our peril.
Guy Greenaway, Calgary
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Economics 101
So Ottawa has put itself into a fiscal bind by having already booked revenue from planned sales of government assets that suddenly look a lot less like sure moneymakers than they did a year ago (Assumptions On Asset Sales Squeeze Tories – Dec. 8). There's a pretty simple economic precept involved here, one that scarcely needs a first-year student, let alone Don Drummond, to explain it. It's called "don't count your chickens before they're hatched."
Perhaps the party that hopes to campaign next year on its presumed record of sound economic management needs to brush up on a few of the basics.
Peter Maitland, Lindsay, Ont.
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The CWB replies
Re Harvest Of Rumours In Grain Country (editorial, Dec. 5): The Canadian Wheat Board is not being given away. CWB is seeking an investor to partner with and continue the growth strategy that began in 2012. Any investor must have experience in grain-hand-ling, industry expertise and significant capital to expand CWB's network of grain-handling assets.
An investor must also be willing to partner with farmers who will have an ownership stake in a commercialized CWB.
Any bids rejected were evaluated by CWB and our third-party experts and didn't meet the criteria.
In any commercial process, commenting on which companies are interested or disclosing commercially sensitive financial information would be detrimental to our business and may disadvantage potential investors. When the monopoly ended and CWB moved into an open market environment, we began to operate under the same conditions as those of our competitors. No other grain companies are required to release any confidential commercial information that would disadvantage their operations.
Dayna Spiring, chief strategy officer, CWB
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Prices here, there
Re Ottawa To Bring In Bill Targeting Canada-U.S. Pricing Disparities (Dec. 9): I recently bought a generator, and went to the company's website to find a cover for it. There, I was directed to Amazon.com, where a cover is $26.91.
Since I order online from the Canadian arm, Amazon.ca, I checked exactly the same cover. The price is $46.05.
What's wrong with this picture?
Jim Hickman, Mono, Ont.
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Kitchen-sink English
A Moment in Time (Dec. 9) characterizes Coronation Street as focusing "on everyday people" and considers this "revolutionary at a time when BBC English reigned supreme." However, the folks in fictional Weatherfield were far from the first "everyday people" to appear on British TV speaking dialects outside the realms of Eton and Oxford.
It was the BBC that in the 1950s hired Canadian Sydney Newman to be the head of its TV drama. Under his direction, it introduced what became known as "kitchen sink" dramas penned by a generation of rebellious working-class Brits who would go on to dominate the stages of that country and abroad. Mr. Newman also brought over several young Canadians to write and direct, including Mordecai Richler and Ted Kotcheff, who of course would go on to greater things back home.
Mr. Newman would return here to head the National Film Board with less success, ending up battling a rebellious group of Quebec filmmakers who felt it was time for their "everyday peoples' " stories to be brought to the screen.
David Balcon, Toronto