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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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Girls, mutilated

Re World Must Empower Women, PM Says In Liberia (Nov. 25): It was encouraging to hear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mention female genital mutilation (FGM) in Liberia – but ironic as well. He praised Nobel Peace Prize

laureate and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's efforts to stop FGM, but didn't mention that Liberia has yet to ban it.

Journalists who broach the topic there regularly get death threats and risk forceful initiation by Sande, the women's secret society that enforces female genital mutilation. It's estimated 60 per cent of Liberian women are survivors. Mr. Trudeau's remarks are ironic, too, because Canada does not currently have funding specifically committed to the battle against FGM in the developing world, unlike other Western countries, especially the United Kingdom, which has made fighting FGM a priority.

And lastly, ironic because Canada has an estimated 80,000 survivors of FGM and many children of immigrants from affected countries at risk, and yet no initiatives focused on FGM, either as support for survivors, or

helplines for girls at risk, or training for health-care practitioners. Contrast that with England – training for health-care workers, mandatory reporting of cases of FGM observed in hospitals, official statistics (not available in Canada), hotlines for children in danger, and numerous organizations dedicated to helping survivors and eradicating FGM both domestically and abroad.

It's time Canada stepped up on all FGM fronts.

Giselle Portenier, West Vancouver

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Canada's broadcaster

John Doyle is to be thanked for his impassioned defence of the CBC against "Canadian values" paragon MP Kellie Leitch (Dismantling The CBC Is The Most Elitist Position Of All – Life & Arts, Nov. 30). I think I know why she dislikes the CBC so much.

I once took a group of University of Waterloo environmental studies students on an exchange visit to a Baptist College in North Carolina.

I was asked to give a talk on "Canadian values" to their compulsory "American Values" class. What was I to say?

I chose to survey Canadian values by telling the story of an immigrant preacher, Thomas Clement Douglas of the Calvary Baptist Church in Weyburn, Sask. His Baptist values evolved during the terrible privations of the 1930s into the social gospel that led to wide-ranging innovative reforms in Canadian life. More recently, in a popular CBC contest to select the "Greatest Canadian," Tommy Douglas was the overwhelming choice.

I also asked my students to select the Canadian who best exemplified their environmental values. Some 90 per cent chose a grandson of Japanese immigrants whose family had been uprooted from their home in Vancouver after the outbreak of the Second World War and interned in camps: David Takayoshi Suzuki, long-time host of CBC's The Nature of Things.

Meanwhile Ms. Leitch's pals in the Harper government have labelled people like me "environmental extremists" and our local birdwatching club was subjected to a CRA investigation after it meekly questioned federal pesticide policies.

Greg Michalenko, Waterloo, Ont.

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With all due respect to John Doyle, the CBC is not a "vital presence" in Canada nor does it "give succour to the ordinary among us." It is a big insular organization run by a cadre of like-minded individuals who have gradually lost touch with their audience.

It would actually be a positive for CBC personnel to participate in some of its own fundraising, which might result in closer interaction with its audience and possibly more relevant programming decisions. Consider CKUA Radio in Edmonton, a listener-supported jewel in specialty music broadcasting with an incredibly loyal international audience. CKUA personnel help with annual fundraising, know their listeners inside out and are growing without government funding – and they manage to deliver their content without pandering to either end of the political spectrum.

Herb Schultz, Edmonton

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The doctors are out

On the front page of Thursday's Globe and Mail, doctors are threatening to leave Canada because new tax rules will cost them thousands of dollars.

Inside the newspaper, Ontario's Auditor-General finds that six doctors actually billed for services every day of the year in the last fiscal year (not one day off all year!) and that the government paid doctors $522-million more under the new group practice structure than the old fee-for-service model. Methinks doctors could use better public relations strategies. For those who want to go to Trumpland, all I can say is: arrivederci, and leave your publicly funded stethoscope at the border!

Robert Brehl, Port Credit, Ont.

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Bed crisis, exposed

The Auditor-General of Ontario has stated a simple truth – excessive waiting in the emergency department for a ward or ICU bed or surgery harms patients. Furthermore, Bonnie Lysyk clearly understands that the prolonged waits in the ER are a function of crowded hospitals. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians has been saying this for years, 16 in fact.

ER crowding is a function of hospital crowding. When hospitals function at 85 per cent bed capacity, crowding rarely exists. At over 95 per cent it is a given. Most Ontario hospitals try to routinely function at over 100 per cent bed occupancy rates and usually fail miserably. Ontario has done a tremendous job at improving wait times for low acuity patients but little has been done to solve the hospital bed crisis. They have finally been called out by the A-G. Exposing elderly Ontarians to harmful waiting implies a moral imperative to solve it.

Alan Drummond, MD, co-chair, public affairs, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, Ottawa

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Protest time

I live on the south Shore of Burrard Inlet in Burnaby. I watch from my house the 55 or so tankers a year that barely squeeze through the narrow and shallow Second Narrows of the inlet. Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has approved up to 400 tankers a year, more than one a day, to move through these already crowded and environmentally compromised waters in a high population-density area. This is a recipe for an environmental disaster. I am stunned that this has been approved by Mr. Trudeau and his government. For the first time in my long life I will be joining the protest lines.

Catherine Carlson, Burnaby, B.C.

The arguments surrounding the Prime Minister's announcement giving the go ahead to the Trans Mountain pipeline are many and complicated. Yet I find myself asking one question, which do I prefer? The Prime Minister who told me what I did not want to hear and meant it, or the one who told me what I wanted to hear and did not mean it? Next election please.

Rick Botting, Comox, B.C.

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