Democracy inaction
I am grateful to C.E.S. Franks for writing about Bill C-9, as I am to The Globe and Mail for publishing it (Omnibus Bill Subverts Canada's Legislative Process - July 14).
I wish that Canadians generally were loudly and consistently questioning the attitudes and methods of the current federal government. Sad to say, it seems the government has a cynical but accurate read of the voting public. We are too distracted or cynical ourselves to realize that our form of government may once have been recognizable as a parliamentary democracy but no longer is, in fact.
It saddens and angers me that there is so little published discussion of this problem and so many reiterations published that we have little appetite for an election. If we lack the courage and desire to maintain the difficult parliamentary democracy model that took so many centuries to develop, we deserve our fate as disenfranchised nobodies in what is sure to follow.
Max Christie, Toronto
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Thousands of Canadians are busy signing petitions, in angry disagreement with the Conservative government's arbitrary change to the 2011 census, and by doing so are exercising their democratic right - indeed, obligation - to dissent where that is needed, as it clearly is in this case.
By arguing that some of those petitions might be "cementing the government's resolve," the president of the C.D. Howe Institute (Knowledge Comes At A Price - July 13) leaves the distinct impression that we've strayed inside a rigid regime where every criticism must be weighed on a finely calibrated scale for fear of angering the powers that be. No doubt he is right.
Patricia Hanley, Toronto
People, and species, rejoice
Re Promoters Abandon Plan For Niagara-on-the-Lake Music Festival (July 14): It's a fair bet that if they were to know about it, the nine identified and eight probable species-at-risk in the last Carolinian forest on the shores of Lake Ontario would be pleased that more than 1,200 cars and up to 9,000 patrons per performance are not going to invade their special Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) habitat for 17 weeks each summer.
As it is, members of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Conservancy and the Harmony Residents Group, totalling more than 1,000 residents, are delighted that wildlife interests will be served, and the traffic, pollution, noise and high costs that the music festival would have imposed on this small, special town are history.
Gracia Janes, president, Niagara-on-the-Lake Conservancy
Bhutan's unhappiness
A caveat is needed to the article Gross National Happiness: Bhutan's Lesson For All (July 13): The Buddhist kingdom's efforts to achieve greater general happiness have been expedited through ethnically cleansing the unhappy people.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, an initiative meant to protect the kingdom's Bhutanese nature, called "Bhutanization," climaxed in government forces moving into the south and orchestrating a campaign of home demolitions, mass arrest, torture, rape and killing of the Lhotshampa - a largely Hindu peasant class of Nepalese descent. Roughly one-sixth of Bhutan's population were subsequently forced to flee across the border with India into eastern Nepal.
With the Nepalese government unwilling to nationalize them and Bhutan refusing to repatriate them, the Lhotshampa have stagnated in the squalor of refugee camps for the past two decades. Though the United Nations has recently gained some momentum in resettling the refugees in Western countries, including Canada, there were still some 100,000 living in the camps when I visited in the spring of last year.
An article extolling the visionary leaders of Bhutan and their Gross National Happiness policies as setting a "valuable model for other countries" is an obscenity cast in the face of the Lhotshampa's suffering.
Spencer Osberg, Halifax
So many questions
Re Mounties Launch Belated Hunt For Missing Couple (July 14): Photos of the McCanns' motor home show that it was an impressively large vehicle, certainly worth a lot of money. When the Mounties arrived on the scene, it was said to be on fire, without any occupants nearby. This, apparently, aroused no suspicions on the part of the officers of foul play and no alarm bells went off. Who pointlessly sets a fine-looking motor home alight and then abandons it? Why did it take five wasted days and a missing-persons' report to finally move members of the force to return to the scene?
Orest Slepokura, Strathmore, Alta.
Pharma comes first
Avandia's reported cover-up is yet another wakeup call for Canadians to pay attention to drug safety (Avandia Risks Known In 1999: Documents - July 14). This is not the first time patient health and safety have been put at risk by a drug company not publishing the results of a study showing the risks of using a drug. At the Health Council of Canada, we are very concerned that little is known about drug safety and effectiveness and its implications for patient health. As a result, we plan to release a discussion paper on the issue for Canadians this fall.
Although a Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network has been initiated by Health Canada in the past year in response to a critical area identified in the 2004 National Pharmaceuticals Strategy, there is still a long way to go to ensure it produces the results we need - and it alone cannot address all the issues at play.
John G. Abbott, CEO, Health Council of Canada, Toronto
May the best anchor win
To me, anyway, the most remarkable aspect of the appointments by CTV and Global Television of Lisa LaFlamme and Dawna Friesen, respectively, is not the widely trumpeted fact that they are Canada's first female network anchors, but that both networks appointed outstanding field reporters to fill their big chairs. I've competed with both and they are tough, smart journalists.
I've also worked with Peter Mansbridge, both in Ottawa and in a combat zone, and I can say the same for him. He is a superb field correspondent in the best tradition of our craft.
Norman Spector, though, seems to think the CBC should immediately replace Peter on the grounds of his gender, just because the other two anchors are women (TV's Last Man Standing - July 14). Perhaps that's Mr. Spector's background as a government functionary asserting itself, but speaking as a career reporter, I'm encouraged to see Canadian television news maintain a highly visible meritocracy.
Incidentally, I seem to recall Barbara Frum anchoring The Journal and Pam Wallin co-anchoring CBC's The National. But I am sure Mr. Spector, as an expert commentator on the Canadian media, had some reason for overlooking their accomplishments.
Neil Macdonald, Senior Washington Correspondent, CBC TV News
Recognizing work in the home
It is encouraging to see that Elsa Torrejon won her discrimination suit after she was fired by her employer once diagnosed and unable to work due to cancer (Cancer Patient Wins $20,000 Discrimination Suit - July 14). I want to point out that there are very few resources for cancer patients who are unable to work.
While Canadians support women on maternity leave through the Employment Insurance program, very little is available to those who are ill. I have witnessed the reality of this circumstance for a close friend: 15 weeks of EI and then nothing. As a woman, she took time out of the work force to raise her children, and as a result she has not paid enough into the Canada Pension Plan to qualify for CPP disability benefits.
I hope that the Conservative government will see fit to extend CPP to parents who choose to stay home from work to raise their children. It's time that this important work is recognized as such and that benefits be extended to those who engage in it.
Stephanie Yates, Burnaby, B.C.
The U.S. vs. Arizona
The Globe and Mail's editorial on U.S. immigration (Take The Fight To Congress- July 14) colours the argument with its use of pejorative words and displays a lack of understanding of the Arizona law on illegal immigration. Just why is this law "draconian"? Because it makes illegal immigration a state crime, just as it is a federal crime? Nothing in the law goes beyond the existing requirements of the federal law on illegal immigration.
It's incorrect to state that the law is creating a police state, and the Justice Department appears to agree. The federal government is not suing the state over violations of the Equal Protection Clause contained in the 14th Amendment; the government is fighting the law over usurpation of federal responsibilities.
The fact that Arizona law-enforcement officials can ask about immigration status when they have "reasonable" suspicion after stopping someone for violating other laws is supported by the nation's highest courts.
G. Allen Brooks, Houston, Texas
Quit while you're ahead
Re A School In Debt, A Legacy In Doubt (July 13): Meric Gertler, the dean of the arts and science faculty at the University of Toronto, says "The centre has been so successful that it has seeded interest in literary theory and comparative studies across humanities departments. In our judgment, it is no longer necessary." Am I to believe that the measure of success at the university level is failure?
It would seem to me that Prof. Gertler is suggesting that the Centre for Comparative Literature, founded by Northrop Frye, was too successful for its own good and thus must be closed. The logic does not add up. If the University of Toronto is really concerned with its international reputation, would it not make sense to maintain a centre that, by the dean's own admission, is so remarkably strong?
Lucy Allan, Kingston, Ont.
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Northrop Frye once observed, "Americans like to make money; Canadians like to audit it. I know no other country where accountants have a higher social and moral status." Plus ça change ...
Jeffrey Sprang, portrait painter of Northrop Frye, Toronto