The flags of provinces and territories are displayed before a question period with premiers on the final day of the summer meeting of the Canada's Premiers at the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, B.C., on July 12.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
Foreign affairs
Re Trudeau Urged To Tell India To Stop Interfering In Canadian Sikhs’ Drive For Independent Punjab (Dec. 12): The headline might better read: “Trudeau urged to tell India to stop interfering in Canadian Sikhs’ attempts to interfere in Indian politics.”
We should ask how we would react if French groups were funding separatists in Quebec or Texans were doing the same in Alberta – not to mention if any groups were from Russia or China.
Tom MacDonald Ottawa
All talk
Re Premiers Hiding Their Hand In High-stakes Health Care Talks (Dec. 10): I am fed up with this. How much time and money have been wasted on what sounds like useless bickering over our money?
If premiers don’t like accountability, then perhaps it is time for the federal government to take full responsibility for health care delivery.
Doug Gregory Pickering, Ont.
What’s good?
Re Most Of The Waste In Government Is On Purpose (Dec. 9): I’d like to respond to the assertion that economists broadly agree on what is a “public good.”
Noam Chomsky addressed this idea decades ago with an interesting example: Consider a bus route which is busy during rush hour, but doesn’t carry enough passengers at night to pay for its own operation.
In the way economists look at issues, Mr. Chomsky pointed out, running the bus is only efficient when it turns a profit. So according to orthodox economic thinking, the bus should only run during rush hour, and people who need to work late can take a taxi or whatever.
Would today’s economists define public goods in this way or not?
Steve Murgaski Markham, Ont.
MAID decisions
Re A Moral Failure That Looms Over Canada (Editorial, Dec. 7): They say that pandemics do not bring out the best in people. As I keep hearing about more and more hospitals being unable to treat the desperately ill, even desperately ill children, and then see scads of young and even middle-aged adults riding transit without bothering to put on a mask, it makes me wonder if the value of human life is changing in our more impatient, electronically driven world.
While I agree that there is something grotesque about offering people an exit button when they haven’t really had an adequate start button with respect to accessing mental health care, our governments are not sufficiently willing to raise corporate and personal taxes to come up with the money for sharply increased medical and social services.
No government can do a great job of comforting the afflicted if they are not also willing to afflict the comfortable.
Ron Charach MD Toronto
Re Mental Health And MAID (Letters, Dec. 9): During my 35 years as a practising psychiatrist I was referred many patients who, like a letter-writer’s mother, continued to suffer in spite of “every form of therapy known under the sun.” When I asked if they had been treated with electroconvulsive therapy, the answer was usually no.
Many of these patients improved significantly with ECT. It continues its century-old history as one of the most successful treatments for depression that has not responded to medication and psychotherapy.
Society is trusting that all viable treatment options have been tried and failed before medical assistance in dying is employed to “alleviate suffering.” The difficulty in deciding when there is no hope left for meaningful recovery from mental illness will continue to be a challenge for patients, families and MAID practitioners.
Hopefully biases and stigma associated with available psychiatric treatments will not increase the difficulty of this meaningful end-of-life dialogue.
Jeffrey Jackson MD, FRCPC Stratford, Ont.
A letter-writer asks how long mental health treatments should be pursued. I was diagnosed with moderate-to-severe clinical depression in 1990. I started on a 10-year quest to find the right prescription.
Those 10 years were an agony, which took a toll on my family. But we eventually found a combination of drugs that worked, and I became much better with no apparent side effects.
During those 10 years, I contemplated suicide a few times. It took until 2012 to determine the cause of the depression: post-traumatic stress caused by a tragic incident during my naval career.
Since then, I have enjoyed the most productive years of my life. I rose to become the project manager of multimillion-dollar projects, published a book about the naval tragedy and wrote well-received blogs, book reviews and short stories.
Yes, the process can take time. But the results, in my case, were very much worthwhile.
Gordon Forbes Peterborough, Ont.
Power up
Re In A Future Of Electric Vehicles, Canada Is Driving On A Low Battery (Report on Business, Dec. 4): Canada’s low country rank in an Ernst & Young report on electric-vehicle readiness is used as justification for why the auto industry should not be regulated. Yet high-ranking countries in the same report also rank high on the “regulatory index.”
The auto industry is lobbying against regulations that would enforce Canada’s EV sales targets as outlined in the 2030 emissions-reduction plan. It is similar to existing vehicle-emissions standards, but would require auto makers to sell a rising share of EVs until new gasoline cars are effectively phased out by 2035 in line with climate targets.
Canada ranks low because of high prices. But a recent Environmental Defence report found that enforcing sales targets would reduce EV prices by more than 20 per cent for the average consumer, because auto makers would have to respond with more affordable models at scale, instead of focusing on low-volume, high-priced luxury models.
Nate Wallace Program manager, clean transportation, Environmental Defence Ottawa
Road rage
Re I Was Waiting For Pedestrians To Cross, Why Did You Honk So Fiercely At Me? (Online, Dec. 8): Automotive tantrums, especially when people are crossing the street, are simply unacceptable. Cities should prioritize the safety of pedestrians, their most vulnerable residents.
Pedestrian safety benefits everyone, including cyclists, motorcyclists and drivers. Any city that aims to be attractive, have a thriving cultural scene and prosperous local businesses and aspires to be inclusive and environmentally friendly, would prioritize pedestrian safety and walkability.
Winter doesn’t have to be a barrier, either. Ottawa’s Snow Moles, volunteers who undertake winter walking audits in neighbourhoods across the city, work hard to uncover how to make sidewalks, roads and pathways safer for pedestrians of all ages and abilities.
Min Ku, Mary Haller and James White Council on Aging of Ottawa
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