People exercise at an outdoor skating rink during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Jan.14, 2021.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
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More measures
Re Ontario’s New Incomprehensible ‘Lockdown’ (Jan. 14): While I fully agree that not enough has been done in long-term care and industrial workplaces to minimize the spread of COVID-19, we seem to be playing dumb in asking for clarity or looking for loopholes.
Why do we put the responsibility for thinking and acting solely on government, demanding they spoon-feed us? As informed individuals, we could simply stay home as much as possible.
Michael Tukatsch Toronto
Re How Much Has The COVID-19 Pandemic Damaged The Economy? (Report on Business, Jan. 11): In assessing COVID-19’s impact on the economy, contributor Glen Hodgson seems to have missed two important issues: income support and daycare.
If the economy shrank by 5.8 per cent in 2020 with income supports preventing it from falling further, how realistic is the expectation that it will grow by 4.8 per cent this year once those programs terminate? If consumer spending falters, corporate investment is unlikely to follow.
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that working from home while caring for preschool children is not a recipe for productivity maintenance, let alone improvement. If work-from-home parents become an increasing part of the labour force, as many predict, the wide and affordable availability of daycare will become indispensable to, at a minimum, maintain productivity levels.
Michel Côté Kanata, Ont.
There is debate on the role of for-profit enterprise in long-term care, though I confess I don’t really understand why. Is it not obvious that dollars diverted to profit should, of a necessity, reduce dollars dedicated to better care? Unfortunately, this simplicity in my thinking doesn’t seem universally shared.
But I have more immediate questions on my mind. When the government steps in to save the day (Paramedics Alarmed By Conditions Inside Ontario Care Home Facing Outbreak – Jan. 8), does profit netted by the private owner get diverted to help fix the identified crisis? Or does the move to insert publicly funded interventions just mean that the commercial operator has its profit margin nicely shored up by taxpayer dollars?
Paddy Bowen Cumberland, Ont.
After dark
Re Curfews, The Last Resort After The Last Resort (Editorial, Jan. 8): Many Montrealers object strongly to a curfew put in place by a government which is largely suburban in composition, and cannot seem to grasp the complexity and variability of city life.
It is not that Montrealers do not accept that measures to combat COVID-19 will require some degree of sacrifice and self-discipline, it is that a curfew disproportionately penalizes those who do not have the luxury of treating our city as a conventional space for work and commerce from which one can withdraw, well paid and well fed.
Montreal is a city of nighttimes. To issue monetary fines for breach of curfew adds further insult to injury for many Montrealers who are struggling to make ends meet, or even for night owls who take great pleasure in walking the city when it is at its quietest.
Robert Wood Montreal
A curfew? It’s as easy as 1-2-3 – article 123 of Quebec’s Public Health Act, that is, which allows a government to do almost anything in the name of a public-health emergency. That’s even if health authorities are unequivocally equivocal when asked about the track record of curfews, and cannot cite orthodox scientific studies in support of the effectiveness of curfews in getting a health emergency under control.
So, what’s it about? Shock therapy, says Premier François Legault. The last time a Quebec government used shock therapy to explain its actions was when Camille Laurin said that Bill 101 was shock therapy for anglophones. The only difference: Bill 101 forced people to leave their homes.
Howard Greenfield Montreal
Those were the days
Re We Must Restructure The Department Of Foreign Affairs (Jan. 14): While columnist John Ibbitson’s analysis of the decline at Foreign Affairs is welcome, I fear he is a voice of reason crying in the wilderness.
Once one of the great departments of state, I find that Foreign Affairs is a shell of its former self: a parade of appointed ministers, a lack of leadership in confronting global threats such as China and Russia, and most decision-making in the hands of the Prime Minister’s Office.
A white paper is long overdue, but, like royal commissions, such initiatives belong to an era when governments did not act as if they had nothing to learn or pretend to have all the answers.
Michael Kaczorowski Ottawa
Would recommend
Re Humour In Indigenous Writing Does Not Always Equate To Frivolity (Jan. 7): Any chronicle of the humourous side of Canada’s Indigenous people should include the wonderful work of Everett Soop, a member of Alberta’s Kainai First Nation.
As early as the 1960s, Mr. Soop was contributing barbed essays and cartoons to the newly formed Kainai News. His book I See My Tribe is Still Behind Me! is a classic example of social and political satire.
Diagnosed at birth with muscular dystrophy, Mr. Soop spent his entire life fighting that disease while continuing to point out the follies and injustices he saw around him. Five years after he died in 2001, at 58, he was awarded the Governor-General’s Meritorious Service Decoration.
Our very own Indigenous Mark Twain.
Mark DeWolf Halifax
Face off
Re This Season Of Hockey Is Like A Reality Show, Minus The Cash (Sports, Jan. 13): With new Ontario lockdown guidelines in place, why do they not apply to professional athletes as well? Freedom for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators to play hockey and rationalize multimillion-dollar contracts seems incongruous at best with what is expected of the rest of us.
There is nothing essential about professional hockey.
Gordon Young Toronto
Re With No Preseason, Leafs Make Their Annual Scrimmage A Big One (Sports, Jan. 11): One of the surprises for me is that the Leafs are still playing a tired MOR song by Hall & Oates to celebrate a goal. How uncool is that? I bet that’s not the kind of groove on Auston Matthews’s car playlist.
The National Football League is having Canadian star The Weeknd play the Super Bowl at halftime. Okay, there may be too much sex and drugs in The Weeknd’s “joints.” But if the Leafs must play family-safe 1970s pop rock, at least pick a Canadian song – like You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Oh b-b-b-baby!
David Ferry Toronto
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