U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla., January 20, 2021.CARLOS BARRIA/Reuters
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Must-do
Re Should Vaccines Be Forced On Health Workers? (Jan. 19): The question should not be whether health care workers can be forced to undergo vaccination for COVID-19. Rather, it should be whether patients can be made to accept care from workers who refuse a safe and effective measure to prevent the risk of transmission.
Moreover, there is also the question of these workers being trained in science, the evidence of which they would refuse to integrate into their work. What other evidence-based aspects of prevention and care do they not accept and, most importantly, practise?
Don Langille MD, Halifax
People should be mindful that the ultimate effect of “delaying” acceptance of a vaccine in the immediate term is very similar to refusing it. While the percentage of those who outright refuse immunization may be small, in my career as a pediatrician stretching over 40 years, I have often observed that vaccine “hesitancy” persists and morphs into passive refusal.
The dangerous effect of slowing to 10 kilometres an hour on a busy highway is eerily similar to coming to a complete standstill.
Paul Thiessen MD, Vancouver
COVID-19 vaccination should be mandatory. Period.
Rick Walker Toronto
Changing of the guard
Re Trump Has Caused The Republican Party Great Damage. Here’s What Conservatives Should Do Next (Opinion, Jan. 16): Contributor John Bolton makes some of the right noises by denouncing the Trump approach. However, I believe he loses credibility when he observes that Republicans need to rebuild so that the party can “unite to make their shared rejection of Mr. Biden’s policies more effective,” and to prevent the new administration “from achieving its worst philosophical objectives.”
There it is: no talk of reconciliation or shared values. The narrative seems to be that only Republicans are true Americans, and they must do everything in their power to block everyone else. Perhaps the greatest legacy of Donald Trump is the promotion and validation of those whose toxic partisanship is the new norm.
Bob Walker Vancouver
Re The Danger To America Will Outlast Trump (Opinion, Jan. 16): I believe the most important dimension of Trumpist populism is race. If wealthy, billionaire-backed liberal elites are loathed by Trump supporters, it’s mainly for their perceived empowerment of people of colour at the expense of white Americans.
While deindustrialization and the decline of the U.S. middle class are vital elements in understanding the rise of this brand of authoritarianism, it would be dangerous to overlook the entrenched ideologies of white superiority that animate the far right in Canada and the United States, and which predate the economic inequalities brought on by free-market globalization.
To reduce Donald Trump’s rise to the economic plight of white workers would be to forget that he draws on a deep well of racist conditioning. It has been deployed to preserve political and social dominance over racialized communities throughout U.S. history.
I believe Canada’s oppression of Indigenous and racialized people grows from the same root.
Benny Baird Victoria
Re Slumber’s Menace: The Real Insurrection Is Still To Come (Opinion, Jan. 16): Contributor Stephen Marche’s opinion reads to me like a leftist version of a Trumpian call to arms. He asks, in what I hope is a rhetorical question, how we can manipulate the U.S. political process and its government to “serve the interests of global democracy.” My answer: We can’t, we shouldn’t try – and we won’t.
The United States is a deeply troubled democracy. But it is a democracy still. It has withstood the assault by Donald Trump and his enablers. A free press and the majority of Americans who voted against him deserve much of the credit.
When even Mr. Trump’s court appointees ruled against him, one cannot but conclude that there’s an inherent strength in the checks and balances that underpin U.S. democracy.
Tony Manera Ottawa
Re Trump Is About To Be History. How Will History Treat Him? (Opinion, Jan. 16): With prejudice.
Ricardo Di Cecca Burlington, Ont.
I care little about what the historians ultimately conclude; our attention should instead focus on future Trumps.
Donald Trump has written the playbook for the next aspiring American dictator. It’s extremely worrisome that, had he an iota more tact (and a lesser obsession with Twitter), he may have tipped the electoral scales in his favour.
So ignore the historians, and pay careful attention to upstarts such as Senator Josh Hawley. This isn’t over.
Pete Reinecke Ottawa
Locked out
Re How Canada Should Answer Wake-up Call Of Biden’s Keystone XL Decision (Jan. 19): It has taken TC Energy Corp. a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to meet the regulatory requirements to build a pipeline. It will take the simple stroke of a pen to negate all that.
Like many other initiatives requiring regulatory approval, the cancellation simply means that it will take a brave management to ever undertake a repeat, however desirable the outcome might be.
Peter de Auer Former director, Ontario Hydro Pension Fund; Port Hope, Ont.
Alberta’s last-minute decision to fund Keystone XL to the tune of $1.5-billion, plus debt guarantees of several billion more, seemed strange to many Canadians. How can we complain when another country makes a well-telegraphed decision they believe to be in their best interest, when our country could not agree on a Canada East pipeline that would lie entirely within our own jurisdiction?
Stew Valcour Rothesay, N.B.
Golden opportunity
Re How South Africa’s Campaign Against Poachers Brought Rhinos Back From Near Oblivion (Jan. 4): Rhino conservation is also a major concern in Namibia.
Northwest Namibia is home to the world’s last and largest population of free-roaming black rhino. At the current rate of poaching that supplies the world’s illegal rhino horn trade, it is predicted that the critically endangered black rhino will be extinct within a decade.
The current and biggest challenge to rhino conservation is COVID-19. The pandemic has greatly affected funding, reduced international tourism to Namibia and generated an influx of in-migrants returning to rural areas because of significant job losses in urban centres, which has led to a consequential increase in poaching.
B2Gold is working with the Namibian government, conservation organizations and community-based rhino rangers and trackers to help protect the black rhino. Last year, we donated 1,000 ounces of gold from our mine in Namibia, which was minted into 1,000 rhino gold bars. To date, the public sale of the bars has raised nearly US$1.7-million to support anti-poaching patrols and other rhino conservation efforts in the region.
Clive Johnson President, CEO and director, B2Gold Corp.; Vancouver
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