A pumpjack works at a well head on an oil and gas installation near Cremona, Alta., on Oct. 29, 2016.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.
Not like the other
Re One And The Same (Letters, May 12): A letter-writer was at a loss to respond to her granddaughter’s question: “Are the people who oppose the right to choose an abortion the same people who protest vaccine and mask mandates?” My answer: It’s a two-sided situation.
The opposing perspective is that many people who support the right to choose an abortion do not want people to have the right to choose against vaccinations and mask mandates.
John Budreski Vancouver
Blast from the past
Re Ontario’s Lecce Blasted For ‘Slave Auction’ In University (May 12): I attended university a few decades before Ontario PC candidate Stephen Lecce, in a city somewhat more diverse than London, Ont. Even then, white fraternities were not known as hotbeds of racial or historical sensitivity.
Perhaps fraternity pledges should be required to undergo equity and diversity training before becoming full members. I think Mr. Lecce’s apology is sincere and he should not be punished for his past actions.
We are currently very conscious of appropriation. Fraternities should be allowed to appropriate the Greek alphabet, but not all aspects of the antebellum South.
Bruce Couchman Ottawa
Déjà vu
Re All Quebeckers Are Victims Of Bill 96′s Overreach (May 10): History repeats itself. In the 1960s and 1970s, many bilingual and unilingual graduates moved out of Quebec. Now unilingual students, both English and French, are looking outside of Quebec toward their future.
The National Assembly should not bow to the Office Québécois de la langue française by giving them what would amount to dictatorial powers.
Dale Horwitz Toronto
It’s the climate
Re Glaciologists Alarmed By Ice loss Accelerated By Climate Change (May 9): I felt so frustrated reading this. It was like earnest scientists in life preservers, diligently measuring the water’s rate of rising as the Titanic goes down. We know it’s going to sink, and it’s going fast.
Therefore it changes absolutely nothing to waste resources and document precise speeds. What there should really be is decisive and effective collective action against climate change.
Brian Green Thunder Bay
Re Hi, My Name Is Canada. I’m An Oil Superpower (Editorial, May 9): Canada is the only G7 country where emissions have grown since the Paris Agreement, owing to oil sands growth, despite efforts to improve efficiencies.
While other countries decarbonize, ours is betting on technology proven to be costly and not very effective in limiting upstream emissions. Is it any wonder why Canada has missed every emissions-reduction target to date?
The federal government promised to cap emissions from oil and gas. This is critically important. Ultimately, we should plan to transition exclusively to clean energy.
Otherwise, I foresee more missed emissions targets when there is no time to lose.
Cheryl McNamara Toronto
The production of oil for combustion is driving the world to the edge of climate – and societal – collapse. It should stop.
I find The Globe and Mail’s argument – that Canada should continue, and even expand, oil production because there are buyers willing to burn it (and other countries willing to produce it if we don’t) – to be morally repugnant. We don’t use the “well, others do bad things, too” argument with most other issues, and it likely won’t work well in explaining to young people why we trashed their world.
I want Canada, this wealthy country filled with ingenuity, creativity and compassion, to lead the world now in an overdue transition away from burning and producing fossil fuels. We should not defer the humane and responsible path required of us simply because others are failing to follow it, too.
Michael Polanyi Toronto
Re Environmental Assessment Law Is Unconstitutional, Top Alberta Court Rules (May 11): A solution to the constitutional status of the federal Impact Assessment Act would be a return to the structure of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, prior to the Harper government’s adoption of Bill C-38 in 2012.
That version of the act was consistently found by the courts to provide a firm constitutional basis for the conduct of federal environmental assessments where projects were on federal lands, involved federal funding or proponents, or required specified federal statutory approvals, such as those found under the Fisheries Act and former Navigable Waters Protection Act.
Mark Winfield Co-chair, Sustainable Energy Initiative, faculty of environmental and urban change, York University; Toronto
Overdoing it
Re Blackstone Sets Targets On Canadian Real Estate (Report on Business, May 9): Why is Blackstone or any other hefty investor allowed to buy nearly unlimited residential properties? Would any sensible society open up the food supply, drinkable water or other necessities to be bought and controlled for profit?
If wealthy investors can find a way to put a meter between sunlight and the planet, they would.
Bill Bousada Carleton Place, Ont.
Rate your service
Re The Wireless Business Needs Four Players (Editorial, May 10): I have been trying to have my landline cancelled for some months now. It’s still not done, although the company sent me a message saying it was so, then asked what I thought of the service.
One thing the telecoms seem to have in common: If one is late making a payment, they are in touch immediately. In deep, deep desperation, I ask that perhaps some foreign competition wakes these companies up.
Patrick Reid Toronto
Mind’s eye
Re Webb Telescope Captures Sharpest-ever Views Of Universe In ‘Extraordinary Milestone’ (May 10): We humans are mere specks on a small planet in a huge solar system in an immense galaxy, among countless others in a space of unimaginably vast proportions.
Yet our minds roam the universe. We probe the submicroscopic depths of atoms. We track the wanderings of the continents beneath our feet.
Our ingenious devices reach out to our nearest neighbours, from great planets to tiny comets. We peer out billions of light-years into space to witness the evolving cosmos. Now we are poised to look away and back to a time when the early stars and galaxies beamed out their first light.
These accomplishments of reason and imagination are a testament to our insatiable curiosity. Most have come in a relative blink of an eye in the scope of human history.
Just imagine what the future will bring.
Douglas Campbell Victoria
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