‘Pouring good money after bad.’ Nearly $200-billion in health care funding proposed by Trudeau, plus other letters to the editor for Feb. 8

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Keep them together

Re “Ottawa will repatriate Canadian children, but not their foreign mothers held in Syrian detention camps” (Feb. 7): The children currently being detained by Kurdish forces in Syria are Canadian. Their non-Canadian mothers are not accused of committing any human-rights abuses or crimes.

Whatever crimes their fathers may have committed should be no reason to punish the children, by forcing their mothers to choose between giving them up or continued detention in Syria.

Let the mothers accompany their children to Canada.

Harvey Goldberg Ottawa

As a former foster parent, I have seen the damage done by separating children from their parents.

As adults, these kids will grow up knowing Canada separated them from their loved ones, likely creating anger and confusion. The last thing these children need, already having been through much trauma, is to lose their only comfort and support.

Surely we can arrange with the mothers to make this work.

Sydnie Crockett Woodstock, Ont.

Money over everything

Re “Trudeau proposes more than $100-billion in health care funding over 10 years” (Feb. 7): I cannot but think that the massive 10-year funding proposal for health care is mostly pouring good money after bad.

We need systemic changes in the scope of health care (pharmacare, mental health, long-term care and dentistry), technology use (digitization, platform innovation, remote care) and delivery models (some privatization). We know that our system is terribly inefficient when compared to other international universal health care benchmarks, but we have been unwilling or unable to take bold steps to improve it.

Our governments always seem to think the answer is to spend more.

Nigel Smith Toronto

It is great that there now appears to be a health care deal on the horizon. However, there appears to be two potential problems.

First, there appears to be nothing in the deal that will require premiers to improve health care by dealing with challenges in provincial delivery systems.

The second, and perhaps larger, concern is the $100-billion-plus in funding. After reading Bill Morneau’s book, one can’t help but wonder if $100-billion is a number derived from careful analysis by experts in the Finance and Health departments – or a number that sounds good to the Prime Minister.

History suggests it may well be the latter.

David Wartman Calgary

Smoking gun

Re “The Liberals beat a hasty, but necessary, retreat on gun control” (Editorial, Feb. 7): These pages recognize that the Liberals have used gun control as a wedge issue, and suggest that it should be addressed “without an eye to polarizing Canadians along the negatively charged lines of the gun-control debate.” I would go further and recommend that the government root any such proposal in its own data and that which is emerging from various police agencies (specifically, who is committing gun crimes and with what firearms).

To date, the gravamen of the government’s position appears to be little more than “no one needs X type of gun.” This assertion is just that, as there are all sorts of things Canadians don’t need that can cause harm to themselves and others.

Significant policy change should be grounded in more than an assertion, particularly when the issue is a polarizing as gun control.

Michael Colborne Toronto

Canadian content

Re “CBC signals plans to go full streaming, ending traditional TV and radio broadcasts” (Feb. 7): CBC president Catherine Tait may be right: Young and new Canadians are online – but not glued to CBC sites that already offer CBC and Radio-Canada offline content.

There’s lots of CBC everywhere now. Just not as many eyeballs as Ms. Tait would like. That inconvenient fact seems to have less to do with technology and more to do with content.

While the CBC engages in “forward thinking” that divides audiences into streams to tempt advertisers, the public-service content with which the CBC is mandated to celebrate our shared national understanding is ever less available. Whose fault is that? Audience numbers reveal that Canadians are not as taken with the programming on Ms. Tait’s CBC as she is.

Ms. Tait and the CBC should look long and hard at the role our national broadcaster is mandated to fulfill, and abandon its muddled self-assigned function as a publicly supported commercial broadcaster.

Kealy Wilkinson Principal, PBC21; Toronto

Telecom troubles

Re “A call for telecom competition rings for the CRTC’s new boss” (Editorial, Feb. 1): Since 2012, foreign ownership restrictions under the Telecommunications Act apply only to carriers with more than a 10-per-cent market share based upon total Canadian telecom revenues, as determined by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Any carrier with annual Canadian telecom revenues of less than $5.34-billion (based on 2020 data) is currently not subject to such restrictions. There may in fact be only a few carriers in Canada that exceed that threshold.

Foreign ownership restrictions do continue to apply to regulated broadcasting undertakings, and telecom carriers with integrated broadcasting operations are subject to broadcasting restrictions, even if their Canadian telecom revenues are below the $5.34-billion threshold.

Stephen Whitehead Ottawa

Re “Rogers profit jumps 25 per cent as wireless gains fuel revenue growth” (Report on Business, Feb. 3): “The telecom’s fourth-quarter revenue … benefited from higher roaming revenues associated with increased travel.”

In 2021, Rogers, Bell and Telus charged the same $8 a day to roam in the United States. One year later, all three companies had increased this charge by 50 per cent to $12 a day.

When describing Bell’s results, president and CEO Mirko Bibic said: “We have the room to compete on price if anyone wants to take us there.” (”BCE reports fourth-quarter profits down as earnings, soft outlook weigh on shares” – Report on Business, Feb. 3)

Isn’t that all we need to know about the state of competition in Canada’s telecom industry? Over to François-Philippe Champagne, the Industry Minister.

Jim Pipe Vancouver

Sources say

Re “Teach me” (Letters, Feb. 7): A letter-writer suggests that artificial intelligence be embraced and integrated into education “in a manner that prioritizes both student learning and academic integrity.” Yet AI tools operate by copying and synthesizing countless sources, without citing any of them.

To simulate human creativity, this technology depends on colossal acts of plagiarism. At the least, this would seem to violate the foundational principles of academic integrity, and teach a counterproductive lesson to students.

Ryan Whyte Toronto

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com