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Rewriting history

Sir John A. Macdonald was not only a Father of Confederation and Canada's first prime minister. He was also the driving force behind bringing together a loose coalition of British North American colonies and binding them into a nation.

It is no exaggeration to say that without Mr. Macdonald's leadership and vision, there would be no Canada. He was, in biographer Richard Gwyn's memorable phrase, "the man who made us."

In this regard, the efforts of an Ontario teachers' organization to remove Mr. Macdonald's name from schools is misguided and ignorant of his legacy (Debate Escalates Over Legacy of Sir John A., Aug. 25). Perhaps these educators should first learn history before seeking to rewrite it.

Michael Kaczorowski, Ottawa

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The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, like Diogenes in search of an honest man, has shone it's lamp on Mr. Macdonald and found him unworthy of the honour of having his name on Ontario's schools.

It is worth asking how famous historical Métis and First Nations leaders, for whom schools are also named, look under a glaring modern spotlight. Louis Riel may not have committed treason, but he did have Orangeman Thomas Scott executed. And some of Chief Tecumseh's views about First Nations being meant to be separate and apart from whites would seem to merit excising his name from "inclusive" Ontario schools.

Diogenes never found his honest man and ETFO will be hard-pressed to find historical figures who both did great things and also measure up to contemporary Western moral standards. If we're really going down ETFO's route, we might as well just assign different numbers to schools instead of names. That's the "diversity" that results from spare-all-feelings inclusivity.

Rudy Buller, Toronto

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While Mr. Macdonald promulgated the residential schools, it was the churches that actually implemented them, primarily the Roman Catholic church. The church's implementation continued until quite recent times, as opposed to Mr. Macdonald's reach in time. Moreover, the major part of the abuse that makes the era of Indigenous residential schools especially regrettable is attributable to the church.

So to be consistent, the public school teachers should also call for eliminating all school names that relate to the churches that were involved. And since we have a public Catholic school system in Ontario, this must eventually lead to the end of that system. One wonders if the separate school teachers are also supporting the petition.

Terry Hollands, Kitchener, Ont.

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I got my secondary school diploma from Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate in Toronto. I did it in a round-about way through night school as an adult, and I've been very proud of it. Not the diploma so much as the fact it's from a school named in honour of our first prime minister, a man not without weaknesses and inconsistencies, but a 19th-century leader who did what he thought right at the time. To change the name of this school, as has been suggested by some, is a discredit to the great work Mr. Macdonald did overall to shape the freedom we have.

James Cook, Oshawa, Ont.

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A flawed system

Full marks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to reassure Canadians about the problems with Canada's asylum claims system (PM Depends Handling Of Migrant Surge, Aug. 24). However, the underlying flaw that was embedded in the system from its first launch in 1989 remains to this day. Simply put, a quasi-judicial tribunal (the Immigration and Refugee Board) is open to almost anyone willing to make a refugee claim and, thus, can never keep up with surges in demand.

This can result in long delays extending to years, in many cases creating de facto residence situations for tens of thousands of irregular migrants, regardless of the merit of their claims. Security authorities do their best to weed out criminals and others who could be a threat, but in many cases we cannot even identify the individuals when they cross our borders without documents of any kind.

While the Prime Minister may argue the same rules are applied to asylum seekers as to those applying properly outside our borders, his statement is wrong. There is a substantial advantage in applying from within Canada.

While the standards for determining who is a refugee may be identical, irregular migrants applying in Canada receive welfare assistance, medical care, education for their children and work permits while awaiting a decision. Through long-term de facto residence, they also establish links that support their requests to be allowed to remain permanently on humanitarian grounds, even when it is finally established they are not legitimate refugees.

At this moment, Canada's border is wide open to anyone willing to cross into the country illegally or who can make it to our shores by boat or to one of our international airports. Our only defence against large-scale migration of this sort is a fundamental overhaul of the asylum process to buffer the IRB from large volumes of people who are using our system for immigration rather than protection as refugees.

A team I led at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada through the mid-1980s tackled the same problem and faced an accumulating backlog of almost 125,000 claimants before the new design was legislated in 1988. The government would be well advised to act to reform the current system sooner rather rather than later in order to avoid a repeat.

Raphael Girard, Ottawa

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Domestic threats

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is right to press the U.S. and other intelligence allies to pay closer attention to far-right extremists (Canada Puts Pressure On Allies To Monitor Far-right Extremists, Aug. 23).

Since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists have been responsible for more deadly attacks in the United States than Islamist extremists. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about racist extremism in 2009 and produced a report that highlighted the danger posed by right-wing "sovereign citizen" groups in 2015. A 2014 study of U.S. law enforcement officials found that they consider "sovereign citizens" to be the greatest terrorist threat they face.

The danger is even more pronounced now, with U.S. President Donald Trump energizing committed racists throughout his campaign and, now, presidency.

Mr. Trump's wink-and-nudge approach to white supremacists has emboldened them beyond the borders of the United States. Six were killed and 19 injured in a terrorist attack on the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City this year. Given the temporary absence of U.S. leadership, it is imperative that Canada and the other "Five Eyes" countries devote increased resources to monitoring and combating domestic right-wing terrorism

Anthony Cantor, Toronto

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