Sharing Toronto's Waterfront
Re Waterfront Is For People, Not Planes (Jan. 29): Many negative assumptions about Porter's proposal to introduce flights to destinations such as Vancouver, Calgary, California and Florida from Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport are based on projected passenger growth to 4.8 million annually. This number is the highest growth scenario that independent consultants cautioned against because it is unrealistic.
Growth must be intelligently managed, which is why discussions are ongoing to match increases in passenger numbers with improvements to area infrastructure. Along with road network and transit improvements proposed by the city's consultants, vehicle use will be reduced by at least 15 per cent among airport users, and the ability to handle traffic flows will increase.
The airport is a public asset supporting thousands of jobs, benefiting millions of travellers and creating billions of dollars in economic impact each year. It has developed in recent years along with Toronto and its waterfront. For example, Harbourfront Centre attendance is up 40 per cent since Porter started flying.
Shared benefits can continue for everyone without claiming the choice prevents anything else on the waterfront from occurring.
Robert J. Deluce, president and CEO, Porter Airlines, Toronto
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Minimum wage, plus
Re Ontario Hike Widens Wage Gap (Jan. 31): As a small business owner, the new minimum wage will absolutely cause my business hardship; our sales are still suffering from the additional 8 per cent on all our sales since HST on recreational activity was introduced.
That said, minimum-wage workers deserve the increase. Both the federal and provincial government should take it one step further and exempt both the employee and employer from deductions for EI and income tax.
Alex Nagy, Toronto
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Recycle expectations
Re What Happens When Fossil Fuels Run Out? (Jan. 31): The only long-term prospects for viable economies involve recycling of our finite resources using renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro, biomass). The number of people who can be sustained in this way are probably far fewer than our world now contains (one estimate suggests three billion people vs. seven billion and growing).
Despite this, economists and politicians babble about solving economic problems by expanding the population. As a species, we are addicted to growth in all its forms, and seemingly cannot conceive of planned shrinkage as a desirable strategic objective.
Martin Kellman, Antigonish, N.S.
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Save the butterfly
Re Monarch Butterfly Numbers Dwindle To Lowest Ever (Jan. 30): If the monarch population is so threatened, why do some municipalities, including the city of Kawartha Lakes, still have the milkweed plant on their lists of noxious weeds to be sprayed, with a fine of no less than $500 for those who contravene the Weeds Act? This plant is crucial to the monarch life cycle.
Dorothy Ottaway, Toronto
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Clear on Marc Nadon
Re Supreme Challenge: Top Court Appointments (Jan. 22): Prof. Adam Dodek criticizes my "sil-ence" on the reasons behind Marc Nadon's nomination to the Supreme Court. As acting chair to the ad hoc parliamentary committee, I made clear the reasons.
Justice Nadon benefits from a 40-year-long career in law, with 20 years' experience as a member of the Quebec bar, recognized for his expertise in taxation, transportation and maritime law.
In his 20 years with the Federal Court and Court of Appeal, he presided over and decided a broad range of cases covering issues from national security to immigration law, from intellectual property to employment insurance and income tax law. As NDP justice critic Françoise Boivin said of Justice Nadon, "He's a great judge. He's a brilliant legal mind."
Peter MacKay, Minister of Justice
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Cigarettes aren't sex
Re Clear The Air On Addiction (Jan. 31): I saw Dominique Bourget testify at the Blais-Létourneau class-action tobacco lawsuit. In my opinion, Sally Satel mischaracterizes these events.
The court was shown several examples where Dr. Bourget conducted her work as an expert witness for JTI-Macdonald in ways that were inconsistent with the practice guidelines established for such activities by Quebec's Collège des médecins.
Dr. Satel is wrong to suggest that Dr. Bourget viewed smoking as an addictive behaviour resulting in brain changes that make it hard to quit. Rather, she told the court that there was a medical consensus against using the word addiction, and that the brain response to smoking was analogous to eating roast beef, playing video games or having sex.
Dr. Satel is wrong to suggest that anyone is claiming that Quebec smokers are "helpless to quit." This trial is about whether tobacco companies knowingly exposed their customers to the risk of addiction without warning them and whether they denied or trivialized those risks.
Cynthia Callard, executive director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada
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Running the country
Re A Senate Idea Worth Considering (Jan. 31): Making the unelected Senate unaccountable to anyone is worse than all the other constitutional dead ends available. Any unelected body with the power to govern is a throwback to the days when elites ran things for the "good of everyone else."
Even if this group is solely made up of the best Canadians (and I wonder who would determine who they are), they were not elected. They are not legitimate.
If the best want a hand in running the country, let them brave the media gauntlet, and the endless probes into their private lives, and run for office.
As we will never have the constitutional stomach to fix this body, and we have to have an unelected Senate, let's keep them tied to the parties.
That way, if the unelected screw up, there are consequences for the elected. That is far more likely to keep them in line.
Maurice Jay Nicholson, Toronto
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There are many senators of different political stripes – Roméo Dallaire, Jacques Demer, Vernon White, Colin Kenny, Jim Munson, and others – who are knowledgeable, hard-working and committed to issues about which they care deeply and that are relevant to us all. Pierre Poilievre, mocking the appointment process suggested by the Liberals, doesn't suggest a positive position that could advance the debate; instead, he continues his role of Conservative critic of anything that has not come out of the PMO.
Over the years, an independently appointed Senate will fill that chamber with people who are far more likely to be concerned with the welfare of Canadians, rather than political debts to the PM who appointed them.
Leo Boychuk, Ottawa
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Loyalty explained
Many people, especially the media, wonder why a significant core of voters still supports Rob Ford, despite the embarrassment the mayor of Toronto undeniably brings. Your article Council Passes 'Phantom Budget,' Mayor Says (Jan. 31) provides a partial answer.
The mayor contributed 18 proposals to the budget discussion and got short shrift from council.
He is right that revenue based on unreliable sources like the land transfer tax is wishful thinking, not budgeting; that not spending $7-million on new trees is sensible since the city is still cleaning up after its old trees and whining for help. Asking families to pay $14 as their stake in free recreation programs is fair-minded: There is no free lunch. Is it unreasonable to add unpaid library fines to tax bills in order to collect them? A security guard in every library is overreaction. Get them off the payroll as he suggests.
One councillor even proposed that the $12-million for subway expansion be spent on social housing. Here is the gravy train gone mad.
And that is why people who have not abandoned reason or responsibility still support the mayor. Without Mr. Ford, Toronto would be more than embarrassed, it would be broke.
Ronald Coleman, Cobourg, Ont.
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Re Bad Boy Or Not, His Fans Are Still Beliebers (Jan. 30): But so are Rob Ford's. What does that prove?
Douglas Cornish, Ottawa