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What 'secret' means, Mr. Dion
It seems like everything Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion touches these days is "secret" (Ottawa Keeps Under Wraps Plan To Foster Deeper Ties With Six Arab Gulf States – June 22).
"Secret" is just another way of saying contentious and probably against the wishes of most of the electorate who voted his government into power. Playing politics with some of the shadier elements of the Middle East under the disguise of business-as-usual will turn around and bite us eventually. In the same way, all this secrecy will eventually turn around and bite the Liberal Party, negating the good things they are doing in other spheres.
Luke Mastin, Toronto
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NATO disconnect
Re Why Canada Should Join NATO's Baltic Mission (June 22): It is a fallacy that Russia poses a threat to its Eastern European neighbours. The idea that Russia is planning to once again restore the old Soviet Union has been used by the U.S.-led NATO countries ever since Russia annexed the Crimea and became involved in the Ukrainian tragedy.
The possibility that Russia was acting in self-defence seems to have been overlooked. Also overlooked since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the steady expansion of NATO eastward to Russia's borders. Earlier this month, 31,000 NATO troops conducted military exercises in Poland and the Baltic states. A few weeks ago, a U.S. warship was patrolling in the Black Sea.
It is not Russia that poses a threat of a possible final World War Three, but the determination of NATO powers to continue the Cold War.
Canada should absolutely refuse to be drawn into the nonsense of sending our scarce military resources to borders of Russia which is tantamount to an act of war.
James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador, Ottawa
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I hope Justin Trudeau is wise enough to refuse to join NATO in its present little-boy games.
The language – "framework nations" – puts the scheme where it belongs: aging men around the "sand table" playing games that belong in the "sand box."
Frances Huff, Kingston
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If our NATO friends wish us to participate in their Baltic mission, maybe they should do something to generate a bit of goodwill.
Perhaps the U.S. President could rethink his unreasonable veto of the Keystone XL pipeline after it had been approved by Congress, or maybe he could do something, anything, to contribute to the new Windsor-Detroit river crossing. Farther afield, ratification of the Canada-European Union free-trade agreement would help.
Brian Swinney, Burlington, Ont.
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Pensions, credit fees
In Wal-Mart Might Win The War Against Visa, But Small Retailers Won't See The Spoils (Report on Business, June 20), we learn that in Canada, Visa and MasterCard "agreed in 2014 to voluntarily cut their fees to an average of 1.5 per cent," but that retailers "look enviously at Europe and Australia, where fees are as low as 0.3 per cent."
In Ministers Reach Deal On CPP Expansion (June 21), you report that "once fully phased in, CPP premiums would rise by 1 per cent each for employers and employees."
If we address the excess profits of Visa and MasterCard by legislation at the same time that we increase CPP contributions for employers, it would help keep costs level for business owners. They could pay 1 per cent more for CPP and 1 per cent less to Visa and MasterCard.
Visa and MasterCard would ultimately benefit, as we could better afford to pay off our credit card interest into our retirement.
Peggy Lunderville, Burnaby, B.C.
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Death's logic
Re Christian Doctors Challenge Assisted-Death Referral Requirement (June 22): Bruce Ryder, a constitutional specialist, says governments or medical associations should maintain an online registry of doctors willing to provide medical assistance in dying: "Requiring objecting physicians to inform patients of the existence of such a registry would be a minimal impairment of their conscience rights and would ensure patients receive timely access."
That is quite a legal mouthful from Mr. Ryder. Ethics has logic as one of its foundations; suggesting that "minimal impairment" means it ought be acceptable equates with telling a student that a little cheating is okay.
Not logical.
Brian Tansey, Ottawa
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Re In Death, New Life For Parliament (June 22): Canadians will not be running to courts because we are a litigious society, but rather Canadians will be pushed in their wheelchairs and hospital beds into courts because they are suffering unbearably and irremediably, and have been denied their constitutional rights.
The chorus of legal experts that has unequivocally concluded that Bill C-14 is unconstitutional includes the Canadian Bar Association, the Quebec Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and leading constitutional experts, most of whom have never been visible advocates for assisted dying. In addition, the recent unanimous decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal effectively reached the same conclusion.
Are we to assume that these are the "unhappy advocates of another outcome" that "possess the certainty of the unknown"?
If the government felt that the overwhelming opinions of the legal community across the country were incorrect, it could easily have undertaken a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada to confirm the constitutionality of Bill C-14. It refused to do that.
Jeffrey Simpson turns his sights on the Supreme Court, "whose tolerance for political discretion is often limited" and which, he suggests, based its Carter decision on a Charter that says nothing about assisted death and which reasonable people could have interpreted differently.
Perhaps we should cherry-pick those Supreme Court decisions and Charter interpretations that we like and ignore the others. After all, the rule of law is so constraining …
Jack Pasht, chairman, Dying with Dignity, Canada
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Marx on Trump
What would a Donald Trump presidency look like? I believe I have found the answer in the works of Marx. Not Karl, the Marx brothers – in their movie Duck Soup.
Groucho plays the role of Rufus T. Firefly, a businessman who is appointed president of the bankrupt state of Freedonia. His mission is to fix the economy, but the wisecracking Firefly proves to be a totalitarian dictator who enacts crowd-pleasing – but dysfunctional – laws, and who heaps contempt on his cabinet.
He impulsively (and unwittingly) appoints a foreign spy to be his secretary of war, and triggers a pointless, disastrous, but popular war with the rival state of Sylvania by his paranoid, erratic and abusive treatment of its ambassador.
As a movie, it's very entertaining. As a view of a possible future … it's sobering.
Hugh Lindsay, Vancouver