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Believing China?
Re Canada, China Seal Corporate Hacking Deal (June 26): Isn't that a major achievement? China will stop conducting state-sponsored cyberattacks on the Canadian private sector because we have a piece of paper saying it will. In return, we'll just let the Chinese buy the technology, as in the case of Vancouver satellite-maker Norsat International.
If things go well, we'll get the U.S. experience where "there has been a noticeable drop in Chinese state-sponsored hacking of U.S. companies." Shouldn't it have dropped to zero?
The deal doesn't stop China from hacking our government/military computers because … well, they still want to do that.
The whole thing seems like the diplomatic equivalent of giving the school bully your lunch money so they don't beat you up. It's a mystery to me why the federal government seems to be salivating over the prospect of a free trade deal with China, but no surprise at all that opinion polls show lukewarm support at best.
The Chinese must view our government as a bunch of suckers – and that's an area where I'd be in complete agreement.
Paul Bennett, Richmond Hill, Ont.
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Sears. Double pain
Re No Severance Pay For Sears Canada Staff (Report on Business, June 24): If an Ontario court permits Sears to stop payments into its defined benefits pension plan, its employees across Canada will suffer doubly – no severance and reduced pensions.
This situation highlights the need for governments – Ontario in particular – to require companies to keep their defined benefit pension plans 100 per cent funded. Unfortunately, Ontario is moving in exactly the opposite direction – allowing defined plans registered in Ontario to fall to 85-per-cent solvency funding.
What will be the next company to go bankrupt – or be hollowed out by a foreign owner – causing even worse suffering for employees and retirees across Canada?
C.R. Jenkins, Stouffville, Ont.
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If my employer did to my pension plan what Sears wants to do, it would be ruinous for me.
I looked around my house and realized just how much I have purchased from Sears over the years. I am stunned that it would treat its employees and retirees so badly. And no severance: Does this company have no shame?
Like many others, I would like to know if the management of Sears will be leaving with a "package" and if so, how much?
Cathy Griffin, Burnaby, B.C.
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Payroll angst
Re The Angst Of The Entrepreneurs (Report on Business, June 24): As a small retailer with a dozen employees, I sympathize with Premiere Kathleen Wynne's goal of improving Ontario workers' income by raising the minimum wage, but I don't think she understands that just because minimum wage goes up, it doesn't mean that I will have more money for payroll.
As the minimum wage increases over the next 18 months by some 30 per cent ($11.40 an hour to $15 an hour), I will have two choices: Reduce my employees' working hours by 30 per cent, or lay off 30 per cent of my people.
I'm not sure what she thinks is being improved by this?
Claire Rose McLeod, Toronto
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Calling an increase in the minimum wage from $11.40 to $14 ($15 in 2019) a "worker's paradise" is melodramatic. (Neither is it "radical" – just ask the Ontario businesses that have voluntarily signed up to pay a "living wage." That's $15 to $18.)
Ordinary Canadians, those who don't own and run their own businesses, are struggling to keep up, too. And it's ironic that one entrepreneur, despite citing increased unionization as a source of economic concern, decided to plead her case to government higher-ups by organizing a group of other like-minded business owners. Sounds socialist to me.
Jeff Zuk, Hamilton
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The menace is …
Re Greenpeace Is A Menace To The World (June 24): I agree with Margaret Wente that Greenpeace has become somewhat of a menace. Greenpeace made news worldwide for its protest of nuclear tests in the late 1960s, and who could forget the pictures of Greenpeace crews zooming their Zodiacs across the bows of whaling ships in the 1970s? Those were worthy causes; Greenpeace was cheered for its bravery.
But in the case of Resolute Forest Products, Greenpeace's extreme, over-the-top stance makes it look like a bully who is more interested in self-promoting publicity than the facts on the ground. Using resources carefully, with sustainability and balance in mind, is a responsible option that provides jobs, maintains the quality of the land and provides useful products, including one most of us on the planet use at one time or another. Toilet paper, anyone?
Deborah McLean, Napanee, Ont.
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Margaret Wente claims Greenpeace is a menace for trying to get Resolute Forest Products to behave better in the boreal forest. Resolute is logging in endangered caribou habitat and has steadfastly refused to negotiate toward solutions that would allow for ongoing logging and protection of this critical species.
Greenpeace is doing their job.
Tim Gray, Environmental Defence
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Canada has some 350 million hectares of forested land, about 9 per cent of the world's forests.
Most of it is on public land, and subject to strict controls – controls which make this country a leader in sustainable forest management. Greenpeace needs to focus on the many real ecological harms in the world, not waste time chasing bogeymen through well-managed woods. Talk about not seeing the forest for the tree.
Madeline Fournier Côté, Montreal
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Run for your lives, Greenpeace is coming! Flee or perish. Forget about terrorism, cyberattacks, growing Chinese hegemony or Mad King Donald to the south.
Insidious, tree-hugging Greenpeacers are coming, deploying such perilous tactics as "rhetorical hyperbole." And they are being covertly aided by a "bunch of authors," including that handmaiden of oblivion, Margaret Atwood.
Oliver Irwin, Vancouver
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Rainbow sketches
Re Love, Justice And Dirty Socks (Life & Arts, June 23): I was somewhat amused that this celebration of diversity within the LGBTQ community included the following generalization about another slice of humanity: "We've noticed that straight men feel they can't do these things [cooking, cleaning, groceries] because it makes them feel like less of a person."
While this may, sadly, be a true statement of the speaker's personal experience, it clearly endorses the kind of stereotyping the rest of the interview rightly rejects. Perhaps one of the few accurate generalizations about human beings is that we all tend to paint our own communities in rainbow colours, while sketching caricatures of others using a narrow palette of black and white.
Steve Kennett, Calgary