Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com
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Where does it hurt?
In walking away from the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump should realize that he is doomed: The poets of the world have teamed up with Providence to defeat him.
The morning after his announcement, I pushed aside a bookcase for its annual cleaning. On the floor behind it was a slip of paper with a few handwritten lines from the poem What they did yesterday afternoon by Kenya-born Somali poet Warsan Shire:
Later that night
I held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere
Greg Michalenko, Waterloo, Ont.
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June 1, 2017: Donald Trump announces he will pull the United States out of the Paris climate pact. Humanity now has its own date which will live in infamy.
Philip Renouf, Victoria
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Bjorn Lomborg displays a naive belief in the power of technology to solve virtually all our climate problems (A Path Forward After Paris, June 2). He chooses to ignore that technology is what got us into big trouble in the first place. Dealing with global warming will need more than just new technologies. We will need adjustments to the way we live.
Ed Janicki, Victoria
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Voting, B.C.-style
The BC Greens and NDP say they will launch another referendum on changing the province's electoral system. PR won 39 per cent support in the 2009 B.C. referendum; four years earlier it had 59 per cent support (failing to reach the bar set at 60 per cent).
How could the same people feel so differently about the issue four years apart? It clearly has to do with the sources and content of the information voters receive.
My preference would be to wait before having a referendum. PR is hardly revolutionary. It is used in most democratic countries whose political systems we admire.
Ideally, B.C. would try it for two elections, with a promise to hold a referendum after the second PR election on whether to retain it or return to first-past-the-post. This would also allow the people of B.C. to test a model that interests many people throughout Canada, and which Justin Trudeau promised, only to renege, claiming Canadians weren't ready.
If there is to be a referendum, B.C. should build on the experience of its Citizens Assembly, in which informed citizens rather than politicians, with their partisan interests, lead the debate. The crucial factor is that the voters get sufficient, objective information. This entails more than anything adequate funding and access to expertise for Elections BC.
Henry Milner, associate of the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Studies, department of political science, Université de Montréal
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Rent and food. Both
Re Why Food Banks Need Your Donations This Summer (Life & Arts, May 31): While it is true that donations are down in the summer, the implied message communicated by Food Banks Canada and other food-charity organizations is that only if enough donations can be made will food security be ensured for people with low incomes in Canada.
Food Banks Canada reports that about 200 million pounds of food are donated in Canada each year – almost 17 million pounds per month. That means each of the 918,000 people who go to a food bank this summer may receive only 18 pounds of food over the season from food banks.
Research by Valerie Tarasuk at the University of Toronto (PROOF) shows that the food needs of people with low incomes are far greater than can be met by these modest, though well-intentioned donations. Prof. Tarasuk's research tells us that only income security creates food security.
It's time to stop pretending food charity is enough to address food insecurity. It's time to demand social assistance and minimum wage rates across Canada that ensure people can pay the rent and put food in the budget.
Mike Balkwill, provincial organizer, Put Food in the Budget campaign, Toronto
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She is remembered
Friday marked the ninth year of the passing of the little doctor who could, Sheela Basrur, Ontario's chief medical officer of health. Her actions and leadership to get operating rooms back open again during the SARS crisis in Toronto saved many lives. Mine was one of them.
She is remembered.
Peter J. Duffy, Toronto
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Still a swamp
Re Panamanian Dictator Ousted By U.S. Dies At 83 (May 31): Manuel Noriega is described as "a long-time collaborator of the Central Intelligence Agency and a useful U.S. ally in a region that was prone to leftist insurgencies."
That's a very sanitized version of events. To learn more about an out-of-control CIA, and its connections with drug trafficking, your readers should look at Douglas Valentine's The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. This is all about the swamp Donald Trump was supposed to clean up. Not surprisingly, he has failed to produce any visible drainage.
Randal Marlin, Ottawa
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Committed Canucks
Re Constitutional Talks? No Thank You (editorial, June 2): It's a sad day when Quebeckers are more committed Canadians than the Prime Minister and The Globe and Mail, especially in this 150th year of Confederation. The curt rejection of Quebec's overture by both of you sounds like a Donald Trump tweet. "Don't want to talk to anyone! Too busy sleeping!"
Canada was founded on dialogue, compromise and mutual respect. We cannot leave those good practices to the past.
Dialogue, compromise and mutual respect must be ongoing if we are to grow and flourish as a country. It's hard work.
But Canada is worth it.
Jim Paulin, Ottawa
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Truth in names?
Further to your editorial, Kathleen Wynne Is A Great NDP Premier (May 31), I propose that Parliament enact some truth-in-party-name legislation.
The Ontario Liberals behave substantially more like an NDP party than a liberal one. In fact, they behave more like an NDP party than the Ontario NDP does. For the Ontario Liberals not to call themselves NDP is a deception.
Ditto for the federal Liberals, er, closet NDPers.
As for B.C., the Liberals there more closely resemble a progressive conservative party. I would rename the Saskatchewan Party as "The Most Balanced and Common Sense Provincial Party in Canada." When it comes to the BC Green Party, how about "The Party That is Trying to Hijack this Nation's Federally Regulated Energy Policy From Three Seats on Vancouver Island"?
John P.A. Budreski, Vancouver