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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'A good one'
Re Rona Ambrose Announces Resignation, Is Seeking 'New Chapter' (online, May 16): Hats off to Rona Ambrose: It was no easy task picking up the pieces after Stephen Harper left the building. And how fitting that her bill on sexual-assault training for judges should pass with all-party support on the day she announced her departure. Canadians are losing a good one.
Ellina Wilson, St. John's
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They always said that Bob Stanfield was the greatest prime minister we never had. Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, regrettably, is in that same league.
Douglas Cornish, Ottawa
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A force's failures
Re Ottawa Weighs Permanent Civilian Management For RCMP (May 16): Both the head of the RCMP civilian watchdog and former auditor-general Sheila Fraser have weighed in on the persistent management failures in the RCMP. Now, a newly tabled Auditor-General's review says the force is failing officers on mental health. The overall theme of these reports is the incapacity of RCMP management to resolve human resource issues – especially workplace harassment and mental health issues – and the call for a new civilian management structure for the RCMP.
Without in any way minimizing the importance of these issues, it would be a strategic error to focus reforms solely on the human resource issues, without regard for the challenges related to the overextended mandate and responsibilities of the RCMP, as well as the serious erosion of the governance arrangements embodied in the 1985 RCMP Act.
The Trudeau government should reject yet-another Band-Aid solution to RCMP management's perennial failures, and undertake a long overdue restructuring of our federal and national policing arrangements.
Scott Burbidge, Port Williams, N.S.
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As a retired senior police executive, having served with another police service, I have had experience dealing with the RCMP on an operational and administrative level. I now live in an area policed by the RCMP.
While the Mounties are suffering from many of the same problems other police services have had to deal with, the RCMP have to operate within an environment that is markedly different. The first difference is operating as a very large, deployed police service. The second and probably greatest impediment to change is the RCMP Act, a dated piece of legislation that has the RCMP locked into a pattern of behaviour that will be impossible to change without changing legislation.
The rank and file are forbidden by law from having a union, unlike other police services in Canada. That has affected the relationship dynamic within the force such that it has contributed in large measure to attitudes within the RCMP that lead to disharmony. Management and officers need a formal process to deal with common issues, concerns and working conditions.
When you combine the (until recently) lack of civilian governance with the remoteness of many postings, the difficulty in providing effective management oversight through monitored supervision is not surprising.
Peter Burns, Ladysmith, B.C.
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Pain, gain: opioids
Re Doctor's Big Pharma Links 'Concerning' (May 16): So Dr. Sol Stern was allowed to vote on a committee that sets that standards on opiate prescription for non-malignant pain because he has "no overt bias." So presumably the ordinary kind of bias was acceptable?
This discredits the entire exercise, an observation that is supported by the fact that there is little difference between the 2010 standards and the new ones. The drug manufacturer's drastic mistake of promoting high doses of narcotic medication for non-cancer pain and portraying the sustained release formulations as being safer, as Purdue did in the case of OxyContin, had particularly dire consequences here in Southwestern Ontario, where we now have twice the incidence of accidental overdose deaths caused by its products.
Such opiates, apart from being minimally effective in the treatment of several conditions that they were promoted for, such as uncomplicated chronic back pain and fibromyalgia, actually enhance the patient's perception of pain. Thus we have created a new class of patient who, stranded on high doses of opiate, needs to go through a detoxification process before we can find out whether he or she is getting any pain relief at all that might begin to justify the life-threatening risks that accompany their treatment.
All those with conflicts of interest should have been excluded from McMaster's task force so that more radical recommendations could have been adopted in order to address the current crisis. Better training for doctors in opiate management involving lower doses and higher ethical standards are long overdue.
Tony Hammer, MD, addictions medicine, Windsor, Ont.
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Voicing a claim
Re The Conversation About Appropriation Is Important, But It's Also Fraught With Irony (Life & Arts, May 16): As a writer, I've struggled with whether I had the "right" to portray individuals from communities outside my own. In a general way, I agree with now-former Write editor Hal Niedzviecki: Writers should go where their imaginations take them.
However, my understanding is that this issue of the Writers' Union of Canada magazine was devoted to Indigenous writing, part of an attempt to recognize great writing from those communities, and increase Indigenous membership in the organization. It was, therefore, beyond idiotic for the magazine to then publish such an ungracious, boneheaded, gratuitously insulting editorial alongside.
Either Mr. Niedzviecki didn't agree with trying to increase aboriginal membership/representation (in which case, he should have considered resigning on that basis), or he was working too hard/needed a vacation/had a brain fart … seriously, it beggars belief. It's like inviting Chabad leaders to shabbat dinner, only to serve them pork roast and cream.
Beverly Akerman, Montreal
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There is a vast difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. At a recent conference I attended, Indigenous participants stated: Nothing about us, without us. Maybe that's easier for some of your settler readership to fathom! (Imagining Reality, letters, May 15).
Laura Phillips, Oujé-Bougoumou, Que.
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At a time when technology provides information with a few bites or images, readers are increasingly selective and discerning. Good writing creates imagery that challenges readers' intellects and/or emotions. They seek this out, and should be free to recognize fallacies and false voices on their own.
Georgiana Forguson, North Vancouver
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Hmm …
Re Comey, Trump And The Firing Fallout (May 11): White House staff hiding in the bushes? That's quite a change from Bushes hiding in the White House.
Bill Kummer, Newmarket, Ont.