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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Power over pipelines
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is right about Ottawa's constitutional power to ram the Trans Mountain pipeline through over the B.C. government's objections.
But there is a legal elephant in the room: First Nations' de facto veto based on the Supreme Court-imposed obligation to consult and accommodate First Nations, and on the court's Tsilhqot'in decision, which virtually destroyed Crown sovereignty in B.C.
As a result of these decisions, the federal government has more power over the provinces than it has over First Nations. Both federal and provincial power are subject to First Nations' constitutional rights, necessary and desirable Crown sovereignty has been destroyed, especially in B.C., and Canada has indeed become, as Ms. Notley warned, "less of a country and more a combination of individual fiefdoms fighting with each other for advantage."
Peter Best, Sudbury, Ont.
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In this, our 150th year as a country, can we re-imagine ourselves, not as a nation based on exploitation of natural resources, but as people in a relationship of mutual care with the Earth?
With climate change already hurting many countries, a sense of justice calls us to do everything we can to reduce our emissions.
The impact of tanker spills along the B.C. coast would be catastrophic. And the Alberta oil sands as an economic driver have been stalled for several years, and many economists question whether there is enough market for bitumen to warrant digging ourselves deeper into this mess.
Organizations such as Iron & Earth are calling for a rapid shift toward green energy jobs that people can feel good about; other groups are highlighting the ecology's impact on human health.
I want to believe Canadians have enough creativity and generosity of spirit to envision a way of life that doesn't endanger our lives and the Earth's capacity to support life. Do we?
Rebecca Weigand, Toronto
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Home is where …
Re Home Is Your Castle – Until You Get Old, And Then It Could Become Government's Last Great Tax Grab (Report on Business, May 19): The rhetoric persists that home care is expensive. Home care has been shown to cost less than the institutional care that is our go-to model. We need to shift from the institution as the standard of care to the home.
The author goes on to repeat a common societal stance that "older people are becoming a burden." Caring for those who cared for us is not a burden, but a privilege. An attitude change could could seriously impact the direction of our health-care policies in a very good way.
Sheila Bannerman, Red Deer, Alta.
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A home's worth
Re Home For Sale (letter, May 18): As the owner of an old but much lived in house in Vancouver's coveted west wide, I could have cashed in many times over the past few years as my modest house turned into a golden opportunity. But I refuse to sell into this market and contribute to the destruction of a community where I have raised my children and shared my life with wonderful neighbours.
Money isn't everything and not everyone is seduced by greed.
Shocking, isn't it?
Annabel Kershaw, Vancouver
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Rx for standards
Re Health Minister Orders Review Of National Opioid Standards (May 19): It is reassuring that Health Minister Jane Philpott considers herself a "steward of the public purse" regarding the contract the feds signed with McMaster University to review national opioid standards. Since McMaster broke the terms of the contract, does her stewardship include asking for the $618,248 back?
Marty Cutler, Toronto
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The results of the McMaster panel should be nullified and McMaster should return the funding. Another panel should be created exactly as the government wanted it to be constituted. Each participant should be carefully vetted. This way the optics will be absolutely clear. And this way, the Canadian people can have confidence in the new standards for prescribing opioids.
A caveat to this is that just because we have a new national program does not mean that every doctor or hospital will follow the guidelines. It will take a lot of effort to change the situation of opioid use in this country.
Lorna Froidevaux, West Vancouver
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Doctors are at risk of inappropriate use of prescription drugs because the pharmaceutical industry has inserted itself into the guideline process?
Say it ain't so.
I hate to say it, but this is hardly front-page news. We have known about tainted and drug-addled drug-prescribing guidelines for years. Some of us have even written books on this and other tactics. The pharmaceutical industry's many-tentacled minions have been able to insert themselves into almost every corner of medicine.
If the minister thinks the opioid guidelines are tainted, she should try taking a look at the diabetes or osteoporosis guidelines around the world, so steeped are they in the tincture of pharmaceutical funding it takes dozens of pages to list the contributors and their many conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
We need clean, clear health information as urgently as we need clean, clear water. Allowing the drug companies to "educate" doctors on prescribing continues to befoul prescribing and sicken the population.
Alan Cassels, drug policy researcher, co-author, Selling Sickness: How The World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients; University of Victoria
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Great again?
After reading your editorial, Feeling Great Yet, America? (May 18), my first thought was: Shame on you for joining the hate-Donald-Trump movement. The tone wasn't just excoriating, it could well be described as a flensing.
The bile and invective could have been penned by the Democratic National Committee. Please stay above the fray and show respect for the Office of The President, regardless of your feelings for the man who holds the office.
Darcy Charles Lewis, Calgary
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Tired of the constant hum of Trump versus the world, CNN versus Fox, Dems versus the GOP, I picked up Gwethlayn Graham's 1944 masterpiece Earth and High Heaven and read:
"Arguing with them was like arguing with someone in a nightmare … they'd been so consistently misinformed on every subject for so long that there was no common ground for discussion … it was hopeless. Every time you produced a fact, they produced a contrary fact, and neither of you could advance an inch."
She was referring to indoctrinated Germans arguing with Canadians before the fighting started, but plus ça change …
Don Skelton, Calgary
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Maybe the Queen should offer to welcome the United States back into the Commonwealth. What they need right now is a nice stable monarchy.
Donnie Friedman, Toronto