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Canada's financials
Re Liberals To Boost Spending As Hot Economy Shrinks Deficit (Oct. 25): Keynesian economics calls for deficit spending when times are bad. It also calls for compensating government surpluses when times are good. The economy is booming: When tax revenues go up unexpectedly, the answer isn't to spend more. It's is to reduce the deficit and, it is to be hoped, pay down the debt.
Did Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau skip Economics 101 – or did they fail the course?
Garth M. Evans, Vancouver
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Re The Liberals Have Room To Manoeuvre (editorial, Oct. 25): You wrote, "the budget repair job carried out during the Chrétien, Martin, and Harper years …" Harper years? Paul Martin left Stephen Harper with a balanced budget. Mr. Harper immediately enacted tax cuts that put it into deficit. Where it remained. Mr. Harper never brought in, or recorded, an honestly balanced budget.
Jeremiah Allen, emeritus professor of economics, University of Lethbridge
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Personal financials
Re Financial Facelift (Report on Business, Oct. 21): "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Apparently this mindset is as true today as it was in Dickens's time when one reads that Ken and Calvin, who together earn more than $300,000 a year, give $20 a month to charity.
Financial advice is way down the list for the help they need.
Don Hermanson, North Saanich, B.C.
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Minister's financials
Re Liberals Defeat NDP Motion To Close Conflict-Of-Interest Loophole (Oct. 25): The real question that needs to be asked of Bill Morneau is this: Why should a person running the country's finances who owns millions of dollars in shares of a family company and who claims he is trying to make the tax system fair for all Canadians even need to go to an ethics commissioner for advice? It should be obvious to anyone worthy of being finance minister that he/she should do whatever it takes to be as far away as possible from a conflict of interest – no matter what the ethics commissioner advises.
Rob van Wiltenburg, MD, North Vancouver
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Referendum, then?
Canadians should be grateful that we have a process for the aftermath in the event of a successful independence referendum. In Iraq and Spain, the governments have reacted with alarm, snatching back authority or territory (Catalonia Warns Of Civil Disobedience As Spain Readies Direct Rule, Oct. 24). Chaos and fear of civil war must be pervasive.
Canada, by contrast, would enter a process of negotiation based on the Clarity Act, the work of the much-maligned Stéphane Dion.
The idea that nations will last forever – one country, never to be divided – is probably naive. But when most countries would send in the army, Canada, I am thankful to think, would send in the bureaucrats.
Gail Neff Bell, Delta, B.C.
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Group think …
As a Muslim woman, I do not consider Quebec's Bill 62, which requires people to show their faces to obtain public services, to be "anti-Islamic." After all, Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria enacted similar bans on the niqab in public institutions. This should not come as a surprise; the niqab is not stipulated in Islam. It is an ancient tribal custom that predates Islam, and that, historically speaking, is only recently seeing a resurgence.
Worldwide, the niqab is being popularized as an expression of Islamic identity, and at times, as a form of counterculture. Meanwhile, even Islamic countries that impose a dress code on women, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, do not expect a woman to cover her face. Muslim scholars have been forthright on the issue: Islam does not require a woman to cover her face, nor does it equate piety with disappearing from society.
To put things into perspective here in Quebec: An estimated (numbers vary) 50 to 55 women wear the niqab. Expressed another way, if half the 243,000 Muslims in Quebec were females 18 and older, then only 0.04 per cent of Muslim women wear the niqab. Group-think hysterics may popularize otherwise, but the niqab is not central to Muslims' identity in this province. It remains on the distant fringes and should not be continually conflated with Islam.
Leila Kayali, Montreal
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Margaret Wente says "only three in 10 Canadians across the country support the right of women to wear face coverings" (Veil Bans Are Bigoted And Sexist. Really? – Oct. 24).
The number is likely much higher: The actual survey question by Angus Reid was, "Do you support or oppose people wearing each of the following religious symbols or clothing in public?" Support for wearing a niqab or burqa is entirely different from support for a woman's right to wear one.
I don't like niqabs or burkas, but I fully support a woman's right to wear one. I'm an atheist and no fan of religion, but I feel personally threatened by any law that curtails anyone's freedom of thought and expression. However, I'm mostly concerned that Bill 62's most significant effect will be to embolden bigots and increase racist, xenophobic attacks against members of an already marginalized and vulnerable group.
Bill 62 is shameful and dangerous. Its nullification in court can't some soon enough.
Graham Briggs, Victoria
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There are so many things to worry about: climate change, planetary degradation, wars, millions displaced from their homes and subsisting in wretched refugee camps.
And yet, while we live in what is undoubtedly the best country in the world, some have concerns about the small percentage who choose to swathe their bodies or portions thereof in cloth. Wear whatever pleases or whatever custom or religion dictates. I don't think my god cares if I wear an apple basket on my head, as long as I try to live a decent life and do unto others etc.
Can we please get this subject into perspective and move on? On a scale of 1 to 10, this matter rates a -5.
Helen Godfrey, Toronto
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'I am disgusted'
Re The Russians Shouldn't Be Coming (editorial, Oct. 24): On Tuesday, I watched Bryan Fogel's documentary Icarus about Russia's state-sponsored doping, and followed that by watching his lengthy interview with Joe Rogan on the steroid scandal.
I have come to these conclusions on this subject:
1) Russia will stop at nothing to get what it wants;
2) Grigory Rodchenkov, who exposed the doping scandal, is a brave man;
3) So is Bryan Fogel (Why Do Athletes Cheat? Netflix's Icarus Opens Your Eyes, Life & Arts, Aug. 26);
4) Richard McLaren, the Canadian law professor who issued the biting report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is an unsung hero;
5) WADA is in a sorry state;
6) The IOC is corrupt;
7) The Olympics are a joke;
8) I am disgusted.
Hope Smith, Calgary
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Next up
Re WHO Rescinds Mugabe Appointment As It Shifts Into Damage Control (Oct. 23): Robert Mugabe as "goodwill ambassador" for the World Health Organization? What's next, Donald Trump as President of the United States?
Jordan Socran, Montreal