SpaceX leadership members and guests celebrate SpaceX's IPO in New York City on June 12.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Risky business
Re "The booming U.S. is for builders and entrepreneurs. Canada is the opposite" (Report on Business, June 24): An uncomfortable truth: Canada has made it increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs and business builders to succeed. But I believe the problem runs even deeper.
Canada needs a cultural shift, one that celebrates entrepreneurship, rewards risk-taking and recognizes that wealth creation is essential to a strong economy. Too often, success is viewed with suspicion.
High taxes and an increasingly burdensome regulatory environment send a clear message to successful entrepreneurs and investors: Take your talent and capital elsewhere. Many do.
A more entrepreneurial Canada would attract investment, create high-quality jobs and generate the prosperity needed to strengthen our communities. Encouraging business success isn’t just good for entrepreneurs, it’s essential for Canada’s long-term economic future.
Mike Dearden Cambridge, Ont.
It ain’t easy
Re “Avi Lewis might not save the NDP, but he’ll likely end the Green Party” (June 25): I am quoted agreeing that Avi Lewis should for Green Party leader. Instead, he chose a party not even remotely green.
In British Columbia, the NDP wants liquefied natural gas; in Alberta, pipelines; in Manitoba, LNG exports; in Saskatchewan, nuclear energy and more fossil fuels; in Ontario, also nuclear energy. The NDP in Quebec is a non-starter; the NDP in Atlantic provinces argue for renewables, but are a marginal presence.
Mr. Lewis will likely not win this fight. The NDP, along with Mark Carney’s erasure of environmental safeguards and Conservative-lite fossil fuel policies, leaves the climate and environmental fields wide open.
The Green Party will be there for the majority of Canadians who think Canada should be a renewable energy, rather than a fossil fuel, superpower and those newly aware of Mr. Carney’s repudiation of his climate campaign.
Far from the “end,” the Greens will be here for the fight.
John Kidder Vancouver
Fast money
Re “Is high-speed rail the best way to spend $90-billion?” (Report on Business, June 26): Given that the $60-billion to $90-billion price tag “should not be considered as a project budget,” let us start by assuming that the final pre-project budget will be 20 per cent higher at $72-billion to $108-billion.
In Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, he pointed out a 2005 study showing that global rail projects between 1969 and 1998 had average cost overruns of 45 per cent. Also, planners overestimated how many people would use new rail projects by 106 per cent.
Hopefully planners and cost estimators have learned something over the 21 years since that study was published. If not, the appropriate headline might really be: “Is high-speed rail the best way to spend $156-billion?”
John Rugg Mississauga
One would hope the government finally realizes the high-speed train proposal is total fantasy.
Cost “guesses” for such projects always fall far short of reality and, in this case, the concept of transporting 24 million passengers annually is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
The prime market is Toronto to Montreal. Now that Toronto may have jets at Billy Bishop Airport and the Longueuil airport is reopened near Montreal, is the planned line necessary? Business traffic will always fly, while private traffic will continue to want a car at each end.
So wrong project, impractical and pie in the sky.
Roger Love Saanich, B.C.
Heard before
Re “An urgent prescription for our ailing Canadian health care system” (June 22): During the Cambie case, arguments for and against a private-public parallel system were presented. After years of legal arguments, the private care lobby was unable to provide persuasive evidence that privatization was beneficial to the health care system and the Canadian public.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia concluded the evidence strongly favoured the universal public system. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the appeal of the 14-year case.
People asking for an “adult conversation” about private care may not be paying attention: Canadians have had this conversation for more than a century, beginning when private care was the only option.
The question has been answered with intelligent adult responses. It seems proponents of privatization just don’t like the answer.
Agostino Di Millo Toronto
Old school
Re “How Canada can get age verification right” (June 25): I don’t know how anyone in this age can believe that age verification is possible or doable without massively overcomplicated and intimately useless digital systems.
The systems proposed here seem ripe for hacking and exploitation (both commercial and criminal) and present another opportunity for government to waste billions of dollars on another digital boondoggle.
I see only one way to protect children and youth from the evils of the Internet: Their parents who, conveniently, control most access to it. Not to sound too Gen X, but we learned not to run out into traffic. It’s different today, but this should not be the government’s responsibility.
Eric Fitz Belfast, PEI
Student body
Re “My job as a fake patient is an exercise in improvisation and empathy” (First Person, June 25): I volunteered as a Standardized Patient at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (now NOSM University). Our motto: not only actors, but teachers.
One time, a student drowned me in medical jargon. My feedback was that I didn’t know what he was saying, which scared me. After the session, he told me he would never forget my feedback.
I am proud of that, just as I am proud of NOSM for recruiting students who wish to practice in Northern Ontario, like my family doctor. I encourage folks to volunteer at their local medical school as an SP. A great experience and it is appreciated by students.
As an added bonus, when folks ask what one does, SPs can say they teach at a medical school, then proceed to sell others on the program.
Jim Quigley Sudbury
Way up
Re “The CN Tower is turning 50. Test your knowledge of 50 fun facts with our quiz” (June 26): As a young lawyer working in the former Royal Trust Tower (now TD North Tower) I watched the CN Tower’s construction with fascination and growing concern.
What if it toppled over in my direction? I calculated that its tip would fall a few hundred feet short of my office. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, I moved my desk another foot away from the window.
Ron Richler Toronto
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