Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Canadian embassy in Tokyo on Saturday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
On the fly
Re “The West’s delicate, troubling dance with Trump on Iran” (March 6): If pundits insist on lambasting Mark Carney for his messaging over Donald Trump’s latest mess, please read this column.
Consider that it is better to have a man of Mr. Carney’s bona fides learning politics on the job than the other way around.
Kyle Harrison Lambton Shores, Ont.
Mark Carney is right: The attacks on Iran represent a failure of the international rules-based order. But I believe he has misplaced this failure: It is the failure of the United Nations to enforce its edicts and discipline its members when they don’t live up to their obligations under its charter.
When a member state openly vows to destroy other members, and undertakes actions clearly intended to advance this agenda, the UN should act to prevent this. And in the face of repeated UN failure to do so, the world should be grateful if others fulfill this responsibility and absorb the attendant costs.
It may not be ideal, but I see no alternative if we are to protect the world from tyranny.
Steve Tanny Toronto
Pay back
Re “Back and forth” (Letters, March 6): A letter-writer doesn’t want his tax dollars used to fly Canadians home from the Middle East; I understand his feelings. That said, the flights will be available on a “cost-recovery basis.”
That was certainly the case when my wife was trapped in Colombia while visiting family when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. We were thankful to pay more money for a one-way flight than we had paid for her two-way ticket.
Robert McManus Hamilton
Other uses
Re “Carney secures $2.6-billion uranium supply deal with India, launches talks on trade deal” (March 3): This deal was agreed to without India signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Nuclear proliferation experts have expressed that while India may not use Canadian uranium directly for weapons, it may allow India to divert domestic uranium to the military, thereby indirectly supporting the nuclear weapons program. We should have some concerns with the most recent shipments that have been agreed on.
Tracking the long-term use of uranium is challenging. It is important to have our government express these concerns and request India to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Don Kossick Saskatoon
Half and half
Re “Ottawa says it still plans to pick one builder for new submarine fleet” (March 6): On the premise that both German-Norwegian and South Korean submarines meet all the requirements, I favour splitting the supply equally between the two finalists. I like the idea of not having “all my eggs in one basket,” and would like the option of reducing the number of units purchased if one supplier’s delivery lags.
I agree that splitting the contract could complicate supply chains and parts inventories. But since the reported intention is that, if split, six German-Norwegian units would be based on the East Coast with six South Korean-made units on the West Coast, I think this issue is minimized.
I also like that Canada might be able to achieve more industrial benefits by having two suppliers. As a resident of Western Canada, I hope these additional industrial benefits would not all be focused on Ontario.
Bryan McConachy West Vancouver
Winning ways
Re “What Canada can learn from Norway’s winning Olympic strategy” (March 2): We’ve known about Norway’s system for decades, ever since Sport Canada and the Coaching Association of Canada insisted that sports organizations develop long-term athlete development models that incorporate the “play” approach. But most of these projects have been failures because, with a few exceptions, organizations failed to embrace the cultural change required to match the “why” of Norway’s success.
I tried to implement the Norwegian “non-competitive” approach for teenage participants in the mid-2000s. Changing the rules of competition was the easy part, but the parents, athletes and culture in which we are embedded seemingly would not change.
They were all focused on medals, not athletic development. Everybody wanted to be a winner – now. So training resources and coaching attention remained concentrated on early bloomers.
That is still the status quo for most sports in Canada in 2025. Unsurprisingly, the cataclysmic rate of sports dropouts from age 13 on remains unchanged.
Alan Ball New Westminster, B.C.
We travelled to Norway about 10 years ago in April. While en route one Sunday from Oslo to Bergen by train, we stopped at a snowy, mountainous area where a large crowd boarded after a weekend of cross-country skiing.
About one-third of Norway’s medals this year were won in cross-country events. Canada simply does not embrace the same enthusiasm for the sport. Norway’s culture embodies it.
We have the terrain. We could certainly challenge the Nordic countries in this pursuit and bring it to the level of Canadian sport accomplishment in curling, hockey and speed skating.
It would require the will and more young athletes gravitating to cross-country.
Michael Schultz Halton Hills, Ont.
Research I conducted at Cambridge University across four countries found that equally talented athletes reach the senior level nearly three years faster with proper institutional support. The difference is not talent or work ethic, it is capital.
One Canadian Olympic medalist lived in a trailer during selection year because Canada’s “carding” program could not cover housing. She nearly quit, but she could not face telling her parents, who spent eight years doing early morning drives and thousands of dollars on mental performance coaching, that she was walking away.
She got back on the plane and won a medal. Her family carried her where the system would not.
The hidden cost of underfunding does not eliminate athletes outright, but transfers the burden onto families who can absorb it, while silently filtering out those who cannot.
We do not just lose medals. We create a ceiling and pretend it is a meritocracy.
Connor Attridge MPhil, University of Cambridge; Coquitlam, B.C.
Still standing
Re “Back in the day” (Letters, March 3): A letter-writer suggests that no one has title of land in perpetuity and uses the Roman Colosseum as an example of expropriation. This may be correct but for one little thing: The Colosseum still exists.
The taking of land for an airport never built and a train system that may have the same fate is somewhat different. Just because a government can do something doesn’t mean it should.
David Harper Burlington, Ont.
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