New passenger trains sit on the tracks at the Via Rail Canada Maintenance Centre in Montreal in February, 2024.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Source of funds
Re “A sovereign wealth fund with more questions than answers” (Report on Business, April 29): This must be one of the rare times in financial history that a country’s sovereign wealth fund is initially funded with borrowed money.
This contrasts with the traditional capitalization method of using a nation’s hard-earned savings.
I know where this is headed.
Bruce Chwartacki Winnipeg
Long and short
Re “With $6-billion boost, Ottawa hopes to shore up labour force for its building agenda” (Report on Business, April 29): As a supporter of apprenticeship training who has worked in the Red Seal program for many years, I am excited.
This package of incentives will go a long way in ensuring that Canada has a sufficient supply of Red Seal skilled trades workers to take on the anticipated boost in homebuilding and construction jobs across the country.
Key to the success of this multibillion-dollar investment is for the federal government to work closely and collaboratively with the provinces and territories, which have jurisdiction over apprenticeship training and certification.
Dono Bandoro Calgary
So, we have a skilled labour shortage. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the drastic cuts in immigration, would it?
Luke Mastin Toronto
How fast?
Re “The costly fantasy of high-speed rail” (The Sunday Editorial, April 26): You argue that Canada should build normal-speed passenger rail on dedicated tracks, rather than indulge in costly high-speed rail. There is another reason to take the modest approach: It would be far more feasible to extend to other parts of Canada.
It is unimaginable, for example, that high-speed rail would ever run to Halifax. But if the initial build-out is a success, normal-speed service on dedicated tracks should reach Halifax.
A similar system could be built in Western Canada. At the risk of fantasizing again, one could even envisage such a network crossing the country. That is at least a long-term possibility for normal-speed rail, while there will likely never be a cross-Canada high-speed system.
We need a good passenger rail system for the whole country, rather than a boondoggle for Central Canada.
Jim Paulin Ottawa
Canada remains the only G7 nation without high-speed rail, and our lack of ambition over recent years is the primary reason for this.
Alto will be expensive, but it is a worthwhile generational investment to transform how we travel with a fast, environmentally sustainable form of transportation. While Via Rail should have its services improved, this would not be sufficient alone to link our largest cities and realize the tremendous economic potential of high-speed rail.
And if we’re going to build new dedicated passenger rail infrastructure anyway, why not build so that it is fully grade-separated?
Recent polls show that support from Canadians for Alto is strong (including from those of us living outside the Toronto-Quebec City corridor). I hope our federal government presses on and proves the naysayers wrong.
Just build it already.
Mark Abel St. John’s
God in the numbers
Re “Catholic leaders urge Carney government to bar MAID access for patients with mental illness” (April 24): Cardinal Frank Leo, Archbishop of Toronto, does not speak for me on any level. More to the point, he doesn’t seem to speak for the majority of Catholics.
A recent poll conducted on behalf of Dying With Dignity Canada indicates that Catholics support the Supreme Court decision in Carter v. Canada which led to legislation for medical assistance in dying in 2016 (85 per cent); Track 2 MAID for chronically ill people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable (80 per cent); Track 2 MAID with mental illness as the sole underlying medical condition (77 per cent); advance requests for MAID where the patient has a capacity-diminishing diagnosis (79 per cent).
This, then, is yet another example of the dogmatic Catholic bureaucracy being out of touch with its more pragmatic followers.
Sherry Moran Ottawa
Life and death
Re “Canada has the information to help prevent the next mass shooting” (April 24): It is appalling to me that more than two years after new measures to prevent intimate partner gun violence became law in 2023, with the passage of Bill C-21 on gun control, they have still not been operationalized by the government.
These measures will help protect women and children from intimate partner gun violence by ensuring that individuals who are subject to a protection order cannot hold a firearms licence.
Draft regulations introduced in March, 2025, seem to suggest the government intends to dramatically curtail these measures. The new regulations should define “protection order” to ensure that any binding order made in the interest of the safety or security of a person, civil or criminal, would trigger licence revocation.
A robust firearm protection regime is a matter of life and death; it determines whether women survive intimate partner violence or are spoken of in the past tense.
Suzanne Zaccour Director, legal affairs, National Association of Women and the Law; Ottawa
Milk it
Re “Why Canada’s supply management system is going to disappear” (April 27): Food inflation is a real issue for many Canadians.
The cost to consumers of supply management is somewhere on the order of hundreds of dollars per family, which is especially hard on lower-income families with children. The beneficiaries of supply management are largely farmers concentrated in Quebec and Ontario.
Due to this concentration of farmers versus the diffusion of affected consumers across the country, lobbyists supporting supply management have no effective competition in Ottawa. Abolition should be a no-brainer, but the regressive burden falls most sharply on those with the least political voice.
I believe the dairy industry would benefit from greater access to foreign markets. Canadian consumers would benefit from lower prices and more choice.
In the absence of strong lobby groups, Canadian consumers should write to their MPs in support of abolition of these restrictive practices.
I find supply management anachronistic and an abomination.
John Harris Toronto
Shifting trade strategy from supply management to countervailing duties on heavily subsidized U.S. milk is an interesting take.
I don’t see how it would change what I pay for the 15 or so litres of milk consumed each week in my home, but I’m sure it would put at risk the local family-owned dairy that delivers my antibiotic- and hormone-free milk each week in pristine glass bottles.
If it’s about battling subsidy strategies for dairy farmers, I’d keep what we have over the taxpayer-milking machine they have south of the border. At least our subsidies are paid by people like me who actually consume the stuff.
Lyle Clarke Whitby, Ont.
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