Ontario Premier Doug Ford returns to his office following a press briefing at the Queens Park Legislature in Toronto on Oct. 15.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
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Personnel change
Re Ottawa Defends Decision To Stay Quiet On Army Misconduct Probe (Oct. 15): I begin by acknowledging that I am a white man of privilege, so I can’t truly understand the issue. However, I challenge the conventional wisdom that efforts to eliminate systemic oppression must be led by a member of the oppressed group, the rationale being that only such a person can truly understand the issue.
Why should one who is oppressed be responsible for solving a problem caused by others? Why not a member of the group responsible for the oppression?
I suggest that the federal government appoint a male chief of the defence staff – reporting to a female minister of defence.
John Rankin Burlington, Ont.
Strong and free?
Re Campaign Takes Aim At Practice Of Holding Some Asylum Seekers In Jails (Oct. 14): Held in jail for months despite not being charged with any crime. Taken to immigration hearings cuffed at the wrist and ankles. Is this happening in China, Brazil, Hungary, Venezuela, Zimbabwe? No, this is Canada today.
How can we scream about Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor and then do this to asylum seekers coming to Canada for a better life?
John Reed London, Ont.
In Ontario
Re Officials Urge Doctors To Cut Back On Virtual Visits (Oct. 14): Naïvely, I imagined doctors and government working together, solving problems for the greater good: better health outcomes for Ontarians.
I imagined doctors supporting each other in good times and bad, because we know the challenges of delivering care in our broken, siloed system. I imagined a world where data drives decision-making.
Instead, a letter: anecdotal complaints about access, ivory tower solutions from politicians and CEOs, a slap on the wrist that further demoralizes a workforce still weathering the hurricane of COVID-19. When did we become so adept at calling out the few, when the many are the ones who need our support?
I prefer my naïve view over this cold reality, even if it is fantasy.
Silvia Orsini MD; Komoka, Ont.
Re Ontario Restaurants May Need To Wait Two More Weeks For Decision On Capacity (Oct. 15): How can it be that people are pressuring the Ontario government to remove capacity restrictions in restaurants, while elsewhere, one of the factors fuelling infections in New Brunswick was the decision to remove most restrictions in July (Outbreaks Rising In Long-term Care Homes Across The Country – Oct. 13), “including wearing masks in indoor public spaces.”
The restaurant lobby, when claiming it is unfair to have different rules for other forms of public indoor spaces, seems to forget the distinction that masks can be required at indoor invents, whereas diners are unmasked when eating. We should thank Doug Ford for the slow and cautious reopening plan that Ontario has had compared to provinces such as Alberta.
I’m crossing my fingers that Mr. Ford is not bullied by the restaurant lobby and restrictions remain in place for the time being.
Barbi Lazarus Toronto
Re That Ain’t No Way To Treat A City (Editorial, Oct. 14): Since municipalities exist at the statutory pleasure of the province, Doug Ford and Queen’s Park can save Toronto’s municipal government from appealing to its worst impulses.
Toronto is in a housing crisis, both for home buyers and renters, and I feel that city council constantly seeks to block and slow down new affordable housing and rentals. We should thank the province for overriding city development decisions and for providing a provincial tribunal for developer appeals.
In the meantime, Ontario has been pouring funding into Toronto for public transit, regional rail and highways. As The Globe and Mail’s editorial points out, the Ford government has little support in the Greater Toronto Area – so aren’t we lucky the Premier can fix it from the outside?
Louise Kolanko Toronto
Family fortunes
Re Housing Is A Well-off Family’s Game As Average Parental Gifts Hit $150,000 (Report on Business, Oct. 15): These acts of parental generosity only help to widen the gap between the well-to-do and their less affluent counterparts. These gifts from parents are in effect a double whammy, because they force up prices and make it even more difficult for those without parental help to buy a home.
I cannot suggest a solution, but it is largely a sad scenario.
Kaz Shikaze Mississauga
Internationally known
Re The Case For A CBC/Radio-Canada World Service (Oct. 12): Contributor Jean-Frédéric Légaré-Tremblay proposes that a CBC/Radio-Canada world service would be the solution to a lack of election campaign proposals on foreign policy and culture and communication policy. Are those really issues that a new broadcasting service can address?
He points out that authoritarian regimes appear to be intensifying efforts to sway public opinion through media. But how effective would a Canadian service be in helping to rebalance the information flow? What would be unique about a Canadian service to make people substitute it for those of the BBC or France 24? Mr. Légaré-Tremblay tells us that we have the assets to play a major role, while at the same time noting that Radio-Canada’s existing international service has a minuscule team of nine employees.
I believe this proposal is vulnerable to criticisms of the institution itself. CBC/Radio-Canada’s mission seems ill-defined and of questionable value in a hyper-rich media universe.
David McGrath Kingston
Alone, together
Re We’re Losing Connection To The Workplace (Oct. 12): In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, political scientist Robert Putnam famously proposed that declining membership in churches, clubs and associations reduced social capital – the shared identity, values, norms and mutual trust that vitally contribute to democratic institutions.
Law professor Cynthia Estlund argued that we underestimate the contribution of the workplace to social capital because our participation is governed by power relationships and largely economic, not voluntary. However, their involuntary nature can make workplaces more diverse than associations we choose.
Workplace collaboration requires common practices to achieve shared goals, necessitating mutual interdependence, empathy and trust. Unlike social associations, work relationships are reinforced by the satisfaction of shared achievements that deepen senses of belonging, identity and self-worth.
The workplace, as contributor Jennifer Moss notes, is important to individual mental health, but is also a key societal good. As Ms. Estlund states, we are actually “bowling alone, but working together.”
Chester Fedoruk Toronto
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