Protesters hold signs during an anti-vaccine mandate protest outside Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, on Sept. 13, 2021.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters
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Don’t go
Re Battling To Save The Unvaccinated Is Exhausting And Demoralizing (Opinion, Sept. 25): Contributor Kevin McKechnie is my family doctor. He is a caring, smart and straight-talking doc. We are fortunate to have him. It broke my heart to read his words in The Globe and Mail.
We should not lose him and other precious health care providers, all because of those who refuse to be vaccinated. Unfortunately, there are still many in our small corner of Canada.
I will channel my Maritime roots and say what a friggin’ shame. Kevin should hang in there. We need him.
Marlene McArdle Nelson, B.C.
All together
Re Are Our Leaders To Blame For Their Unpopularity? Or Is It The System? (Sept. 30): Last weekend, friends and family had a postelection barbecue.
One daughter voted Liberal, another NDP. A son-in-law voted Conservative and one chap supported the Greens. Three others were Liberals.
Over dinner, we explained why we voted the ways we had. Then we all had a good laugh and another glass of wine.
All so non-judgmental and polite. That’s Canada.
Jeff Passmore Ottawa
Re The Tories Have A Big City Problem (Editorial, Sept. 27): “We count 20 seats where the Conservative candidate lost by a margin of fewer than 2,000 votes. Just 24,000 extra votes, spread across those ridings, would have seen 20 more Tory MPs going to Ottawa.” That’s an average margin of some 1,200 votes per riding.
In 2011, Stephen Harper owed his double-digit majority to just thousands of voters who supported the weaker opposition party. First-past-the-post is deeply loved by those politicians upon whom it bestows power.
George Haeh Lethbridge, Alta.
Calendar change
Re Provinces Face Calls To Make New National Day For Truth and Reconciliation A Statutory Holiday (Sept. 29) and An Important Day For Canada’s Relationship With Indigenous Peoples (Sept. 30): As much as I share the sentiments expressed by contributor Dakota Kochie, I think that holidays in honour of a cause rarely do anything to further the cause.
However, if we’re looking for a symbolic gesture that at least does no harm, how about putting the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in place of Victoria Day?
Doug Wiens Edmonton
Blank cheque
Re Wage Gap Between Male, Female Equity Partners At Top Law Firm Averages $371,596 and Danish Artist Given $84,000 To Create Piece Of Artwork Submits Blank Canvases (Sept. 30): Are men really that much more valuable, or are they simply required to submit about four-and-a-half blank canvases every year?
Charlene Brown Victoria
More rent
Re Ottawa Has The Heft To Get Housing Built (Editorial, Sept. 25): If we want to get people housed faster, cost effectively and more environmentally, our efforts should be directed toward the rental market, not single-family homes.
We need culture change. We should become more like Germany, where most people rent. And what would help the most are quality apartments – both low- and high-rise – that contain a healthy socioeconomic mix and are located in urban centres.
Otherwise, I agree: Subsidies for buyers increase already too-high demand. Increase supply. Encourage building.
Brian Green Thunder Bay, Ont.
Profit problems?
Re No Profit? No Problem (Report on Business, Sept. 25): We should remember that while Amazon spent many years without profit, it was building up a staggeringly widespread and efficient warehousing and distribution system, including advanced artificial intelligence. This blew away the previous logistics leader, Walmart, who seem to me to be still floundering.
AI is doubling in power, not every 18 months like basic chip hardware, but every three months. This, to most humans, is truly unimaginable. It drives the FAANG stocks, which include Amazon, and I feel it is a legitimate basis for investment.
As well, the “balloon” stocks mentioned are basing growth on acquisitions mostly. But nearly all acquisitions fail. (We used 80 per cent as a figure when I was in a big consulting firm.)
David Cawood West Vancouver
So people are investing in companies that don’t make a profit but will hopefully one day become a monopoly or duopoly. I think it is time our government got in on this game.
These heavily subsidized companies cut prices, undermining their competition while still investing in growth. They’re wiping out smaller domestic businesses. Sadly, Canadians need these kinds of companies in order to compete against monster ones that attack from the United States and beyond.
As a small-business owner, I’m not okay with this process. We are being squeezed by foreign-owned tech companies with far more resources. Excluding couriers, they have no investment in my city and their Canadian office is on top of a distribution centre.
Maybe political parties should incentivize voters with Amazon discount coupons. Why fight evolution?
Jamie Brougham Ottawa
Italian history
Re Trying To Engage With An Impervious World (Opinion, Sept. 25): It was interesting of contributor Ian Williams to reference Italian immigrants as “white,” because it overlooks so much of my own experience growing up as the offspring of an Italian immigrant.
I have seen my father excluded from the privileges of white Canada. When he was brought into the discourse as part of multiculturalism, he was a token immigrant. The dark colour of his skin, his accent, the way he spoke with his hands, his supposed communist status – all worked against him in Ontario from his arrival in the 1950s.
As a child, I was targeted for the colour of my skin, the difficulty of my name. I was raised without white privilege, but still receiving the privilege of being a settler on Indigenous land.
As the poet Claudia Rankine asks: “How did Italians … become white?” I think it’s useful to see privilege as movable.
Concetta Principe Toronto
Justice when?
Re ‘Discomfort Is A Home Of Sorts To Me’: An Excerpt From Marie Henein’s Nothing But the Truth (Arts & Pursuits, Sept. 25): I don’t do social media, but I feel the intensity of its pulse all around me in so many different ways.
While author Marie Henein thinks that “an informed public is the antidote to a mob,” writer D.H. Lawrence said, “Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.” I want to believe that truth and justice will prevail eventually but, at 88, it may take more time than I have left.
Grace Lallemand Port Colborne, Ont.
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