Air Canada Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft at Vancouver International Airport, in Richmond in August, 2025.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
System overload
Re “Immigration officers don’t have latitude to probe refugee claims, experts say” (April 8): This exposes a glaring flaw in Canada’s asylum system: front-line officers are handcuffed from judging claim credibility, leaving the process vulnerable to abuse. Canadians deserve better: a rigorous, 100-per-cent vetted system that ruthlessly separates genuine refugees from economic migrants who might be gaming the rules.
Too many claims sail through without proper scrutiny, eroding trust. File reviews without hearings accept fraud risks and security gaps, as critics warn. Refugee protection should be for the truly persecuted, not a loophole for opportunity-seekers.
Fix it now: Empower officers, mandate interviews, speed up decisions. Public confidence demands nothing less.
Prat Pushkar Whitby, Ont.
The 1985 Singh decision by the Supreme Court did not require government to create the Immigration and Refugee Board, which I believe was a bureaucratic and political overreaction, just that an asylum applicant be given an in-person hearing.
Previous court decisions required the person hearing the claim to make the decision: “He who hears must decide.” Not even the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees requires a quasi-judicial panel.
Canada could have followed the model used in most Western European countries, where initial decisions are made by specially trained immigration officials supported by a comprehensive information database, with appeals to more senior officials. Such an approach would be quicker and more elastic in allowing faster expansion and contraction of resources.
There is no reason this approach could not be created now. Scrap the dysfunctional IRB and begin again.
William Lundy Ottawa
Food for thought
Re “Food security expert urges Canada to invest in agriculture, not just military capabilities” (April 7): In his much-lauded Davos speech, Mark Carney said that “a country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options.”
At the same time, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced plans to close seven research facilities, end the Organic and Regenerative Research Program, and terminate 12 per cent of personnel. Breeding programs at these research facilities have produced crops vital to Canadian farmers and adapted to our climate.
Discontinuing this research puts us at a severe disadvantage in seed and food production on our own soil, for our own needs, let alone contributing to global food security. At a time when reliance on fossil fuels and fertilizers means being at the mercy of wars, disasters and disrupted supply chains, Canada should increase self-sufficiency in food production.
The shortsighted axing of the research program further derails such a trajectory. In the face of climate change, we are headed backward.
Tuula Talvila Ottawa
Go big
Re “Government-run grocery stores: A leftist idea coming from the heart, not the head” (Report on Business, April 3): According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, millions of people in the United States and Mexico already shop at public grocery stores which support local supply chains, hire local workers and buy at scale to save money.
Meanwhile, Canadian “mega-grocers” have doubled their profit in recent years. Why should that money go toward executive bonuses rather than passing cost-savings on to families in publicly funded supermarkets?
According to the CCPA, it’s about scale. The modelling and precedents for this enterprise exist, and governments already involve themselves in retail enterprises (for example, Ontario’s LCBO for alcohol).
This could not only bring prices down for consumers, but capitalize on the “buy local” movement and further support our community – and economy – at home.
Katrina Ince Toronto
Arbitrary measures
Re “Air Canada to launch arbitration test project to settle passenger disputes” (Report on Business, April 8): So the arbitrator will paid for by Air Canada? This should go well.
Peter Keleghan Toronto
Consistent with a broader trend in this country and beyond, our national airline is looking to arbitration to resolve disputes.
Critics point to failures of the “government system,” specifically the Canadian Transportation Agency. This seems to ignore the agency that Air Canada’s leadership has in avoiding disputes in the first place.
Here is a simpler approach: Management could empower their hardworking front-line staff to make decisions and resolve issues as they arise; reward strong customer service and problem-solving; hold vendors to account rather than deflect blame.
Strong tone from the top – in French and English – would be needed, but this approach could avoid the rigmarole of complaints, disputes and arbitrators. This once great company deserves it.
John Seddon Toronto
Think of the children
Re “Million-dollar social-media judgment against Meta is way out of whack” (Report on Business, April 2): Even just a few years ago, many of us did not understand how social media algorithms worked, but the companies behind them did.
As a parent of two school-aged children, I’ve had to educate myself through recent books such as The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, Smartphone Nation by Kaitlyn Regehr and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I still find it difficult to manage the pull of screens at home.
Platforms are designed to maximize engagement, often exploiting developmental vulnerabilities in children who lack impulse control and critical judgment. Expecting parents, especially those juggling work or single parenting, to keep pace is unrealistic.
We would never allow casinos or drug labs to target children, yet we permit similar dynamics online. But now that courts have begun to hold companies accountable, parental awareness is growing.
With that will hopefully come meaningful change for families and the systems shaping our children’s lives.
Tara Rasmussen West Vancouver
Some perspective
Re “Farther from Earth than any human yet…” (Editorial Cartoon, April 7): You brilliantly capture the mood of the moment with this cartoon depicting the Artemis II astronauts, smiling together in their space capsule, far away from Earth where Donald Trump is making profanity-laced threats.
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man who walked on the moon, once explained why lunar exploration was so important for the survival of the human race: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.”
“From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that….’ ”
Luis Silva Toronto
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