Prime Minister Mark Carney holds up a copy of the budget in Ottawa on Tuesday.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Get to it
Re “Great budget, Carney. It would be a shame if Canadians don’t get onside” (Report on Business, Nov. 5): So we shall borrow, spend, partner, diversify, market and incentivize our way to the broad, sunlit uplands of Canada’s bright future. But mostly borrow and spend.
Well, we needed a plan. Now we have one, and execution becomes key.
Speaking of execution, months ago when the Carney government swept to power, there was much excitement about sweeping away internal trade barriers. Hands up if anyone can give me an example of action on that front. Anyone?
Mike Firth Toronto
World stage
Re “Canadian aid cuts will bite deeply in global crisis zones, relief agencies say” (Nov. 6): I find the budget nationalist and parochial. I get it, every other country is doing it. But don’t we Canadians hold ourselves to better standards?
The budget leaves those outside our borders in peril. With global health threats rising, conflicts raging and displaced people being left with fewer options, now should not be the time to be insular.
Mark Carney emphatically said on the campaign trail that “my government will not cut foreign aid.” Yet it was cut in the budget.
Canada had an opportunity to lead the world through its commitment to aid, and it failed. I find this budget is not generationally ambitious. Not at all.
Tiffany Nyklicikova Toronto
Crossroads
Re “Liberals pursue Conservative MPs after Chris d’Entremont joins Carney’s caucus” (Nov. 6): I support any MP who makes the decision to change party affiliation or sit as an independent.
Democracy is messy and should be challenged at the right time, for the right reasons.
J L Isopp Selkirk, Man.
A Conservative MP crosses the floor and names negativity and personal attacks from the Opposition Leader as the key reasons.
How does the Conservative caucus react? Negativity and personal attacks.
The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre look finished.
Lyle Clarke Whitby, Ont.
At minimum
Re “The Supreme Court used a far-fetched hypothetical to axe minimum sentences for child pornography” (Nov. 4): I find the Supreme Court’s use of hypothetical scenarios unrepresentative of the case at hand, in order to strike down laws, simply ludicrous. Any law can seem unjust under the right circumstance.
Jaywalking is illegal. But what if I am running away from a car coming toward me, and the only option is to run across the road for my safety? Should jaywalking then be deemed unconstitutional to account for this scenario, or does the court want laws to have every single scenario written into them?
Maybe the latter is what we should have. Then the court would be tasked with making judgments solely on the facts, and not whatever their “interpretation” of the law might be.
Jason New Foothills County, Alta.
The root problem I see here is not that Supreme Court justices let their imaginations run wild. It is mandatory minimums.
At sentencing, judges take into consideration the particularities of a specific case. We could say with justification that there’s an art to sentencing. It should be nuanced in such a way that the resulting sentence is appropriate to the circumstances.
Mandatory minimums eradicate nuance in favour of a “one size fits all” approach. This in turn can lead directly to retributive sentencing based on emotional responses rather than true justice.
I believe this is the point the majority of Supreme Court justices were trying to make. For the average lay person, they likely failed to make their case convincingly, but that doesn’t make their position wrong.
Steve Soloman Probation officer (retired), Toronto
For centuries, judicial practice was that the court tries only the case before it.
If there are doubts about a law, then wait for a case that raises those doubts so the matter can be argued by all parties within known parameters. Otherwise, what has been described is likely to happen.
The court’s decision is based on the assumed existence of a “rogue prosecutor” who proceeds by indictment in a case that clearly calls for summary procedure. This imagined scenario was also relied upon to strike down some of the Harper government’s minimum sentencing laws.
The problem is what lawyers have been wary of for centuries. There is little evidence that such a “rogue prosecutor” has ever existed here.
If the court wants to discuss mandatory sentences, it would have been better to wait until such a rogue prosecutor showed up and allowed the defence to argue the precise point.
Tom Curran Prince Edward County, Ont.
The possession and accessing of child pornography are horrific and disgusting. Such conduct should be dealt with severely by the law. That is not in dispute.
Only the limitations on a judge’s sentencing discretion have been removed. The issue is whether there may be some cases that are repulsive, yes, but deserving of less than the mandatory minimum (a favourite of the Harper regime).
As the majority pointed out, constitutionality of a provision turns on scope, not the facts of a specific case. The example involving an 18-year-old “adult” and a 17-year-old female “child” is hardy “far-fetched” in today’s digital world. That the problem could be avoided by a prosecutor choosing a different procedure does not make an unconstitutional provision any less unconstitutional.
Judges should be free to tailor a sentence to facts before them, and not be constrained by populist views of politicians who, years earlier, passed a law.
John Edmond LLM, Ottawa
When MPs debate new laws, it is essential for them to ask not what would happen if this is bill passed, but what could happen. In other words, it is the job of Parliament to consider “reasonably foreseeable scenarios” when making law.
If our MPs were doing their jobs properly, the Supreme Court would not have to do it for them.
Hamish Telford Abbotsford, B.C.
Art of fielding
Re “It ended in defeat, but the Blue Jays gave fans a magic World Series” (Sports, Nov. 3): A surprising and wonderful thing happened during Game 6 of the World Series: My wife, born and raised in Britain and knowing less than nothing about North American sports, sat down and began watching with me.
She asked a number of questions about baseball: balls, strikes intentional walks, etc. I explained as best I could (not mansplaining!).
I was taken aback, but her interest demonstrated the power of baseball and a Canadian team participating in such a monumental, nation-galvanizing series. When the game was over, she commented, “Baseball is such a civilized game.”
Robert Milan Victoria
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