The WikiLeaks Papers
The release of internal U.S. military documents related to the war in Afghanistan (Distrust Among Allies Rife, Leaked Reports Show - July 27) reminds me of the release of documents during the Vietnam War. It was in 1971 that Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, which helped to erode public support for the war and proved politically embarrassing to Richard Nixon's government. Will we see the same outcome again?
Walter Tkach, Winnipeg
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Did Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon smile ironically when he said the government had reported transparently on the mission in Afghanistan (Ottawa Disputes Friendly-Fire Account - July 27)? Surely he wasn't serious when he claimed: "We haven't misled the Canadian public in any way, shape or form." Or was the government to which he referred not the same one that prorogued Parliament and that has otherwise persistently disregarded the will of the House in the Afghan detainee affair? Transparency is hardly a hallmark of the Harper government in this or so many other contentious areas of public concern.
Marvin Schiff, Toronto
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Margaret Wente (When Nothing Is Secret Any More - July 27) notes that the new-media outlet WikiLeaks has "some powerful advantages over old-line media": It's not bound by confidentiality deals, it doesn't have to consider "what may or may not be in the national interest" and it's insulated from lawsuits. Nothing it has leaked thus far has been newsworthy. However, it managed to create a sensation, shocking those who just love to be outraged. In short, WikiLeaks doesn't care for quality, or the responsibilities and obligations of professionals.
Shocking, attention-getting irresponsibility - it reminds me of the time I threw a massive house party when my parents went out of town when I was 16. Maybe Julian Assange will grow out of it, too.
Gregory T.S. Riddoch, Quebec City
In with the old
Jan Buley (Classroom Realities - July 27) is right to insist that today's electronic literacy tools be "useful and honoured" in education. But exactly how the new media are to be incorporated into the classroom is another matter. After all, it took several decades before Marshall McLuhan's similar recommendation for television, radio and film was implemented in schools - albeit, even now, somewhat awkwardly.
Meanwhile, the new reality of electronic media must in no way displace or interfere with the old reality of print in formal education. The fact that most students are now far more proficient in managing the former over the latter argues rather for an intensification of effort to bolster the teaching of print literacy, thereby restoring a healthy balance between the new and the old.
Jon Cowans, Toronto
Balancing rights and health
In your article U.S., Canada Lead In HIV Prosecutions (July 21) and your editorial The Duty Not To Infect (July 21), you highlighted the complex issue of the growing use of criminal charges to deal with HIV transmission or exposure. It was noted that our organization is "working with provincial (justice officials) to develop guidelines for prosecution," a point that requires clarification.
We have consistently taken the position that criminal prosecutions may be justified in a limited number of cases, such as those rare instances where there is a malicious intent to cause harm through HIV transmission. We are, however, very concerned that "HIV panic" is extending and distorting the application of criminal charges in cases where it is not justified - such as where people practise safer sex or otherwise engage in activities that pose no "significant" risk of transmission, the legal standard articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Overextending the criminal law is counter-productive to HIV prevention and treatment efforts in numerous ways. Therefore, we have joined with a growing number of individuals and organizations working in HIV prevention in calling for guidelines that would bring some rational, principled limits to the use of the criminal law, and would seek to ensure clarity, consistency and fairness in its application, in the interests of both human rights and public health.
Richard Elliott, executive director, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
The creative mind
Re Making A National Capital, Well, National (July 26): Did Preston Manning suggest the artificial lake for the G20 conference in Toronto, or was he simply inspired by the idea?
Alex Ramsay, Walkerton, Ont.
Careful what you wish for
Neil Reynolds notes with approval (The Anachronistic, Coercive, Unnecessary Census - July 26) that many countries have eliminated the questionnaire-based census. This is true. It is no accident that these countries are mostly in northern Europe and Scandinavia, where government information on individuals is far more extensive, centralized and linked than in Canada, as Tavia Grant points out in A Scandinavian Model For Gathering Data: No Census, But Far More Privacy Invasion (July 27).
Sweden substituted a register-based census in 2005. It accomplished this by assigning a unique number to every dwelling. Citizens and other residents are required (i.e. coerced) to report the registration number of their homes, which are then linked to tax records and personal identification numbers (the latter linked to records on health, education, social condition, etc.).
Is this what Mr. Reynolds wants?
Andrew Hubbertz, librarian emeritus, University of Saskatchewan
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It appears Stephen Harper kept secret his decision to eliminate the mandatory long-form census for six months (PM's Push On Census Got Under Way In December - July 26). Well, you can't fault him for inconsistency. The government has no right to know what we're doing and we have no right to know what the government's doing.
D.S. McNeal, Delta, B.C.
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The long-form census questionnaire provides data on knowledge of the two official languages that are essential to determine where the federal government must provide services in English and French, as required by the Official Languages Act and its regulations on services to the public. Those enactments have a quasi-constitutional character because they give effect to the official languages provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Without reliable data from the census, it would be impossible to determine which federal offices must provide bilingual services.
For this reason, a strong case can be made that the government decision to scrap the compulsory form is invalid and unconstitutional. Short of repealing the Official Languages Regulations, the Harper government could not have found a better way to preclude their proper application.
Louis Reynolds, Ottawa
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It seems that the libertarian agenda in Canada is, if not already dead, certainly very unhealthy. There are so many opponents of the government's plan to remove compulsion from the collection of census data that it surely grieves small-c conservatives.
One can only wonder what public opinion would have been if the government had announced an entirely opposite policy - that everyone must now complete a mandatory long-form census. Would that be accepted with timid alacrity?
George Dunbar, Toronto
Mounties always get their man
The unprecedented palace revolt of senior RCMP officers directed at Commissioner William Elliott once again raises serious questions about the capacity of the RCMP to ensure the public safety of Canadians (Senior RCMP Officers File Complaints Over Commissioner's Conduct - July 27). The many auditor-general reports, as well as numerous public inquiries of the past two decades, have revealed an organization that is under-resourced, riddled with internal divisions, and engaged in endless turf battles with other federal law-enforcement and national security agencies, as well as with provincial and municipal police forces. Worse still, the RCMP has failed to demonstrate the transparency and accountability required by the RCMP Act and our Constitution.
The time has surely come for Ottawa to constitute a blue-ribbon commission of distinguished Canadians to inquire into the future of the RCMP as our leading law-enforcement agency. The first order of business should be to determine whether even a reformed RCMP is capable of doing the job, or whether, like Australia and the United Kingdom, Canada needs a new national law-enforcement agency with the mandate and authority to address serious organized crime and terrorist threats.
Scott Burbidge, Port Williams, N.S.
That's some child prodigy
I read with interest that the photo caption accompanying the article Gehry Says House Nothing To Write Home About (July 27) noted that 81-year-old Frank Gehry spent his childhood from 1925 onwards at a house on Beverley St. in Toronto. I pity his mother, but a five-year gestation period from 1925 to his birth in 1929 may explain the extraordinary development of the architect's brain.
Konrad H. Kinzl, Peterborough, Ont.