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Garbage glut
China's mounting garbage problem highlights the link between greater wealth and increasing waste (China's Growing Garbage Problem – May 12).
The solution begins with knowledge. All Canadian school boards and municipalities should build classrooms at local landfill sites so children from kindergarten through Grade 12 can spend at least one day a year learning about garbage, right at the dump. Seeing is believing, and what students would see would have a profound impact on their future consumptive behaviour.
Geoff Lee, Thunder Bay
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The debt load
Re There Is No Such Thing As Good Debt – Report on Business, May 11: The chart accompanying Rob Carrick's article about mortgage debt was interesting, and illustrated how gains in the value of a home are offset by the costs of carrying a mortgage, and maintaining the property. I guess my family could save that $146,000 by sleeping in the park for the next 30 years …
Tom Reader, Peterborough, Ont.
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A $146,000 shortfall over 30 years means that the cost of accommodation works out to less than $500 a month. How can one live cheaper, unless in a cardboard box over a sidewalk grate? We pay the cost of housing because we want to live in a house; expecting to live at no cost, and make a profit doing it, is loony.
H.J. Whidden, Wolfville, N.S.
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Your series about the increasing debt of Canadians is supported by the comments of Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz ('We Need To Try Something Else' – Focus, May 9). His book, The Great Divide, confirms how our political system and capitalism have benefited the very rich at the expense of the lower and middle class.
Any economy that does not deliver a reasonable standard of living for most of its citizens is a failed economy. When you add in jobs lost as a result of low-cost, high-quality imports, you have a major political issue for the next federal election.
H.V. McMurray, Mississauga, Ont.
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Parade of history
Re Russia Parades For Victory Day While West Watches From Afar – May 9: The large photograph shows banners proclaiming the Second World War years as 1941-1945. Those dates are a fiction. The Soviet Union entered the war in September, 1939, invading and occupying the eastern third of Poland after signing a secret non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany to partition Poland. Soviet action against Finland occurred soon after the invasion of Poland.
Marek Rozwadowski, Port Alberni, B.C.
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Pay for PSWs
Re Minister Vows Quick Action On Delayed PSW Pay Hike – May 12: My fiancée works for a company that places nurses and personal support workers in Toronto hospitals. She works 12-hour shifts, with few breaks, and makes barely more than minimum wage for a 50-hour week. Hospitals no longer hire staff directly; the work is subcontracted out. We treat the front-line workers in our health care sector like pawns.
Matthew Midgley, Toronto
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Thalidomide help
Re Frustrated Victims Set Compensation Deadline For Ottawa – May 11: Obviously thalidomide victims do not constitute a large enough voting block to warrant full, fair, and immediate compensation. How difficult can it be to set up annual pensions for 94 people, especially when there is no precedent being established as there will never be additional claimants?
Margaret Smith, Toronto
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One hopes the government is not so crass as to withhold compensation for thalidomide victims another five months just to make political hay come election time. Have these people not suffered enough? Or does propaganda value trump compassion?
Jason Scott, Kanata, Ont.
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Timely memory
Re Israeli Agents Nab Adolf Eichmann In Argentina – May 11: As a young student at Holy Blossom Temple religious school, I learned about the Holocaust, and remember how the capture of Adolf Eichmann became a topic for our Grade 2 class. I vividly recall our teacher asking us, "What should be done to punish this man?"
Our curriculum at the time covered the growth of a new country called Israel, filled with communal farms. I remember one student's answer: "Give him a teaspoon and send him out into the fields and make him farm the land of the people whom he tried to erase from the Earth."
I often wonder how much we could have learned from Eichmann, historically, had we incarcerated him instead of hanging him. He got off easy.
Andrea Marcus, Toronto
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Why Kim?
It was nothing short of an abomination that a review of Kim Kardashian West's collection of self-portraits was the lead item in Saturday's Books section (Express Yourself(ie) – Arts, May 9). I suppose the next thing we'll see will be hosannas to Paris Hilton on the front of the Report on Business.
Ed MacLellan, Halifax
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Where's Jim?
I may finally understand what has been puzzling me since The Globe and Mail endorsed Jim Prentice for Alberta premier (In This Election We Are Picking A CEO For The Province – editorial, May 1). It must have been foreign hackers who wrote that editorial.
I expect the hackers will never be identified, but I now wonder whether the same trouble makers may have kidnapped Mr. Prentice? He hasn't been seen since he resigned his seat before all the votes in Calgary Foothills were even counted.
Harvey Krahn, Edmonton
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Duty calls
All my life I have wanted to be called for jury duty (Filling The Jury Pool – editorial, May 11). Finally my summons came to do so, just this month. I thought it would be interesting, doing my public duty, and so on.
Alas, on rushing to my spouse with the good news, I was met with: "What? A 93-year-old who naps in the afternoon, although admittedly in great shape, a Second World War veteran, who would be asking witnesses to, 'Speak up dear, I can't hear you,' and would want to know if toilet facilities are near the jury box."
After sober second thought, I gracefully declined, and a kindly clerk seemed to think it was a wise decision.
Larry Wulff, Toronto