'Girls like me'
Re Bring Back Our Girls (Folio, May 6): Hello, my name is Hannah Greenfield and I am 12 years old. I read in in the paper about the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram three weeks ago.
I have researched this more deeply and I believe that our government should be helping these girls. The Nigerian government is now asking for help. Nigeria is going to need help for the rescue. They will also need help as the girls, their families, their community and their country recovers.
I want to live in a country that does not stand by as this happens.
If we just stand by, then we are saying girls like me and my classmates don't matter.
Hannah Greenfield, North Vancouver
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Gumption to clarify
It is a very scary spectacle – the Prime Minister hurling slings and arrows at the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, as if she were a campaign opponent and wide open to vilification, all this without the PMO having the gumption to clarify its aspersions and knowing full well that the Chief Justice, by virtue of her position, is unable to descend into the fray.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has always been regarded by the members of the legal profession as deeply principled.
I would lay my professional life on the line, as I am sure virtually every lawyer in Canada would, that the Chief Justice would never have compromised the integrity of the Supreme Court. She was merely acting in her administrative capacity, long before the PMO put forward its candidates.
To suggest she was trying to influence a case is beyond the pale.
Our judiciary is the gatekeeper of the rule of law, the watch dog that discerns between laws passed by Parliament that are just, fair and constitutionally valid, and others that are not. It is that scrutiny that marks us as a civilized and democratic society.
Debby Cumberford, lawyer, Vancouver
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At odds on Ukraine
Re Freedom Is A National Interest (May 6): Ukraine was a democracy with a majority-elected (albeit corrupt) president in 2010. That he was more Russia's man than the West's is what is at issue here.
Not to throw support behind Viktor Yanukovych or Russia, but the coup that unseated him was hardly a "democratic" uprising.
I cannot imagine Canadians supporting a "populist" overthrow of the sitting Conservative government and then accepting a new PM installed by a rump Parliament. Moreover, there is no way we would tolerate U.S. senators and ambassadors handing out muffins at an anti-government protest – and no democratic country should.
Accepting this in Ukraine is pure hypocrisy.
Jeremy Fry, Sydney, Australia
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Professor J.L. Granatstein is correct when he observes how Ukraine's freedom is in Canada's national interest. That said, he writes that a majority of Crimeans wanted to join the Russian Federation. But the website of Vladimir Putin's "Council on Civil Society and Human Rights" posted a blog, soon removed, reporting barely 30 per cent of Crimea's citizens voted on March 16, of whom only 15 per cent supported annexation.
There is no significant support for dismembering Ukraine in any region of that country. Canada is quite right to strongly oppose what lies at the root of Ukraine's recent troubles, namely Russian imperialism and neo-colonialism.
Lubomyr Luciuk, professor, political science, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston
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Statistics update
Re Job-Vacancy Rate Plunges As Tories Drop Kijiji Data (May 5): May I suggest that our science-based government also delete data from the crystal ball lady and the Ouija board?
Barb Cram, Courtenay, B.C.
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Inequity, inequality
There continues to be much discussion of income inequality, with Margaret Wente's column (Who Cares About Inequality? Wonks – May 3) and Ed Broadbent's letter (Inequality Is Real – May 6) both contributing.
I think some of the confusion and debate around this problem is caused by inappropriate use of "inequality." Inequality in income is appropriate. I have no problem, for example, with a bank CEO earning substantially more than a teller. That's fair, and I think the teller would agree.
But I do have a problem with what I view as excessive compensation paid to that CEO, particularly in relation to the teller. That's unfair – that is, it's inequitable. So isn't it inequity that we're discussing, not inequality?
And doesn't that also apply to broad comparisons of top-tier income with the income of the "middle class"?
That being the case, we first need to put some sort of measure on inequity – and then find appropriate ways of correcting it.
Peter Hirst, Oakville, Ont.
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FIPA's a 'bad deal'
Derek Burney and Fen Osler Hampson should be celebrating the fact that the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement has not been ratified (As China's Ascent Continues, Canada Is Missing In Action – May 5). FIPA is a bad deal for Canada.
Exceptionally, it gives a right of market-access by Chinese investors to Canada but not vice versa. It backtracks on Canada's long-standing commitment to transparency in investor-state arbitration. It removes a standard clause in Canada's treaties that permits the negotiation of aboriginal-impact and benefit agreements in the resource sector.
It has the longest lock-in period of any Canadian trade treaty. Its allowance for foreign investment screening is much broader for China than Canada.
A stronger economic relationship with China cannot be based on a one-sided legal framework. The federal government should be applauded if it is attempting to renegotiate the deal.
Gus Van Harten, associate professor, Osgoode Hall Law School
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Clarity spoken here
Since there is an annual list in the press of the worst examples of official "doublespeak," surely there should be one for the finest examples of official "clarity" ('Everything You Ever Saw On Moby Dick' – May 6).
I hereby nominate Wayne Ledwell of Newfoundland's Whale Release and Strandlings, who declared the following about the need to quickly dispose of the beached sperm whale's carcass: "No one wants to touch them … everything becomes gooey and slippery and you can't stand up on the whale and it gets on your boots and you can't get the smell off and then you go home and the dog rolls in it and you get it in your kitchen and you curse the whales, and you curse the government and … it becomes a mess."
Clear, concise, no ambiguity. And can't you just imagine it being spoken with a wonderful Newfoundland accent?
Wendy Kerr Hadley, Mississauga