A man tries in vain to get on the property ladder.Mark Airs/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Payment plan
Re “The federal budget admits millennials and Gen Z are being left behind. Now it’s time to fix the system” (Report on Business, April 20): It is hard for me to imagine why contributor Paul Kershaw would support British Columbia’s “wealth tax” on the theoretical value of homes assessed at more than $3-million.
Millennials of modest income, who may inherit family homes but without the cash flow to pay this wealth tax, would be forced to sell to high-income purchasers who can afford the tax. Further, those with senior parents of modest means, who may have to defer this punitive tax, would experience the erosion of their future inheritance.
This is why we should tax income, not theoretical wealth.
V.J. Dartnell Vancouver
Re “Spread the pain” (Letters, April 20): “New capital-gains taxes … will affect every single cottage owner across the country.”
At a time when working people are struggling to afford putting a roof over their heads, owning a seasonal recreation property, even a modest one, requires a certain level of personal wealth beyond affording a home. I would say cottage owners are therefore personally wealthy.
I include myself, in that I have the privilege of retreating to a seasonal recreational park each summer, something I consider myself fortunate to be able to do, and not many can.
Carol Gottlob Burlington, Ont.
Old fashioned
Re “The world can change course before we arrive at Planet Plastic” and “This could be the year we solve plastics pollution” (Opinion, April 20): I was again dismayed at the reminder of the “single-use” tsunami that has become normalized since my childhood.
Remember glass milk bottles left at our doorstep, paper grocery bags, waxed paper around sandwiches and so on? It does not feel undoable to do things the old way.
Where I live, we have an organic food co-op with bulk bins for filling our own boxes and bags, and a package-free vegan grocery store where we can do likewise or order online, returning containers for the refundable deposit. To be sure, living this way is more work, likely unfamiliar to a younger generation, and not something that can be adopted at large overnight.
But it has been done before. How hard can it be?
Carol Lewis London, Ont.
Plants and animals
Re “Ending agriculture isn’t the climate-crisis solution some think it is” (Opinion, April 20): Contributor Taras Grescoe provides a persuasive argument that farming need not give way to “precision fermentation,” and that the real problem is industrial farming rather than its smaller scale counterpart.
My research on developing countries, where the great majority of the world’s population lives, with much of it still engaged in agriculture, has led me to exactly this conclusion. Small farms are usually more productive per acre than large ones (counterintuitive to most people), more environmentally protective and far better at generating income for families in the bottom half of income distribution.
Large farms generate little employment per unit of land, and thereby push overall wage rates down. Even more than in the United States or Canada, the problem lies with ecologically damaging large farms such as those for cattle in Brazil and other forms of monoculture.
Albert Berry Toronto
Economic forces have brought us to where we are.
Consolidating farm resources facilitates feeding more people with less. We create more food so that more people can live in the many towers we build. They, in turn, support the many businesses that keep our economy growing, so we can have more people and stuff.
From one perspective, it’s great to have more people and stuff than we’ve ever had. But how much do we need? We should assume we’ve reached the limits of our planet’s ability to support us.
Drawbacks from megafarming, then, are the same we face from megacorporations of all kinds. When it comes to corporate growth, all else is secondary, from the sustainability of an economic system that distributes wealth through the value of labour to the sustainability of our planet.
Jamie Brougham Ottawa
Re “Why striking down Ontario’s ‘ag-gag’ law is so important” (April 22): Another hallmark of “ag-gag” laws is that they get rammed through, while meaningful legislative change to improve animal well-being moves at a glacial pace, if at all.
Animal agriculture is subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars, so taxpayers should have the right to know what happens behind the closed doors of industrialized farms. Instead, they are usually fed a litany of euphemisms designed to humane-wash, greenwash or otherwise mislead.
According to which Canadian values is it acceptable to deny legal protection for the most vulnerable in society, while passing laws that criminalize those who seek to expose their abuse?
Debbie Wall Winnipeg
Thank you for highlighting the difficulty in reporting animal cruelty in our food production.
I am not vegan. Yet. Teetering on the edge.
How can I admire robins and cardinals then eat chicken for supper? I can hope the end was quick.
Is that a high enough standard?
Kathleen Moore Toronto
On campus
Re “Jewish students are being forced to weigh a new factor when choosing universities” (Opinion, April 20): The behaviour of our best and brightest at American and Canadian universities is appalling to me.
Jewish Americans and Canadians are no more responsible for the behaviour of Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza than Palestinian Americans and Canadians are responsible for the behaviour of Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7.
Patty Benjamin Victoria
When in Rome
Re “What we gain from mass tourism” (April 20): We should weigh the consequences of overtourism.
Tourism workers in the Canary Islands reportedly live in tents and caves. On the Greek islands, young doctors and teachers are asked to evacuate their rented places every April to make room for the tourist hordes who arrive every summer.
Students in larger destination cities have a hard time finding accommodations, because most affordable housing has been converted into short-term rentals. Even by economic measures, governmental overdependence on tourism seems short-sighted, to say nothing about infrastructure costs, environmental degradation and so forth.
If we want to talk about the positive effects of tourism, what good comes from a “Disneyfied” city? Rome is not only a beautiful open-air museum, but also alive with such character only her local residents can give.
What would Rome be like if one only met tourists, who just want to check off destinations and post “I was there” photos to Instagram?
Nicholas Christoforou Hamilton
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