Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says the 'vast, vast majority' of Liberal MPs continue to support their leader.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Home and away
Re “U.K.’s Labour Party wins landslide victory in British election” (July 6): Goodbye to all that: Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
This election was a study in the superiority of parliamentary democracy and the Westminster style of governance: a free and fair election, conducted in a rational six-week span, without judicial overtones or overblown, hyperbolic media.
For this July 4, we should raise a glass to Britain every bit as much as the United States.
Adam de Pencier Toronto
Re “Under fire” (Letters, July 5): A letter-writer assures us that the separation of powers in the United States ensures there would be no “abuses of power by deplorables” after the coming election, therefore democracy is safe there.
That’s the theory. However, the Republicans are likely to take both the Senate and the House. Should Donald Trump win, the Supreme Court has demonstrated they are likely to support whatever actions he plans to take by signalling a president is immune from the rule of law in official matters.
The erosion of rule of law governing those in power feels like just a beginning.
Dave Sanderson Carleton Place, Ont.
Re “Freeland says ‘vast, vast majority’ of Liberal caucus supports Trudeau in wake of Toronto by-election loss” (July 5): Chrystia Freeland and other Liberals seem delusional if they think their stunning loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s sends them a “clear message” that they need to do a better job of addressing affordability concerns.
I live in St Paul’s. I voted for the Conservative candidate, something I have never done before, to send a simple, clear message: It’s time for the Prime Minister to go.
What could be clearer than that?
Michael Scott Toronto
Full access
Re “B.C. to require new homes to be adaptable for disabilities, prompting concern from developers” (July 1): Kudos to British Columbia. Providing accessible and adaptable housing is a simple but urgent matter of human rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted in 2006, recognizes this.
Developers often say that such requirements make a housing unit more expensive. They’ve used that argument to push back against adaptable housing for many years. But as long as accessibility features are incorporated at the design stage, additional cost can be negligible.
Anyone can become disabled at any time. May this be merely the first of many essential moves toward creating accessible housing across Canada.
Carol Damioli Toronto
I used to provide “handy helper” services for a non-profit community organization that supports clients living at home.
People with severe arthritis of the hands benefit from touch-free faucets. People with balance and mobility impairments benefit from grab bars for bathtubs, shower stalls and toilets in a wide range of locations and orientations.
For high-rise towers, underground parkades should provide adequate height clearances for wheelchair vans and more accessible parking stalls. For detached homes, due to the hilly terrain in much of British Columbia, accessible front doors and garages may be a design challenge with major construction costs.
Derek Wilson Port Moody, B.C.
Vancouver is refusing to adhere to the new law’s timeline. The result will be continued hardship for seniors and people of all ages with disabilities.
Statistics Canada reports that at least 27 per cent of Canadians have a disability, yet building codes have been allowed to ignore this demographic and contravene their human rights.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports that the cost of building a new apartment is the same whether it’s accessible or not, and it is only minimally more costly to make a house accessible – if it is included in the design. So we know cost, then, is really not a factor.
The benefits of having accessible housing include fewer falls and hospitalizations; reduced need for in-home help and reduced caregiver burnout; reduced costs for long-term care; improved mental and physical health; increased employment of people with disabilities.
No tax dollars should ever create accessibility barriers.
Kate Chung Co-founder, Accessible Housing Network; Toronto
Overflow
Re “Ottawa considering buying hotels to house growing number of asylum seekers” (July 3): Has Ottawa lost its mind?
The world is in such a state of migratory chaos that Canada, like other nations, seems well past the stage of being able to accept unlimited asylum seekers. What were once manageable schemes are now overwhelming the services of nations, and even the tolerance of their citizens.
Our stressed middle class is already taking a large federal tax hit, and now Ottawa wants to buy hotels for foreigners? To continue on this path would be irresponsible and socially dangerous.
It would further undermine services that Canada desperately requires for its own citizens, and may stoke resentment against asylum seekers already in Canada.
W. E. Hildreth Toronto
Recent history
Re “How attitudes to immigration have evolved in The Globe through the generations” (July 1): In Canada, “restrictive covenants” were clauses in land deeds that forbade a property to be sold to Black, Asian, Italian and Jewish immigrants, and so on.
I am the secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association, a charity that sued itself in the early 1940s for owning a property that had a restrictive covenant, which said it could not be sold to ”Jews or others of objectional nationality.” The association was found guilty In 1943. It was the first case to challenge a restrictive covenant.
Canada did not do segregation or apartheid, but we did do restrictive covenants all across the country.
Wendy Terry Toronto
In bloom
Re “Inside a New Brunswick mine, a beaver’s cadaver sprouts new life” (July 1): Macabre mycologists need not confine their forays to the depths of old mines. In the 1989 book The Outer Shores, a delightful quartet of impassioned mycologists report that the carcass-strewn coasts of Haida Gwaii are a littoral lunch box for “corpse finder” fungal feasting.
Hebeloma and Lactarius mushrooms proliferate on Sitka deer carcasses, while the more omnivorous Onygena corvina generously degrades the feathers of bald eagle, rhinoceros auklet and blue heron corpses alike. Its epicure cousin Onygena equina is particularly partial to deer hooves.
Unlike sombre-clad humans at funerals, many of these mushrooms, such as the resplendently purple Laccaria amethysteo-occidentalis, sport bright colours. Others specialize on salmon remains brought into the woods by bears, passing on valuable nutrients from distant seas to awaiting masses of rootlets of nearby trees.
They are ecological assets.
Greg Michalenko Waterloo, Ont.
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