An ambulance drives past Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg on June 15, 2023. A review into the death of man who was waiting in a Winnipeg hospital hallway to receive care found that there was a lack available beds in the emergency room at the time and there was a surge in patients requiring emergency care.david lipnowski/The Canadian Press
At court
Re “The genocide case against Israel is an abuse of the postwar legal order” (Jan. 9): Although I totally agree, I also think the case should proceed.
A case against Hamas or any other entity can also be brought. They are not mutually exclusive.
The analysis used in the case against Israel should further the judicial basis of what is a genocide. I very much want to know the difference between Russia’s conduct in Ukraine and Israeli conduct in Gaza.
I believe there is a world of difference between the two. I believe Russia will be condemned and Israel vindicated, but having judicial reasoning to support the findings in each case will be instructive and improve judicial reasoning for future cases.
Michael Di Paolo Toronto
I cannot help but wonder when, and by what means, contributor Rosalie Abella hopes to see the international legal order chime in on Gaza.
“There will inevitably be accountability,” and there is a “sophisticated set of legal instruments” developed after the Second World War “to prevent, minimize and sanction global conflicts.” One of these instruments is the International Court of Justice, established in 1945. Nevertheless, letting the court do its work is somehow beyond the pale when it comes to Gaza.
Instead “history,” and not a court, “will judge Israel’s response” to the Oct. 7 attack. I find it unfortunate to see an eminent jurist calling for the international community not to use the tools of international law, and to leave the matter to history’s judgment after events have finally run their course.
Thoby King Toronto
Contributor Rosalie Abella, a distinguished jurist who lost family in the Holocaust, is outraged by South Africa’s genocide charge against Israel. She thinks history will deliver the correct verdict on Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
In the meantime, could international disapproval, manifested in these genocide accusations, lead to a ceasefire that might benefit all parties? If not, hopefully the International Court of Justice might deliver its own verdict on all the human-rights violators in Israel and Palestine.
Human-rights violations can be sanctioned in international courts, even if they don’t amount to genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention. However, I find the South African complaint measured, carefully drafted and evidence-based.
As someone raised, like Ms. Abella, in a Jewish household, I think it’s time we heed the words of a Jewish Nobel laureate and “bury the rag deep in your face,” because “now is the time for your tears.”
Andrew Lyons; Member, Independent Jewish Voices Toronto
Re “Make the case” (Letters, Jan. 10): A letter-writer implies that Israel’s defensive war in Gaza is the application of lex talionis, or “biblical” eye-for-an-eye justice. The Jewish legal interpretation of the biblical verse says that the penalty for injuring a person was monetary compensation and not corporal punishment, unlike the laws of other religious systems. To accuse Israel of genocidal behaviour in Gaza, by implying that it is governed by biblical principles, is outrageous to me.
Morris Sosnovitch Toronto
Over, under
Re “Manitoba to spend $12-million on highway safety after deadly crash killed 17 people” (Jan. 9): Building an interchange with an underpass or overpass on the Trans-Canada Highway would take 20 to 25 years? Really?
Needing such a length of time seems quite improbable in an advanced society such as ours. Decades ago, the United States built its interstate highway system with overpasses and underpasses in much shorter times.
Where is federal funding to protect Trans-Canada traffic on the Prairies, by building overpasses as it seems to do in other parts of the country? This should be a no-brainer.
Bruce Hutchison Ottawa
The state of the Trans-Canada Highway would be laughable, were it not the source of so many tragedies.
It should be a national embarrassment that most of the rural access points to this highway in the Prairies, and some elsewhere, are lethal level crossings. The U.S. interstate system has, I would venture, not a single level crossing.
I am astonished that any remedies other than overpasses are even being considered – wider medians, rumble strips, even traffic signals and other such absurdities. Saving lives is paramount, but not being the laughing stock of tourists and traffic engineers also counts for something.
The Trans-Canada was the result of a federal initiative. Another federal program to upgrade it coast-to-coast to uniform and modern standards should be a welcome priority for a government approaching an election.
It would save lives and benefit the economy.
John Edmond Ottawa
Emergency call
Re “ER overcrowding won’t be solved by telling sick people to stay home” (Jan. 9): In 2022, at age 74, I spent 30 hours in various emergency rooms.
It started with a trip to one hospital for severe abdominal pain. After a five-hour wait the pain subsided, so I went home.
Sure enough, there was another attack and another trip to an ER where I spent eight hours. I was found to need gallbladder surgery and sent home to wait for a surgery date.
The final episode was an attack so severe that I called 911. I spent 17 hours in another ER before being admitted for surgery. (I then spent 24 hours in a hospital bed after being bumped several times for more severe surgical emergencies.)
I consider myself fortunate. Apart from my gallbladder, I was healthy and could tolerate the experience.
Having made it through this outer ring of hell, I did receive excellent care. But it shouldn’t have to be like this.
D.J. Baptist Toronto
I find emergency room crowding not so much a function of too many patients presenting with minor problems, but more a logjam of patients awaiting a bed in hospital for disgraceful lengths of time, sometimes days.
They are blocked from admission by already hospitalized patients who are prevented from discharge by a lack of home, transitional, rehab, long-term, mental-health and primary care. “Follow up and consult with your primary care provider” has become a sick joke.
In my many decades of working in a regional ER, I rarely found that crowding and dysfunction was due to an overload of unnecessary patient visits. Diverting such patients would doubtless provide them with a better experience than many hours of waiting, but it wouldn’t significantly address crowding inside the department.
And that patient with a hangnail? They actually had invasive group A strep, the cause of flesh-eating disease.
David Walker MD, FRCPC; professor, emergency medicine and policy studies, Queen’s University Kingston
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com