The Senate of Canada building and Senate Chamber in Ottawa on Feb. 18, 2019.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
On your own
Re “A test for the new Senate awaits” (Editorial, May 29): A positive legacy that I’m sure will emerge from the Trudeau Liberals’ time in office is the decision to reshape the functional dynamics of the Senate, by replacing voting blocs with non-partisan individuals unencumbered by party politics and pressure to vote along party lines.
Doing as they were told, members from the old Senate structure functioned more as a political rubber stamp than as a source for sober second thought.
Free to vote and speak their own minds, these newly independent men and women are far more likely to ensure that legislation before them is in the best interest of all Canadians, and not simply a reflection of ideological preference.
Edward Carson Toronto
Extra emissions
Re “Canada needs to seize a global LNG export opportunity” (Report on Business, May 27): When emissions from shale gas extraction, liquidizing the gas, tank evaporation, ocean transportation, fugitive emissions and vaporization at the other end are included, the emissions of liquefied natural gas are higher than those from burning coal.
A study by Robert Howarth of Cornell University looked at the life-cycle assessment of emissions from LNG, finding them to be at least 44 per cent higher than those from burning domestic coal and more than twice as high in some of the cases researched.
One conclusion of the study was the need to “move away from the use of LNG as a fuel as quickly as possible, and to immediately stop construction of any new LNG infrastructure, because of methane emissions, particularly those upstream and midstream emissions associated with the shale gas used to produce LNG.”
Peter Smith Sarnia, Ont.
Medical support
Re “Uncertainty underlies health care for 10,000 people in Sault Ste. Marie as clinic cuts off patients” (May 28): The brings to mind a suggestion by doctor Jane Philpott: Address the shortage of family physicians by paying them more and setting up clinics with administrative staff.
We don’t expect teachers to pay for the facilities they teach in, nor do all the administration involved in running a school. Why do we feel doctors should?
In Ontario, instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on increasing the opportunity to buy booze (“Ontario blowing $225-million to cancel its Beer Store contract is a scandal, not something to celebrate” – May 28), perhaps the money could be spent reregistering patients in Sault Ste. Marie.
Marilyn Dolenko Ottawa
Down and out
Re “With a glut of office space, Windsor is betting on new measures to lure tenants back downtown” (Report on Business, May 27): This is the outcome predicted by critic Alex Bozikovic (”Will Windsor’s new hospital heal the city, or do it harm?” – May 6, 2019), who detailed the problems with relocating Windsor’s downtown hospital to the city’s rural fringe. He asked why a government would “suck the life out of a city?”
Downtown Windsor is dying, and now politicians will spend even more tax dollars to try and revive it, a problem which they created. Funds are wasted by all levels of government when decision drivers on public projects do not include the effect on climate change.
Keeping the hospital in place would not only have ensured downtown Windsor remained vital, but would have contributed to a more walkable and denser city, preserved greenfield development land and saved taxpayer dollars.
Karen Prandovszky Toronto
Heart to heart
Re “Don’t trust your heart health to your wearable device” (May 27): When I was diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection in 2016 at Vancouver General Hospital, I was told that if I had been anywhere else at the time, I probably would not have been diagnosed correctly.
Knowledge is gradually spreading, but many SCAD survivors still feel scared and alone, struggling to find a cardiologist and dealing with family physicians (if they are lucky enough to have one) who may know nothing about it.
I formed a peer support group, SCAD BC, with others I met at VGH’s SCAD-specific cardiac rehab program. We now meet via Zoom instead of in person. Participants at our monthly meetings come from all over British Columbia, and even from across Canada and parts of the United States.
Janice Wasik Delta, B.C.
Return to sender
Re “Canada Post is failing at being a business and must be restructured” (Report on Business, May 29): Thousands of small but vital businesses, especially in remote areas, depend on the extensive delivery network and excellent security offered by Canada Post.
The extra billion dollars a year needed to run Canada Post across the vastness of Canada should be a necessary investment for the Canadian good.
David Ellis Bookseller, Vancouver
Stephen Harper’s government had started down the road to reforming the postal service.
Plans were in place to make cuts to home delivery. Around the corner from my house in a Vancouver suburb, a cement pad was poured to accommodate community mailboxes. The hiring of new postal employees ceased and attrition was causing the total number of employees to drop. Indeed, across all federal government departments, similar cuts were made.
Then Trudeau’s Liberals came to power with the backing of the NDP. The cement footings around the corner from my house were removed, and Canada Post delivery trucks displayed signs that announced, in English and French, “We are hiring.”
This vignette seems emblematic of the Trudeau government’s lack of concern for fiscal discipline. Unfortunately, similar reforms should be made throughout our federal civil service if Canada is to prosper in the future.
James Nightingale Delta, B.C.
Cool it
Re “Misting stations pilot project in Toronto schools aims to combat overheated classrooms” (May 29): The photo of kids cooling themselves under a blue-tented misting station, with the school in the background, says it all. Asphalt paving everywhere within sight.
There is a more permanent and effective way to cool kids that would increase in value with each year, rather than depreciate: trees. Nature’s breathing machines have been relegated to the far margins of most Canadian schoolyards for generations.
Is it not time to reverse this trend and stop paving up to the walls of schools, and start planting appropriate species of trees? A mature maple can transpire hundreds of litres of cooling water on a hot day.
And who is going to throw a picnic blanket under a blue tent on top of asphalt? I rest my case.
Mark Cullen Chair, Canadian Trees For Life; Markham, Ont.
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