Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives to speak to reporters during the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly at United Nations headquarters, on Sept. 24.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Rock the vote
Re “Party faithful” (Letters, Sept. 24): A letter-writer describes his commitment to the Liberal Party but also states that, come election time, he will “stay at home and … sit on his hands” because he’s angered by his party’s spinelessness.
I, too, am dismayed by Justin Trudeau’s hubris and refusal to admit, as Joe Biden grudgingly did, that his time in the spotlight may be over. But is it not also spineless to sit out and choose not to vote when it may pave the way for Pierre Poilievre, whom the letter-writer describes as having “proudly stood with the protesters on Parliament Hill in 2022,″ to become the next prime minister?
D. J. Baptist Toronto
Payout
Re “Public system spent at least $1.5-billion on private nurses last year, study finds” (Sept. 23): I operate a staffing agency which provides nurse staffing to hospitals and others in the health care sector, and I take issue with many of the assertions made in a new report.
The $1.5-billion “handed over” to private staffing firms also includes the corresponding payments we make to nurses. Together with travel expenses and other statutory employment obligations, it is likely staffing agencies earn 10 per cent of this amount, with the majority going to direct wages paid to nurses, money the public sector would have spent anyway.
The report also suggests we employ the equivalent of 3,724 full-time nurses, indicating, based on recent information from the Canadian Nurses Association, that we employ less than 1 per cent of the nation’s 460,000 nurses. There may be many problems in Canadian health care – staffing agencies should not be considered one of them.
David Kennedy Director, Bullitt Staffing Toronto
Re “Healthy ROI” (Letters, Sept. 24): A letter-writer thinks Canada is “duped” into hiring nurse staffing agencies.
If governments have to resort to filling nursing (and other health care worker) vacancies through private recruiters, the source of the problem seems pretty obvious: Governments aren’t paying nurses market rates for their services, and aren’t providing them agreeable working conditions.
Since we can’t draft nurses into involuntary servitude, the solution to disintermediating the staffing agencies should be to pay our health care workers what they are worth in the private market, and to make their working conditions more palatable.
If governments want to provide universal public health care, they shouldn’t expect health care workers to bear the cost.
John Harris Toronto
New start
Re “A campaign for a new New Brunswick” (Editorial, Sept. 21): I was surprised at your pessimistic tone in outlining the economic challenges faced by New Brunswick.
In the last six years, there has been considerable improvement in the province’s economy. Our credit rating has been upgraded. Our debt load has been reduced by more than $2-billion over this time.
What surprised me the most was quoting the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s economic projections to the year 2098. To put any credence in an economic prediction for 74 years from now feels ludicrous.
Often your editorials have been justifiably disdainful of government-deficit projections extending beyond an election cycle. As the last few years have shown us, the world and our country can face challenges that no one can predict.
Colin Lockhart Carleton North, N.B.
Higher education
Re “Who’s subsidizing whom?” (Letters, Sept. 24): A letter-writer thinks that an engineer should be trained by an engineering firm, not by a university. A good engineer is educated, not trained.
Engineering education – the learning of a broad base of fundamentals, a wide range of applications and the effects of one’s activities on society – should clearly be a university function. Training, on the other hand, is imparting a narrow range of skills for a specific job.
There is a world of difference.
William Hallett Emeritus professor, department of mechanical engineering, University of Ottawa
Hard to see
Re “Age-verification laws won’t protect kids from porn – and they could even make things worse” (Sept. 17): Age verification alone won’t prevent kids from accessing webpages intended for adult audiences. But at the same time, symbols matter.
Morals are constructions we actively build through social norming. Hurdles such as age verification help communicate what is socially acceptable.
The experience of sneaking around to view something taboo is entirely different from one in which simply typing a URL leads straight to the wild west of porn. Without these types of barriers, the message kids receive is that no one really cares what they see online.
We can’t always stop kids from breaking rules. But without rules, they won’t even know we tried.
Esther Steeves Edmonton
Truckin’ on
Re “The massive trucks flooding our city streets should be subject to different parking rules” (Opinion, Sept. 21): One of my favourite mean-girl things to do is take my Prius hybrid to the gas station for its monthly fill-up.
Already pumping when I arrive are often drivers of F-150 trucks and Escalade SUVs. The drivers of the behemoths on wheels are neither farmers nor tradesmen, just ordinary office workers by their clothes.
I fill up my tank; the fellows are still pumping. I walk into the store to pay, pick up a candy bar, stand in line awhile; they’re still pumping. I pay my $40 (sometimes $50); they’re still pumping. I get into my Prius and leave; they’re still pumping.
As I pull out of the gas station, I look over my shoulder and they’re still pumping. I snicker, because I am a mean girl.
Claudette Claereboudt Regina
As a Calgary stockbroker, I was particularly affected by the boom-bust nature of Cowtown’s economy.
During the nasty downturn in 1991, I took a part-time job as a parking valet at the venerable Palliser hotel. On my first day there was a convention of accountants, most of them driving monstrous trucks with double tires. It was a hugely stressful baptism by fire, negotiating these behemoths around a cramped parkade.
Any relief I felt on the last day was short-lived: According to the manifest, the next group checking in were cattle producers from northern Alberta. If accountants drove monster trucks, I could only imagine what cattlemen drove. Then the first cowboy arrived – in a Mazda Miata.
The real cowboys drove nice but rather plain cars to come into town. They had nothing to prove.
Ken Johnston Ottawa
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