Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to supporters at an anti-carbon tax rally in Calgary on Friday, Oct. 5, 2018.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com
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Carbon discomfort
Re Liberals Unveil Rebate Plan, Bringing Carbon-Tax Battle To Ford (Oct. 24): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says pollution in Canada “is no longer free.” Apparently it is for the 80 per cent of households that will receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon tax.
How is this supposed to change Canadians’ behaviour? By linking the rebate to annual income tax returns, what we really have is another classic Liberal income-redistribution scheme wrapped up as saving the planet because the government could not get away with doing it through a change in income tax rates. Vote buying indeed. So much for a different style of politics in Ottawa.
Paul Clarry, Aurora, Ont.
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The main reason Conservatives are opposing the Prime Minister’s carbon tax and rebate plan is because it represents a major transfer of money from the haves to the have-less. This is a direct challenge to the heart of Conservative ideology, which is the protection of the moneyed interests.
Robert Milan, Victoria
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I would like to thank the federal government for taking logical action on climate change by charging for dangerous pollution. Some businesses worry they will pay with no benefit. If a business’s success depends on society suffering the damage from its waste, perhaps it isn’t a viable enterprise. This fee will encourage efficiencies and healthier bottom lines.
Elizabeth Snell, Guelph, Ont.
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Maybe high finance isn’t my strong point, but if you have a 20 per cent carbon tax and you give 90 per cent of it back, doesn’t that make it a 2 per cent carbon tax?
Bruce Henry, Waterloo, Ont.
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There’s a reason people say politicians can’t be trusted. Listening to the Prime Minister rolling out his carbon plan in Ontario on Tuesday, you might have felt relieved (Hey, this tax isn’t that bad) and then even gotten excited (Wow, I could actually make some money out of this thing. Well, go ahead. Bring it on!).
Canadians are not dumb. They know the environment needs to be saved and polluters need to be taxed, so nobody with common sense can expect to make money out of it. This pre-election math being bandied around by politicians to fool voters will have many holes. One discovery is sure to be that the calculations apply to the mythical “average family of four.” We have been suckered into that one many times, only to find out later that our family of four wasn’t their family of four.
Another question a commonsensical voter might want to raise is this: Why is the government proposing to redistribute a whopping 90 per cent of the carbon revenues? Why tax businesses and then pass the revenues back to the people who work there?
Maybe the government should lower the carbon fee and reduce the incentives to be paid out. Otherwise, it makes businesses uncompetitive and they will die out. Then who will be left to pay those promised incentives to the Ontario “family of four”?
Amar Kumar, Burlington, Ont.
Kafkaesque hoops
Re How A Mysterious Skull Became A $70,000 Headache (Oct. 24): Kudos to Ian Brown. I don’t believe that Kafka could have written a better account of the absurdity to which Pat Baker and the poor skull excavated on her property were subjected. As a retired federal bureaucrat, I can only stand in awe of the rules and regulations written by the public servants who implemented the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act. Imagine putting citizens through such unbelievable hoops and then making them pay for it. Pure genius. Such creativity should not go unsung.
Brian Caines, Ottawa
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I applaud Pat Baker for the respectful way she dealt with this enormously frustrating situation. In the end she handled it with admirable grace. On the other hand, your reporter variously describes the skull as “the vintage noggin,” “bothersome bone,” “the topper,” “the Yorick,” and “the noodle fragment” among other descriptions. That skull belonged to a living, breathing human being and deserves respect. This tone echoes the waning respect for human life on the world stage. The Globe and Mail can do better.
Lorna Hruby, Vancouver
Worth/not worth it
Re PM Says Ending Saudi Deal Carries $1-Billion Price Tag (Oct. 24): It would be difficult, expensive and have little impact on Saudi Arabia’s behaviour to try to cancel the armoured vehicle deal with 10 years remaining in the contract. Witness the Saudi response to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s human-rights tweet in August.
Cancelling the contract would invoke huge penalties and see thousands of Canadians lose their jobs, including many employed at subcontractors. Canada’s reputation as a reliable and trusted international supplier would be hurt, and production would just move to U.S. plants. Why penalize Canadians? Just stop buying Saudi oil.
Mike Usatis, Mississauga
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A billion dollars sounds like a lot, but on a per capita basis it is a one-time payment of $27.25 per Canadian. That buys us the privilege of not selling Canadian military equipment to a regime that indiscriminately bombs civilians in Yemen, systematically oppresses women and girls within its borders, and that just murdered and dismembered a journalist inside its embassy in Turkey. For the price of a few boxes of cereal, a case of beer, or a trip for two to the movies, I’d say it’s worth it.
Gyde F. Shepherd, Ottawa
Taught in 2018
Re No, To Kill A Mockingbird Shouldn’t Be Taught In 2018 (Oct. 22): Every year, students are presented with the old reliables of literature – To Kill a Mockingbird, The Giver, Of Mice and Men, Bridge to Terabithia, Lord of the Flies, 1984, The Outsiders – all worthy books, all but one published between 1948 and 1978.
Most importantly, schools already have class sets. This doesn’t mean, however, that these are the best or only books to teach.
As Andray Domise says, To Kill a Mockingbird is a well-written book. It is a fine book to read for many reasons. Teaching children about the realities of racism is not one of them. It offers a child’s view of the world, unerringly voiced, as she encounters an adult world complicated by fear, prejudice, injustice, heroism and more. It is set in a particular place at a particular time. Racism forms a part of the story, as does some kind of unspecified mental illness/disability, in the form of Boo Radley. But no one argues the value of the book is that it teaches children about mental illness.
To Mr. Domise’s list of better books for the curriculum, I would add Christopher Paul Curtis’s award-winning Elijah of Buxton (published in 2007). It works for readers aged 10 to adult. It offers the strong voice of a young person observing adult behaviour and it makes wonderful and sophisticated use of language and humour, while also packing a gut-wrenching punch. It gives a picture of slavery and freedom, the Underground Railroad and a slice of black Canadian history.
Gillian O’Reilly, Toronto