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‘Like a Peanuts sketch’

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Re: Provinces fiddle with the Structure at their peril, Dec. 13, Chris Selley

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Consider youngsters sitting on the ground, colouring one giant image, agreeing amongst themselves which part every would color. They keep inside their borders, crayons by their aspect, colouring their parts. Then one in all them begins colouring one other’s. Assembly with no resistance, he feels his oats, and goes after the opposite’s crayons, too.

That’s Quebec’s Invoice 96 and Invoice 4 in a nutshell. A province trying to insert its personal provisions, marking Q for Quebec, within the Canadian structure. And Q has even taken C’s personal crayons to finish the image.

Quebec nationalists used to need their very own structure. In the present day’s breed appears content material to jot down all around the Canadian Structure as an alternative. Premier Moe Scott, and recently Premier Danielle Smith, have taken a web page out of Quebec’s colouring e book, calling Saskatchewan and Alberta, respectively, “a nation inside a nation.” I assume the phrase “province” is hopelessly provincial for a few of our premiers.

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Children have totally different temperaments, and a few may discover the invasive makes an attempt of others all good enjoyable, resulting in a good-natured free for all with mirth and jocularity. Or, possibly, one thing much less good-natured. However in all instances, this scene, like a Peanuts sketch, has no adults within the room.

Howard Greenfield, Montreal

Not priorities for Canadians

Re: Canada’s Nationwide Gallery has develop into a woke nationwide shame, Andrew Cohen, Dec. 26; and Canada funded this assisted suicide ‘exercise e book’ for kids, Tristin Hopper, Dec. 21

Final Saturday, Andrew Cohen wrote about troubles on the Nationwide Gallery of Canada. Earlier within the week, Tristin Hopper wrote in regards to the Medical Help in Dying (MAID) Exercise Guide that was created with a grant from the Authorities of Canada. Each endeavours, whereas presumably noble, take pleasure in little or no assist amongst Canadians as priorities that deserve the eye of presidency right now.

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In different phrases, really democratic governments haven’t any professional enterprise spending time, cash and energy on these initiatives when our economic system is as distorted as it’s, our armed forces are unable to recruit troopers, our civil service has misplaced management over the issuance of visas and passports, wait occasions for medical care have risen to insupportable ranges, and Ukraine wants all the assistance it may possibly muster to defeat Russia.

Our flesh pressers assume that all the things is a precedence and that they subsequently haven’t any responsibility to deal with these initiatives that their constituents assume are most essential. If we’re to succeed at something, we should know tips on how to establish and pursue a really restricted variety of priorities.

Patrick Cowan, Toronto

Federal authorities’s EV diktat is ‘utter madness’

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Re: Why Liberals should backtrack on ‘aggressive’ push to bump electrical car gross sales, John Ivison, Dec. 24

As one who’s spent his working life doing production-machine design, I proceed to be appalled on the ignorance and ineptitude displayed by our federal Liberal authorities. There is no such thing as a means the auto trade can adjust to this latest diktat. John Ivison is appropriate: Telling auto-makers that one-fifth of their manufacturing in Canada should run on electrical energy by 2026 is completely ludicrous. This timeline is utter madness.

H.Okay. Hocquard, King, Ont.

Let’s finish the charade and cease calling electrical and hydrogen autos “zero emission.” Till the technology and distribution of the electrical energy (or hydrogen) to energy the car, the sourcing of all the supplies from which the car is made, the manufacturing technique of the car itself together with all of its element components, and the end-of-life recycle/disposal processes are all zero emission, then these autos really can’t be categorized as zero emission. These are all very complicated technical points whose options are nonetheless (far?) sooner or later — sadly, points that our legislators and local weather activists are conveniently ignoring. A local weather plan that merely bans current applied sciences and power sources however doesn’t handle, and resolve, these technological challenges isn’t any plan in any respect.

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Till then, it’s all simply foolish phrase video games supposed to cloud the state of affairs and idiot the uninformed.

Lloyd Vinish, Kelowna, B.C.

Liberal math: 2+2=22?

Re: Trudeau has ensured ‘there isn’t any enterprise case’ for oil and gasoline, Rex Murphy, Dec. 24

Rex Murphy aptly summarizes verbally the paucity of thought given by the Canadian authorities to the power wants of Europe on this time of Russia’s reticence to ship LNG merchandise. For instance his view arithmetically may counsel that the elemental truism that 2+2=4 has been bastardized by the Liberals to imply 2+2=22 the place values of reciprocal wants have been cloaked in utterances defying frequent sense.

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Douglas L. Martin, Hamilton, Ont.

Reward for plain talking and Pierre Poilievre

Re: Poilievre and Anglo-Saxon phrases, William Watson, Dec. 27

William Watson’s splendid piece on “plain” phrases jogged my memory of my very own conversion.

Keith Spicer, Canada’s first commissioner of official languages, greatest remembered for his contributions to nationwide bilingualism, grew to become my English-language guru whereas instructing at UBC within the late seventies.

Spicer, later a great good friend, was an evangelist for clear writing, and gave me a listing of guidelines distilled from such books as Strunk and White’s “The Components of Model,” Sir Ernest Gowers’ “Plain Phrases” and Gowers’ revision of H.W. Fowler’s traditional “Fashionable English Utilization.”

One among Spicer’s guidelines was “desire the Saxon to the Romance.” Pierre Poilievre ought to be praised, not criticized, for following it.

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Msgr. Gregory Smith, West Vancouver

A New Yr’s decision for politicians

Re: Decision for 2023: It doesn’t should be this fashion, Joe Oliver, Dec. 20

A New Yr’s decision that Canada ought to embrace is the popularity of the deadly flaw in idealism. Canada’s idealistic fervour in rigidly holding on to the constraints of the Canada Well being Act and our medicare system to the exclusion of all different alternate options to medical care, and its tunnel imaginative and prescient strategy to eradicating fossil fuels at an unrealistic tempo as an alternative of adhering to a realistic, affordable, sustainable timetable is main us down a self-destructive path sure to be detrimental to our future, and we ought to be fast to switch these insurance policies.

Morton Doran, Fairmont, B.C.

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Lester Pearson’s successors

Re: Pearson’s legacy: Seven of his successors assess how he modified Canada, Dec. 27

I loved studying the feedback from the seven dwelling prime ministers on Lester B. Pearson. Properly, to be sincere, I loved six out of seven as Justin Trudeau simply couldn’t resist making the most of being requested to jot down a number of phrases a couple of former prime minister with out praising his authorities’s (and clearly, by inference, his personal) obvious achievements.

I used to be disenchanted however not shocked. Paradoxically, Trudeau’s phrases solely spotlight what former prime minister Pearson was and what the present prime minister shouldn’t be (and can by no means be).

Clark Woodland, Surrey, B.C.

Rural web woes

Re: Inaccessible, unreliable, unaffordable: The battle to get web in rural Canada, Jessica Mundie, Dec. 27

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It’s time Canada acknowledged that web is a part of fundamental infrastructure, as an alternative of being offered by personal corporations that don’t care about much less populated areas. Then our web service can be extra like … nicely, , our medical care, our passport service, our college programs, our roads, our navy, our emergency preparedness, our public transit, our Indigenous water programs …

On second thought — Elon Musk, the place are you?

Tom Curran, Prince Edward County, Ont.

‘Revolving-door justice system placing all residents in danger’

Re: ‘Outraged’: Ontario’s high cop calls for bail change after officer’s killing, Dec. 29

Kudos to OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique for shining a light-weight on our pathetically weak bail system as he lamented the tragic slaughter of one in all his younger officers. The person accused of killing Const. Grzegorz Pierzchala was out on bail on felony prices, together with assaulting a police officer. We deserve higher than the present revolving-door justice system that’s placing all residents in danger by mollycoddling perpetrators of significant crimes.

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Larry Comeau, Ottawa

Cease enjoying video games with well being care

Re: Trudeau content material to look at health-care system crumble, Rahim Mohamed, Dec. 15; and Well being-care funding deadlocked as Trudeau says provinces received’t get extra money with out reforms, Dec. 13

With hospitals and ERs feeling the pressure of flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19 infections, Canadians are demanding swift motion from our federal, provincial and territorial governments. The bickering should cease. The Registered Nurses’ Affiliation of Ontario agrees with the premiers that the Canada Well being Switch ought to be raised to 35 per cent. We additionally agree with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that any improve ought to include strings hooked up that handle such key points because the nursing disaster, main care, house care, long-term care and psychological well being and habit. Swift commitments and co-operation are wanted now. What number of extra kids’s surgical procedures have to be cancelled? Nurses say to our elected officers: cease enjoying video games and get to work, as nurses and different well being professionals do — days, nights and holidays!

Dr. Doris Grinspun, CEO, Registered Nurses’ Affiliation of Ontario (RNAO)

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