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Ontario Education Minister Lisa Thompson says class sizes in Ontario high schools will increase from 22 to 28 students.Chris Young/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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Class size is the right fight

Re A Fight Over Class Size Is The Wrong Fight (March 21): Your editorial supports the increase in class sizes for Grades 4 and above, citing studies that say there is little evidence larger classes have a substantial impact on a student’s academic performance. If this is the case, why do most of Canada’s private schools advertise that they have low teacher-student ratios as a selling point? What do the wealthy know that The Globe editorial board doesn’t?

Brian Caines, Ottawa

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Class sizes are not set by the province, but are negotiated between boards and local unions. When Ontario’s Ford government announced it would raise the average class size from 22 to 28 at the secondary level, what it was actually announcing was not an increase in class sizes, but a decrease in funding, which yes, will lead to larger class sizes – but which will also lead to the decimation of programming.

The Toronto District School Board alone stands to lose between 800 to 1,000 teachers – roughly 20 per cent of its teaching staff. Fewer teachers means fewer courses. Electives will disappear, small specialized programs will have to fold, and schools of 700 students or fewer will struggle to offer a full range of even the compulsory courses that students need to graduate, thereby hastening the schools’ closure. Say goodbye to small schools and alternative programs.

Moreover, class sizes are already at 33 or 34 for many subjects, which means many students are already not getting the full support they need in class. Increase the average, and you will end up with classes of up to 40 students. Try finding a computer lab with 40 computers or department budgets that can purchase 40 textbooks for every class. Try finding a music class that has 40 working instruments. But then that’s not likely to be an issue, since music programs will be among the first things to be cut.

Jason Kunin, teacher, Toronto District School Board

SNC jobs? Be worried

Re SNC Never Claimed Jobs Were At Risk, CEO Says (March 21): Where is the information in this article that backs up the headline’s implication that SNC-Lavalin’s CEO, Neil Bruce, is contradicting government officials?

The story says the company didn’t cite job losses when it asked for a deferred prosecution agreement because the law doesn’t allow such an argument. Mr. Bruce also says SNC never threatened to move its headquarters out of Canada. But he goes on to say both those things would be the possible – even likely – results of a conviction at trial.

According to the article, both Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick and Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts have said that the government (which employs policy analysts fully capable of predicting the potential economic impacts of a conviction) was worried about possible job losses. Neither of them is quoted as saying those worries were the result of anything SNC had told the government. So where’s the contradiction?

What Mr. Bruce says later in the story suggests the government was right to be worried.

David Ross, Toronto

Court of public opinion

Re Ethics Report Clears Ford In OPP Hiring, Says Process ‘Flawed’ (March 21): The Integrity Commissioner says he found “troubling aspects” in a “flawed” recruitment process to name a new head of the Ontario Provincial Police, and Premier Doug Ford spins that into a “complete vindication for our government.” If that’s “vindication” of a government that was intent on making the Premier’s buddy the top cop until it got called on its morally – if not legally – reprehensible actions, what does criticism look like? Or is that even a concept in Mr. Ford’s blinkered universe? The court of public opinion isn’t buying it.

Theresa Saunders, London, Ont.

‘Safe’ is M.I.A.

Re Finally, A Fix For Our Border Problem? (editorial, March 19): Like so many other countries, Canada has to find an appropriate balance between its moral and international-law obligations to those seeking asylum, and the burdens that respecting those obligations place on its government and citizens. Thanks to Canada’s geographical situation, the question is not nearly as pressing here as it is elsewhere, but we must face it nonetheless.

Your editorial focuses on the burdens for the Canadian government; you rely on the unsupported (and probably unsupportable) premise that returning asylum-seekers to the U.S. under the so-called “Safe Third Country Agreement,” relieves Canada of its obligations to those seeking asylum.

You make no attempt to argue that, under the current American administration, the United States does indeed constitute a safe third country for asylum-seekers. On its face, it is hard to see how such a case could be made.

Did Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen ask his department to review the question, before having jurisdiction over asylum-seekers taken away from him? Is this issue part of the complicated political mix involving NAFTA, steel and aluminum tariffs, Huawei and so many other points of friction with the United States – or purely a matter of domestic politics? Unfortunately, your editorial does nothing to clarify these important matters.

Philip Raphals, Montreal

Politicizing massacre?

Re Trudeau Put Scheer On The Spot (March 21): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reflects that the tragedy of the massacre at the mosques in New Zealand reminds us that we must speak out against hate mongering, and Konrad Yakabuski says that this is politicization of the tragedy, and constitutes a veiled criticism of Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

But isn’t politics (as she is sometimes practised) speaking out for the things you believe in (or not speaking of things that you don’t)? Is Mr. Trudeau supposed to keep quiet, or speak his mind?

Fred MacDonald, Peterborough, Ont.

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The shooter in Christchurch was the one who politicized his own actions. Not Justin Trudeau.

Dwight Williams, Orleans, Ont.

Food furies

Much has been made about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eating a chocolate bar in the House of Commons on Wednesday night, an apparent no-no. As far as food-sourced improprieties go, this seems pretty tame compared to a 1985 incident involving NDP MP Jim Fulton.

As a protest against the fisheries policy of Brian Mulroney's government, Mr. Fulton dropped a dead salmon smack on the prime minister’s desk (he was absent that day) during Question Period. The House erupted amid ineffectual cries for “Order!” from speaker John Bosley. No one knows how Mr. Fulton got the fish into the House, but fellow MP Bill Blaikie told me “that fish was fresh as a daisy.”

J.D.M. Stewart, Toronto

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