Shipping containers are seen at a port in Shanghai, China, on July 10, 2018.ALY SONG/Reuters
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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Canada, china trade
Re The Risks Of A Free-Trade Deal With China (Oct. 15): I rarely find myself in entire agreement with editorials, but I can find nothing to disagree with in this one. It is a necessary antidote to overheated anxiety about loss of sovereignty under the USMCA.
Negotiating a free-trade deal with such a large, authoritarian partner as China is likely to be even more difficult and unequal than negotiating with a Trumpian U.S., which is an ally and a democracy. Even if the USMCA clause hadn’t been included, in today’s environment there is no certainty a deal with China wouldn’t bring Trumpian displeasure that would damage our relationship with our major trading partner. The clause’s inclusion reflects reality and Canada’s best interests, and arguably offers leverage (albeit minor) with China.
I share the concern about diversifying our economic partnerships, but efforts to that end haven’t had much success. While the Report on Business article (on the same day as your editorial) on the jump in exports to China augurs well for diversification, we must be realistic, in the context of a China-U.S. trade war, about the possibility of Donald Trump’s reaction to allies that benefit from that war (Canada’s Exports To China Surge Amid Trade Tariffs).
Even if that weren’t the case, we need a much clearer understanding of how we want to manage our relationships, including trade, with China.
W.P.D. Elcock, Ottawa
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It is humiliating enough that we accepted limits on our ability to negotiate free trade with China, part of the price of the USMCA (US Must Control the Americas?). But let’s not start letting U.S. senators dictate our telecom policy.
Although the U.S. attack on Huawei is always couched in national security terms, it’s obvious the overriding objective is to limit competition for America’s own big 5G players, who lobby hard in Congress. Senator Marco Rubio’s appeal to the long history of Canada-U.S. security co-operation might be more convincing if we weren’t facing U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs on “Trumped-up” national security grounds (U.S. Senators Urge Trudeau To Block Huawei From 5G – Oct. 12).
Tom MacDonald, Ottawa
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Here’s an idea: We offer to trade one real security threat (Huawei) for two fake ones (Canadian aluminum and steel). And how about we ask the Americans to throw in assurances they won’t treat their good friends so poorly again, eh?
Ivor Palmer, Burnaby, B.C.
Canada’s carbon share
Re Our Carbon Future (Oct. 15): A letter writer suggests per capita carbon measurement is bogus, despite the fact that a multitude of respected economic and environmental agencies routinely use such statistics.
He also goes on to take issue with the oft-quoted statistics that Canada has only 0.5 per cent of the world’s population but causes 2 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, stressing that Canada has a cold climate and scattered populations.
According to Statscan, Canada has one of the most urbanized populations in the world. In 2017, some 82 per cent of Canadians lived in cities; more than two-thirds of us in a metropolitan census area. And cold countries, such as Finland and Russia, have considerably lower per capita emissions than Canada. Such arguments, commonly used by conservatives, are merely an excuse for Canada to do nothing – or to get away with doing as little as possible.
Charles Magill, Ottawa
Health is defined as …
Re There’s More To Health Than Our Mechanical Parts (Opinion, Oct. 13): According to philosopher Sholom Glouberman’s astonishing discovery, “There’s more to health than our mechanical parts.” I guess. But why get stuck in Descartes’s mechanistic 17th century mindframe (with references to other 17th-century chaps)?
The 19th-century public-health expert Florence Nightingale, also known as the founder of nursing, had a rather different definition, one which was widely accepted: “Health is not only to be well, but to be able to use well every power we have.” She, with other health-care reformers, saw social and economic factors, especially housing, as key in determining health or disease.
The definition of health by the World Health Organization, on its founding in 1948, echoes Nightingale’s, as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Lynn McDonald, Co-founder, Nightingale Society; Toronto
Abortion obstruction
Re Abortion-Pill Inequality: How Access Varies Widely Across Canada (Folio, Oct. 13): I want to thank Carly Weeks, who wrote the article on abortion-pill inequality, and Jessica Leeder, who wrote of wanting an abortion in Nova Scotia (How Invisible We Are – Opinion, Sept. 22) for their persistent attention to inequities in Canadian women’s access to reproductive health care.
Their investigations reveal that we live in a time when many women are forced to beg for access to care that is both legal and medically recommended. That a Saskatchewan government official could suggest that a woman seeking Mifegymiso, an approved abortion pill not covered by that province’s health plan, should haggle with her pharmacist for a discount is particularly alarming.
The obstructions and double speak that governments quietly put in the way of women seeking safe abortions are both dangerous and disrespectful.
If even a fraction of the logistical energy given to the challenge of how to safely and legally distribute marijuana were given to the challenge of providing safe access to Mifegymiso, Canadian provinces could solve this problem in no time.
Pamela Klassen, Toronto
Nix ‘vitrue signalling’
Could we please lose the phrase “virtue signalling”? I see it repeatedly in your publication and others. It is inevitably preceded by adjectives such as “preachy,” “smug,” “self-righteous,” and so on. It is used as an insult against liberals, progressives, elites, the usual targets of politicians or commentators on the right.
How did it happen that to articulate a “virtuous” perspective on an issue or policy has been framed as some sort of stupid, wrong-headed thing to do?
Those accused did not invent the term; their accusers managed that feat of linguistic appropriation. Ironically, the phrase actually suggests that those who use such language are speaking from a position of virtue.
At the very least, they know what the virtuous position is well enough to talk about it. Did we not once call this “knowing the better thing to do”?
Perhaps the right would prefer “vice-signalling” from our politicians? Oh, wait. We’re already there. We repeatedly hear fearful, angry and muddled vice-signalling from our neighbours across the border and their fellow populists.
I for one know which is worth paying attention to.
Nancy Bjerring, London, Ont.