A voter walks to a booth to fill out their ballot at Public School 160 on Nov. 3, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
By the numbers
Re “Voting in the U.S. election shouldn’t be as hard as it is” (Sept. 4): Voter turnout for U.S. elections is notoriously low: about 46 per cent in the 2022 midterms and 66 per cent in the 2020 presidential election. Yet Canada has nothing to brag about: Our turnout in 2021 was only 62 per cent.
But the last elections in countries where every vote counts (remember Justin Trudeau’s promise to make every vote count?) saw turnouts of 76 per cent in Germany and 78 per cent in New Zealand. No wonder the last Liberal Party convention voted to establish a non-partisan National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, still party policy today.
Wilfred Day Port Hope, Ont.
Price of war
Re “Rosenberg Research: Defence stocks are still an attractive option for your portfolio” (Report on Business, Aug. 30): If one values making money regardless of consequences, then we see the results in rapidly growing wealth in the weapons industry, and death and destruction in many parts of the world with wars which refuse to end. If arms development and sales include nuclear weapons, as is the case, then we likely live close to human extinction.
If, on the other hand, one values life, security and co-operative interconnection, we would see creativity, dialogue and non-violent conflict resolution. That sounds like a far better option for one’s portfolio.
Mary-Ellen Francoeur Toronto
Going green
Re “Algoma Steel is banking on a renaissance with its multimillion-dollar plan to go electric” (Report on Business, Aug. 31): Instead of a pat on the head for adopting electric arc furnace technology already used to produce more than two-thirds of steel in the United States, 122-year-old Algoma Steel should explain why it took so long.
Donald Rollins Vernon, B.C.
Re “Canada must align its corporate climate disclosures to global standards” (Report on Business, Aug. 30): Scientific consensus agrees that climate change is caused by human activity. We need a standard set of criteria against which to measure where we are and where we are going.
If we don’t measure, we have no data. If we have no data, we have no direction and no end goal. International and parallel Canadian standards are critical to our success.
We should have a clear mechanism to cut through “greenwashing” and manage our progress. Canada and the equivalent Canadian Sustainability Standards Board should be aligned with the emerging global standard of the International Sustainability Standards Board.
Geoff Sheffrin P.Eng.; chair, climate crisis task force, Ontario Society of Professional Engineers Brampton, Ont.
It is the Canadian Securities Administrators, not the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board, that dictate what disclosures must be made by public companies. CSSB standards may at best be helpful input to the CSA in promoting global alignment.
Alan Willis Mississauga
On and on
Re “Which is worse: Infectious diseases or the denial they breed?” (Sept. 3): Columnist André Picard describes the apparent increase in infectious diseases. In my case, since I am an infectious-diseases physician, it is not “death by a thousand bugs,” but rather “life by a thousand bugs.”
Because of HIV, COVID-19, HPV, SARS, tuberculosis, resistant bacteria, etc., we are all busy. But it has not always been so.
When I was in training in the 1970s, it seemed like I may have chosen the wrong career and I may not be getting much business because of effective antibiotics and newer immunizations. Indeed in 1977, Robert Petersdorf, a legendary infectious-diseases physician, published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which he predicted the end of this specialty: ”I cannot conceive of the need for … more infectious-disease experts unless they spend their time culturing each other.”
I have never been relegated to doing that to pass the time.
Irv Salit MD Toronto
Public-health responses are most effective when they are grounded in reality.
Reinfections with evolving (“mutating”) strains of respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 are ultimately the norm, not the exception. The same applies to influenza (the “flu”) and the common cold.
Even with the advent of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and their latest iterations, not to mention widespread infections since the Omicron variant emerged, we are all consigned to keep getting COVID.
Neil Rau MD, FRCPC; Toronto
Wild west
Re “Behind the BC United Party’s surprise move to sit this election out” (Aug. 31): So B.C. United has become untied. Plus ça change: Liberals and Conservatives coalesce.
Those who lived in my native province at the advent of Social Credit in 1952, upon defeat of the Liberal-Conservative coalition, may recall that coalition of more than a decade had been formed to keep the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation at bay. Now its NDP successor is the threat.
B.C. politics is never boring. Will the authority of the B.C. United leader to fold his tent overnight without consultation be challenged in the courts, possibly by the 50 surplus candidates? In British Columbia, anything’s possible.
John Edmond Ottawa
So the B.C. real estate industry wants to return to the good old days of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, whose hands-off approach to the industry was a major driver of provincial inequality and housing unaffordability. They and the rest of the business community seem willing to vote for a Conservative climate-change denier to do it. That speaks volumes to me.
British Columbia has faced out-of-control wildfires and floods for years now, events that scientists attribute to climate change. Do we really want a government that would ignore science and be prepared to dismantle successful policies such as the carbon tax? Apparently the business community is just fine with that, presumably as long as profit continues to grow.
I have a hard time believing they are governed by such self-centred ignorance, but there it is in party stalwart Norman Stowe’s words: “We’re going to be going with the Conservatives.”
Colleen Alstad Victoria
Big buzz
Re “Wasps are everywhere this summer in Alberta. Extreme heat and dry conditions are to blame” (Sept. 4): Yes, we white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants are firmly entrenched out here, monopolizing most of the jobs and pushing up house prices.
But we’re not all bad. We keep our hedges trimmed, and we’re polite.
Bill Atkinson Edmonton
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com