Traffic on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway.Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail
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Carbon scrutiny
Re Carbon-Tax Debate Filled With Dishonesty (June 20): Kudos to Gary Mason for pointing out the dishonest and childish behavior of Conservative leaders – including federal leader Andrew Scheer, incoming Ontario premier Doug Ford, Alberta United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe – who attack the federal government’s climate change policies without offering a plan for public scrutiny.
Past Conservative leaders – including Robert Stanfield, Brian Mulroney, John Robarts, Bill Davis and Peter Lougheed – stood for “progressive” fiscal responsibility that helped make Canada a “can-do” country (free trade, peacekeeping, anti-apartheidism, improving education, building universities, expanding public health care and the Alberta bill of rights).
Unfortunately, today’s Conservative leaders seem hijacked by Trump-like populist nostalgia, where greatness comes from “going back in time.” They now stand “against.” Against a price on carbon, against tighter gun controls, against supporting government-funded day care and pharmacare, against marijuana legalization …
Canadians will soon have to decide if they want governments that seek solutions that allow us to grow and prosper as a “can-do” country, or governments with a “can’t-do” philosophy supported by populist minorities who want to step back in time.
Doug Zuliani, Ottawa
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Now that Doug Ford has said he intends to withdraw Ontario from cap and trade, one might ask, Where are the Green Tories?
What are Green Tories, anyway? They use market measures to most efficiently reduce emissions – avoiding overpayments for renewable energy, rejecting carbon taxes, significantly improving Kathleen Wynne’s cap and trade, and facilitating green finance and jobs of the future.
Where are they? Here’s a hint for Mr. Ford – they don’t always vote Tory, though they did this time. They’re right in the middle. That is where Mr. Ford will find them, and he will need them.
Gerry Rocchi, Toronto
The trauma of children
It has been heartening to see Canadians’ outrage at the inhumane repercussions of the U.S. immigration policies which separated migrant children from their parents at the border. Indeed, the Society for Research in Child Development just issued a statement relating to child separation from families: “The science on separating children from their families is unambiguous: It is harmful to children’s development and long-term physical, mental, and emotional health. It disrupts a child’s sense of security, removes a child’s strongest source of comfort, and causes harm to a child’s well-being.”
Let us not forget that Canadians are far from innocent of such atrocious practices. Our long history of involuntary residential school placements of young Indigenous children continues to result in significant intergenerational trauma in many of our Indigenous communities.
Yvonne Bohr, associate professor of psychology, York University
Vision Zero …
Re Toronto Fails Its Road Test (editorial, June 14): We are part of a network of researchers and practitioners working with municipalities across Canada to create safer streets. As professionals, we help to inform planning processes to discover what works best. We study trends, network, question, evaluate and treat patients.
Vision Zero started in Toronto in 2017; it started in Sweden in 1997. In 21 years, they reduced road fatalities by 50 per cent. New York is in its fourth year of Vision Zero, and traffic fatalities, although trending downward, have not disappeared. Vision Zero is not a quick fix. It is about long-term change. It took a century to build our automobile cities, change is not going to happen overnight, and it’s not likely to follow the ebb and flow of political cycles.
What is already happening with Vision Zero in Toronto is an emerging co-operation among stakeholders who are trying to produce safe streets for everyone. The recent tragedies on our roads are preventable collisions, and not “accidents.” We will see success if we all continue to keep working hard together. To say Vision Zero is a failure when it has barely started is extremely short-sighted.
Linda Rothman, senior research associate, Hospital for Sick Children
Ron Buliung, professor, Geography, Programs in Environment, University of Toronto
Andrew Howard, orthopedic surgeon, Hospital for Sick Children
… Zero Vision?
A strong, comprehensive bike lane network is essential to reduce cycling fatalities. How many more deaths will it take to get results from City Hall? Why are the sidewalks of Toronto’s unprotected main streets safer for cycling than its roads? This is 2018: More bike lanes mean more people will cycle. Toronto needs political vision, courage and imagination to protect the public, not more studies and deferrals. Perhaps Toronto’s safety campaign should be renamed Zero Vision.
Harold B. Smith, Toronto
Vancouver tax revolt
Re In B.C., A Growing Tax Revolt Of (Housing) Millionaires (June 20): With respect to our friends and neighbours who may complain about the new B.C. tax surcharge on highly valued properties, one only needs to look at a recent “What You Get” article in the New York Times comparing homes valued at US$4.75-million. In Belvedere, Calif., the taxes were estimated at $60,000 annually; in Nyack, N.Y., $49,442; in Chicago, for a condo, $50,873.
It would seem we have little to complain about.
Ronald Appleton, Vancouver
It’s just so … T.O. dull
Re Relax, Ottawa: The Château Isn’t Falling (June 18): Larco Investments engaged Peter Clewes as the architect of the Château Laurier addition. In my opinion, this was a mistake.
Not because Mr. Clewes and his heritage architectural consultant, Michael McClelland, are bad architects, but because Larco doesn’t appear to understand Ottawa’s unique architecture. It is different from the architecture of Toronto, where both architects are more in their comfort zone.
What we have in the design of the addition to the Château Laurier is a decorated shed, on a modernist theme. If the team had unpacked the complexity and sophistication of the original architecture and setting, Larco would be receiving international acclaim. Instead, we are presented with a dull, incompatible box that the architects have even (desperately?) suggested will be invisible in its deference to the grand Château: How typically dull Toronto is that!
Ottawa is an intensely romantic and sublime city (politically and in other respects), which is what has unfortunately been ignored in the proposal.
Andrew Waldron, architectural historian, heritage conservationist, author Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa-Gatineau Region