Threats to Democracy in 2024
With elections in major countries coming up this year, people are worried about the health of democracies. There is a saying that bad things happen when good people do nothing. The question, therefore, is what can ordinary people do to stop this trend?
Katy Austin, Midland
Make street parking free on weekends starting Friday nights
Taking back the night life, Dec. 29
To ease the cost of going to shows downtown on the weekend, we could make street parking free on weekends starting Friday after rush hour, except overnight. Make a cut off time, say 3 a.m. nightly to remove all cars off the street to a private lot or get ticketed. Many people I know would love to go downtown, but because Scarborough has this little transit problem, they want to drive.
Richard Kadziewicz, Scarborough
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Educate the public about how our health-care system runs to curtail misuse
It strikes me that people use our health-care system in inappropriate ways, from ER to ambulance use. Citizens do not understand the nuances of the triage system and how that affects wait times.
I would like to see these issues addressed by adding an educational component to the effort to curtail misuse. Don’t rely on punishment entirely, or even at all, when citizens have not been taught how to use or understand the system.
Education would go a long way to changing behaviour, and would ease the burden on the system and on our beleaguered health-care professionals that must face the consequences that arise from having a poorly informed public.
Paul Greenhough, Sunderland
Low salaries are reason for the affordability crises
Finally, an article that states that while Toronto is not the most expensive city, it is one of the least affordable.
Extrapolating on that, it would appear (based on the supplied salary graph) that Canadians are woefully underpaid, and that is the reason we have an affordability crises.
Perhaps instead of complaining about politicians, we should be taking the corporations to task and demand an explanation that doesn’t hinge on competitiveness or some other business “doublespeak” as based on salaries, we are already ultracompetitive.
Imagine how much better off we would be with higher salaries and the resulting increased tax receipts to all levels of government.
Something to think about?
Julius Olajos, Cambridge
We cannot recruit medical staff without affordable housing
Kudos to George Brown College for recognizing and planning for a growing problem in our city, lack of affordable housing to recruit and retain staff. The University of Toronto has been offering homes for faculty for many years, although demand exceeds supply.
When I moved to Toronto as a nursing graduate, there were residences to move into until you figured your new surroundings out and got established. There were also residences for other medical staff, interns, residents etc, all torn down now in favour of condos.
Why would a new graduate of nursing, or a new physician, often saddled with educational debt, want to move to Toronto, where the rents are astronomical and the ability to ever buy a home is out of reach to most?
If you want people to choose to work here, it is imperative that they have affordable housing. This is a crisis that we need to address immediately. We cannot retain or recruit desperately needed medical staff for our world renown hospitals, unless we offer them affordable housing. This is already affecting hospitals and will only get worse.
We all need doctors and at some point in our lives will need PSWs and nurses. This crisis affects us all.
Sharon Pitto, Aurora
While legitimate technical issues exist, EV growth is essential to achieving net-zero by 2050
Passenger vehicles are a small part of the emissions pie, Dec. 23
A recent letter to the editor stated that electrification of light vehicles is a “small slice of the solution” to achieving Canada’s emission reduction targets by 2050 and predicted future streets filled with inefficient gas-powered vehicles.
Regarding EV impact, quite the opposite is true. EV growth has been identified as essential to achieving net-zero by 2050 and contrary to what was implied, transportation is not the only sector being addressed. A few notable examples include electricity generation through the draft Clean Electricity Regulations and oil and gas through the recently proposed emissions cap and methane regulations.
While there are legitimate technical issues that need to be addressed — sufficient numbers of charging stations, for example — the notion of old vehicles on the roads “for decades to come” is hyperbole and ignores how technologies advance through ingenuity and innovation. EV development is no different.
Richard Schertzer, Milton
Deep burial of nuclear waste will be an improvement to current solution
Despite the knee-jerk opposition by some people to the deep burial of nuclear waste, it is an essential step in dealing with this problem.
At present this waste is stored on the surface next to the nuclear power generating plants, specifically the Bruce Nuclear Plant in Bruce County, Ont. The local opposition to this plan is difficult for me to understand because this measure would reduce the risk by many orders of magnitude. Prevailing winds in the area are westerly. If a strong tornado passed over the plant, the existing storage might well be breached, potentially spreading contamination over a wide area.
Is deep burial a perfect solution? Perhaps not, but it is a great improvement over the existing condition. The last paragraph in this article states that the “whole thing is a grand experiment” according to We the Nuclear Free North. A quick internet search would reveal several existing sites throughout the world, which have been operating for a number of years.
David Golem, Waterloo
Memories of Harry Rosen
I was an early customer at the second location. I briefly met Harry Rosen, but my transactions were with his brother Lou who was cut from the same bolt of cloth. From an early age I was quite bald and shaved my head. One afternoon as I left their store, I encountered two close friends who shared my head treatment. We were chatting when Lou came out smiling and said, "Dennis would you and your friends move a little down the street because three golden balls above the door is the sign for a pawnshop and we can't have that! We all had a great laugh.
Dennis Toews, Oakville
