Caster Semenya, winning a IAAF Diamond League race last week in Doha.Francois Nel/Getty Images
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Faster, higher, stronger?
Re With Semenya’s Loss On Testosterone Ruling, Olympics To Play Host To An Unwinnable Debate (May 2) and How Do You Compete Against Testosterone (May 3)?:
In 1961, science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut seemed to anticipate the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision. A short story he wrote, Harrison Bergeron, describes a dystopian society where government, striving for equality among people, imposed a program to handicap anyone with exceptional talent. Athletes were weighed down and intelligent people were forced to hear mentally disturbing radio sounds.
Mr. Vonnegut did not anticipate the many drugs that folks would be able to foist on athletic or sophisticated people to reduce their activity and mental function.
David Zitner, Halifax
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Obviously, there are always at least two sides to every argument, but in the case of Caster Semenya, requiring her to undergo what would be essentially chemical castration seems extreme. This is not “levelling the playing field;” it is a case of cutting down the tallest flowers.
Perry Bowker, Burlington Ont.
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Why should anyone have to have a debate? All that’s necessary is for the Olympics to open a third division, open to people who are intersex or otherwise fail to adhere to stereotypical ideas our society is desperate to link to sex. Ms. Semenya deserves to have a chance to participate without having to reduce her skills to accommodate others’ discriminatory ideas linked to womanhood.
Amy Soule, Hamilton
No bargaining position
Two messages for Kendall Coyne Schofield and her associates who have decided to forgo playing professional hockey for a year (Women’s Hockey Stars Lead Walkout In Bid For A Stronger Pro League, May 3).
One, sports – especially pro sports – is entertainment. That’s it. No one has some kind of personal right to demand that she be allowed to play pro hockey, on her terms, at someone else’s expense. Either fans will support the sport, or they won’t.
And two, strikes work when a sizable part of the population suffers some kind of deprivation. This won’t do it. You have to have a following before you can make demands of those followers.
Tom Curran, Ottawa
Sound the alarm
While firefighters must sometimes risk their lives to enter burning buildings to save occupants, it is generally not the absence or presence of fire trucks that saves lives, whether in remote Northwestern Ontario First Nation communities or in downtown Toronto (House Blaze Kills Mother, Four Children In First Nation Community With No Working Fire Truck, May 3).
Usually, they arrive after the people ought to have been evacuated, and their role is to keep the house from burning to the ground and preventing the fire from spreading to adjacent buildings.
Lives are saved much earlier, when smoke alarms warn occupants to flee the building. While focusing on the fire trucks, the article too briefly mentions a shortage of smoke alarms, which is a much easier problem to solve.
But then that view would have shifted the responsibility for saving lives from distant and faceless bureaucrats to local leaders who could easily and cheaply ensure the availability of those devices.
Ab Dukacz, Mississauga
Smoking regulation haze
Re Federal Rules on Plain Packaging For Cigarettes Make Canada An Anti-Smoking Leader: Experts (May 2):
After lobbying to get graphic warning labels on cigarette packages, the same groups then advocated that people not see the graphic warning labels in Ontario by banning retail displays of cigarettes and having them hidden in covered displays.
Since that time, smoking rates in Ontario have not changed very much.
Now, some of the same advocates are suggesting that plain packaging will have a great impact on reducing smoking rates even though people won’t know they are getting a plain package until they have invested their money at the store and bought a package of cigarettes they can’t actually see.
At the same time, we tell underage smokers that it is wrong to smoke on school property and they can be fined a couple hundred dollars if caught, but if they move as little as a few metres away from school property, to a sidewalk that isn’t school property, there is no fine for smoking.
Can we develop a more coherent anti-smoking policy that doesn’t work at cross purposes or send mixed messages to our youth that suggests smoking is fine if you do it in the right places?
Kimble Sutherland, Ingersoll, Ont.
Judges chosen fairly
The judicial appointment process followed by the federal government is now exhaustive, fair, impartial and does not deserve criticism for criticism’s sake (PMO Vets Prospective Judges With Data Looking Back A Decade, April 30; Lametti To Uphold Reviews of Potential Judges’ Partisan Past, May 1).
Ontario, and other provinces, have judicial appointment committees that conduct interviews of potential candidates to the bench after a review of their applications and inquiries. This type of process might be seen to be the best way to screen candidates who are recommended to ministers of justice for further review and potential appointment.
Nevertheless, the application for federal appointments followed by the current federal government involves a 50-page application form that is revealing in its detail. It is akin to a judge writing extensive reasons in a case they must decide, but it is themselves they are describing.
It is an exhaustive interview on paper, where almost every aspect of the candidate’s background, skills and experience must be carefully set out. It will then pass through the screening committee before recommendations are made to the minister. Further checks in government databases are not inappropriate.
Long gone are appointments motivated by patronage. Connections, contributions or campaigns with the governing party are no longer positive attributes. Indeed, they may be the opposite. We have a respected and talented judiciary in this country. The appointment process seeks the best candidates, which by and large, we are getting.
William Trudell, chair, Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, Toronto
Dirty money?
Re Decision On Whether Canada Will Ban Huawei’s 5G Tech To Come Before Election, Goodale Says (May 1):
As two Canadians are suffering greatly in Chinese jails and two others are sentenced to death, is it appropriate for the CBC to accept sponsorship money from China-based Huawei and have its brand prominently displayed during Hockey Night in Canada?
David Henderson, Ottawa