About 500 Central American migrants headed out of Mexico City on Friday Nov. 9, 2018, to embark on the longest and most dangerous leg of their journey to the U.S. border. Thousands more were getting ready to follow them.Rodrigo Abd/The Associated Press
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Nations and neighbours
The building humanitarian crisis as migrant caravans march through Mexico to the U.S. border will not go away. Neither will the unwanted economic and strategic implications for all of us who share this continent.
Canada should act now to assist Mexico in managing the migrant caravans in that country. Not to do so would perpetuate the suffering, desperation and hopelessness of those fleeing oppression in their own countries.
In the worst case, inaction could lead to a humanitarian disaster on the U.S./Mexico border, with women and children likely to be the most affected.
Canada has a real opportunity to demonstrate leadership while the migrants’ status is being resolved. Our government’s aid could take the form of financial and logistical support, skills development and employment, enabled by NGOs already active and familiar with the region. Mexico could surely use the help – recuperation and reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Willa come to mind.
In the process, Canada would be setting an example to other nations confronted with migration and refugee crises, by acting responsibly, effectively and humanely in response to the one in its own North American back yard.
John B. Partington, Ottawa
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“Nationalism” and “racism” – it’s sad to see these terms conflated so readily. I suspect many other Canadians feel much the same way.
Having been brought up in communities across Canada (we moved – and moved), we met and knew all kinds of people, Indigenous and European and whoever was there! I learned early there are good and bad people everywhere, that appearance and human worth are completely separate matters.
I am proud of our Canadian nation, because I believe we are trying to be ourselves, to be accepting of people based on their human worth, not their appearance. With differences in cultural norms this is a challenge at times, but it seems to be one most of us are at least trying to meet.
While I suspect that the current American Revolution will be much nastier for us than the previous one (and that’s saying something, considering they invaded us during that one), I believe we will persevere in our nationalism, in loving and working for this nation, despite the sickeningly relentless wave of racist propaganda from the south.
In this country at least, nationalism and racism are not interchangeable.
Mary Lazier Corbett, Picton, Ont.
Keep our SINs out of it
Re Why Statscan Should Have Access To Our Banking Data (Nov. 7): The assertion from Statscan’s chief statistician that the agency has no interest in the details of any specific Canadian’s life or activity runs counter to its expressed desire to collect social insurance numbers along with individual financial data.
Yes, Statscan does require geographical data to ensure governments can make sound policy decisions when allocating resources. But if the intention truly is to produce anonymous and non-confidential statistics, then it doesn’t need to collect our SINs.
I suspect many of us worry about another government agency having both our social insurance number and our financial data in this era of frequent data breaches. Although it requires more effort, Statscan has the ability to produce geo-specific reports without using SINs, as it has traditionally done with data from the long-form census. Doing so would enable Statscan to understand how Canadians are spending their money and where in Canada they are spending it, while giving all of us the peace of mind that our personal information is protected.
Beth Bailey, Ajax, Ont.
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It is one thing to gather the data necessary to aid in creating social programs – and then there is this. The data Statscan is demanding from the banks includes SINs, billing information, number of credit cards owned, debt, online purchases and downloads. How exactly is it that anything that I might or might not buy off the internet is vital to these social programs? The number of credit cards I may or may not have?
To put it simply, this is a major overreach of the government into the private lives of Canadians. Unless a crime has been committed, there should be no reason for banks to hand over such data.
Manjit S. Toor, Surrey, B.C.
A Canadian imperative
Re Will Mounting Costs Of Reconciliation Benefit Indigenous People? (Nov. 6): The legacy of the residential school system still affects the lives of First Nations, Métis and Inuit today – lives uprooted, children stripped of their sense of personal and cultural identity – making them more vulnerable to be abused or to abuse, often leading to addictions and self-harm.
The Sixties Scoop, day schools, and Indian hospitals all left lasting harm we are still trying to address. There is a moral imperative to ask different questions than Prof. Tom Flanagan’s article does.
We need to ask if reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis should be left to future generations. Should our legacy be spending more decades and millions of dollars in court, fighting to deny the constitutional, inherent and treaty rights of Indigenous people? Reconciliation is not an Indigenous issue, it is a Canadian imperative.
Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations
Death as it is? So wrong
Re How Do We Balance Rights In Cases Of Medically Assisted Dying? (Nov. 7): Requiring dying patients at their most vulnerable to move to an alternate facility for the “deed to be done” is cruel and egregious. I’ve been there.
Imagine that on a patient’s second-last day of life, while suffering bouts of tremendous pain, she is required to be ferried to another location. The facility is new and strange, the setup there lacks the amenities for the sensitive and comfortable support of what’s soon to take place. Staff faces are now those of strangers. The patient, who is otherwise on enough medication to help control pain, must stay lucid enough to answer the final questions to qualify for her chosen death medication. What a gauntlet.
I suggest Catholic hospice operations nationwide decommission their physical space where patients receive end-of-life care. That way the patient can stay in familiar space, the patient’s rights can be preserved and protected, and the facilities can be absolved of any complicity/support for the patient’s decision to die.
MAID is the law and a patient’s right. Catholic hospitals receive public funds; many communities only have Catholic service providers for palliative and hospice care. Catholic hospitals have to figure this out. As it is today? So wrong.
Patricia Bain, Thunder Bay, Ont.
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A woman still enjoying life chooses to end it, because she fears that she will be unable to do so when she no longer enjoys it. This is ludicrous, of course.
Until we consider dying a basic human right to be exercised at the discretion of the individual, situations like this will continue to arise. The law needs to change as the boomer avalanche heads to the brink.
J.C. Henry, Mississauga