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Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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Ready, set, backward

Re Liberals Unveil Path For Incumbents To Keep Nominations (Jan. 29): Having shot down their pledge to reform the current electoral system, the Trudeau Liberals continue their progressive agenda by marching backward. Now, incumbent MPs won't have to face pesky nomination challengers, so long as they fulfill certain keep-in-touch-with-voters conditions.

The 2015 Liberal victory represented an infusion of new blood into the tired Harper political dynamic, a surge that met with the applause of many Canadians. Protecting incumbents from fresh would-be MPs taints the process that helped bring Justin Trudeau to power.

A closed system, an incumbents-only party, isn't good for the party – and it's certainly not good for the country.

Geoff Rytell, Toronto

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Under nuclear threat

Re Defenceless (Opinion Section, Jan. 27): According to J. L. Granatstein, Canada should be a spear-carrier at Armageddon, a walk-on part in the biggest-ever bomb on Broadway.

Daniel Ellsberg posits that a nuclear showdown could result in 600 million people dead outright. It would be more sane, under these farcical circumstances with the juveniles leading North Korea and the United States, for the government to supply everyone with lead umbrellas rather than purchase missiles to shoot other missiles out of the sky (landing wherever), because it's more Lord of the Flies than Dr. Strangelove in this madhouse, with two crazy Piggys instead of multiple Peter Sellers, both "fat boys" astraddle ICBMs like Slim Pickens – wahoo!

There's no defence against bedlam. Better to finish that cup of coffee in the time left.

Jerry Thompson, Ottawa

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Justin Trudeau and his cabinet should have J.L. Granatstein's article on Canada's feckless defence policy engraved on their desks. Exposed as we are to North Korea's nuclear madness, Canadians should be clamouring for Ottawa to sign on in some fashion to the U.S. missile defence program. Instead, we seem to be dreaming that peaceable Canada is somehow exempt from any such threat.

George Galt, Victoria

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We need a navy and an air force to patrol our huge coastlines and a professional army to assist the civil authorities in times of emergency. We do not need to be flunkies of the American Empire involved in endless colonial wars on other continents.

Vern Huffman, Burnaby, B.C.

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Death: help wanted

Re Fight To The Death (Opinion Section, Jan. 27): Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is our final human right, writes Sandra Martin; physician-assisted death is a basic human right for grievously suffering patients, claims Dr. Ellen Wiebe.

But how can a process be a right if it is dependent upon the work of someone else? That someone else has an even more basic right to refuse the work.

A right is an asset granted by nature/providence such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: Man can take away, but not give a right. A death unencumbered by technology is a right, but requiring someone to kill you is a privilege.

Gabor Kandel, MD, Toronto

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I wrote last year to the president of the Ontario Medical Association, questioning the use of "Doctors of Conscience" as a title for those physicians in Ontario who were refusing to provide MAID to their suffering patients. Predictably, I received no reply, but my point was an obvious one: that a doctor with conscience, one who could imagine how others feel, would be open to MAID, and not closed to it.

Nicholas Ruddock, MD, Guelph, Ont.

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Sandra Martin made me cry. Such a compassionate piece of writing, but also so clear-headed and helpful. The next time I see my family doctor, I am going to have a conversation with her about this subject. I should know now whether she would help, should I ever ask for it.

Elizabeth Caskey, Vancouver

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Robot architecture

Re Build 2.0: The Future Of Architecture Rests In The Hands Of Robots (Report on Business, Jan. 27): Although prefabrication has not yet proven to be more cost effective than stick-built or on-site construction, its major advantages include providing steady employment, eliminating waste, enhancing quality control of materials and workmanship, and speeding erection on-site.

While it's possible in a factory to produce a house much like the way an automobile is produced, at the rate of one every 20 minutes, you can't put the unit on a site at that rate. And yes, it's possible to prefabricate many components for high rise construction. But it's difficult, if not impossible, to prefabricate total units.

This is thanks to the length of time and uncertainty in securing entitlements (zoning and building permits), jurisdictional union problems, unions' fighting having fewer workers on a job site, and the reluctance of building authorities to accept electrical and plumbing work that is installed in factories and delivered inaccessible to a building inspector on the site.

Contrary to prefabrication being the future of architecture, it may well be the end of it since the architect, in realizing a building made of prefabricated parts, is limited by the constraints of the factory and the nature of the components it is able to produce.

That said, prefabrication has a role to play in the manufacture of components, and in producing large-scale, government-sponsored low-cost housing, and projects such as military or emergency housing for humanitarian purposes.

Herb Auerbach, real estate development consultant, Vancouver

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Burden of political proof

Re Rough Justice/Injustice (letters, Jan. 27): Those decrying the lack of due process afforded Patrick Brown fail to understand that the public judgment being rendered is not judicial but political. When someone stands for election, the "burden of proof" is on the candidate to satisfy the voting public of their qualification for elected office.

For most voters, this includes good morale character. In the case of Mr. Brown, from the facts available to the public, the court of public opinion judged he failed to satisfy this political burden of proof. If Mr. Brown, as an ordinary citizen, were ever faced with a criminal charge or a civil lawsuit, of course he would be entitled to due legal process. But now is not that time.

Paul Montgomery, Collingwood, Ont.

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2018's zeitgeist

Georgie Porgie is in deep trouble … and should be dropped from nursery rhymes because of alleged events dating back many years.

Charles Morton, Manotick, Ont.

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