Readers Question RCMP Accountability, Bilingualism, Child Care, Arctic Defence and German LNG Requests

On the letters page of the National Post at the end of August 2022, readers wrote in on a run of subjects, and the first letter set the tone. Eli Honig of Toronto compared two police leaders. Itaru Nakamura, Japan's national police chief, took personal responsibility for the fatal shooting of former prime minister Shinzo Abe the previous month and announced his resignation. In Canada, Honig noted, more than two years had passed since a single gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia, and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki had offered an apology for the force's failure and nothing more. He asked whether the gap reflected the national character of the two countries, the integrity of the two officials, or both.

On language, Patrick Cowan of Toronto responded to an Aug. 27 column by André Pratte on the end of bilingualism in Canada. Cowan agreed that bilingualism is passé. He said it served the country in the 1970s and perhaps the quarter century after, when it helped hold Canada together. Now, he argued, Canada needs multilingualism, with technology allowing people who speak any of the world's prominent languages to be served by public institutions. He called for politicians who look past identity politics and cultural nationalism, and said that need is greatest in Quebec.

Alex MacMillan of Kingston, Ont., took up an Aug. 19 article by Bianca Bharti on child care costs and Ottawa's claim that cheaper care helps fight inflation. In his view, government cannot make child care cheaper. It can only shift the cost from users to other taxpayers, whether through the tax deductibility of daycare expenses or through spending on new spaces and subsidies. He said that is not an answer to inflation. He also argued that daycare prices are not the real problem, since centres lack monopoly power. The problem, as he saw it, is that some people's incomes are too low, and his proposed remedy was to identify them and give them vouchers for daycare services.

Defence drew a letter from Roger Cyr, a retired naval commander in Victoria, B.C. He was responding to coverage of Prime Minister Trudeau and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg highlighting Russian threats to the Arctic. Cyr wrote that Canada is not close to meeting its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence. He said the six Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships due in a few years are not classed as warships by the navy and carry no naval weapon systems, only a constabulary gun, a secondary armament meant to counter fast boats or shore attacks. The 12 Maritime Coastal Defence vessels, he added, are built to commercial standards, carry no naval armament and cannot navigate ice. He asked when Canada will invest in real warships.

From Port Moody, B.C., D.B. Wilson wrote about Quebec's decision to let long-term care homes house up to four residents per room, against the coroner's recommendations. Wilson said the risk goes beyond illness. Quebec's care facilities have a history of deadly fires, he noted, in buildings that then lacked sprinklers, and four residents per room makes evacuation harder for emergency responders. His prediction was that the decision will lead to more deaths.

The final two letters concerned German requests for Canadian liquefied natural gas, prompted by an Aug. 26 Rex Murphy column and an Aug. 24 article on East Coast hydrogen. Colin Lockhart of Florenceville-Bristol, N.B., said the German leader came to Canada seeking gas needed now, not in a decade, while the prime minister said there was little business case. Lockhart asked why that was not a decision for the businesses involved, called the hydrogen promise a bait and switch, and described turning down an ally trying to end its dependence on Russian energy as a disgrace.

John P.A. Budreski of Vancouver took the opposite side. He wrote that Germany spent two decades building an energy supply on intermittent wind and solar and unreliable Russian gas, and now looks to early-stage green hydrogen from a Canada with little production or export infrastructure, under an agreement he said was full of holes. He said Germany shows what happens when things that work are replaced with things that feel good.

The pages show readers still pressing on accountability for the Nova Scotia shootings, and divided over what Canada owes its allies in energy and defence.