‘Add cheating, drugs and lying as an Olympic event.’ Canada Soccer and drone spying, plus other letters to the editor for Aug. 2

Re “The Haniyeh assassination pushes Iran and Israel back to the brink of war” (Aug. 1): Dennis Horak, former Canadian chargé d’affaires in Iran, writes that the “underlying tensions between Israel and Iran … seem intractable.” If Iran were to stop trying to destroy Israel, the problem would become tractable.
Paul Socken Distinguished professor emeritus, University of Waterloo Toronto
Re “Not so fast” (Letters, Aug. 1): A letter-writer bemoans Canada’s “juristocracy,” querying how long we should “obey judges who impose their beliefs on us.” I find this insidious suggestion worrisome.
While vigorous debate on the merits and perils of the notwithstanding clause is valuable, arguments that would undermine our democratic institutions at best add nothing, and at worst – let’s not go there.
Nicole Chrolavicius Burlington, Ont.
Re “Canada loses appeal of FIFA penalty in Olympic drone spying scandal” (Online, July 31): So Minister of Sport Carla Qualtrough attempts to write down the cheating and chalk it up to nothing more than the “perception of unfair advantage.”
This is more than perception. It’s possible to support the players while simultaneously showing disgust for those involved in cheating and the organization that enabled it. More should be expected from Ms. Qualtrough.
Jon Heshka Associate professor, sports law, Thompson Rivers University Kamloops
Re “Canada Soccer has a different definition of the truth than the rest of us” (Sports, Sept. 1): We have merely, as a country, discovered another Ben Johnson moment.
Everybody cheats. We just got found out.
It may make practical sense for fair play to add cheating, drugs and lying as an Olympic event. The competition would be very close, apparently.
M. C. H. Burgess Surrey, B.C.
Re “Could Jasper change how we manage wildfires?” (July 31): I believe Banff will burn.
In the late 1980s, the Alberta town called for tenders to build affordable housing in the heavily treed Middle Springs area. The consortium I was part of proposed fire-resistant metal roofing with stucco siding.
The winner featured cedar shake roofing with vinyl siding. We were stunned, not because we lost the bid but that the town would be so heedless of the fire danger in the selected building materials.
In the 30 years my family lived and worked in Banff, we never stopped worrying about the big one. Thanks to poor forest management and lack of planning, I believe it is not a question of if but when Banff will burn.
John Seigner Calgary
Now that forest fires have cleared vast acreage, what ever happened to Justin Trudeau’s plan to plant millions of trees?
Seems like a solution whose time has come.
Chris Tworek Calgary
Re “The controversy behind animal sentience” (July 26): The debate around animal “sentience” (abilities to feel pleasures and pains) involves a spectrum of views.
At one extreme, some believe even single-celled organisms are sentient. At the other, sadly missing from this op ed, are views that most animals are non-sentient.
Some neuroscientists believe sentience is unique to primates, for instance, and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has proposed that farm animals lack sentience. Such positions potentially imply that fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and farm animals need no protection from welfare harms.
Currently the National Farm Animal Care Council and Canadian Council on Animal Care do somewhat protect these animals. However, whether they protect them enough, or protect all relevant species, is a continuing ethical issue.
This moral and political context is what makes the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s new statement on sentience so crucial for animals in Canada.
Georgia Mason Colonel K. L. Campbell Chair in Animal Welfare, University of Guelph
Re “The conversation we really need about aging doesn’t involve U.S. presidential candidates” (July 25): Not only are more people living to old age (traditionally considered 65), we are also living longer in old age.
There are at least two generations over 65. Many people in their 60s and 70s have a parent or parents in their 90s, and some in their 80s have a relative over 100.
Old age can be decades long and requires planning as we live 10, 20, 30 and, for some, even 40 years in later life. There is great diversity of capability among older people.
The conflation of aging issues and “being old” in general, with behaviours indicative of physical frailty or cognitive decline, is deeply problematic. They are not one and the same.
Anne Martin-Matthews OC; professor emerita of sociology, University of British Columbia Vancouver
Re “Let’s talk about it: How do you solve a problem like Alice Munro?” (Arts & Books, July 27): I would say the exact opposite, namely that it’s time to stop talking about Alice Munro.
As a member of the arts and literary community, it seems that she is getting a free pass when it comes to society’s standards of morality. I can only imagine that if she was any other Canadian icon, there would be loud cries to strip her of Nobel Prize and any other awards.
End of story.
Michael Gilman Toronto
Novelist and editor Russell Smith argues that we not assume fiction provides lessons (or even should), nor be read as autobiography. As he underlines, decoding authorial intent from stories isn’t literary criticism, it’s the seeking of “meaning.”
Didactic writing, however, is mostly bad writing, and Ms. Munro was certainly known to avoid that.
Robin Collins Ottawa
Re “Only hard-core Marvel fans will survive Deadpool & Wolverine’s multiverse of mind-numbing madness” (July 26): Within three minutes, I wanted it over.
I found the gratuitous but predictable and supposedly artistic violence boring and stupid. The “clever” profanity that drenches it, the same.
I’m not sure there was a plot, and there was not one nanosecond when I didn’t know it was all going to end just fine. I guess apart from rating it the worst movie I’ve ever seen, it is nonetheless deeply disconcerting that this is considered entertainment. And that it is massively successful.
It doesn’t even raise the conversation any more that movies like this feed into a culture of gun violence. The whole thing is just appalling.
Nigel Smith Toronto
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: [email protected]