READERS WRITE

LETTERS WELCOME, 250-word maximum, full name required. Send to letters@thespec.com

Mental issues are health issues

In response to the The Spectator’s view Jan. 25 — “mental health funding shortfall” and the heart wrenching story written by journalist Teviah Moro published Jan. 23. The lack of housing is a key shortfall and is why a relative of mine living in a small community in southwestern Ontario has taken it upon himself to house an individual suffering with schizophrenia. Apparently housing is not available and his family are at their wits’ end.

It is commendable this individual is stepping up but clearly it is not ideal and should not be necessary. We must as a society come together and realize that mental health issues are health issues.

Jayne A. Sanger, Burlington

Attila’s story should be required reading

I read Teviah Moro’s article about Attila and Richard Csanyi and was deeply moved. I am a social worker and was thoroughly impressed with the depth of understanding that Mr. Moro showed to illustrate how an individual’s life is influenced by so many different factors. We learned about the impact of intergenerational trauma; family history of severe mental health; the abuse that so many children have endured in foster care; and, the interaction between poor mental-health support, addiction and homelessness. This story showed readers that kids are resilient, can succeed and do, even under the harshest circumstances, but also that our genetics play a huge role.

This article should be taught in social work programs, psychology programs, medical school, and any mentalhealth program. I hope that readers were left with a more fulsome appreciation for the complex path it takes to become homeless and that it is rarely, if ever, attributable to one thing.

Laura Mayo, Hamilton

Alfredo sauce not worth risking lives

I enjoyed reading the cute piece about the missing alfredo sauce, but I have to ask: is visiting four stores to find a jar of sauce during a stay-at-home order essential? This is the kind of action that helps spread the virus. I love alfredo sauce as much as the next person, but it’s not worth risking lives for.

Liz Sutherland, Ancaster

Learn about life on the ground for Palestinians

Re: Israel not depriving Palestinians of pandemic care (Jan. 21) This author defends Israel’s refusal to provide COVID-19 vaccines for Palestinians in occupied territory. He repeats almost verbatim points made by another writer in the Toronto Star Jan. 7. The primary argument is that an interim Palestinian self-government was created under the Oslo Accords, so responsibility for health care rests with the Palestinian Authority.

Two points: the Accords were agreed in 1993, and intended to last for only five years. Palestinians were to have their freedom by May 1999. They still don’t. Second, more importantly, Israel has committed many violations of the Accords. Most notable are the continued confiscation of land and building of settlements in the occupied territories which make the Accords irrelevant — unless it suits Israel to refer to them.

The author referred to the story as being published online Jan. 18. Ironically, in The Spectator print edition on that date, the only article on Israeli-Palestinian issues reported the Israeli authorities approved building more homes on the West Bank, doubling down on their breaches of the Oslo Accords.

As Physicians for Human Rights Israel state, Israel has a moral and humanitarian responsibility to provide vaccines to Palestinians. In a Jan. 5 interview on Democracy Now, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti explained various problems, including the inability of Gazans to store vaccines at low temperatures, given Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s power plant. The author should learn from the interview what life is like on the ground for Palestinians.

Harry Shannon, Dundas

Trudeau’s pattern of bad judgment

Psychotherapists have a saying, “Once is nothing, twice may be a coincidence; but see evidence of the same behaviour three times and you are probably looking at a pattern.” With his refusal to follow the normal vetting process and instead personally appointing an inept person like Ms. Payette as governor general, he has once again exhibited the kind of poor judgment that has now become an all too familiar pattern of his. But the worst of it is his attitude when confronted, his “insouciance,” his arrogance. I guess the apple really doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

David McInnis, Ancaster

Payette should have stayed in space

Had our governor general been a white male a certain segment of my social media feed would be alive with, “here we go again” recriminations citing misogyny and the like. Instead what do we hear? Zero, zip, nada. Silence, like the cold dark emptiness of space ... where our prime minister should have left Julie Payette.

Phil Beard, Dundas

Skelly’s comments an insult

How insulting it was to see Donna Skelly on TV promoting her party’s line on the need for workers at long-term-care homes when it was the Tory party leader at the time, Mike Harris, who pushed for more privatization. The same Mike Harris who earns almost $300,000 a year from the long-term-care company Chartwell, while paying many of their part-time staff minimum wage, and yes the same Mike Harris who someone had the nerve to nominate for the Order of Ontario.

It is time to get these facilities back into the nonprofit sector and pay the workers a proper wage. Stuart Mutton, Hamilton

Trump atop the trash-heap

Donald what’s-his-name sits now upon his throne atop the summit of the Trash Heap of History. The pinnacle of poetic justice!

James Kenney, Ancaster