LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Ashamed by lack of action

Re: “How you can help in Aleppo” (Montreal Gazette, Dec. 15)

As a child of Holocaust survivors, I am truly disgusted and ashamed of the Western leaders’ lack of action on Syria. Have they not learned anything from the past? I can hear the sound of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin fiddling, can’t you? Susan Philip, St-Laurent

Please, just let me get somewhere

Re: “No green light to redlight turns” (Montreal Gazette, Dec. 14)

Mayor Denis Coderre refuses to permit right turns on red lights, but that is a minor issue in comparison with the chaotic Montreal traffic due to road closures.

I recently attempted to drive from Westmount to St-Laurent. I tried DocteurPenfield heading east, which was blocked at Peel, turned north on Peel to Pine, which was also blocked, forcing me to turn west instead of east. Somehow, I managed to get to Sherbrooke, heading east, only to be blocked at McGill, forcing me south to SteCatherine, which was blocked at Jeanne-Mance. I turned north on Jeanne-Mance in an attempt to get to Pine, but that street was closed at Pine (not because of construction) without any prior warning.

I made a U-turn and finally got to Parc heading north, enabling me to get to my destination. A 20-minute drive took 1.5 hours, and this was after the rush hour.

I must add that at each forced detour, none of the lights were adjusted to compensate for the extra traffic flow forced onto the detour streets.

If we cannot turn right on red lights, I would ask the mayor to please arrange it so that we can go straight, or right, on greens. Norm Shacter, Westmount

Time is on criminals’ side

I have read about the Supreme Court of Canada’s Jordan decision — putting a time limit on bringing cases to trial — four times this week alone, concerning different cases. What a mess this is turning out to be.

Could the Supreme Court not foresee that any criminal with some sophistication can simply take measures to complicate their activities enough to take “too much time” to unravel? On top of which, courts are going to be even busier hearing Jordan rule pleas. Criminals have a new accomplice: time! David Bernstein, Dollard-des-Ormeaux

Tax policy should follow the money

Re: “Repudiating the new cruelty” (Opinion, Dec. 9)

Julius Grey’s comment piece was insightful, but depressing. Globalization, free trade and automation have indeed robbed economies of jobs and hope, and the future bodes no better. The irony is that there is no shortage of wealth, but it is in relatively fewer and fewer hands — meaning somehow our economic model must change. The taxman must be allowed to follow the money. It has been rather counterproductive to continually increase the taxes on those who don’t have the wealth, resulting in ever-increasing debt for governments and most of the rest of us.

That, at best, is the future unless there is change.

From the dawn of civilization, taxation has been a necessary means of redistributing wealth, never pleasant, but it does not have to be too dirty a word, if it’s fair. Collecting has never been easy, and in our time globalization has made it much more difficult. Wealth and jobs are freer than ever to move from country to country. To compete, to maximize profits and to satisfy their shareholders, companies and corporations take that available path of least resistance, and of course those with the advantage usually have the leverage to keep things the way they are or to create even more favourable conditions for themselves.

Free trade agreements have, to a significant extent, tied the hands of national governments, and there is no international government to ensure the right kind of control. Short of protectionism and closed borders — which have led to disasters in the past — our economic and political experts must find solutions, a middle way. One of them is fundamental: wealth must be taxed and fairly redistributed, and for that, some responsible international governance is essential. It must be made to work, because poverty, debt and despair lead to trouble. Jerry Dunn, Laval