Plus, Adamson Barbecue's anti-lockdown double-standard, Canada's Achilles Heel on human rights and sympathy for Britney Spears in reader mail this week
Google Street View of 55 Triller Avenue in Parkdale.
Re Parkdale Tenants Keep Their Rents Over Building Upkeep (NOW Online, March 2). I live in a building in Mississauga purchased by Starlight a year ago. There has been barely any heat all winter. They stopped cleaning last May and started again in August. Now there’s a really bad bug infestation.
Tim F. – From NOWTORONTO.COM
Your articles on rental issues ignore the plight of the small landlords who rely on rent to pay their mortgage and do not have the financial resources to deal with people not paying their rent. They are faced with losing their homes. But they cannot sell it either until the tenants are evicted.
If Doug Ford and the Prime Minister really have compassion for tenants, they should help them pay part of their rent. Why is a small landlord left alone to subsidize the tenants? If this situation is not addressed, it will lead to a whole bunch of foreclosures.
Dave Duhre – From NOWTORONTO.COM
Re How Did Adamson Barbecue Guy Become A Martyr For Anti-Lockdown Crowd? (NOW Online, March 1) Funny how the same crowd that shouts “Blue Lives Matter” and for “law and order” are willing to completely ignore crimes when it happens to be one of their tribe. Adam Skelly endangered the entire community for his own personal gain. With Conservatism the cruelty is the point
Denis Robert – From NOWTORONTO.COM
Re Framing Britney Spears (NOW Online, February 23). I watched the documentary because I was interested in learning about Spears’s custody battle and the current guardianship dispute with her father. Instead, I was terrified by the footage showing the paparazzi. Criminal harassment is supposed to be illegal. How are the paparazzi allowed to do what they do?
The answer seems to be that they have the right to take pictures of someone in a public place. That’s fine and I respect people’s right to make a living. But is waiting for someone outside a washroom acceptable? Is blocking someone’s car from getting out of their driveway something to be tolerated?
There must be limits.
Alistair Vigier – From NOWTORONTO.COM
Re The Conservative Party Has A China Problem (NOW Online, February 25). Enzo DiMatteo is right to condemn the anti-Asian hatred poisoning this continent. However, leaders like FBI Director Christopher Wray have singled out China as the world’s greatest security threat for good reason. China uses global investment in its holdings to upgrade its armed forces with the goal of surpassing America’s strength by 2050.
Secret messages smuggled out of China for the BBC and The Globe and Mail reveal that the Communist party imprisons Uyghur and Turkic groups so as to sterilize some and kill others. The Pentagon warned Canada’s top military commanders not to participate in joint training sessions with China as these exercises were a way for the regime to gauge our capability and technology.
Much has been said about the way China’s government coaxes foreign powers into doing business and manipulates foreign citizens into seeing the regime in a favourable light. In doing so, China proves it is more cunning than the Soviets ever were.
Christopher Mansour – TORONTO
Letter-writer Endy Aych argues that there is no engaging China on human rights (NOW Online, February 28).
Before Canada — or any other nation, for that matter — might effectively challenge China on its human rights violations, we first have to have a significant bargaining chip. But as one country of fewer than 38 million people, Canada can’t go it alone against China’s almost 1.5 billion consumers.
A large enough number of world nations securely allied, however, likely could combine their resources and trade necessary goods and services between themselves without China.
Each nation placing its own bottom-line interests first is collectively our Achilles Heel to be exploited by huge-market nations like China.
Frank Sterle Jr. – From NOWTORONTO.COM
What in the heck is “toxic masculinity”? And how is a man like Jordan Peterson, who describes himself as a classical liberal, responsible for right-wing extremism? Classical liberalism is neither left nor right. It is a complex political and social philosophy and should be treated as such.
Sean Kolenberg – From NOWTORONTO.COM
