Letters to the Editor: November 30, 2024

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Fair wages, no bonus

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I am a letter carrier at Canada Post. I have been with the corporation for close to 20 years and I am reaching out to you, Jean-Yves Duclos, minister of service and procurement, regarding my concerns with the ongoing labour dispute between Canada Post Corp. and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

If Canada Post is operating at a loss on an annual basis, why are executives, directors, managers and supervisors continuing to receive annual bonuses on top of their regular salaries?

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By my calculations, there are 4,302 individuals who receive generous annual bonuses.

CUPW members are on strike trying to negotiate a fair contract with those same Canada Post executives.

We want annual salaries that keep up with inflation. Canada Post executives seek to alter our pension plan due to a changing marketplace and failing profitability. And yet, their bonuses continue.

Minister Duclos, I humbly request you please help us resolve this labour disruption by providing firm and fair instruction to the contract negotiators of both sides. Please insist they reach an agreed-upon settlement as soon as possible.

Moreover, I feel it would be prudent to insist on more government oversight concerning bonuses and spending. Canadians deserve a postal system that can function with fewer labour disruptions and less wasteful spending. Unnecessary bonuses for more than 4,300 employees is a clear example of such waste that needs to end.

As a front-line worker and a proud civil servant, I want to get back to work and do what I can to help all Canadians prepare for the busy holiday season.

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Brandon Brockman, London

Trump does it again

Donald Trump has done it again.

Threatening a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods exported to the U.S. is the U.S. president-elect’s way of getting action on drugs and migrants crossing the border. This is similar to his threats of pulling the U.S. out of NATO if members don’t increase military spending to two per cent of GDP.

Canada has to demonstrate our intentions to seal our borders to movement of migrants in either direction, render drug trafficking abolished, and increase military spending to two per cent of GDP in a more reasonable timeframe.

We must act sooner than later. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for a change in our own leadership to get on with our own problems of out-of-control immigration, resulting in a housing shortage and affordability crisis, out-of-control mental health issues requiring mental health facilities as well as a heavy-handed remedy to eliminate illegal drugs, while getting our population to adopt a work ethic that will improve our collective lack of productivity.

Hopefully, our prime minister, with consultation with premiers, will recognize the necessary remedies and feed the lion, while feeding ourselves before it feeds on us.

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Jim Paddon, Komoka

Less gridlock a benefit

In his letter to the editor, Bike lanes a benefit (Nov. 23), Andrew McClenaghan claims bike lanes alleviate traffic congestion and often fit into underutilized road space. If that were true, why was it necessary to create bike lanes?

Just as specious is his claim that adding traffic lanes leads to more cars. It is nonsensical to posit that, if the city adds more lanes to city streets, more Londoners will buy more cars.

In fact, the addition of lanes to arterial roads is a response to the need to reduce traffic congestion that already exists, not the other way around. In the process, the environment also benefits because cars are not stuck in a gridlock belching carbon in the atmosphere.

John Lisowski, London

Pray to end bullying

Violence in elementary schools doubled in 2022, and it’s gone up so much since then, educators refuse to report the stats.

Ontario is adding $4.6 million in new spending to help combat bullying in schools.

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I guess we didn’t do enough to spend $3.8 million in 2019, $6.4 million in 2021, or the half a million during COVID-19 in 2022, and $24 million in 2023 plus the new approaches to bullying in 2023 by the Crisis Prevention Institute and all the changes to laws and policies. Now, we have to give $1.5 million to Big Brothers and Big Sisters to provide a “school-focused mentorship program” for grades 1 to 12.

To discover the right solution, we have to go back to the year school violence started. In the U.S., it was 1963, the year students stopped saying the Lord’s Prayer in school. After that, school violence climbed from 250,000 incidents a year to 1.7 million by 1990.

Please, no more government solutions.

Patrick Bestall, London

Protest misplaced

Canada is not responsible for the war between Israel and Hamas, so pro-Palestinian protesters in Canada should take their protest there rather than costing the taxpayers in Canada.

Genevieve Grech, London

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