Letters: Does this sound like a healthy nation?

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Or sign-in if you have an account.Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks in the House of Commons on June 9, 2026. Letter writer Dorothy Lipovenko is mystified by Carney's "record-high" popularity despite the loonie's slide against the greenback, Canada's "technical recession," and sky-high grocery prices. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK / PostmediaEnjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorA U.S. radio host once summed it up when discussing elections: “People vote with their pocketbooks.”Or in Canadian vernacular, “their wallets.”That’s voters doing a financial gut check, asking “Am I better off since (fill in the blank) was elected to run the country?”Let’s apply this logic to the latest poll showing a “record-high” 50 per cent of Canadians support the federal Liberals, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has an even bigger fan club.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThose numbers beg the question: do Liberal campers feel the impact of Liberal policies and the direction Carney is steering the country in?As of Monday, the loonie had dipped to less than 72 cents against the U.S. greenback, a “technical recession” had been declared, food prices are in nosebleed territory, the CUSMA trade pact is on life support, and consumer insolvencies were at their highest level since 2009 in the first quarter of this year.How does any of this, for Liberal supporters, add up to a healthy country?Dorothy Lipovenko, Westmount, Que.It was a great week for theatre! First we had Mark Carney performing at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple, where the prime minister told a hand-picked audience of the Liberal faithful that Canada has an antisemitism crisis, something they know all too well from their daily lived experience, and echoing that other piece of great theatre, Hamlet, in Act I, Scene V, where Horatio tells Hamlet, “There needs no ghost, my Lord, come from the grave to tell us this.”But then it gets better. Carney’s solution to a crisis of epic proportions, which he himself acknowledges, is, with a nod to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, to appoint a committee to study antisemitism. Hello! Study antisemitism? Just take a stroll at Bathurst and Sheppard in Toronto on any Sunday afternoon to watch the anti-Jewish protests, or sit in on a class in any one of the “Studies” departments at a Canadian university, or visit any of the Jewish institutions that have been shot at, firebombed and vandalized.Then there’s Carney’s committee, the composition of which is quite baffling. Among others, we have one token Jew (Marc Gold), a speedskating champion (I’m not sure what Catriona Le May Doan brings to the table, unless she can teach Jews to speedskate away from their tormentors), and former cabinet minister Omar Alghabra — a former president of the Canadian Arab Federation who, in 2004, chastised CanWest Publications for referring to terrorists as — well — terrorists, and who lobbied hard for Hamas and Hezbollah to be delisted as terrorist organizations. And then there is litigator Avnish Nanda, who defended the illegal anti-Israel encampment at the University of Alberta.One might suspect that the role of this committee is to kick the antisemitism can down the road so that it either becomes someone else’s problem, or disappears. To borrow once again from Hamlet, with apologies to Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in Canada.”E. Joan O’Callaghan, TorontoIt would be both appropriate and useful to have a $250 U.S. bill. That is what it will soon cost the owner of an F-150 to fill up their gas tank, and the face on the bill will remind them of the author of their misfortune.Mark Sexsmith, TorontoThe alarming increase in antisemitic protests, which have included threats of violence and actual violence, assaults and gunfire, the deliberate targeting of Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and individuals, needs to be controlled. And while education, expressions of support, and advocacy are all well and good, they are clearly not the tools we can rely on to be an effective deterrent.But there is one tool that can work. Sentencing an offender involves the weighing of numerous factors, including remorse, the need for individual deterrence, background and prior criminal conduct. Unfortunately the factor that seems to have somehow fallen out of favour these days is that of general deterrence. That is, the need not only to send a message to the particular offender, but to others who might be inclined to follow the same journey, that punishment will be meaningful. A few slaps on wrists send the opposite message — that these offenders got off lightly, so would-be copycats can assume the same.These attacks are not being carried out in isolation. They are planned, and numerous intelligence agencies including the U.S. National Intelligence office have clearly established that funding for agitation, for the recruiting of “useful idiots,” salaries for “student” protest organizers, and for tools to carry out the agitation, is supplied by Iran. We cannot control what Iran does, but we can ensure that Crown Attorneys seek higher penalties for those arrested and convicted based on the obvious need for warning future offenders.Tom Curran, Consecon, Ont.Reading Don Braid’s column about Alberta’s separatists was a teachable moment about human rights, logic, and the current politics of separatism. Why do the separatists get to portray themselves as freedom fighters while the descendants of our nation’s freedom founders are portrayed as anti-freedom reactionaries?Clearly there is a peculiar inequality in how we treat separatists that deserves discussing. They get to knock on democracy’s door in the name of freedom and demand a referendum. The rest of us — who merely wish to remain what we already are — are then forced to answer it. This order of operations should strike serious thinkers as less than equal.The argument for a right to self-determination is real. Nobody disputes it. But rights, in a functioning democracy, are symmetrical things. If a minority’s right to leave is a natural right, then the majority’s right to stay is at least its equal — and arguably it’s superior, since the status quo requires no new mandate. It simply is.Why, then, does a startup proposition command a public test while the going concern is presumed forfeit? Why does choosing to go outweigh choosing to remain? Brexit should have taught us something here: the framing of the question is already half the answer, and separatists have historically been very good at framing questions.Democracy is not a mechanism for dismantling itself on request. It is entitled to defend itself. Canadians who prefer to remain Canadian are not blocking freedom; they are exercising it. Equal rights means equal rights — including the inherent right of a majority not to be redrawn out of their own country by a minority initiative that gets to call the vote, set the question, and pick the moment. What gives them such a super right over the rights of others?Automatic referendum rights for separatists, with no corresponding weight given to the status quo, is not democracy. Instead it is the asymmetry of injustice that no self-respecting Canadian should be willing to tolerate.Tony D’Andrea, TorontoThank goodness the Senate did not agree with its human rights committee’s proposal to criminalize residential school “denialism” under the government’s new Combatting Hate Act (Bill C-9). For all the bad-mouthing, Canadians need to know that many Indian Residential Schools did much good. Had the amendment passed, it could have criminalized the reproduction of archival evidence such as this:Charles Parker, Inspector of the Indian agencies, wrote of the 1928 flu epidemic in the NWT: ”The epidemic was under control by the time I left the country after having taken a toll of 300 natives … Our schools at Resolution, Hay River, Fort Providence, and Aklavik were all affected and we have reason to be gratified that we lost only one pupil. Too great credit cannot be given to the services performed by sisters and nurses at these institutions. Few of them escaped the disease themselves and at times there would be only one left on her feet to carry on.”* Quoted in René Fumoleau, As Long As This Land Shall Last: A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11, 1870-1939Colin Alexander, OttawaThe decision as to which submarine Canada buy should be based on three things: the quality of the submarine, the cost, and the delivery time. Residual economic benefits to Canada should not be considered at all.We have been over this road a hundred times respecting military procurement contracts. Whatever those residual economic benefits cost the provider will be added to the contract price, and there is no guarantee that whatever is produced in Canada will be built efficiently.Unfortunately, the same approach appears to be in use respecting other military procurement contracts. Let’s just stick to buying the best submarines, aircraft etc. for the best price and forget about everything else.Garth M. Evans, VancouverIn his review of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s antisemitism speech at Holy Blossom Temple, Chris Selley was right to highlight the ineptness of this pronouncement: “When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your tradition, your language, your story. You leave behind your wars and your animosities.”Selley noted, quite rightly, that it’s not Jews, but a minority of Muslims, who march through their adversaries’ neighbourhoods and harass the residents.But one fact seems to have escaped all commentators on Carney’s evasive speech.The vast majority of Canadian Jews (70 per cent according to the Berman Jewish DataBank) didn’t “come to Canada.” They were born here. In fact, Canadian Jews feel very Canadian, and they’re not “bringing” wars and animosities with them. Canada is their home and native land.In striking contrast, a majority of Canadian Muslims were born outside of Canada. Maybe Holy Blossom Temple was the wrong venue for Carney’s lecture.Marjorie Gann, TorontoNational Post and Financial Post welcome letters to the editor (250 words or fewer). Please include your name, address and daytime phone number. Email letters@nationalpost.com. Letters may be edited for length or clarity. 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