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Or sign-in if you have an account.Teaching young people how social media works — its manipulations, incentives, and traps — would be far more beneficial than simply cutting them off, writes reader Tony D'Andrea. Photo by Getty ImagesEnjoy 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 AccountorJosh Dehaas rightly skewers Mark Carney’s Safe Social Media Act, Bill C-34. Sold as child protection, it is a classic bait-and-switch: restricting Charter freedoms while pretending to improve society.It also betrays the spirit of education that Northrop Frye considered a moral obligation one generation owes the next. A society that aspires to be better trusts young people enough to educate their imaginations rather than shield them from reality. Censoring “harmful” content does not create neutrality; it simply grants those in power greater authority to decide which opinions may survive. The court of public opinion remains the most democratic mechanism for exposing and defeating bad ideas.Social media functions as a real-time census of the public mind. Suppressing radical or offensive opinions does not make them disappear; it merely blinds society to problems that must eventually be confronted openly.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 againIf protecting youth is the goal, media literacy at every grade level would accomplish far more than restrictions any determined 16-year-old can bypass with a VPN. Teaching young people how social media works — its manipulations, incentives, and traps — develops judgment. Censorship replaces knowledge with ignorance while delivering the worst civic lesson imaginable: that banning things solves problems.A confident country does not fear young people encountering unpleasant ideas. It fears their ignorance. Bill C-34 is not protection. It is a failure of education.Tony D’Andrea, TorontoAfter 74 years of Hockey Night in Canada, CBC is cancelling the program. Our national broadcaster has a mandate to contribute to a shared national consciousness and identity. Hockey Night in Canada kept us focused and unified; nothing else on CBC has been able to accomplish the same. The loss of Hockey Night in Canada begs the question as to why CBC should continue to be a federal Crown corporation if it has removed the one program that unified Canadians.Kevin Kattas, TorontoTo many Canadians of a certain age, Saturday night was CBC Hockey Night in Canada. The voices of Danny Gallivan and Foster Hewitt emanated from small black-and-white screens weekly. Occasionally, fathers had to venture onto snow-covered roofs to adjust the TV “antennae.” (Google that word GenX!)As an ex-Montrealer, the ‘60s were a Habs Golden era. Those were the days. There are many horrible things happening in the world now but today, hearing this news, I am truly sad. I cherish my childhood memories.We will still chant “Go Leafs/Habs go!“ next year, just on a different streaming platform.Jed Rabinovitch, TorontoThe natural inclination these days is to assume that the complaint lodged with the language police at the Office québécois de la langue française’s (OQLF) against Arthurs Nosh Bar in Montreal was more of an attack on the Jewish root of “nosh,” as opposed to it not being French.It is only apropos that the pitiful schleppers at the OQLF are showing chutzpah here, and the other restaurant owners showing support for Arthurs are being real menschen as they expose the meshugass of the schmendriks protecting the province from such tsuris.What word do they use to order their bagels for office breakfasts?Perry Medicoff, Lisbon, PortugalIt is all well and good to note that the Bank of Canada should improve communications with the public but why stop there? The avalanche of numbers being spewed out from multiple government agencies are also impossible to aggregate in any meaningful manner by average Canadians. At the same time that the number crunchers in government provide more and more information about the country, our political leaders continue to function inside a bubble of silence about the principles that guide the nation’s governance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current round of trade talks surrounding CUSMA.Canadians receive no consolidated information on the economic state of the nation other than the nebulous mutterings of the speech from the throne at the beginning of each parliamentary session. Despite the fact that Canada has been in a state of economic decline for two decades, we have no concept of what economic models are being employed in government decisions. The lack of economic sustainability in the tax-and-spend approach to governance has been acknowledged by virtually every commentator of Canada’s economic performance but we have no idea of how we have evolved to this dismal state of affairs in relation to other OECD countries. Are we following a Marxist socialist model or a capitalist Keynesian model? Or something else entirely? Every economic decision seems disconnected from the ongoing proliferation of policies and programs beyond knee-jerk reactions to political contingencies.Forward guidance on the state of the economy is a standard feature of the corporate world but remains foreign as applied to the state of the nation, with politicians preferring to fixate on Bank of Canada interest rates unconnected to the impact of constantly rising taxes and national debt. Surely, Canada can do better than this to ensure our citizens do not feel they are becoming the proverbial frogs in a pot of boiling water.Raymond Foote, OttawaIn her column, Amy Hamm discussed Chris Gay’s article that appeared in the June 12 issue of the Globe and Mail. Here is some of what Gay wrote that was not discussed by Hamm in her piece.“The more compelling argument against billionaires has to do not with the ethical implications of the extreme inequality that they arguably promote, but with the adverse real-world consequences,” he wrote. Also, “There is plenty of evidence that extreme inequality produces inferior and even perverse social outcomes.” Gay quoted jurist Louis Brandeis, who warned that “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentration in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”Elon Musk was not elected to office yet his wealth and influence enabled him to effectuate changes in how the United States is governed. Trump became president in 2024 by a narrow margin in the percentage of popular vote: Trump 49.8 per cent, and Harris 48.3 per cent. About 75 million Americans did not vote for Trump. They and the now disappointed Republicans who voted for him will get another chance in the next election, but they may still not win if they can’t raise more money for election campaigns than can billionaires and a trillionaire.Reiner Jaakson, Oakville, Ont.We seem to be allowing a society that combats racism by practicing it.It’s one thing to accommodate people with disabilities and other things nobody can control. But parking spaces based on race, Indigenous specifically?I fail to see the difference between this and whites-only parking spaces.Jerry Pryde, Stoney Creek, Ont.It is easy to say to a pollster that you would move elsewhere if Alberta voted for separation. It would be a lot harder to make that decision if Alberta does vote to separate. Pulling up stakes and moving is hard. What about a job, selling your house and finding a new one, uprooting your children and finding a new school for them, finding a new doctor and making new friends?Moreover, moving to another part of Canada where being unilingual English would foreclose the upper ranks of the civil service is hardly attractive. It is much like some Americans telling pollsters in 2020 that they would leave the country if Donald Trump was elected. Very few actually did.Greg Yost, OttawaThere is truth to the maxim that you reap what you sow. The Liberal Party of Canada and the NDP have long been either equivocal to or outright hostile to Israel and Zionism. It wasn’t difficult to see that the only political friends we Jews had were the Conservative Party of Canada and some of the provincial Conservative parties. In spite of that, Jewish Canadians have voted (albeit in decreasing numbers) for the leftist parties, particularly the Liberals, and have been among its biggest donors.Jewish Canadian voters (and donors), as a bloc, never seemed to vote in our self interest. I thought that October 7 and its aftermath would have altered these patterns but that trajectory seems to have been derailed by Mark Carney’s candidacy. That seems to have been a colossal misjudgment.Kevin Klein’s column on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights stated that the Asper family is disappointed that the organization they essentially founded has betrayed the principles on which they thought it was founded. Other than with my political donations, I have radically changed my charitable giving. I will donate to Canadian health-care charities and to Canadian-based Jewish charities. The donations I used to make to Canadian community organizations, I have redirected to Israeli charities. Perhaps the Asper family should consider doing the same.John Harris, TorontoAs Canadians we are deeply concerned about murdered and missing Indigenous women. At the same time we are told it is right to lessen the prison sentences of convicted Indigenous men because of their heritage. How do we square these concerns when, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data, from 2009 to 2021, 86 per cent of the individuals accused of killing Indigenous women and girls were Indigenous.Here an Indigenous man in B.C. is convicted of murdering his Indigenous wife and son, and his sentence is reduced because he is Indigenous. Is this fair justice for victims or clear deterrence for perpetrators?John L. Riley, Mono, Ont.National 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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