It's a mystery why anyone ever thought we needed LRT | Letters to the Editor

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Instead of pouring taxpayer money into expanding jails, the government should be making proactive investments in mental-health care, affordable housing, education and community support services.

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Real public safety and long-term community health come from robust social safety nets, not an expanded correctional system. It’s time we demand our tax dollars be spent on fixing our essential services, rather than funding the consequences of neglecting them.

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Ralph Cooper, Ottawa

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Promoting preventive care would help fix ‘sick’ care problem

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I have argued before that the wave of socially disabled persons we actually create by ignoring the roots of homelessness in education and mentoring is choking our cities and eating our budgets.

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It is almost too easy to fit that same argument over the crisis in health-care real estate. By now, all of us have seen the PSAs from Illumi Health. That group of MDs argues that almost none of our “health” care is proactive and, in fact, we have “sick” care. We treat too many unnecessarily sick and injured people. I agree with the group’s thesis. We would need smaller and fewer hospitals, and fewer staff if we worked together to actively promote preventive care in diet, exercise and personal safety so that a healthy minority of persons never step foot on the health-care treadmill.

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Alas, so many of the persons we place on this file cannot see the actual root of any social issue.

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Thomas Brawn, Orléans

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The terrifying streets of downtown Ottawa

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I commute from a small town to come to my office in downtown Ottawa. Almost daily, I am accosted by individuals who are screaming obscenities or stepping over those who have defecated on themselves lying on downtown streets.

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These drug-addicted people are becoming dangerous to taxpayers, but it is the taxpayer who no longer has rights. Is this the new normal? Terrifying downtown streets, lack of police presence and a mandate forcing us to walk into the danger.

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Jennifer McNamara, Carleton Place

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Mass timber would be perfect for building in LeBreton Flats

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I’d like to offer the NCC a modest suggestion.

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Developers at LeBreton Flats should be required to use engineered wood as their primary building material. Architects and builders are discovering the advantages of mass timber in tall buildings, and a neighbourhood built this way could be unique, beautiful and distinctively Ottawa.

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Northern Europe is ahead of Canada in using mass timber. For almost two years, Ontario has allowed it in buildings up to 18 storeys. The material is greener than concrete and steel, and much faster to construct. The buildings can be up to 75 per cent lighter than those made of concrete, which matters on LeBreton’s soft Leda clay.

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The Ottawa Senators, too, should think about mass timber for the new arena, for the same reasons.

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Finally, the NCC should ask Ontario to follow British Columbia’s lead and allow single-staircase apartment buildings of up to six storeys. These can lower energy costs. They facilitate multi-bedroom family apartments, which LeBreton should encourage.

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The NCC should show vision, not just talk about it. The city and the province should back it.

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Patrick Esmonde-White, Ottawa

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The cross is a foundational Canadian value

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In this letter, I would like to remember my grandfathers and my father who fought for a right cause during the First World War and the Second World War.

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Many of their friends died and were not ashamed to be buried under a cross. On Remembrance Day, Christians believe and pray that their faith and ultimate sacrifice will be accounted to them as righteousness.

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Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Carney would do well to remember that the cross is a foundational Canadian value not to be discarded on the heap of current atheistic ideology.

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David Morse, Ottawa

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