Today's letters: Canada's public service is like a relic of the past

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So little has changed in the public service

Re: Canada’s public service can’t afford to ignore these four New Year’s resolutions in 2025, Jan. 2.

Karl Salgo’s article struck a chord with me. I retired from the federal public service 20 years ago and lived through many of the situations he describes today.

It was disappointing to see that so little has changed in the reality of the work environment despite evolutions in technology and workplace design.

John Beggs, Orléans

5,000-seat arena is a very bad plan

Re: Letter, Stop Lansdowne approval process in 2025, Jan. 3.

I guess if the City of Ottawa goes ahead and tears down the hockey rink at Lansdowne and builds one that only accommodates 5,000 fans, then not only will our women’s professional hockey team not play there, but Ottawa can never host the World Juniors’ tournament again.

John Arbuckle, Ottawa

Vehicles, pedestrians shouldn’t mingle

Re: New Orleans New Year’s Day ramming is the latest attack to use a vehicle as a deadly weapon, Jan. 1.

In the aftermath of yet another attack on crowds using a vehicle, may I draw your attention once again to the tragic risk of such an event at Lansdowne?

Mingling a pedestrian precinct with a vehicular thoroughfare is just plain stupid. The current design offers no protection whatsoever to the pedestrians. The proposed design is worse.

Lansdowne 2.0 requires an immediate halt and extensive revision to the core concept.

Frank Johnson, Ottawa

Smooth LRT service is decades away

Re: Dudas, Rail link to Ottawa airport is the real game-changer, Jan. 2; Edmond, Ottawa is building light rail in all the wrong places, Dec. 30.

I wonder if Coun. Laura Dudas read John Edmond’s article about building LRT in the wrong places.

Dudas envisions “swift connections” from airport to locations across the city. Maybe by the time Taylor Swift (at 80+ years old) does an “Erasure” tour, regional LRT will provide seamless connectivity? even to the Ottawa Senators “new” LeBreton Flats arena.

Ben Kutner, Ottawa

The answer is not to keep using oil

Re: Letter, The Liberal brand can yet be saved, Jan. 3.

The author proposes changes that would be required, including ending the EV program and carbon tax, and approving projects to enable Canada to sell our “natural” gas, as the author believes the world will never be able to survive/function without oil and its products.

2024 was the third year in a row when global temperatures were deemed the hottest on record. The atmosphere is a delicate balance of elements of gases and water vapour, which create conditions to support all life on Earth while providing a protective blanket from the sun’s radiation.

However, since humans have increased the use of fossil fuels, the composition of the atmosphere has changed, the globe is getting hotter, and we are hastening the next extinction of life on Earth.
If we humans do not rapidly reduce emissions from fossil fuels, we will not survive beyond a few more generations, and even those will suffer continuing harm from the increasingly damaging extreme weather events resulting from changes in jet stream and ocean current movements and evaporating oceans and water bodies.

Personally, I would like my great-grandchildren to live a quality of life not destroyed by our fossil addiction but marked by innovations to preserve the Earth home we have been given.

Carolyn Herbert, Nepean