Letters

Editor, This week, the Grey-Bruce Vaccine Distribution Task Force met for an update from Dr. Ian Arra and the health unit team on two pressing issues – the spread of COVID-19 and the progress on vaccine distribution. The Task Force is a team of public institutions, community partners, health providers, businesses, Indigenous communities, agricultural sector, and people committed to supporting...

Mr. Editor, At the risk of clogging your letter box, some positive news to help celebrate Earth Day. Despite some media companies warning us about ‘climate change impeding food production’ as in: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/4/2/this-is-how-badly-climate-change-has-hurt-food-production, the UN agriculture database says this not the case: http://faostat.fao.org/static/syb/syb_5000.pdf. This UN data shows world food and meat production are up by about +56% from 1997 to 2017,...

Editor, Today is an exciting day for engineering and science. NASA engineers and scientists successfully achieved powered, controlled flight of a helicopter. On Mars. As far as we know anyway, this is the first time an aircraft has flown on another planet. The engineers at NASA should be celebrating. It was one heck of a historic feat of engineering. Unfortunately, back...

To the Editor, As an engineer I have long been disturbed by the claims made by TC Energy in their Overview of the project on their corporate web site. Prominent bullet item benefits on the page include: - 1,000 MW clean energy - zero emissions - powers 1 million homes To begin with, MW is not a measure of energy. It is a measure of...

Editor, I would like to comment on the April 1, 2021 letter submitted by John Mikkelsen, Director, Power Business Development, TC Energy. His letter addressed the issue of 'Safety' of the proposed project. From my own experience in the mining industry, I can confirm that even the best engineered earth containment structures are subject to failure. There have been several recent...

Dear Editor, Dr. Jowett's thought-provokoing juxtaposition of these two areas of public concern begs the question: are we nervous of these issues because we lack enough facts or is it about contradictory conclusions drawn from the facts that we do have? Medicine and climate are areas of soft science where numbers can be used to suggest statistical correlations (e.g. CO2 and...

Editor, The shocking allegations brought forward by women in the Canadian Armed Forces have made it evident that there are still members – and more disturbing – also senior leaders who somehow think improperly exercising their position of authority over women is acceptable. It’s not. I’m writing this to express my disappointment and as a call to action to my former Canadian...

Editor, I would like to thank Louise Buccella for her letter, published in the March 25, 2021, edition of The Meaford Independent, in which she states her concerns regarding the safety of our proposed pumped hydro storage facility near Meaford. We understand that safety is important to the citizens of Meaford, particularly those who live near our proposed Pumped Storage Project....

To the Editor: I find your recent editorial relative to the 'actual' end cost ( to the ratepayer) of the new library to be somewhat misleading. You claim that ratepayers have the benefit of $1.3 million in development costs to be collected from new developments. This may be true eventually, but for now this $1.3 million had to be borrowed,...

Dear Editor, Confusion in people’s minds after seeing media reports on COVID or climate is understandable. We hear diverse things about a virus that is ‘novel’ and therefore not yet understood by our health practitioners, and we hear opposing opinions about climate and whether it could be controlled by humans. It appears that washing hands, physical distancing, wearing masks have all...