Friday’s letters: Mobile-only parking payment unfair

I was very unhappy to read in the Edmonton Journal Saturday that city council will be changing us to “mobile-only” parking payment on city streets and city lots. I think about people like the seniors who don’t have mobile phones, and those who also have mobility issues, who rely on their cars for their freedom to move around the city. I think about the people who are on very restricted budgets who cannot afford a data plan, or even a cellphone.

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Having a mobile phone is not a requirement for driving and should not be a requirement for parking. The ability to pay for parking should not be dependent on the ability to pay for a mobile phone and its associated plan. Did city council look at something like an ARC Card system for parking? (i.e. some kind of prepaid card that you can tap in and out with?) The ARC Card system is already in place on city transit and it will be around for a long time.

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Will the city install free phones in phone booths for people to use to pay for parking if they don’t have their own phone? I think council could do better than the solution they came up with.

C.A. McCartney, Edmonton

Point of a blind trust is it’s blind

Re. “Carney must disclose: polls,” April 2

The article does a serious disservice to readers. Just repeating that a majority of those polled want Mr. Carney to disclose the assets he holds in a blind trust without mentioning the critical detail that this is impossible, doesn’t do the job a newspaper should — helping people understand the world. The entire point of a blind trust is that it is blind; Mr. Carney doesn’t know what assets it holds.

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If through some colossal mismanagement, Mr. Carney somehow learned what assets were in the trust to make such a disclosure, they’d have to be immediately sold and other assets he didn’t know about purchased with the proceeds, to make the trust blind again.

Mark Senior, Edmonton

Stop repeating U.S. propaganda

Re. “Carney looks weak on China — and U.S. noticed,” Tasha Kheiriddin, April 2

Can the Journal please stop repeating the rubbish, lies and half-truths issued from U.S. propagandists and the White House? Canada has not “exposed” the U.S. to a “massive” influx of illegal Chinese immigrants. It only takes some very elementary understanding and logic to know that if there are people or materials getting into the U.S. illegally, that’s the U.S.’s fault. They’re responsible for controlling immigration into their country, in the same way we are for immigration into ours. Can we help? Sure. But in the end, the problem is theirs.

Same goes for the fentanyl “issue.” The amount of fentanyl coming from Canada is miniscule. If we want to use the logic U.S. propagandists use, we should be hollering at the White House and Congress to do something about the far more massive amount of illegal guns crossing the border from the U.S.

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Recall that the first U.S. impulse after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was to say the terrorists had come in through Canada. Standard trope of the U.S. and authoritarian regimes, generally: Got a problem? Blame outsiders.

David Dear, Edmonton

Letters welcome

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