Budget bombast

Re: SAC to pay CFS $1m, Nov. 9

Mike Ghenu, meet Jayson Blair. Journalistic integrity once again took a well-deserved vacation, this time in The Varsity’s precious little hack job about the SAC budget. I understand that Ghenu might not like all of SAC’s policies, but to formulate his own guesses as to what the budget will be and then present them as fact is a truly stupefying move. In what rabid, Neocon reality does that constitute “news”?

Carla Manfredi

• It’s really quite amazing that Mike Ghenu, in a few short months, has been able to turn The Varsity into a disgraceful morass of misinformation and Republican ideologies. I think perhaps Ghenu’s opus was this propagandist article, which stated that SAC is planning to pay the Canadian Federation of Students a cool million dollars. Sure, SAC hasn’t indicated that they’re going to do this, nor have the four SAC executives which preceded them. And yes, Ghenu admits he hasn’t seen a budget indicating this, but hey, he wrote his own “budget estimates.” Who needs facts when you can make up the news yourself? Congratulations to The Varsity, you are officially a farce.

Alex Tepperman

Props from The Mez

Re: No mayoral vision in sight, Nov. 9

I love your “No mayoral vision” editorial. I agree. I’m voting for Kevin Clarke! And, thanks for all the City Idol coverage.

Dave Meslin
Project Coordinator, City Idol

Tough transit choice

Re: The fizzling rocket, Nov. 6

Sana Ahmed rightly bemoans the TTC and correctly highlights the lack of vision in the past 20 years that have led to its decline. All is not lost, however, and certainly-with political will and a modest yearly investment-we can have a network of reliable and efficient Bus and Light Rapid Transit lines built by 2016. This plan is outlined in a TTC report entitled “Building a Transit City” (2005) and calls for building hundreds of kilometres of dedicated transitways throughout the city. LRTs and BRTs work really well-try using Ottawa’s BRT or our own Spadina LRT. Graeme Parry has created maps indicating how this network would look and has contrasted this to a more expensive Spadina subway extension of just under 7 km. In an ideal world we could have both, but realistically we have to make choices. Contact your city councillor and tell him or her which version you prefer if you’d like to see better transit in this city.

Nicholas Provart, PhD
Assistant Professor, Bioinformatics,
U of T

Tasty food for thought

Re: Campus cuisine with Amie and Amanda, Nov. 6

I really enjoyed reading the restaurant review and would love to see more in the future. If you want to appeal to people’s real concerns, I don’t think you could ever overstress food.

Michael Collins

• I just wanted to say that I enjoyed the recent review of Live restaurant. I’m very glad that your newspaper is reviewing organic options, especially for students.

Emilia C.

Hope for vegan eatery

Re: Vegan eatery uprooted,
Nov. 6

One fact this well-written article neglected to include is that the Radical Roots levy, approved last year, was collected by SAC this school year. The money is currently sitting dormant, and the U of T Environmental Resource Network (UTERN), in partnership with SAC, has plans to try to revive a similar operation under a new management system. Students interested in being part of the initiative should contact
[email protected].

Leah Stokes
President, UTERN

Drug sites help AIDS battle

Re: Injection sites for sore eyes?, Oct. 31

Safe injection sites have been shown to reduce the spread of HIV without increasing drug use. They also serve as a bridge to drug treatment for an especially hard-to-reach population. Drug users are not the only beneficiaries. Consider the tragic experience of Canada’s southern neighbor. U.S. Centers for Disease Control researchers estimate that 57 per cent of AIDS cases among women and 36 per cent of overall AIDS cases in the U.S. are linked to injection drug use or sex with partners who inject drugs. This easily preventable public health crisis is a direct result of zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes.
In the interest of containing the HIV pandemic, let’s hope the Conservative government acknowledges the drug war’s tremendous collateral damage sooner rather than later. Canada cannot afford to emulate the harm-maximizing drug policies of the former land of the free and current record holder in number of citizens incarcerated.

Robert Sharpe, MPA
Policy Analyst, Common Sense
for Drug Policy