Letters: Politics needs more business-type leadership

Montreal Gazette

14-07-2025

Martine St-Victor's thought-provoking column highlights the difference between management and leadership.
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this is incorrect. A manager plans and controls; a leader enables and changes. Both persons or traits are required for success in the private and public sectors.
I agree that a true leader is able to admit an error and change a decision or policy. But in politics, the rules of the game seem different. How frequently does a politician admit a mistake? Virtually never, as the electorate tends to punish such an admission.
Thankfully there is some evidence that voters may be altering their decision-making process, focusing less on flash and more on competence. Mark Carney decisively beat and pushed Pierre Poilievre off his seat — figuratively and literally — in the last federal election.
Here's hoping this trend continues at the municipal level. The way I see it, now more than ever, Montreal needs a leader.
Nick Di Cino, Ahuntsic-Cartierville
Weapons exports a barrier to peace
Re: ' An urgent letter to Mark Carney ' (Opinion, July 4)
Clifford Lincoln's plea addressed to Prime Minister Carney to initiate a grassroots antiwar initiative for peace deserves wide circulation across Canada.
'Peace certainly does not mean guns, bombs and missiles, which have no other purpose but to kill and destroy,' Lincoln writes.
Yet Canada has a significant military production industry that generates billions of dollars of revenue each year and exports lethal weapons, some to countries with disturbing human rights records. Why?
Shloime Perel, Côte-St-Luc
Our joie de vivre a glorious mess
Re: ' Enjoy summer in the city with its beautiful chaos ' (Josh Freed, June 28)
Josh Freed nailed it. There really is something irresistible about Montreal's messy, noisy, gloriously alive summer streets. They can be chaotic, but what a beautiful kind of chaos.
It's the construction detours that somehow lead you to a new café and the bike paths jammed with every kind of cyclist from Lycra-clad missiles to wicker-basket commuters.
It's the way entire neighbourhoods spill onto sidewalks during a three-month block party with languages mixing, music playing and kids racing through sprinklers.
Montrealers don't just put up with the bedlam; we create it, and we love it.
After months of darkness, cold and ice, we've earned the right to live outside, make noise and celebrate it.
Summer here is messy, loud and full of life — and Montrealers wouldn't trade it for anything tidier.
Vive l'été, Montréal-style!
Lindi Ross, Carignan
Hazy thinking south of border
U.S. representatives are calling on Canada to take action on wildfires that send smoke across the border — 'robbing Americans of their ability to enjoy the summer.'
What are the Prairie evacuees supposed to do? Stand atop the closest highrise and blow the smoke back north?
David Garforth, Pointe-Claire
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