North America's backyards
Thankfully, there are world leaders such as Mexican President Felipe Calderon who challenge the Conservatives' feeble stance on climate change ( Mexico Pushes Ottawa To Act On Climate Change - May 28). Given the global consequences, foreign leaders have a responsibility to criticize nations that have the economic ability to reduce emissions but choose not to do so.
Joel MacDonald, Saskatoon
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Mexico City is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Shouldn't the President of Mexico clean up his own backyard before criticizing others?
Douglas Cornish, Ottawa
If I had a billion dollars
To add to Jeffrey Simpson's list of uses for $1-billion, how about maternal health ( The Siege Mentality Of Back-To-Back Summits Will Cost Us Dearly - May 28)? At a time when Canada's infant mortality ranking has plunged from sixth place to 24th ( Why Are Our Babies Dying? - May 22), when the impact of HIV/AIDS on maternal health is being neglected ( G8's Maternal Health Initiative Neglects Aids Funding: Activists - May 28), and when Canada's maternal-health initiative is supposedly taking centre stage at the G8, it's ironic that our spending on summit security is expected to reach $1-billion: One billion would go a long way to educate women and girls, provide accessible health care and address poverty.
Monica Cullum, Ottawa
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I am a faithful reader of Jeffrey Simpson's columns and find myself nodding in agreement with his views. News that the summits will cost taxpayers $1-billion has incensed me.
I live not far from Joyceville, Ont., where one of six prison farms across the country is slated to close because these farms are losing $4-million a year, a tiny fraction of the sum to be spent protecting foreign leaders and their officials for a few days. The incongruity of the situation should be obvious, even to the inhabitants of the insulated group in the PMO.
Sheilagh Dubois, Lyndhurst, Ont.
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Does Stephen Harper really believe that almost one billion dollars is an acceptable cost for security measures for the G8/G20 summits? The original estimate for these security costs was a mere $179-million only a few months ago.
National security be damned, we need an investigation ( Budget Watchdog Probing Summits' $1-Billion Price Tag - May 29). The world leaders can stay home if this is the true cost of hosting such a ridiculous affair.
Jeff Leggat, Maple Bay, B.C.
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This week's launch of the Charter challenge to homelessness is anchored to international human-rights covenants and treaties that articulate the right to housing (This Is Not The Way Home - editorial, May 28). The homeless and those at risk of homelessness need the courts to hold governments accountable for their duty to honour the right to housing. If we can find a billion dollars to guard 20 heads of state at a lavish summit, we can find the funds to ensure everyone has a decent dwelling to call home.
Rob Rainer, executive director, Canada Without Poverty
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Once wonders if Stephen Harper will be taking to the microphone to get by with a little help from his friends by delivering a riff on the Barenaked Ladies: "If I had a billion tax dollars, If I had a billion tax dollars, I'd buy your love." He'll need to buy theirs 'cause he sure won't be feelin' it in these parts when it comes time to pick up the tab for his buddies' safety.
What's a billion among friends? Now, if I had a billion dollars ... I'd be rich.
M.J. Simmons, St. John's
Health-care costs: doctors
Salaried doctors in Ontario emergency rooms are shown to see 2.9 patients per hour on average, versus 4.4 per hour for fee-for-service doctors ( Province Plans To Cut Costs By Putting More Doctors On Salary - May 28). Most of Ontario's emergency doctors already have voluntarily moved to hourly compensation. We see the result in longer wait times. Is this move a way to ration health care for patients by removing doctors' incentive to see patients efficiently?
Kevin Speight, MD, Toronto
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Ontario's Community Health Centres applaud the plan to compensate more doctors using salaries. In all 74 Community Health Centres (CHCs) and 22 Community-Governed Family Health Teams (CFHTs), physicians are salaried employees. Salaries mean predictability in budgets and care that is relieved of the fee-for-service need for speed, providing time for doctors to get at all the layers of need and not just the surface condition.
Community Health Centres employ many more types of health providers than other models of care. Because doctors do not receive financial incentives for doing what they do, other health-care providers, such as nurse practitioners, dieticians and physiotherapists, can step in and apply all the benefits of their training. All this has enabled better health outcomes for the 325,000 clients served by Ontario's Community Health Centres. And CHCs have been doing it for more than 35 years.
Joan Lesmond, president, Association of Ontario Health Centres
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George Bernard Shaw said it best way back in the early 1900s. With regard to the dilemma created by the way doctors are paid, Shaw recognized that any system of incentives creates potential distortions. His analysis is pithy: "That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity."
In addition to creating a deficiency of attached legs, when we pay doctors, laboratories, hospitals, ambulance staff and other health-care practitioners on a fee-for-service basis, we inevitably contribute to the nation's ever increasing health-care costs.
L.A. McKenna, Toronto
Health-care costs: pharmacies
We have no intention of backing down on plans to reduce the cost of generic drugs and eliminate professional allowances ( Dirty Dealing - May 27). In certain cases, we're paying more than five times what some U.S. states pay for the same drug. That's why we're acting to reduce the cost of drugs by at least 50 per cent and eliminate professional allowances - fees generic manufacturers pay pharmacies that have inflated the cost of drugs.
Professional allowances were introduced in 2006, when we first reformed the prescription drug system to save taxpayers $1-billion. They were intended to replace an unaccountable system of rebates that had been abused for too long. At the time, we put strict rules in place to govern how pharmacies would use professional allowances. However, we found many pharmacies were breaking these rules. Some transgressions were so serious, we were forced to take legal action. We're cleaning up this system by eliminating these fees while, at the same time, lowering generic drug prices and increasing government funding to pharmacies. We're adding more drugs to Ontario's formulary - which will benefit seniors and those on social assistance - and we'll reinvest every cent in health care.
Deb Matthews, Ontario Minister of Health
A beginner? on the job
Lawrence Martin may have a point ( Harper Has Taken The Wrong Lessons From Chrétien - May 27) but overlooks a significant difference between the two PMs. The brass-knuckle guy was one of the most widely experienced federal politicians of recent memory. Jean Chrétien was the utility infielder of the Trudeau government, acting variously (and with varying success) as finance, energy, justice and northern affairs minister. Once an MP, Stephen Harper returned to federal politics after a stint as director of an anti-tax lobby and with an MA in economics that would have qualified him for a job at a community college. His much-remarked-upon "toughness" often looks more like the white-knuckle overcompensation of a beginner on the job.
Ian Porter, Halifax
Don't bank on the OECD
Notwithstanding the OECD's urging, the Bank of Canada should hold its rates at the current level ( Feeling The Squeeze - Report on Business, May 27). It's not just the recent European crisis, although that's been interesting, it's our high unemployment rate, the consumer debt load, our dollar jumping all over the place, and commodity prices up and down like a thermometer, to name a few concerns. These factors have created a stressful and challenging environment for our factories, farmers and consumers and are doing a very good job, thank you, of slowing growth and mitigating inflationary concerns.
Let's not repeat the mistakes of the late 1930s, when everyone thought the Depression was over. A rate increase by the Bank of Canada next week would be premature at best and potentially dangerous to our fiscal well-being.
Peter D. Hambly, Hanover, Ont.
Cement that relationship
It seems BP is attempting to plug the leak by pumping thousands of litres of mud and cement to choke the blowout, but efforts so far have been unsuccessful ( BP's Spill, Obama's Burden - May 28). As an alternative, my suggestion to stem the flow of crude is for Barack Obama to ask "The Mob" to help out by offering a limited amnesty. I'm pretty sure that when it involves cement, water and plugging holes, these experienced individuals would do a more effective job, and quickly. And don't forget the cannoli.
David Honigsberg, Toronto