We need a mature understanding of God that won't breed sexual predators in priestly clothing.
Patricia Seeley, Toronto
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People keep missing the point about allowing priests to marry. It's not that marrying will cure pedophiles, but rather that priests will be selected from a larger, more normal population group than is the case now.
Philip Levy, Vancouver
Green with Wente
Re The Wacky World of Green Energy Power (April 10):
Margaret Wente is half correct. While it is bad economics to distort the market by subsidizing green energy, it is equally unfair to ignore the hidden health-care and climate-change costs of coal-fired electricity and the externalized costs of nuclear power.
It should be acknowledged that subsidies to dirty electricity are hidden while green energy subsidies are fully costed, giving green energy an unjustified bad rap as uneconomical.
If consumers paid the true cost of coal-fired electricity, as reflected by a carbon tax, and if the accurately costed nuclear power included the hidden liabilities of limited insurance liability, reactor decommissioning costs, stranded debt charges and opportunity costs, then conservation and renewables like wind would become economically viable without subsidies.
Frank de Jong, past leader, Green Party of Ontario
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Ms. Wente would have us believe that the introduction of more solar and wind power will contribute zero carbon savings because we will still require a coal- or gas-fired plant in the wings to ramp up when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
The alternative is to have those same plants running 100 per cent of the time instead of only part of the time, as would be the case with alternative energy sources.
Bill Pearce, Victoria
Pharmacy wars
Saturday's editorial on Ontario's drug pricing legislation ( A Step Toward Reform) was factually correct, but there was an incomplete understanding of the main issue.
The dispensing fee paid for the provision of prescription services under the Ontario Drug Benefit Program has increased by 56 cents over the past 21 years. The system of professional allowances was approved as a way to remunerate pharmacists appropriately while avoiding the politically difficult move of increasing the dispensing fee. Without these allowances, most pharmacies would have been out of business years ago.
If they are removed without adjusting the dispensing fee, there will be no reason for Ontario pharmacists to continue providing online services to ODB recipients. The majority will likely withdraw from their contract with ODB. Seniors and welfare recipients would then be faced with paying cash for their medications and attempting to get reimbursed directly by ODB. This would effectively collapse the drug distribution system.
I hope I don't sound self-serving when I say that Ontario citizens will be much poorer in terms of their health care when the effects of these proposals are realized. Political brinksmanship may look sexy to the public now, but dark times are ahead.
Richard Granville, Ajax, Ont.
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Ontario's most vulnerable patients - seniors and the chronically ill - will have their health-care services seriously compromised by this legislation. Instead of being able to rely on their pharmacists to provide the front-line health-care services they regularly seek and need, they may now be forced to make a doctor's appointment or go to the hospital.
On average, these cuts represent approximately $300,000 to each and every pharmacy - money that pharmacists now spend on staff, hours of operation and the one-on-one services they offer their patients. There is just no way to sustain the level of service we offer today with more than a quarter of a million dollars cut from our bottom lines. Although the government would have you believe the cuts will affect only the big chains, more than half of Ontario pharmacies are owner-operated and these cuts will have a direct and severe impact on the neighbourhood health care they deliver.
Dean Miller, chair, Ontario Pharmacists' Association
Fare comment
So Lucy Waverman ( Serving Up A Host Of Down East Delights - Globe Life Style, April 10) finds that several restaurants in Nova Scotia have "standards as high as Toronto's and every bit as original." Faint praise indeed.
Sally Lou Le Messurier, St. John's
Insert Leafs joke here
Re When It Comes To Sports, Toronto Is A City Of Losers (April 10): As I always say to out-of-town friends, our losing sports teams are compensation for Toronto's being the centre of the universe. It's the least we can do.
Michael Derblich, Toronto
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Criticize as you might ( Where Did It Go Wrong? - Sports, April 10) , but the Leafs have managed a super-human feat. Mere mortals earn, at best, one post-mortem examination on the road to eternity. For the immortal Leafs, it's an annual event.
Rev. Robert Assaly, Montreal
