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......................................................................................................................................Respect the Senate?
I'm sorry NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is so adamant about abolishing the Senate. It's going to cost the party my vote (Senators To Challenge Expense Findings – June 11).
Senators, from many backgrounds, are people who have succeeded in their chosen field. Most do good work of great worth to all Canadians, often leading projects according to their passion and a vision of what is needed, projects that wouldn't get done if left to the Commons or the private sector. This is in addition to being available to provide "sober second thought" and common sense, especially when the Commons is faltering, a phenomenon that can be seen under governments of all stripes. Consultants doing the same thing would cost us a whole lot more.
The fact that a few senators have erred, deliberately or inadvertently, does not mean the whole body should be thrown out. Because of a few bad apples or bad appointments, should we start again from scratch, in the forlorn hope that this time we'll manage to create egalitarian societies of perfect people?
It doesn't work that way, people being people.
Better to address the fallibility exposed and try to overcome it than to get rid of an institution that, for the most part, tries to do just that!
Keldine FitzGerald, Stittsville, Ont.
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As senators squirm over the revelations of their expense claims, it is worth repeating that in the private sector, life is very different.
As an employee of a company in the tourism industry, any expenses I submit must have supporting documents, namely receipts. Failure to provide receipts means the claims will be rejected.
Our whining senators should be dismissed, and an immediate clean-up of Senate expense rules undertaken to make them open, transparent and accountable. My respect for this institution is nil.
Peter Archer, Oliver, B.C.
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We now have a Triple-U Senate: Useless, Unwanted and Unremovable.
Craig Gordon, Fonthill, Ont.
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Letter writer Stella Deacon argues that we need the Senate's oversight to mitigate the power of the Commons (2nd House, 1st Steps – June 11). I entirely agree.
That concentration of power stems from our "first past the post" electoral system. Spread that power by adopting a proportional representation system, widely used in Europe, for the House of Commons and the need for a second chamber diminishes considerably.
John Grimley, Toronto
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Fired by the CBC
Evan Solomon was fired from the CBC for brokering art sales: The horror of it! Cover the eyes and ears of the children! (Solomon Firing 'A Disproportionate Response': Union – June 11).
Personally, I'm not much disturbed by Mr. Solomon's activities. How about the "speaking engagement" payments accepted by Amanda Lang, Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy?
How many years was Jian Ghomeshi coddled and enabled? How many executives who allowed his behaviour are still in place?
The hypocrisy, the cynicism of it all.
J.R. Ellis, Margaret Harbour, Cape Breton, N.S.
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CBC employees are public servants. All are governed by formal conflict rules and by a proud tradition of integrity. CBC journalists holding others' actions to the light need integrity by the boatload. They know it.
Star journalists like Evan Solomon negotiate generous "super contracts" with the CBC to recognize their contribution. They are well paid. What the heck was he thinking?
Barry Kelsey, Saanichton, B.C.
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Paying the doctor
I have to agree with most of what Jeffrey Simpson says about fees versus salary for doctors, but this solution will take a generation of doctors to change (Doctors Need Salaries And Pensions, Not Fees For Service – June 11). In the short term, the continuance of medicare will require a private parallel system and a small fee for patients at the point of care.
R.S.M. Eberhard, MD, London, Ont.
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In Ontario, we have primary care "reform" in rostered practices, where physicians are paid a salary per head, per month, whether they see patients one, two, three, four or five days a week in their office. They can double dip in the private sector, while being paid the same as those working harder within the provincial system.
They are not required to provide a reasonable minimum guarantee of availability to their patients, in the office or after hours.
Emergency departments are the default system, and are flooded regularly with patients not only more appropriately seen in the office, but when their "own" physician is being paid to see them.
This is a disincentive to work.
It is being exploited regularly; the Ministry of Health's decision to cut physician remuneration across the board unfairly penalizes those who actually care for patients. Drafting and enforcing reasonable minimum service requirements is essential to ensure fairness to patients, as well as physicians, yet it isn't there.
This would not take "a decade to phase in." As long as the egregious waste continues, the MOH can argue that fee cuts are necessary and that a pension system for physicians is unaffordable.
Compromise? We need accountability, efficiency, now.
Patients, the taxpayers, deserve nothing less.
David Hughes Glass, MD, South Bruce Grey Health Centre, Kincardine, Ont.
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Doctors still make more than almost any segment of society. Let's find an issue that needs fixing. Say, transit for working people who need to commute.
David Cramer, Toronto
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Irony indeed
Mistakenly naming George Bernard Shaw as the author of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is rather ironic (Judgment, M.I.A. – letters, June 11).
While Shaw admired Wilde's more serious plays (Lady Windermere's Fan, for example), he did not care for Earnest.
"It amused me, of course," Shaw wrote when he reviewed the play in 1895, "but unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening."
Leonard Conolly, literary adviser to the Shaw Estate, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
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Danger: texting
Shortly after reading Elizabeth Renzetti's column, Texting Addicts Drive Me To Distraction (June 8), I was on my way downtown, when a cyclist, wearing earphones and texting – yes, texting – while riding with no hands on the handlebars tore by me on the sidewalk, then barrelled through a red light, leaving a motorist standing on his brakes to avoid her.
She didn't even look up.
Frankly, I'm surprised there isn't more carnage.
Madeline Pelletier-Leblanc, Montreal
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Roadside sign in Costa Rica: "Honk if you love Jesus; text if you want to meet Him."
Eric Pelletier, Toronto