By Sally Barnes
Whatever Chrystia Freeland is smoking, I need some.
To steal a line from an old movie, I’ll have what she’s having.
Like a kid on a Bouncy Castle, our effervescent finance minister delivered her third federal budget and proclaimed that she is “really, really optimistic” about our future.
Good for her but it’s really, really confusing.
As a mere taxpayer without Chrystia’s credentials or hands on the nation’s purse strings, my mundane life involves cuts, cracks, and creaks that make me believe she and I live in very different places.
While she’s hobnobbing with the world’s grandees, my daily experiences bring me in touch with people like parents and grandparents worried sick about their kids’ futures, family businesses facing bankruptcy because they can’t find employees, and healthcare workers who have lost hope they will ever see our ragged health care system repaired.
It has become traditional during the U.S. President’s annual State of the Union address to pack the public gallery with true heroes and examples of the type of Americans who benefit from the current administration’s policies and programs. These special guests are introduced by the president and applauded by a grateful Congress.
As is often the case, this practice has caught on here and during the visit of President Biden to the House of Commons recently the “two Michaels,” who were held captive in China for more than 1,000 days, were present in the public gallery, introduced and enthusiastically and duly honoured by the audience.
Using that technique, therefore, let me introduce you to the kind of people I rub shoulders with and who lack Minister Freeland’s bubbly optimism about the state of affairs in our neck of the woods. I have given them different names to respect their privacy.
Jennifer’s cancer progressed to stage 4 as she struggled without a family doctor to requisition tests and obtain a timely diagnosis. She lost more valuable time when her records were lost in the shuffle of an overworked bureaucracy. She’s a fighter but the fight needn’t have been this hard.
Several friends and family are among the 8,000 to 10,000 local people who will soon be added to the millions of Canadians who don’t have direct access to a family doctor. It‘s no exaggeration to say this will cause great suffering and probable death. As widely reported, six doctors in one practice here are all retiring and no one wants their jobs.
Healthcare funding will be increased, and more workers will be trained and retrained but it will take years, wisdom, and political will to dig us out of this current quagmire of shortages, turf wars, inefficiencies, backlogs, and suffering.
Where was the wisdom that should have foreseen and avoided this mess as our population aged, needs became increasingly complex, and immigration rose?
My friend Christine worries about her own health working long shifts at the local hospital but answers the call for help on her days off because she is so committed to her patients and can’t bear to see them and her co-workers suffer.
Mac, a retired public servant, is on the outs with his teenage grandson who is angry because his dad won’t keep giving him money. Mac suggested the kid get a part-time job. “A job? he scoffed like I was suggesting he rob a bank or give up his cell phone,” Mac told me. Apparently, it’s no longer cool for kids to work.
Eric is a distinguished, retired professional who used a recent family gathering to test his grandkids on their knowledge of Canadian history. “Who knows who Sir John A. Macdonald is?” Eric asked of the five offspring around the dinner table. Only one replied. “He’s the old guy that killed all the Indian kids.”
Toronto friends who for generations have ridden the buses, streetcars, and subways, are now scared for themselves and their children after a series of violent incidents on the TTC. Everywhere, crime is not only rising, but it’s also becoming more violent and brazen, especially among young people. Mental health issues, a staggering opioid death rate, and the use of guns threaten communities across the spectrum.
Several of the high-profile murders now before the courts involve accused young men with a long record of major crimes who were out on bail at the time the murders were committed.
Truth to tell, our justice system is as badly in need of reform as our health care. The only difference is that so many of us personally experience healthcare tragedies while our interest in courts and justice is relegated to what we learn from the media.
Meanwhile, our military struggles to attract recruits and our RCMP has lost its once-great reputation.
Even small pleasures are challenging these days. My day begins with a pot of coffee and three newspapers. Delivery of one of these was suddenly cancelled this week—apparently for lack of a delivery person and/or dropping circulation in my area.
My friends Veronica and James live comfortably on pensions and used to treat themselves to a meal out once a week.
“So many restaurants can afford to open only a few days a week and can’t get the staff they need. Staff they do have are overworked and often untrained and inexperienced. Think cold, soggy fries when they finally arrive… we’re just staying home,” they told me.
Staff shortages mean some rest stops on Highway 401 have resorted to using machines where customers order and pay while a skeletal kitchen staff struggles to fill orders for a waiting lineup of frustrated customers.
Doesn’t anyone want to work anymore?
Is it, as some have suggested, a case where more people are taking resources out of our economy through government payouts while fewer people are working and paying the taxes needed to fund our social services and infrastructure?
You can shoot a cannon down the main streets of once safe and vital small towns.
Many shops, including those operated by the same families for generations, closed during the pandemic and never re-opened. It looks like there’s only a real market for dollar stores, nail salons, and food banks.
So many communities like our own struggle with a shortage of affordable housing, homelessness, unsafe and unlawful encampments, and people who live and beg on the streets.
This is in addition to other threats and challenges Canadians face. There is a fiscal storm brewing with inflation, high-interest rates, and increasing energy and grocery prices not to mention distant wars and foreign interference in our governments and other facets of our lives.
I haven’t even mentioned our staggering debt levels that most people would rather just forget and leave to their grandkids to pay off.
Tony, our accountant, called this morning with a question to complete my income tax return: “Are you willing to give permission for use of your organs after your death?”
“First, they came for my money. Now they’re after my body parts,” I quip and it’s obvious I’m not his first client to use that line.
Tony says that, unlike myself, more than 90 per cent of his clients decline to participate in this new tool to promote the important cause of organ donorship.
“Another example of people who have become cynical and angry—not good,“ I mumble.
It’s obvious that Minister Freeland has a real selling job on her hands and it will be a frosty Friday before respect and confidence in our democratic institutions are restored and we can all clutch our pearls and be “really, really optimistic.”
Right now we’re just all holding onto our hats—and apparently our body parts too.
Sally Barnes has enjoyed a distinguished career as a writer, journalist and author. Her work has been recognized in a number of ways, including receiving a Southam Fellowship in Journalism at Massey College at the University of Toronto. A self-confessed political junkie, she has worked in the back-rooms for several Ontario premiers. In addition to a number of other community contributions, Sally Barnes served a term as president of the Ontario Council on the Status of Women. She is a former business colleague of Doppler’s publisher, Hugh Mackenzie, and lives in Kingston, Ontario. You can find her online at sallybarnesauthor.com.
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A few years into this pandemic and its aftermath, I’m sure we have all heard a variety of horror stories; about health, money and otherwise. I could suggest that Sally Barnes might consider sitting a little further from some people. Or carry a spray.
The responses to her commentary sure were all over the board; radical denouncement of Liberal/NDP programs, decrying Canada as a failed state (considering flight to Haiti or Afghanistan perhaps?), the failure of todays youth to work: to the suggestion that we try making something to sell rather than printing money (a personal favorite), and the observation that the pay difference between the upper echelon of society and the rest of us has become obscene.
But the government attempted to help both the people and businesses and received barely an accolade from either, while getting ripped of by both. And now both are howling again.
Corporations such as Leon’s and GDI received millions in benefits, supposedly to help them pay and retain employees. But there was no real ironclad stipulation regarding the usage of those funds, so many companies took the money, laid the employees off, and used the funds to dividend stockholders and buy back shares.
People left jobs, collected government money, and went into business for themselves.
Support money was paid to companies that would never fail, unless the fires of hell went out and Judas was reinstated. The general population took the hit, while I doubt any bureaucrat or politician missed a single pay check.
Now, the corporations who might still have their employees if they had used the government money to support those workers, can’t get them back. ‘Can we please have some imported? We are suffering and will surely have to raise the price of——everything.’
I am a little unsympathetic of politicians who really didn’t imagine that people, both corporate and individuals, were capable of ripping said government off to such a degree. They, those same politicians, must realize from time to time, that people know we are failing to get our money’s worth.
But, thousands of workers just kept on truckin’.
I appreciate what they have done, though I still haven’t heard any (ANY) politician or political party acknowledge what they have done.
And since they kept on working, they will still be required to pay their taxes.
Otherwise, how will those who ducked out, get paid?
Diana Mitchell, I agree with you that we should all make a conscious effort to be nicer in dealing with those who serve the public. Restaurant servers, airline counter agents, doctors, nurses, etc. have had a difficult time during the 3 years of Covid. One of our granddaughters is an ER nurse and she has lots of stories about how nasty people can be after waiting 3 or 4 hours in ER, even if its because they couldn’t be bothered following readily available public health advise.
However, let me assure you the current success of our 6 grandchildren has nothing to do with “who they knew”. To start with, they are all working in completely different fields and at locations from coast to coast. They have a job because they (with their parents) worked diligently for 20 + years to prepare them with the # 1 attitudes and #2 skills to be good citizens and good workers. That was easier for some than for others, but they all did it, and we are very proud of them all.
This may be a depressing article but it had to be said because unfortunately it is true . The person whose 6 grandchildren all have good jobs, well bully for you but I wonder if they have these jobs because of who they knew? Sorry if this is not the case but some people on low paying jobs don’t have many chances. I have heard from someone that these low (let’s face it they are VERY Low paying jobs) not only don’t pay much but that the public now treat them with no manners (like complaining at having to wait to be served, etc. – when the person is probably doing the best they can with the time and job they have) I have heard that many people now are downright rude to servers and workers, so who would want a job like that! – and with low wages!!
It’s surely not encouraging when we hear that our Prime Minister spent $6,000 at a hotel every night at the Queen’s funeral (no one would expect our Prime Minister to stay in a dump and we would want him to stay at a decent above average hotel) but at that price that is certainly over the top and not encouraging for the rest of us. Folks, let us go into shops, restaurants, doctors, hairdressers, wherever with a smile and a word of encouragement regardless of the service because at this moment of time, everyone needs a lift.
Sally I always enjoy your articles and I am also concerned in our government spending and the debt we are leaving our grandkids.
But,can you pick a country you would rather live?
Thank you Hugh Holland for your more encouraging commentary. If I felt that badly about the world I think I just wouldn’t get out of bed! That was a very sad, biased op-ed and, quite frankly, I regretted reading it. I also found it a little difficult to feel sorry for the “soggy fries” couple. I don’t wear blinders on the state of the world but, honestly, the world has been in awful shape many times. Even David Suzuki had to be told by his wife (and he readily admitted this on CBC) that the World has to be given some reason to HOPE. I didn’t get that from this op-ed and I feel sorry for Sally Barnes. And if her aim was to whip up a frenzy then it was a callous act and shame on her.
One thing to remember if your a government finance wizard is that unless an industry either makes some kind of widget or digs up some resource that is ultimately sold OUTSIDE our country that industry is going to do very little for our balance of payments and ultimately our national debt.
Service jobs, be they at the MacDonald’s counter or fixing a person’s cottage mostly just re arrange the money already in the country.
Unless your jobs are making things, sold overseas or bringing in money spending tourists from overseas, then these service jobs merely take from Joe and give to Harry with, of course, a cut to the government on every transaction.
Even the so called white collar jobs maybe designing new software for example, is really just making a slightly different shaped widget. You still have to make “something” and sell it to “somebody” preferably outside our country to make a difference to our balance of payments and thus to our debt.
There is a finite limit to the taxation any government can withdraw from their constituents before it becomes apparent to the masses that working is no longer a significantly beneficial way to spend their time..
This is all fairly obvious but once politicians are installed in office with the money flowing in they seem to forget that the future of our country is secured by investment, mostly private investment, in facilities that will work in the future to make the money that is to be taxed. If you take too much money now, that future will not be built well enough or big enough to handle tomorrow’s needs and at that point no amount of government jiggering, speechifying and hand wringing, at any level, is going to save the day. By then it is too late.
My goodness Sally, if readers don’t already have mental health issues, they will after reading your column. Yes there are problems but the sky is not falling. My wife and I both had surgery this year. The wait times were reasonable and the care was excellent. Six of our seven grandchildren have good jobs and # 7 is in university. Life is what you make it. The best thing we can give our grandchildren is a positive can-do attitude.
Thank you Sally
Your commentary should be published in every newspaper & virtual media so all tax paying & non paying Canadians can acknowledge how bad this Government has jeopardized this country. We are taxed to death and our future is very depressing. Every politician should get your commentary so they know how the real people live & feel about there Doomed country CANADA.
Sally, another great article. Luckily our town has attracted a goodly number of immigrants, who are filling the MacDonald and Tim Hortons jobs. We had bus loads of Venezuelan workers come and stay at our new Hilton while cleaning up from a fire at our Home Depot. Thank goodness all these new workers are willing to do these jobs.
Manual labour just isn’t what the youth of today want to do, and their parents don’t want them working either. How will they have time to spend all those hours on Tic Toc or other social media’s and get a job? Perhaps with so many government jobs over paying their staff, these children just don’t need to get any work experience unless it is in their academic field?
Our biggest problem is that many of the seniors that use to do these low paying jobs have taken enough abuse from todays youth and high paid workers and have packed it in.
The entire nation needs a realty adjustment.
Freeland/Expensiveland
Everything in Canada has increased significantly because of someone named Freeland, how ironic. She should change her last name to Expensiveland which would be a more accurate assessment of her marvellous achievements.
We better start attracting industry back to North America because the loonie is in for a rough ride thanks to our self induced inflationary spiral. Will we be able to afford items produced in other countries in the future with a devalued currency? The USA will have to create more protectionist policies as global markets realign. This will increase the cost of trade between our two countries. Ottawa will be forced to eliminate all marketing boards to gain access to the American market.
There will be lots of purchasing opportunities in the future for Blackrock or other WEF members to increase their real estate portfolio in Canada at our expense.
Who the hell does Ottawa really work for?
Can you imagine getting paid exorbitant amounts of money to screw up everything, welcome to Canada.
Too easy to grumble and be like those two old guy muppets in the balcony watching the show. There is likely a better payoff for smiling, cheerful optimism. But a reality check: some jobs do not pay enough to cover commuting costs, especially if a car is needed and daycare costs are to be covered. Not everyone has an agreeable grandma able to help.