April 2000
by Barry Stagg
It is not too often that major newspapers like the Globe and Mail turn to satire for their major features. However, an article published Saturday, February 26, certainly broke new ground for the Globe in that regard. A major expose of the poverty situation in major Canadian cities, especially Toronto, was put together by the paper.
It had never occurred to me, before reading the Globe feature, that the working poor included the families of well-to-do senior partners in Toronto law firms. Apparently, in my misguided life, I had unavoidably been ignorant of that. Perhaps a few of you found yourself in the same boat as me. Nevertheless, the Globe, in a rather lengthy and insistent article, told us how the Toronto family, consisting of the senior partner in a Bay Street law firm and her husband (a sales and marketing whiz) were having trouble getting by on a mere $300,000 a year. The statistics were trotted out and it turned out that they had very little money after they worked through all of the necessities of their $300,000 a year lives.
Private schooling, nannies, trips to Europe, cottage up keep, private clubs, a yearly liquor bill for entertaining, all of these took their toll on this wretched family. There were other sad examples of the "poor rich" that really tugged at the heart strings.
Given the nanny state status of contemporary Canada , there must be some just solution for these people. One possible way of assuaging their need for money would be to have them apply directly to Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart. Surely, using the "pocket poverty" test that Ms. Stewart used for shovelling funds into her home riding, there could be some way found to circle a convenient pocket around that particular family's homestead. A pocket of poverty in Rosedale or other affluent areas of Toronto would usually raise eyebrows but given the Human Resources Minister's impeccable logic and the equally formidable reasoning of the struggling senior partner and husband, it should be no great effort to accomplish this bit of sophistic sleight-of-hand.
A careless thought entered my mind though. Quite possibly other Canadian citizens might perceive that this whole process bordered on the ridiculous. Others might even look upon it as the ultimate illustration of a mad rush to oblivion by the corporate welfare bums of this country. Thus, it might be difficult, optically speaking, for both the struggling senior partner and the Minister to put into effect this pocket poverty solution.
With my mind hard at work on this problem, I managed to come up with another and likely more sensible solution. This one involved a Toronto institution that has been prospering from a charitable point of view for many years. That is the Daily Bread Food Bank. This Bathurst Street repository for dogooderism has operated to both feed the poor and to sate the ever burgeoning appetite of the Toronto affluent for conspicuous charity. It would then be possible to integrate the two.
Perhaps a special category could be created at the food bank for those working wealthy who find themselves asset rich and cash poor. A day could be set aside where some of the volunteers from the food bank could, perhaps, provide private tours of the food bank so that lady lawyer and marketing husband could pick up what they needed for the week. An even more circumspect plan could involve having the food bank volunteers deliver food to the lawyer and husband rather than subject them to what might be a bit of discomfort in having to actually tour the food bank premises. After all, their busy working lives and their insatiable desire for both status and consumption would hardly leave any time free for the potential humility, if not humiliation, of passing through food bank headquarters.
One other solution comes to mind. This would involve a form of counselling or personal therapy that might be best administered by people such as unemployed fishermen from places in Newfoundland such as Trepassey or Wesleyville. Just maybe, a few people there might have the odd lesson or two to teach these disgraceful examples of careless, greedy and selfish consumption. There might even be a chance for a bit of dialogue between the true working poor of small Newfoundland towns and the pseudo-poor of Rosedale. Talking points will include just how the fat of the land gets divided up in this country.
When those in the Toronto service industry such as Mrs. Bay Street Lawyer and Mr. Bay Street Marketeer can run up $300,000 year incomes and still want more, then it is time to wonder where these sadly incomplete people get the qualifications to actually earn that money. Perhaps their positioning in life is more akin to Pete Seeger's fabled fat maggot who fell off the handle of a shovel into a dead cat and nearly gorged himself to death. When you get a chance to listen to some of Seeger's music, check out that worthy fable. Mr. and Mrs. Fat Maggot appear to be living in Rosedale.