When did we become nations of sissies?

Everyone is now a victim, no one is responsible for themselves or their own family

I watched a recent episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO. The panel comprised two executives from Loblaw and Maple Leaf Foods and three panelists who I would label as left-wing cry-babies. The business executives seemed as welcome as a skunk at a picnic and were challenged as to why their companies didn’t just pay their employees more since some of their employees were “food insecure” and needed help from food banks. Paikin and the non-business panelists made it clear that government and corporations had to do more to make sure everyone had enough to eat. None of them said even one word about who would pay for that outcome. Presumably the issue is one of the income of those who are “food insecure” in a time when inflation (caused by left wing policies of rampant spending, artificially low interest rates, and an attack on fossil fuels based on a specious climate change theory) is manifesting itself in high food prices.

The idea that someone else is responsible for your well-being is the epitome of left-wing nonsense. You make choices in life and you live with the consequences. Society does not owe you anything.

But the panelists argued that corporations and government owe a duty to ensure everyone has enough to eat.

Start with corporations. Loblaw has net profit margins of less than 4% of sales. In 2022, Note 26 to Loblaw’s audited financial statements discloses that Loblaw paid employees a total of $7,360,000,000 in 2022. Loblaw profit in 2022 was $2 billion after taxes of $793 million. Put another way, Loblaw paid people and government over $8 billion. The implication of the cry-babies on The Agenda was that Loblaw should pay its employees more and that would help solve the food insecurity problem. I suspect any detailed analysis of the number of Loblaw employees using food banks would be immaterial (and certainly not all 100,000) but paying all 100,000 employees 20% more would pretty well eliminate Loblaw’s ability to carry on business unless it raised prices, which would tend to put more people in a “food insecure” state. Loblaw annual sales are about $56 billion. Increase wages and benefits by 25% and and recover the $2 billion cost in prices added to revenue and food inflation rises by 2/56=3.5 percentage points for Loblaw customers and likely for everyone since competitors will follow suit. Absorb the added cost and Loblaw goes out of business and grocery shortages replace costs as the issue.

How about government? Loblaw’s already pays almost $800 million in taxes in addition to the taxes paid by its workforce which at a 25% tax rate comprises $1.8 billion. The $2.6 billion governments collect from Lobaw directly or indirectly is already spent on silly and ineffective policies like Trudeau’s “climate change” charade, foreign aid, support for the World Economic Forum and United Nations, a useless Senate and a host of pet projects which do nothing to make Canada a better place, and to provide indexed pensions for members of Parliament and civil servants. Are any of those people “food insecure”? Not likely. But with our government running record deficits, doubling the national debt since Trudeau was elected, the idea that government can dole out more is as stupid as thinking Loblaw corporation is everyone’s daddy.

About “food insecurity”. An estimated 5.8 million Canadians experience “food insecurity”. It can’t be the ones I see out and about since the majority of them are obese and haven’t missed too many meals.

I grew up in abject poverty and had many days when our family had no food. We didn’t ask for handouts from anyone, didn’t think we were poor (since everyone we knew lived just like we did), and grew little gardens, picked wild berries, hunted small game and made do. My ancestors came to Canada in 1790 and I have found no records of them asking governments to provide money for food, not even in the depression which my Dad and his parents and grandparents lived through.

It is about time for all Canadians to take responsibility for their own lives. I hear sob stories of people earning less than $40,000 a year in Toronto complaining they can’t afford to live with rents over $2,000 a month, and ordinary expenses like heat, light and power, fuel for their cars, insurance, day care, etc. leaving not enough for adequate food. Toronto real estate prices reflect the nutcases elected to municipal governments who constrain homebuilding, federal policies driving down interest rates for two decades manifesting itself in higher home prices, and governments at all levels stalling permitting for home construction with a plethora of NIMBY rules.

Getting a few acres permitted for home construction is a twenty year effort in Ontario. Before bitching about home prices or rents, think about who you voted for in the past federal, provincial and municipal elections since they created the shortage with your support. Ontario construction costs are about $200 a square foot yet Toronto homes sell for $600 to $1,200 a square foot owing to a shortage of supply and demand growth fueled by migration to the city and immigration. We need and encourage immigration but perhaps should build the infrastructure needed to house and feed them before they come, and encourage them to live in places other than major cities.

Who compelled everyone to live in Toronto? In Moose Creek, where I am from, an annual income of $40,000 would make you well off. I suspect the same is true in Timmins, Cochrane Miramichi, Sainte Marie, P.Q., Rimouski, P.Q., Quesnel, B.C. or Rossland, B.C. or Sept-Iles, P.Q. Homes in those places have average prices less than $250,000. My aunts, uncles and cousins live just fine on incomes often much less than $40,000 a year.

Canada has become a cess pool of leftist ideology where many people think the government can pay for everything, everything is a human right, and, no one has to take personal responsibity for their own lives and the lives of their families. It is a sad state and does not lead to a happy ending.

Governments don’t have money - they take yours. Asking for it back to buy food has to come at the expense of something else - like health care, education, pensions, public transportation and all the other “programs” you voted for without a second thought as to who would pay for them. Lacking personal responsibility, your default is “tax the rich” - the ones who primarily build the wealth you wish to redistribute, or borrow from future generations (government debt) saddling your kids with the burden of your lack of self-sufficiency.

I am reminded that my Dad post-war in 1950 after his farm failed became a carpenter in the RCAF and was paid $138 a month to support his family of a wife and three kids. He never asked anyone to hold his hand. Neither should you.

Life is tough and not everyone will make out well. But Canadians live like kings compared to those in sub-Saharan Africa or Myanmar - even Canadians who suffer “food insecurity”. Let’s confine our social assistance to those who actually need assistance through no fault of their own and leave able-bodied people with decent health to fend for themselves. They should not be “wards of the state” owing to a lack of effort. Unemployed and homeless people need a job, not a handout, and there are plenty of jobs going begging, particularly in remote regions like our mining camps and oil fields. They pay well but don’t let you commute from Scarborough and spend hours complaining you don’t get enough government help using your smartphone or tablet while sipping your $5 coffee at Starbucks.

Canadians need to grow up, toss the bleeding heart Liberals out of Ottawa, and return Canada to a free country where people took personal responsibility for their own lives and family and didn’t walk around pretending they are victims of one form of oppression or another when, compared to most people living on Earth, they are privileged.