Pay equity For the Rich

The was a brief article in some of the national media earlier this week that questioned why Bianca Andreescu, who won the Roger's Cup Women's Tournament earned approximately half of what the winner of the men's tournament won. The only reason why CBC and others even cared about this story was because Andreescu is a Canadian. Without wanting to seem too cynical, if Andreescu had been an Australian or a Brazilian, we could not have cared less who got paid more.

None-the-less - it is a fair question. On the surface (or anywhere else for that matter) there cannot be a good reason why a woman would get paid less than a man for playing the same sport - except of course for those sports where there are insufficient viewers to attract enough fans to pay the salaries (and more importantly to make the owners rich). Tennis appears to be one of those sports where women's tournaments attract as many fans as do the men's tournaments, it is therefore obvious that both the men and the women champions should be paid the same amounts for winning. However, I find it noteworthy that we can get all concerned about the inequality of income amongst professional athletes while ignoring the extraordinary difference between the average Canadian's income and the earning of some athletes.

According to https://playerswiki.com/bianca-andreescu, this 19-year-old has made $2,417,873 this year in prize money. I would imagine that the amount she has made in sponsorships, especially since winning the Roger's Cup is equally as impressive. I accept that she may have significant costs as she jets across the world playing tournaments. I am sure that she has coaches and perhaps a number of other people who work with her, help her stay organized etc. to pay. It is also true that she will not always be a champion and she needs to make enough money to support her in the style she is used to when her earnings drop. I fully support her advocating for herself and other women to get paid equal pay for equal work but I am not prepared to invest any energy in that exercise. Quite frankly, I do not think that anyone else should either.

Watching sports is an activity that is reserved for those who have a significant level of disposable income. Many (perhaps most) Canadians cannot afford to buy tickets to any professional sporting event with a reasonable view of the field/court. While we may call a team our team, and we may cheer them on from the bar or from our living rooms, we have almost nothing in common with the owners of those teams or any of the players, some of who are multi-millionaires.

Pay equity is a fundamental human rights issue. It needs to be addressed at all levels of Canadian society - but can we start with those who are at the bottom of any pay scale - not somewhere near the top?

End of Canadian Manhunt

In the past few weeks, many of us have been closely following the RCMP's manhunt for the two young men accused of murdering at least three people. After finding the bodies of McLeod and Schmegelsky I suspect that many people, specifically those who live in the general area where what appears to be their last known vehicle was found, have breathed out a collective sigh of relief. I am equally as sure that some of the RCMP officers who were doing the search in the muskeg are equally as relived.

In Canada, we have so few manhunts, that this one attracted a lot of attention. People who normally are not interested in who killed whom - wondered what happened to the young men and whether or not they had escaped. Now that their bodies have been found - we will all move on to other things to gossip about. The myriad of questions that remain including why did the original murders occur may remain unanswered forever.

The press has created the general assumption that McLeod and Schmegelsky did commit the murders. To the best of my knowledge, the police have not released any evidence proving that they did kill the three people. We may never see whatever evidence suggested that to the police. Certainly, it would appear to be highly unlikely that anyone will come forward with any sort of motive for the original murders. But one thing is clear - the families of the murdered individuals are rightly shattered. And in at least in one case, the family are angry at one of the fathers for producing such a dangerous young man(1).

I cannot imagine what it would feel like to lose a child. The pain must be overwhelming. I suspect that even the simple acts of living such as breathing are almost impossible. However, I am not sure if the pain of losing a child through violence is all that different than losing a child through an accident or a drug overdose. We allow families of individuals who have lost a child through violence to publically grieve - in fact, the media actively seek out comments from the family. However, it would appear that we are less ready to accept that the parents of the dead, alleged perpetrators are also grieving. Furthermore, there appears to be an expectation that the parents of the individuals charged need to apologize for the actions of their adult children.

No parent is perfect (ask my kids). We all mess up. Sometimes we get lucky and our kids turn out better than we could have ever dreamed. I am not sure if the parents should get all or even any of the credit. Similarly, when our kids struggle or do bad things - it is not always our fault. There are just too many events and too many people in a child's life to blame a single person. It seems to me that there are a number of people grieving over the series of events that led to five people being dead. None of those families will ever know what really happened. However, some of the families will be supported in their grief while others will be blamed and left to cry behind closed doors. As a dad, that feels unfair to me.

Why is it so Hard to Stay Positive?

I swear, I do try to look for the positives in most people. I always try to focus on the behaviour not on who they are as individuals. I believe it does little good to insult the individual even when I profoundly disagree with their comments or actions. But it is so hard to maintain that outlook when people such as the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford uses words such as "animal" or "nutcase" when describing someone who has a mental illness.

Premier Ford used those words to describe a patient of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto who had been on an authorized, unaccompanied trip into the community. He did not return when he was supposed to and has since left the country. The individual in question had committed murder but had been declared not criminally responsible. As his mental illness had been progressively dealt with - assumingly by medication he was given more and more privileges. Whether or not he was released too soon, whether or not he needed more supervision are questions that should be answered, but to call him an animal is just wrong. To further suggest that such individuals should be sent to jail (rather than a mental health facility) because jails can just as easily deal effectively with such individuals demonstrates a profound ignorance of mental illness and even worse a complete lack of any awareness of how our correctional system functions.

One might accept or at least understand how an uneducated, perhaps somewhat intellectually slow and certainly a socially isolated individual might hold such beliefs. If one lived in some far distant backwater of our country and had no opportunity to learn about mental illness, perhaps one could forgive the use of such words. If within that individual's family there had never been anyone who demonstrated aberrant or illegal behaviours perhaps one could at least partially understand the lack of human compassion. But I would hope that anyone who runs and gets elected to be premier of a province would be better educated, brighter and more compassionate than that.

It may be too much to expect that those who get elected to our highest political offices have a clear working knowledge of all parts of our society. It may be a fantasy of only the most naive amongst us that our leaders will base their statements on facts and commonly accepted reality. Our most devout wish the government's actions will be based on some compassion and understanding of the fragility of humans may be a prayer forever lost amongst the debris of fallen stars and dreams. Instead, the people get stuck with politicians who spew the rhetoric of the illiterate, the uneducated or the narrow-minded who are only interested in maintaining their status quo. Instead of leaders who serve everyone - we get politicians who only serve those who will re-elect them.

Lord knows, we might not deserve better- but we surely need better.