I think the People of Leeds Grenville need to be informed of the continuing story of the skyrocketing inequality in income growth sponsored by Harper, Harris, Hudak, McGuinty, Martin, Clark and Brown. Our Bay Street Sunmedia “newspaper” does not deem the fact Canada’s top 100 CEO’s helped themselves to an average Ontario workers income of $45,448 by 1:18pm on January 2 newsworthy. Repeated searches through the news editions since January 1^st revel that this extremely important issue has not been reported. Instead we have been treated to other issues this newspaper must deem more impactful on our lives, stories about Vampires, wacky news, Christmas Tree Bonfires and Hudak’s latest hair brained schemes to enrich the rich, and impoverish the rest of us.

In 1995 Canada’s top 50 CEOs appropriated “only” 85 times the average Canadian workers’ pay. Now only 16 years latter our Top 100, a less select group, are helping themselves to 235 times what working people toil all year to earn! Where’s the headline “CEOs incomes rocket skyward while workers incomes remained mired in the mud”? Instead in the last couple of weeks we have been deluged with story after story on the need to destroy the government services that we all depend on, and fact free editorials attacking Unions and justifying the totally indefensible arbitrary increase in retirement age to 67. Obviously none of the politicians previously mentioned or the noble editorialists has ever had to earn a buck from the sweat of their brows, for even a month let alone 45 or more years.

Harper, Hudak, Clark and Brown will all be quick to tell you that Canada, and Ontario cannot afford to properly fund Health Care, Day Care, Home Care or Education. They will be equally quick to condemn, any tax increases for CEO’s who pay themselves over seven and half million a year, or for companies which have nearly six hundred billion in dead money sitting in their accounts. Defenders of greed, neither they nor the editorialists will mention the $10.3 billion in bonuses Bay Street Bankers will divvy up amongst themselves this month, for yachts, Ferraris, luxury condominiums, vacations homes, trophy wives and retired politicians. Harris has sat on over twenty six different Boards of Directors since he left office! These outrageous salaries and bonuses are ripped directly from our shrinking pocket books through higher costs for our car repairs, our cell phones, our cable fees, our bank fees, and our insurance rates to name but a few, but you will never read that in the Sunmedia Recorder and Times or hear Clark or Brown mention it.

God forbid though that the minimum wage should actually be a living wage. Or that the working people of this country, this province, or this ridding, actually get to retire in dignity before they are nearly dead. And since when did it become calamitous for a working person to get a raise slightly beyond the rate of inflation?

David Lundy

Regional Vice President OPSEU

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