While there has been a trend in this country to eliminate gender-specific holidays I believe it is important to honour those who brought us into the world. Many schools and school boards have stopped the practice of celebrating Mothers and Fathers for fear of not being inclusive. This of course is about as ridiculous as it sounds.
As such my son did not have a hand-drawn tie or some other cute kid artwork for his Dad this year. I have to give him credit though, he knew it was Father’s Day and trumpeted in the occasion with a loud and boisterous Happy Father’s Day at 7am as he jumped on me in bed!
My Dad will celebrate his 84th in September. We didn’t always see eye to eye when I was younger. I remember making him feel like crap as a teenager because I was smarter and going to go places his blue-collar life could never have gone. Of course, I was wrong. My Dad was a great father and provider for our single-income family. We lived within our means but my sisters and I never wanted for anything. He and my Mom raised us the best they could and they did a great job, with my sisters at least. I’m sure they lay awake at night wondering what they did wrong with me. In all seriousness…
Thank You, Dad.
My Dad with most of the Grandchildren / Greg Glazebrook @ GMGPhotography
Father’s Day got me thinking about my favourite Dad song and the George Strait classic “Love Without End, Amen” was the first to come to mind.
And for all the ladies celebrating their Daddy take a listen to the Holly Dunn classic “Daddy’s Hands.”
The week in review…
Layer of Lies A colourful take on a layered Poem by Paula at Light Motifs II. Now I’m hungry for cake and rainbow sprinkles!
Ripped Pages Out of My Diary A work exploring the weight of hopelessness and despair written by Rockstar Girl at Is It Real or Fantasy.
Backwards A time caper complete with a twist at the end written by Sadje and Keep It Alive.
Wildfires dot the northern landscape, dry conditions and an abundance of debris on the forest floor fueling burns that are raging out of control. Hundreds of miles away the sun is all but blotted out and the smell of smoke hangs heavy in the suburban air…
Sounds like one of Fandango’s story starters but it isn’t. It was actually the scene over many eastern cities from Toronto to New York as some 200+ wildfires burned across Northern Ontario and Quebec.
As the hellfires raged on it became increasingly apparent that the response from our cities and towns in the path of the smoke may have been blown out of proportion. That seems to be the norm in today’s world. For example, Nate’s baseball was cancelled on Tuesday, the first wave of the smoke storm to pass through, due to air quality concerns however by Thursday all the hype had died out and even though the air quality was worse than Tuesday the games went on. Even a joke I shared about the cancellation on the team chat drew gasps from outraged parents. Really, all I said was,
Like all things, the smoke blew over and everything returned to normal.
This week in music I’ve headed back to 1984. The Human League was known for lush synth-pop tracks with 80’s staples like Don’t You Want Me and (Keep Feeling) Fascination. I’ve reached back for something that was less successful but arguably stands the test of time better than the band’s more commercially successful works. It was rumoured that the band had a no-guitars rule, it was the 80s and they were a synth band after all. Whether that was true or not I don’t know but if it was, breaking that rule was a great idea for this week’s track – The Lebanon. The song was written about the civil war that raged on in Lebanon in the early 1980s.
The week in review…
Brand Management The future of A.I. from Paula at Light Motifs II. Hope there is a wife model too!
In the Music Which Touches My Mind An exploration of the connection between emotion and music by written by Rockstar Girl at Is It Real or Fantasy.
Our Party Platform A fitting piece by Fandango at This, That and the Other considering the planet appears to be burning to the ground! Probably pie in the sky to think politicians will change though.
Inkwell A powerful poem written by Rebecca at Is It Real or Fantasy
A Thorny Problem Maybe they used the same A.I. Generator for the campaign idea? Written by the business-savvy Sadje at Keep It Alive.
I have spent a lot of time in the United States from the mid-aughts through the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency. With my children playing rep sports it seems every weekend was spent in some apple pie town for ball tournaments or some other sports-related function. I have met some great people and made lifelong friends but it is safe to say that the nation to the south of my home has always been different. A singular obsession with guns, violence, race and money is woven far more deeply into the fabric of American society than it is north of the 49th parallel.
The infiltration of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its companion illness COVID-19 brought both our great countries and in fact the entire global community to a standstill. The onset of the “China Flu” halted our frequent forays across the longest unprotected border in the world. While the majority of us adhered to mandatory quarantine and masking mandates public sentiment was turning. It has become clear that in my absence something was shifting in the machinations of Canada’s southern neighbour. The division of the Trump Administration policies continues to poison America, seeping into its very fabric.
Fast forward to 2023, with the world once again open for business. Most everyone has returned to an altered yet familiar normalcy of pre-pandemic times and our weekend jaunts to a very different America have once again resumed. My son now a young man has graduated from youth to beer league sports. Travel for him has ended, however, his sister has taken up the mantle, playing fastpitch with all the aspirations and promises of her youthful exuberance. One eye fixed on a future that could open doorways to grants and scholarships for both academic and athletic performance.
Who knows, maybe someday she will play in the Women’s College World Series, something that she and her teammates have followed closely during this trip. Gathering together in the hotel between their own games to watch women role models, not much older than they themselves playing their butts off for personal pride and the glory of their school.
My return to America was much different than my previous visits. On the surface everything seemed familiar, however, this time there was a tension I don’t recall being there before. This rendition of America is suspicious and deeply divided between rich and poor, black and white (and red and yellow and brown), donkeys and elephants, scientific discovery and fairy tales, Venus and Mars (and everything that falls on the spectrum in between).
I felt this tension in everything I observed and everyone I interacted with. The African American clerk at the Dick’s Sporting Goods store, tentative as I approached the counter until the tension was broken with friendly banter. The Latin American waitress at the restaurant seemed so timid serving tables of white customers, barely able to make eye contact with me or those at other tables, but had no problem interacting freely with people identifying from minority backgrounds. The gay Latin barkeep who wouldn’t dare talk back to an obnoxious white customer, waiting to unleash loud, harsh words about them the moment they walked out the door. At the same time starting arguments with Black customers he felt had “disrespected” him. These interactions drive home the hierarchical nature of race in American society.
Then there was the retail experience. A highlight for most Canadians heading to the States however I found it very different – almost every major outlet and even smaller stores had uniformed Security Guards at the doors. Some places, like Walmart forgo private security in favour of paid-duty police officers armed to the teeth. In small ways, it felt more like a police state than a constitutional republic ingrained with the ideals of democracy and freedom. I was flabbergasted to find that the prices which used to be so much cheaper were no longer a bargain. Most items after factoring in exchange rates were comparable to prices back home and in many cases more expensive. Many items are priced the same in USD as they would be in CAD. For a Canadian, that means incurring additional costs of about 25% to purchase the same products in the States as at home.
The only exception is gas, which by comparison is still cheap as f@ck, especially in Ohio. That is probably why the cars seemed bigger than ever. Navigators, Suburbans, Expeditions, Silverados and F-150’s everywhere. The only electric-powered vehicles I saw the entire trip were the ones with Canadian licence plates on them. Apparently, global warming isn’t a thing anymore.
I know America is the land of gun worship. Constitution, militia, amendment, yada, yada, yada, but this is the first trip where it seemed real. From the McDonalds somewhere between Detroit and Columbus where a teammate’s family stopped for lunch. Multiple TV menu boards were black and riddled with bullet holes that had rendered them lifeless. Another example was the car in the hotel parking lot, damaged and dented along the entire passenger side, The lines from scraped paint and dented metal lead the eye to a void where the rear bumper, ripped clean off the car, would normally be. From the front view, it sported bullet holes through the hood that were now operating as additional air vents for the engine block inside. The owner spent most of his time hotboxed in the back seat before returning to the hotel room and leaving the entire building stinking like skunk.
It takes time for government policies to work their way through the system and down to the grassroots levels. It seems to me the divisive nature of the Trump Republican years continues to bear pest-infested rotten fruit while the oblivious Democrat left concerns itself with social engineering pet projects. All the while, Nero fiddles away as the real fires rage on.
My observations point to an Empire at a crossroads, an aging Superpower quickly fading beyond the Western horizon while the morning Sun rises in the Far East. A politically savvy China tightly controls its media and manipulates the narrative to build goodwill and paint itself as a positive and cooperative international partner. It is an image that does not jive with the brutal nature of China’s totalitarian regime but Trump himself proved that if you keep telling the same lies over and over the truth becomes irrelevant. The pro-Beijing rhetoric has become a seemingly better option for our youth when juxtaposed against the outward dysfunction of a divided America. A disillusioned generation of Americans, of Westerners, willing to forgo freedom in favour of the red mirage. Not even a slim chance that they know they are being duped by a wolf in sheep’s clothes.
Without some sort of monumental upheaval that allows America’s factions to reconcile, find common ground and work towards a common vision all China and its allies need do is waits like vultures for The Divided States of America to destroy itself from the inside before swooping in to pick whatever scraps remain on the carcass.
How is everyone doing? Sunday Review is coming at you a day late as I was away in Columbus, Ohio for the Capital City Showdown. If you follow my blog you will know that my daughter plays fastpitch at a very competitive level. You may even recall seeing the Queens of the Diamond series of images that ran weekly last summer or more recently in last week’s Sunday Digest.
I did not take the camera out of its bag this week. I just sat back and watched in awe of these young women playing their butts off over four days.
The girls went 5-2 in the tournament. Not enough to advance to the final but a great showing nonetheless. For her efforts, my baby (she will kill me if she ever reads this) had a great tournament. I didn’t keep track in the first two games but I know she got hits in both games. In the last five games, she was 9-13 at the dish with three doubles and two home runs. The two dingers coming in the middle of a string of six consecutive at-bats with at least a base hit. She was on fire at the hot corner too. Solid defence and a hot bat earned her two Player of the Game honours over the seven.
Although our stay in Columbus was uneventful it was interesting. Not the America I remember but I will leave that for another post I’m working on. What I have realized is I really don’t like long drives anymore. Six and a half hours is way too long. Even with a couple of stops, I was so stiff I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull my @$$ out of my seat when we arrived.
The drive down and back meant my favourite radio stations weren’t available. That had me making use of the free Sirius XM promo I signed up for a couple of months back. (Note to self: Cancel before it goes to full price.) I ended up listening to 1st Wave, the 80’s Alt Rock channel. The classics of my youth. Not everything stands the test of time, but surprisingly a lot of my music is still relevant. In particular, I caught myself crooning (probably a bad word to describe my singing) to Australia’s Midnight Oil when they played it, remembered almost all the words my favourites too. The critically acclaimed Deisel and Dust was the Australian band’s most successful offering. Rolling Stone named it the best album of 1988, the year it was released in the United States. Did you know the lead singer (pictured at right) was a prominent politician who served in the Australian parliament? Here are a couple of my favs from Diesel and Dust…
The week in review…
Slipknot Proof that it doesn’t have to be perfect when it’s made with love written by Diana at Writer Ravenclaw.
Friendly Banter Come on guys we can all relate to the twins in this Fandango from This, That and the Other tale. Olivia just doesn’t understand!
Darrell’s Deadly Disposal A disposal dilemma for the creepy Darrell written by Christine at Stine Writing. If you come across him remember it’s a slipknot!
Captive A tale of greed, coverups, and dissenting voices written by Sadje at Keep It Alive.
Every week Fandango over at This, That and the Other posts a provocative question. This week’s question is…
“Do you think that the metrics the Academy Awards will start applying in 2024 regarding the composition of at least 30% of the cast and crew by under-represented groups in order for a film to even qualify for the Best Picture Oscar nomination is appropriate? Or, do you share Richard Dreyfuss’ opinion that because filmmaking is an art form, imposing such criteria in order for a film to even be considered for an Oscar is inappropriate?“
It is as ridiculous as the publishing world rewriting books to conform to today’s politically correct woke-driven standards. It is a form of censorship that we cannot allow to happen. I believe the best people applying for the position should be employed. I’m not naive, I fully understand that there are bigoted factions in society and sometimes affirmative action initiatives are appropriate. There are other ways to ensure a representative workforce. Stifling art is not the place it should be applied.
Art must be judged on its merit, not on a headcount of arbitrarily delineated categories of people. Salman Rushdie said it best of the literary world at the 2023 British Book Awards when he was talking about publishers re-writing works by authors such as Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. “Books have to come to us from their time and be of their time, and if that’s difficult to take, don’t read them. Read another book, but don’t try and remake yesterday’s work in the light of today’s attitudes.”
While Hollywood may not be re-editing or updating older works there is a push to rewrite the screenplays of the stories Rushdie talks about to conform to today’s rules. I point to the example of The Aeronauts, a fictional film based on the true history of scientists James Glaisher and Henry Tracy Coxwell. When the screenplay was being written and the cast chosen there was a conscious effort to replace Henry Tracy Coxwell with the fictional Amelia Wren (the name of the character, no doubt chosen to mimic that of female heroine Amelia Earheart, only serving to further muddle the true history) to make the film more inclusive. Essentially rewriting the past for public consumption and to an audience that will take it as a fact and never consider looking up the real history.
While I believe that all people who are qualified should be able to apply and work in the film industry (or any industry) I suspect the new rules the Academy will impose only encourage more bowdlerizing of art and history and that is a form of censorship that cannot be tolerated.
After last week’s record-breaking heat the last two days I have woken up to this… Snow and temperatures hovering around the freezing point.
WTF!?!?!?
Just when you think that winter is behind us April reminds us that she can be an unpredictable and finicky one when it comes to weather. At least there hasn’t been much accumulation of the white. Don’t get me wrong, 29°C was nice but I’d be happy if we just got back to more seasonal spring weather!
No pictures of this time period in my life exist so best I can do is a really bad composite I made. Greg Glazebrook @ GMGPhotography
The Karaoke Cowboy
Every week Fandango over at This, That and the Other posts a provocative question. Everyone is said to get there 15 minutes, Fandango’s question asks us to explore fame and expose our claim on it. This week’s question is…
“What is your claim to fame?”
Back when I attended Lakehead University I would take the train back home. You don’t really get a feel for how big Ontario is until you try and cross it. The trip from Toronto to Thunder Bay, itself the amalgamation of Fort William and Port Arthur sitting at the western end of Lake Superior, is a 20-hour train ride. That only moves you from two points within Ontario. There is still another ten hours from Thunder Bay to the Manitoba border in the west and six from Toronto to the Quebec border in the east. Alaska and Texas are small in comparison to Ontario’s vast geographical area.
As odd as it sounds VIA Rail (Canada’s Amtrak equivalent) did not pass through the City of Thunder Bay. It ran along CN Rail’s northern route through the small logging community of Armstrong situated about 250 km and 3 hours north of Thunder Bay.
Chris Wilson via RailPictures.net
At the time, Armstrong was home to about 1300 residents, about 100 more than call it home today. The town had two bars, both nothing more than one-room dives. The first location played classic rock music through an old Jukebox and the other played country and western through a karaoke machine. This was 1993 so Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, and Reba McEntire were filling the airwaves and with the advent of Soundscan to properly track record sales, the genre was seeing a resurgence fueled by young and charismatic artists across North America. My girlfriend and I were listening to “New Country” as it had been dubbed, hitting up local rodeos on weekends and spending nights cutting a rug at the local honky tonks.
Anyway, here we are in this tiny bar, me in my deerskin cowboy boots, blue and black Garth Brooks cowboy shirt and a black ten-gallon hat. Naturally, my girlfriend insisted I go up and sing her a song. She even picks out the Randy Travis’ classic “Diggin’ Up Bones” and me being a fool in love agrees to make an arsehole of myself for all to see. For my efforts, I may have spent some time in the back seat of a fogged-up car before hopping on the train back to Hogtown, but my memory is a bit fuzzy.
So here is this fool on a makeshift stage crooning to the ball boppin’ across the screen of the Karaoke display. The room is full of about 25-30 mostly Aboriginal Canadians from the nearby reservation. When the music finally ends and I set the microphone back on the stand the room erupts into applause, a few so moved they even jump to their feet to give me a standing ovation. Later on, as we were sitting at our table sippin’ on Molson Canadian, the only beer they served, one of the patrons who was clearly three sheets to the wind stopped by our table and insisted I should consider starting a career as a singer/musician, he even suggested he could talk to the owner of the bar to get me a gig for a few nights.
FYI, you will be happy (or at least your ears will) that my singing career has remained largely confined to an empty car or the bathroom shower!!!
My favourite movie is ‘The Usual Suspects’. Writer Christopher McQuarrie and Director Brian Singer weave an intricately layered crime drama that has stood the test of time since its debut in 1995. Honourable mentions go to the Coen Brothers ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, a fantastic retelling of Homer’s Odyssey and ‘Layer Cake’ a British crime drama starring Daniel Craig.
2. Who is you favourite actor and actress?
For my answers to this question, I will stay with the classic definition of gender while acknowledging times are changing.
Favourite Actress: Cate Blanchett. She has received many accolades over the years and is considered one of the best actresses of her generation. I particularly recall her performance in ‘The Shipping News’. Her performance was the highlight of a well-crafted film although not in the Hollywood sense.
Favourite Actor: Kevin Spacey. Separating the man from the work I have to say he is one of the best actors I have seen. His work in the aforementioned ‘The Usual Suspects’ and ‘House of Cards’ is outstanding. I don’t ascribe to cancel culture and the way it’s meted out in today’s world however there are people who the facts show to be reprehensible and I think it is safe to say his work in real life is less impressive.
3. Do you attend or have you ever attended a live theatre production?
I have attended many shows over the many years I’ve walked the planet. My very favourite was ‘Showboat’ which I saw at the formerly named Ford Center for the Performing Arts in North York. (A former borough of the now amalgamated City of Toronto.) The music was sublime and one of the leads had the deepest, most soulful voice I’ve ever heard live. Magical.
4. Have you ever wanted to be an actor/actress?
Not in any serious sense. Certainly not as a career but who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to walk across the stage, silver screen or beam into millions of homes. For those who achieve stardom, it’s a lifestyle those of us mere mortals can’t really begin to fathom. For others in the industry, I’d imagine it is a very tough life.
Ever waste a day waiting for a delivery that never comes?
Every Monday Paula gives us an opportunity to vent and this week marks a milestone. The 100th Monday Peeve of the refreshed era! My peeve fits in quite nicely with the one she published herself although the TARGET is different!
I purchased a new electric snow thrower online. It could have been a useful tool over the winter considering how much snow fell but the price was crazy. Of course, now that it seems spring is in the air and the majority of the snow is in the rearview the unit is on sale for half price. I probably could have bought a gas-powered unit or another electric brand for cheaper but this one works on the same battery packs as my mower, blower and weed wacker making it the logical and environmentally friendly choice.
Clearance bonanza pricing is not my peeve although it is annoying enough in itself. You could make the argument that if you can sell at half price now that is all it was ever worth. I know, as a business major I understand it is not that simple. I remember learning a lesson from my marketing professor about inventory costs. Before taking the teaching job he had worked as a marketing consultant for a firm hired by Sears Canada to build a new warehouse facility. They found items that had been sitting in warehouse inventory for years. Their recommendation to Sears was to burn all the excess inventory and use that space for inventory that was turning over more quickly. Sears ultimately didn’t need to build a new warehouse with all the money and space they were saving. The cost of storage per square foot meant that they had already sunk something in the range of 40 to 50 times the retail price for many of the products sitting in the warehouse. So I understand the reasons for getting rid of inventory. Ultimately getting anything is better than warehousing it until next year. Especially in today’s world where a newer, better, shinier model is scheduled to come off some Chinese production line next year.
No, my beef lies solely with the courier company. The tracking number I’d been given showed the goods were to be delivered today, and even the shipment history showed the goods were “out for delivery”. That seemed pretty clear to me. I’d been told the driver would call to confirm we were home because a signature was required so I called my office to let them know I’d be late.
When the courier company called I answered and said, “We are waiting, how long until you get here?”
The woman on the other end said, “No delivery scheduled for today, I am calling to set up an appointment for tomorrow. Will you be available between 9am and 3pm?”
At first, I said, “Tomorrow, your tracking information says it is to be delivered today?”
She insisted their system didn’t say that even as I was reading it off my phone screen to her. “No Sir, we would never have delivered without an appointment first. The supplier insists that we set appointments up.”
“Ok but your system says…” I wasn’t going to win so I shifted my attention to the delivery window, another losing battle. The courier companies just can’t seem to get it right ever. What is worse, they can only provide me with a six hours delivery window. They call me to set up an appointment and the best they can do is provide a six-hour window? That doesn’t really even approximate the definition of an appointment, it’s more like, we will show up whenever the <bleep> we bloody well feel like it and if you don’t like it or aren’t there well too <bleepin’> bad!
Look, I get it for my relatively low-value Amazon shipments. If I am not there and some porch pirate nabs it, annoying but oh well. This is an $1800 piece of machinery that I have to be present to receive. Some organization on your tracking website and tighter delivery windows should be the norm! Mister Courier, you should be at my beck and call not the other way around.
As inflation continues to grip most of the free world thanks to COVID, Russia, China and our own western governments’ decisions to expand the money supply to record levels in an effort to combat the negative effects of the first three scourges on western economies, very few giant box businesses have NOT chosen to take advantage of the situation to bolster the bottom line. None is more prevalent than the oligopoly held by the three major players in the Canadian grocery business. Loblaw’s Companies Ltd. (Superstore, Loblaws, Fortinos, No Frills), Empire Company Ltd. (Sobeys, Freshco, Farm Boy) and Metro (Metro, Food Basics) have seen profits explode far beyond the rate of inflation or the normal margins for the grocery business.
What gives? Yes, we all agree that inflation has increased prices at our local store. Partially because of economics, disruptions of supply chains, and loss of crops due to weather but that is only part of the picture. It is becoming apparent that greed in an industry that the government has left relatively unchecked for decades is a major driving force. They believe they can get away with anything and truth be told they can.
Case in point. In 2018 it came to light that the significant players listed above plus Walmart, Giant Tiger and Canada Bread were being investigated for anti-competitive practices in the food sector. The companies had been y colluding to fix the price of bread well above market value for at least 16 years. Loblaws and its parent company Weston Foods, one of Canada’s largest bread producers operating under the banner Weston Bakeries, admitted to the scheme but insisted it was concocted by a group of rogue employees who never revealed the scheme to the top brass. The employees were allegedly released and Loblaws agreed to the reimbursement program. Consumers were required to register at the Loblaws website, where they were asked to provide personal information and images of identification, such as a driver’s licence (a massive breach of privacy laws) to receive a $25 gift card. The admission and card program was instituted in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Keep in mind that the price-fixing scheme had taken place over a 16-year period. The other players denied any involvement in the scheme and five years later (21 since the scheme started) are still being investigated by Canada’s consumer watchdog, the toothless federal Competition Bureau. The price of bread has not dropped, in fact, it is more expensive than ever.
In 2019, less than a year after the scandal came to light the Trudeau Liberal’s awarded the hugely profitable Loblaws Companies Ltd. a $12 million grant to replace their in-store refrigerators with new environmentally friendly models. The grant was awarded through an Environment and Climate Change Canada program that did not include any checks and balances to ensure the grant was ever used to upgrade the aging equipment. A loophole that effectively had taxpayer cover large portions of the bread scandal rebate program. I admit none of the allegations I make have been proven but if it walks like a duck…
This week the federal government has called upon the CEOs of these companies to appear before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food which is probing the causes of an 11.4% increase in the price of food. Consumer costs have sky skyrocketed to their highest levels in decades, increasing at almost twice the 5.9% rate of inflation. The CEO’s responses to the committee questions were as expected:
“We are not profiting from inflation, it doesn’t matter how many times you say it … it is simply not true.” – Michael Medline, CEO of Empire Foods.
“Our food profit margin has actually decreased, focusing on grocers will not solve the problem of food inflation because we are not causing it and we’re not benefiting from it.” – Eric La Flèche, CEO of Metro Inc.
“So no matter how many times you read it on Twitter, the idea that grocers are causing food inflation is not only false, it’s impossible. Our retail prices have not risen faster than our costs,” – Galen Weston, CEO and President of Loblaws Group of Companies.
In the media scrum following his testimony, Weston played for sympathy suggesting his company loses money on every chicken breast it sells. I was so moved I almost pulled out the world’s smallest violin.
“It is folly to suggest that an unprofitable grocery business is somehow better for customers. Like all Canadians, we look forward to seeing the end of this tough inflationary period.” – Michael Medline, CEO of Empire Foods.
I say this to Medline and the entire group. No one is begrudging grocers for turning or even maximizing profits, but fair profits are not the same as gouging Canadians to a tune that far outstrips the rising costs so that you can line your pockets with as much gold as possible. Pockets that are so full, inflation is nothing more than an annoying mosquito buzzing about on a warm summer night.
It was an interesting exercise that I’m certain will amount to a big nothing-burger. Considering their past indiscretions I’m not sure we needed to cart out the dog and pony show to hear them insist they are not to blame for inflation and that the larger profits margins are a result of Canadians’ increased spending on other discretionary goods sold in their stores. The track record speaks for itself but I’m sure their word will be good enough for our limp-dicked politicians. None of them will ever be required to open up the books to back those claims. I suspect a well-timed donation to party coffers (3 companies, 3 political parties, you do the math) and the government will consider the matter closed.
In related news…
“The price of tea is going up.” Galen Jr. was heard uttering to his fartcatchers as they boarded the Weston family jet. “I’m not sure who these politicians think they are questioning me. They will pay through the nose for the cost and inconvenience they’ve caused. Take that Canada!!!”
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