The Citizen, 2010-03-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010. PAGE 5.
T he word of the day is “optics”. My
dictionary defines it as the branch of
physics that studies the properties of
light, but there’s a trippier definition currently
in circulation. “Optics” can stand for “public
image”. Rick Hansen: good optics. Tiger
Woods: not-so-good optics.
Then there’s the Royal Bank of Canada.
RBC spent a fortune during the recent Winter
Olympics on ads showing what a caring,
sharing and fiscally prudent company they are.
Just the people you’d want to shepherd your
hard-earned nickels and toonies wisely. Good
optics.
Unlike the story that appeared in The Globe
and Mail – the one telling how Gord Nixon,
chief executive of the Royal Bank of
Canada got a paycheque for $10.4 million last
year.
Mister Nixon must be getting better at his
job. He only managed to pull down $8.8
million the year before. Call me Chicken
Little, but when I see the head teller of my
bank raking in an annual salary worthy of
Saudi oil bandit I check to see if my wallet’s
still in my pocket.
Thing is, Mister Nixon wasn’t even RBC’s
biggest financial makeout meister. Mark
Standish who runs RBC Capital Markets
pocketed $14 million for 2009. Doug
McGregor his co-pilot, had to make do with
$13 million.
So RBC’s top three guys saw fit to steam
shovel nearly $38 million into their own
pockets for a year’s work – and they think I
should invest my money with them????
Sorry, boys – bad optics.
And lest you think this is the beginning of a
Big Bad Banks rant, let me hasten to point out
that not all Canadian banks are equal. Why,
over at the Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce, the head honcho actually made $2
million less than he did a year previous. That’s
right – Gerry McCaughey, CIBC’s chief
executive, was forced to stumble through the
year under a 25 per cent pay cut.
Don’t send Mr. McCaughey a CARE
package just yet. The CIBC treasury still
managed to scrape up an annual stipend of
$6.24 million to keep the wolf from the boss’s
door.
Enron, Goldman Sachs, Bernie Madoff,
Canada’s own Earl Jones…the parade of
corporate greedheads marches on, dragging
their loot bags behind them. There was a time
when such sackers and pillagers would have
had the decency to at least wear an eye patch
and a peg leg, but today they come at us in
pinstripes and BMWs. Did you know by 12
noon of January 4 Canada’s top 100 CEOs had
each earned the equivalent of Canada’s
average annual wage? That’s right; by lunch
time January 4 (Canada’s first working day)
our highest paid bosses had already pocketed
$42,305 apiece – 174 times more than the
average Canadian working stiff.
Money means different things to different
people. H.L. Hunt opined that it really wasn’t
all that important. “Money’s just a way of
keeping score,” Hunt said. You can say things
like that when, like Hunt, you’ve got $800
million or so in the bank. He might be right
though, because there has to be a limit to the
toys and diversions a mortal can actually use.
How do you justify a multi-million dollar
salary when you see Haitian kids with flies in
their eyes?
And then there’s Joshua Silver. He’s no
corporate wheeler-dealer, just a professor of
physics at Oxford University. Still, he’s
arrived. He could spend the rest of his career
turning out incomprehensible papers and
sipping sherry with the dons.
Instead he’s working on refining his
invention – Adspecs. They’re eyeglasses –
eyeglasses that will change the world we live
in. Look around at all the people with specs
on. Now imagine living in a land where all
those folks are barefaced. They’d still need
the glasses, you understand – they just
couldn’t afford to buy them. Experts reckon
there are a billion people out there who are too
poor to afford the corrective eyewear they
need.
That’s where Joshua Silver’s Adspecs come
in. The eyeglasses he invented feature lenses
filled with silicone which can be adjusted by
syringes attached to the frames. Long story
short, people who wear Adspecs can dial their
own eye prescriptions to suit themselves, no
optometrist, ophthalmologist or optician
necessary.
Doctor Silver could make himself a mega
millionaire by charging top dollar for
eyeglasses like that. Instead he’s figuring
out ways to make them cheaper. He’s got the
price down to $20 a pair, but he wants to
get it down to just a dollar – and then he
hopes to donate boxcar loads of them
to aid organizations around the world. He’s
already sent off more than 30,000 pairs to
Africa.
That’s good optics. Royal Bank of Canada,
please copy.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Getting rich – an optical illusion
In recent weeks I’ve written about Canadian
athletes who have achieved hero status and
inspired a nation. However, on Friday a true
hero was laid to rest in Wingham: OPP
Constable Vu Pham.
Thousands of police officers in formal dress
descended on Wingham last week to pay final
respects to their fallen brother. They came from
all over the country and most stood at attention
and in formation outside of the North Huron
Wescast Community Complex for two hours as
the cold winds whipped through Wingham.
Pham’s fellow officers remembered a man
who worked hard and loved his job while his
adoptive father and brother remembered a
thoughtful little guy who came to Canada when
he was just a young boy. Pham’s wife, Heather
remembered an amazing and quiet man, while
their three children remembered hunting trips
and hockey games with their father.
Heartbreakingly, after being handed her
husband’s hat, Heather preached forgiveness
and understanding, because it’s what Vu would
have wanted.
Coming from a family of police officers, this
hit home for me. I often found myself too
clouded to think while trying to cover this story
for The Citizen and holding back tears as I
listened to Vu’s children, Tyler, Jordan and
Joshua, tell their father they missed him and that
they wished he was there with them on Friday.
My father was a Toronto police officer for 33
years, while two of my uncles served similar
tenures in Durham Region. I also have several
cousins and friends who are scattered
throughout the province protecting and serving.
To be honest, forgiveness and understanding
weren’t the first thoughts to cross my mind. A
certain level of confusion and anger are reached
in me when children are left fatherless, simply
because their father was doing his job.
Despite the punishment that would have been
imposed on Pham’s killer, had he lived, I’m not
sure I would have ever felt the peace Heather
has said she will strive for. In discussion with
others about this incident, I felt that if a
murderer is extended the luxury of so much as
one visit with a family member, that is one visit
the family of the deceased will never get and
would no doubt have given up many earthly
pleasures to experience.
And as media came from the province’s
biggest city centres and scuttled around looking
for the best shot, the best angle or the best
interview, I spoke to officers.
I spoke to an officer who joked about the
rusty rims on the the car that brought Ontario
Premier Dalton McGuinty to the service and an
officer who was made fun of for wearing a
turtleneck that day.
Behind every uniform is a story and a life that
deserves to be lived. Behind every uniform is a
man or a woman who has worn a turtleneck,
only to have their partner make fun of them or
someone who constantly has to battle jokes
about how short he is (which was certainly true
in Pham’s case).
And behind every uniform is someone who is
afraid that what happened to Pham could
happen to them one day. They’re afraid that a
routine stop could go wrong one day (like an
Auxiliary officer from Wellington County told
me) or they’re afraid of where the future of
crime in Canada is going (which is most
definitely true in my dad’s case).
But they all do it anyway. They lace up their
boots each and every day to face danger so that
we don’t have to.
May Vu Pham’s friends, family and
colleagues all find the peace that they seek, as
difficult as it may be.
McGuinty’s ad machine misfires
A hero’s farewell
P remier Dalton McGuinty and his
government are a giant advertising
machine, endlessly dreaming up
grandiose names for their programs that make
them sound more desirable than they are and
hoping to boost their image – but not all
succeed.
Their latest attempt is the Liberal premier’s
Throne Speech in which he announced what
he calls his plan for an “Open Ontario”, open
to new ideas, investment, industries to replace
those lost, education to provide the skills to
work in them and growth, particularly in the
north, where it has been lacking.
This name does not sound distinctive
enough to capture public imagination like that,
for instance, of former prime minister Pierre
Trudeau’s promise to create a “Just Society”,
which still stirs feelings when it is spoken of
today.
Some of the names McGuinty created earlier
also probably already are forgotten – who
remembers his “ReNew Ontario”, “Reaching
Higher” or “Next Generation of Jobs
programs”?
The best remembered of McGuinty’s names
probably is his “Second Career” program,
which has had some success, but also teething
troubles. He set up the program in 2008
offering laid-off workers opportunities to
switch to new careers through longer term
than usual training in colleges and fairly
generous funding, up to $28,000 for a two-
year period.
Most applicants for it have lost jobs in the
hard-hit manufacturing sector and hope to re-
train for work in services, including
community and social, bookkeeping,
computer operating and many branches of
medicine. The program has been a success in
attracting many applicants, more than the
places available, and some have complained of
difficulty getting accepted. Opposition parties
have complained it primarily is a public
relations gesture.
In “ReNew Ontario”, launched in 2005, the
province provides money to build
infrastructure, including roads, hospitals,
bridges and transit, which in turn provide
construction jobs, but it can be argued the
province would be building these anyway and
only the name is new.
McGuinty set up the “Next Generation of
Jobs Fund” to invest provincial money in
industries considered in need and worthy,
including auto manufacturing, and prompt
companies receiving it also to invest. The
province has pumped substantial money into
this, but probably few know what the name
means.
The Liberals have created a Ministry of
Research and Innovation to help innovators
and entrepreneurs turn ideas into new
products, businesses and jobs and show them
Ontario is an attractive place to innovate.
They claim this is the first ministry in any
province dedicated to this role and have found
financial support for some, but others claim
they are slow coming up with cash.
The Liberals have created a program called
“Ideas for the Future” – what name could
better show they are forward looking? – that
offers tax incentives to attract people with
worthwhile ideas in high technology to set up
businesses in Ontario, but there is no thorough
report yet on what this has achieved.
They have established a program called
“OntarioBuys” quickly after being elected in
2003 to encourage the broader public sector,
including school boards, hospitals, colleges
and universities to collaborate in buying goods
and services to save money, again the first
province to do this. But the auditor general in
his most recent report found broader public
sector institutions are not as willing to join
together and take advantage of this service as
expected.
The province has a program it calls
“Reaching Higher” aimed at making higher
education more accessible to lower-income
students, but many have complained its cost
leaves them with too much debt.
These are only a sampling. The Liberals
have a “Move Ontario” program for public
transit, a “Growing Forward Initiative” for
farmers and a program called “Eating Well
Looks Good on You” to promote nutritious
eating in schools.
They also have a Fairness Commissioner
trying to ensure professions such as doctors
and accountants judge immigrants applying to
practise here without bias and these names
sound impressive, but not all live up to them.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
It is a common experience that a problem
difficult at night is resolved in the morning
after the committee of sleep has worked
on it.
– John Steinbeck
Final Thought