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The Citizen, 2019-01-03, Page 5Apparently, according to a pollster writing in the Dec. 15, issue of the Globe and Mail, immigration may be one of the most important issues when this fall’s federal election rolls around. You don’t need to take the word of Frank Graves, president of Ekos Research Associates, who co-wrote the article with Michael Valpy, a senior fellow with the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. The same day the article appeared there was an anti-immigration rally in Edmonton. At the same time, the newly-elected government of Quebec has vowed to slash the number of immigrants allowed into that province. On the federal scene, Maxime Bernier has made opposition to immigration one of the major platform planks in his new People’s Party of Canada, which hopes to field candidates in every riding in the October election. Meanwhile, the parliamentary budget officer has provided delicious ammunition with his forecast that irregular refugee claimants walking across the U.S. border could cost the federal government alone $1 billion over the next three years. For a little perspective on our current situation I’ve been reading an 80-year-old novel, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I thought I might discover some insight into today’s migrations of desperate people. The Grapes of Wrath tells the stories of hundreds of thousands of dispossessed farm families from south-central U.S. states like Arkansas and Oklahoma journeying to the promised land of California. Some had been landowners but lost their land when several years of drought, combined with ruinous prices caused by the decade-long Great Depression left them without enough income to make their mortgage payments and their farms were repossessed. Others were sharecroppers whose reduced share of the crop turned over to the land companies didn’t provide profit anymore. The companies decided to farm the land themselves using massive new farm machinery. Tempted by flyers promising plenty of well-paid jobs picking fruits and vegetables in California, families finally decided to leave the place that had always been their home and head west. Reading this part of the book I couldn’t help thinking of the desperate refugees who pay smugglers for passage on leaky boats to cross the Mediterranean. First of all, to get money, the farm families sold all their livestock and possessions. Knowing they were desperate, buyers offered far less than the possessions were worth. The families took what they could get. Now they needed a truck or car to make the journey with the meagre possessions they could take with them. Car dealers bought old jalopies, doctored some of them so they’d keep running until the migrants were safely miles away, then over-charged for the rolling junk. Lucky were those with a good mechanic in the family who could keep the vehicles going during the grueling 2,000-mile journey through mountains and across deserts. Part of what is frightening for some people about the caravans of people from Central America is the sheer numbers marching northward toward the U.S. border. Steinbeck explains the need to congregate when he talks about the little camps of lonely migrants that would spring up on the roadside at the end of each day’s travels. People shared a sad past and faced a mysterious future so they huddled together for support. As for U.S. President Donald Trump’s accusations that the caravans are filled with murderers and rapists? The “Okies” were often unjustly accused of being thieves – and these were white Americans, not foreigners. For me, looking at the stories of the caravans, it always makes me wonder whether they know about the harsh lack of welcome that awaits them when they finally reach the U.S. border? In the book, as they continue westward the migrant farmers begin to meet people who were heading east because they had found California was not the paradise they’d expected. Did people turn back? They had nothing to go back to and held out a desperate hope the story was wrong so they kept going. There were no border barriers between states but soon after entering California, state police start warning the families to move on when they camped overnight. “We don’t want you Okies settling down”. When they reached their destination, there were far more workers than jobs, allowing employers to exploit them in those days before minimum wages. The Grapes of Wrath is a window into the desperate plight of migrants. After reading it, immigration won’t be big on my election agenda. Other Views Cheating on my New Year’s resolution Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk The more things change ...Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense While I’ve had this discussion with a few people, it may not be publically known that late last year I ended up undergoing some fairly drastic dietary changes as a result of a medical scare. For about a week, I suffered from pleurisy which is an inflammation of the membrane around the lungs. Breathing wasn’t comfortable, that’s for sure. Normally, I’m not the kind of person who goes to hospitals. I’m not avoiding them (though I’ll be the first to admit I’m terrified of needles), I just think that the majority of what goes wrong with someone my age likely isn’t something that can be fixed at a hospital. Pleurisy, however, was not something I’d ever faced before so, after about a week, I decided it was time to seek some medical attention. Expecting to walk out, at best, with a prescription, or at worst needing some kind of surgery, what I didn’t expect was to have a New Year’s resolution thrust upon me a month in advance of when I should be making it. After an x-ray, a couple electrocardiogram tests and a blood test, the doctor told me that the pain was likely due to significant acid reflux and that, aside from some over-the- counter medication, there was really only one thing to do: change the way I live. That may seem overly dramatic, but in reality, what he did was tell me was that my diet was all wrong, I wasn’t getting enough physical exercise (but who, among us desk jockeys, is really?) and I needed to make some significant changes. How significant? Well I wouldn’t be lying saying that four out of every five things I usually eat or drink in my house was suddenly put on the “cut it out” list. First, it was greasy food, which was obvious, but then it got more specific. When he asked me what I normally ate, I said, matter-of-factly, usually whatever my daughter was eating. Some of that was okay, but some of it, like chicken tenders, are apparently not great. The doctor said that tomatoes and cheese weren’t acceptable and, when I started to think about it, that is a huge portion of my diet. Spaghetti, lasagna, pizza, hamburgers, anything with ketchup... I was starting to feel like a prisoner with bread and water here. The doctor then said no caffeine. “You mean cut back?” I asked hopefully. “No. No caffeine.” And just like that, my life was changed pretty dramatically. It wasn’t until I was discussing the issue later at the local coffee shop (which also serves decaf and herbal tea) that my editor Shawn pointed out that coffee was a big part of who I am. It is, really. I mean, one of my earliest columns for The Citizen was about how much I love coffee. I keep pods and pods of coffee at my desk at work. I drink it constantly. Or should I say, I drank it constantly. My pods of coffee have been replaced with herbal, caffeine-free tea and my morning coffee has been replaced with a fibre supplement. I’ll turn to President Donald Trump for an analysis of that trade: “This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever.” It’s been difficult and, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t slipped, but I’m actually making a pretty good go of things. Sure, it’s making shopping a little more of a priority in my life because you can’t stock up on veggies the way you do frozen entrees, but I’m doing my best. The toughest part is my closest friends and family. I’m not blaming anyone here, but people tend to forget what is likely the third or fourth biggest change in my life (becoming a father, becoming a husband, graduating, then not beng able to drink coffee, in case you were wondering). They suggest things for dinner that I can’t eat, tell me to indulge myself or tell me that the doctor was just trying to get rid of me so he told me to live healthily. The worst is when they nudge me into breaking my new healthy habit. “Oh come on, one won’t hurt,” they say. The thing about having “just one” is, I know my weaknesses. One will never be enough. Maybe I’ll have a coffee one morning because someone suggests it. Then I’ll feel fine for a day and have another coffee a couple days later. Fast forward a few weeks, and I’ll be back to three or four coffees a day and waking up with heartburn scorching my throat once a week. This isn’t about the pain though and it’s not about me. This is about being healthy enough to grow old with my wife and be around to continue supporting my daughter throughout my life, so I’m doing my best to stay on the straight and narrow. I’ve wanted, for a number of years, to live a more healthy lifestyle, but nothing seemed to stick. Fortunately for me, I don’t have much of a choice with this. Either I stick to the diet and cut out my beloved coffee, or I’ll be making sure that, in years to come, I’m not as healthy as I need to be to be a good, active dad. So I’m cheating. My New Year’s resolution comes with some pretty hefty fines to pay if I ever break it, which, in the end, is why I have to succeed. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019. PAGE 5. Try harder, be better Something Brussels-area home builder Devon Henry said to me recently – which I then printed in a story about him – has served as an unofficial mantra for some of us here in The Citizen office since we first heard it. It’s made us look at regulations and laws from a new point of view. Henry builds extremely efficient, passive house-standard homes and his path to that calling was simple. He said that it wasn’t an attempt to single-handedly save the planet that drove him to these building standards, but rather his drive to build better houses. He said that building a house according to the building code shouldn’t be a goal of a home builder. The way Henry saw it, the building code is a regulation dictating the worst house he could legally build. Rather than doing the bare minimum, he said, builders should be striving to be better. That perspective put the idea of laws and regulations in a whole light for me. For example, many small businesses throughout Ontario have been wrestling with the concept of the former Liberal government’s Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, which called for a minimum wage of $15 per hour. While there are no doubt some businesses that struggle to bring in enough revenue to pay employees at the higher minimum wage, there are others that view the concept of a minimum wage a little differently, particularly after hearing what Henry had to say about houses. Here, The Citizen Publisher Deb Sholdice has said to me before that the minimum wage, by its very name, is the lowest wage the company can pay its employees without her going to jail. Channeling Henry and his house- building standards, she says that keeping just above the go-directly-to-jail-do-not-pass-go- do-not-collect-$200 line (her principle, my Monopoly reference) shouldn’t be any employer’s goal, though it can become reality at times. The goal should be to find a way to make those higher wages work when it comes to the bottom line, though it’s not always easy. So, when Doug Ford’s Conservative government swept into Queen’s Park and vowed to roll back those changes, there were some who were happy that they could go back to paying their employees less. However, there were others who have opted to stick with the changes in the hopes of seeing the betterment of life the bill’s authors hoped to engender. It won’t be easy for all businesses, not the least of which is ours, but like Henry said, it shouldn’t be the least you have to do by law that should guide your decision-making process. Instead of regressing to a lower standard as a default, some have strived to be solutions-oriented and find a way to make the higher standard achieveable. When I entered high school and we started getting numeric grades, my father (who wasn’t exactly a scholar who encouraged a lifetime of learning) told me that if I need a 50 per cent to pass, anything beyond that is unnecessary. Not exactly father-of-the-year material, but in a very practical sense he was right. The piece of paper I received when I graduated high school is the exact same one received by students who... accomplished less while at the same school, let’s say. Aiming for a grade of just over 50 per cent may do the trick, but no one is going to be impressed if you tell them that was the biggest accomplishment of your academic career. You can bob above the aforementioned Monopoly line and float through life or you can be someone who strives to be better. Never be satisfied and always reach further.