Caring Canada a distant memory after this budget

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2012 (5210 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For most of us, the great Canadian retirement dream was supposed to be Freedom 55, or so we were sold.

But, after this week’s federal budget, a new reality awaits millions of younger Canadians when they get old.

Two more years beyond the traditional 65 before their government pensions kick in, and for the poorest among them, a cruel parody of the old dream.

Poverty 67.

Which brings me to today’s story.

It’s a parable, of sorts.

And an ode to a country’s fading identity.

— — —

Jean Gendron had to compose herself before she sat down to compose her letter to me on Thursday evening.

At least that’s how it sounded.

“I wanted to share something with you that happened this morning that really bothered me,” she began.

It was 8 a.m. on budget day and Jean was at Broadway and Main Street waiting to catch the No. 14 bus to work when she noticed something she often sees there on chilly mornings.

Someone stretched out on the bench inside the bus shelter.

Actually, on this lion-like late March morning, there were two people bedded down in the bus shelter, both of them men.

That didn’t bother Jean.

“I was going to do what I have done other mornings; slip into the shelter quietly, trying not to disturb their sleep, but get out of the wind while waiting for the bus.”

But before she could reach the shelter, a Winnipeg Transit supervisor arrived and politely told the two men they had to leave.

Jean watched as one of the men, the younger of the pair, got up and moved to the bus bench outside the shelter, while the older one wandered away up Main.

“The fellow sitting on the bench looked cold,” Jean continued, “so I offered him my coffee.”

It was black and hot and she thought it might warm him up.

It did, and he thanked her warmly.

And when Jean returned to the shelter, the man followed her.

“It sure was cold last night,’ Jean said, as the young man sat sipping the coffee.

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I slept in here,” he said.

Jean asked why he had to sleep in a bus shelter and if he had any family.

“Actually,” he replied, “that’s my dad I’m with.”

At that point Jean pulled out $20 — all she had with her — and gave it to the young man.

By that time her bus had arrived and his father had returned.

But so had the transit supervisor.

“That’s when the thing that has bothered me all day happened,” Jean said.

She watched as the transit supervisor banged on the bus shelter glass and told them they had to get out.

Jean protested.

“They aren’t bothering anyone,” she told the supervisor.

The supervisor said he was just doing his job.

“Im sorry ma’am, I’m not here to argue with you, but not everyone is as tolerant as you are when it comes to this,” Jean recalled him saying.

Jean got on the bus, but as it pulled away she looked back, watching the young man walk down Main Street, and wondered.

Will he be cold again tonight?

— — —

Which brings me back to the budget and what it really means.

In 1997, while he was addressing a right-wing American think-tank as the vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, Stephen Harper offered his sneering opinion of the country he would eventually govern.

“Canada,” he said, “is a northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

Fifteen years later, the economy of this so-called welfare state of ours is looking rather good in comparison to the United States.

Nevertheless, Harper’s first majority government budget appears to be the beginning of the end of the truly caring Canada.

Instead, we will be expected to take more personal responsibility, and expect less of almost everything else.

So prepare to say goodbye to the Canada personified by the caring for those least able to care for themselves, that Jean Gendron’s treatment of the homeless father and son exemplifies.

Say hello, instead, to the Bus Shelter Budget.

The one that’s just kicked younger and impoverished Canadians out into the cold. And under the bus.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca