Canadian Politics Today

   I'm a little surprised that they couldn't find a female to help the SVP (Senior Vice President in charge of mid-west marketing? I don't know acrynyms) deliver his presentation, even if it was just Janice from the HR department.

Oh, Janice was there.  She introduced him but he was the king of the rodeo.  Later presentations were done by an Indian Janice who will be a VP in 2040 probably.

A few years ago when the news broke about the Royal Bank trying to outsource jobs to India, I fired off an email to my banker asking what's the deal, and casually mentioned that I was thinking of taking my mortgage elsewhere.  She replied that she didn't personally know anything, but promised to pass my concerns along.  Later the same day I got an email from somebody with a higher-up job title, no doubt a form letter composed in response to thousands of other complaints like mine.  They promised to take my concerns seriously and to reevaluate the situation and so-on.   I think that overall the strategy is to get away with as much as they can, but dial it back just a little when the public gets mad at them. 

As somebody who works in the industry, I found that story fascinating.  First of all, outsourcing started during Y2K *preparation*, ie. 1998-1999.  My career at that time was ruined by Chretien allowing offshoring and I had to retrain and take a job with a 50%+ salary cut after 10 months of unemployment.  There was no mention of this in the media that I could see despite 1000s of jobs being affected.  CGI, a big Canadian consulting firm, just laid off people and told the rest to take a pay cut or suck it.

But if you threaten the dairy industry, close a factory or threaten culturally familiar jobs you will be on the front page.

Gartner Group declared offshoring 'dead' in 2013.  That meant that all the jobs that were going to Asia were gone there and our jobs would start to grow again.  So when this story hit the news, it was like hearing that Blacksmithing was under threat or something.

This is why - despite being left of centre - I think that our political economy discussions are bullshit and am now favour of global trade.  People wring their hands at the loss of 'jobs' but in fact they vote with their dollars.  It's a hollow concern to worry about "Canadian jobs".

Regarding their enthusiasm for Pride and for supporting female employees and so on, I think it's similar... it's something they can do to score some cheap PR points without actually spending any money.  It doesn't cost them anything to talk about how much they love gay people or how much they support working women.  They spend a few bucks to have their logo at Pride or other events?  Sure, why not?   Gay people have money and buy houses and buy RRSPs and stuff like that... sponsoring Pride might help generate some warm-fuzzy feelings towards their brand.  Big corporate support for gay people is still fairly new... gay people are used to feeling somewhat ignored or unloved, and vocal support from a big corporate entity is probably feels somewhat validating, especially for gay people who were older and grew up in a time when nobody supported them.  Dollar for dollar it's probably more effective than expressing their support for moms because everybody says they support moms and moms are probably numb to all these expressions of support by now.

I'm probably drifting away from your topic... but overall I suspect that the mindset is born from a marketing perspective.  Being seen as caring is good for business. 

Was the audience at this presentation mostly front-line workers? middle-management types?

No, as I said it was a mix of old/young, male/female, and races.  Don't get me wrong, I think that these people are actually liberal and not feigning it.  But as I said, they can afford to be.  Kindness is easy when you can afford it.

I'm not sure why being broke would be an excuse for being bigoted.  It's not like treating people with respect costs money (it might actually save you money, as Ezra Levant has discovered after his slander appeal was denied today.)


 -k

Being broke isn't the same as having lost status as a middle-class person.  People who have lost status are bitter and angry and look to blame others.  The American economic elite sold their middle-country manufacturing jobs to Asia, thinking that there was still some kind of resilient American spirit.  In fact, those people had become used to relying on a company cheque and were ill-prepared to rebuild as their ancestors did.  So we have opioid addictions, rust towns and Trump.