We won’t see Darryl Katz pulling up to Edmonton City Hall with 50,000 shipping containers full of granola bars to guarantee payment for his new downtown Oilers arena complex. That’s because Katz, like most Canadians, uses the common legal tender of money.
Money is an amazing thing.
Small, light, easily identified at different commonly agreed upon values, money not only buys you things, it gives you the one thing that a democratic society prides itself on providing to citizens: choice.
Granola bars don’t do that.
The City of Edmonton’s Have a Heart — Give Smart campaign makes me sick to my stomach with its self-righteous posturing, its smarmy little donated Smart Car and eager beaver ‘street team’ — all of which were made possible by . . . money. Hopefully Red Deer won’t attempt something so heartless.
In Edmonton, a team of young people circulate downtown in a donated Smart Car. They have ‘pushkas’ — charity change boxes — in the back. Give them a buck and they give you a granola bar to hand out to the next street panhandler. The money you donated goes directly (they say) to places like Boyle Street and Bissell Centres to help street people.
Lots of problems here, as I see it.
Grocery retailers can only donate granola bars because they have profits. They likely also get a tax deduction for their contribution.
The company that donated the Smart Car gets free publicity and probably a tax benefit. Only because it had surplus money to provide a ‘free’ car.
And I bet those Have a Heart ‘street team’ kids aren’t taking home a wagon full of granola bars every two weeks. I am sure they are being paid. With money.
However, this well-meaning program is designed to forbid the most marginalized people of society the right of access to a pittance of money. And along with that, it imposes a lack of choice. An easy way to test for discrimination is to simply reverse the terms. If granola bars won’t work for city council and Katz and his arena, then why would they be right for me?
Last time I looked, I couldn’t buy a coffee with granola bars, pay my utilities or rent an apartment with them. No one would take granola bars in payment for a new driver’s licence or ID card, something that is vital to gaining employment. No bank would open an account for me with granola bars to deposit, and without a bank account it is hard to have a job, get income support, Assured Income or credit.
Edmonton is confusing the problem of homelessness and hunger with panhandling. If you are hungry, a granola bar instead of spare change might be a useful solution once or twice. But if you are thirsty, it won’t help. In fact, if I were poor and desperate, I think a granola bar from a well-heeled income earner might just enrage me.
Edmontonians are already freaked out by aggressive panhandlers. I can’t see how this insulting program could possibly help either side.
If I was a street person, I would look at that fellow citizen, knowing that they just stepped from the shower, sprayed on expensive perfumes, dressed in clean clothes, psyched up for work with a coffee in hand — and arrived in my neighborhood to slap me in the face by saying politely “I don’t give change, but here, eat this. Have a good day!”
Have a good day?
I would know they throw out 40 per cent of their food a week, food I would gladly eat right from their garbage can, if their garbage can weren’t in the suburbs. How many granola bars can you eat before you gag?
Granola bars aren’t reusable like money. No one will accept a used or half-eaten one — unless they are starving.
The street person is the result of a Canadian societal collapse, no less devastating than the earthquake in Haiti — but their earthquake was private.
You are still on firm ground.
If you are not going to create a society in which a person can live decently below minimum wage, at least give the useful tool of exchange that all other citizens have access to.
Money.
Have a heart. And a brain.
Give money.
Or nothing.
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a Ponoka-based freelance columnist.