I always figured that the opening controversy of 2023 would have something to do with government and housing, but I didn’t think that it would be over a city councillor actually creating more housing.
You’ve probably seen it on social media, or somehow on the national news, but there’s been a lot of discussion about Councillor Rodrigo Goller’s rental listing for a two-bedroom tiny home at the back of his property. Given the blowback, you would think that this is the house from Poltergeist, built on a graveyard and cursed with killer trees and haunted TVs.
I know, seeing the $2,500 price tag for 600 square feet on paper gives you a physical gag reflex, but so should the average price of renting a one-bedroom apartment in Guelph right now, which, as of December, was close to $2,100. Could Goller have chopped a couple of hundred dollars off the price? I don’t know, I can’t FOIA Goller’s personal finances, but I do know one thing…
The cost of housing is not a problem created by Goller, nor is it his exclusive responsibility to solve. Also, one extra house can’t create balance in the local housing ecosystem.
But the cost of housing is one piece of the affordability issue, and this was a really good week to turn that kaleidoscope and watch as the colours fall out and reform to present the ever-shifting picture of why life presently is so unaffordable.
The first meeting of the year at the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health focused on the cost of feeding local families, at least if you want to feed them things where fructose or food colouring isn’t among the top three ingredients. For a family of four that means nearly $1,200 per month, and if your family depends on ODSP or Ontario Works, eating nutritiously is a threat to your financial solvency.
This was also the week of “Chicken-gate”. CTV Queen's Park reporter Siobhan Morris posted a picture on social media from a west-end Toronto Loblaws showing three pounds of chicken with a price point of $37. A Loblaw media statement described the skinless, boneless, anti-biotic-free cuts as a “premium” product, which makes this the first time in the history of chicken it’s been described as a “premium” meat.
What Loblaw, as a corporation, is a little less eager to report is that they added more that $120 million in profit between October 2021 and October 2022. The cost of groceries, accounting for all retailers last fall, jumped 11.4 per cent compared to the year before, the biggest increase since 1981 according to Statistics Canada.
Sylvain Charlebois, a Dalhousie professor that works with the Agri-Food Analytics Lab, said last fall that there’s a need for more transparency in the grocery sector because of Loblaw’s diverse holdings.
"Selling food is not the same thing as selling lipstick," he said accounting for the fact that Loblaw isn’t just groceries, it’s pharmacies like Shoppers Drug Mart.
Isn’t it interesting too that the Ontario government took a moment over the holiday break to open up another revenue stream for provincial pharmacies by making it possible for them to directly prescribe medicine for a limited number of maladies. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Loblaw’s friend is CEO Galen Weston, who still appears in ads acting like an affable middle class Canadian dad who thinks frozen key lime pie is the height of foodie culture because it has real lime in it, but his total compensation last year was $10.6 million. Peanuts when compared to the combined net worth of $8.7 billion USD that the whole Weston family has in the bank.
Three days into the new year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported that the 100 highest paid CEOs in Canada were paid 243 times what the average Canadian worker took home last year, Weston among them. It’s funny how inflation and the supply chain hurt people buying “premium” chicken, but not CEO compensation or corporate profits.
Of all the absurdities in what counts as accountability in our culture, nothing tops the free pass our business leaders get. All the people that scream about every last lost penny at city hall will never think twice about the annual losses at a big box retailer, the ones that CEOs use to justify increases in prices, and cuts to labour costs.
Donald Trump left a trail of bounced cheques and pink slips in his business career, but he had to run for president before the so-called “powers that be” held him to even a minimum standard of account. The sad truth is that we expect more transparency and culpability from someone running for city council than the people who control billions of dollars in assets.
That brings me back to Rodrigo Goller’s house. He built it, he paid for it, and he posted an ad on Kijiji looking for a renter. He didn’t do a victory lap, he didn’t hold an open house for the media, and he hasn’t beaten his chest about his own awesomeness. In fact, in one media interview he even conceded that the situation is less than ideal.
“There was some negative feedback on social media that was surprising, but understandable,” Goller told CTV Kitchener. “We really need more social housing in Guelph and that is something I want to see done as a city councillor. We need to more dollars towards social housing in Guelph.”
It’s not social housing, but it is housing, and how often have you demanded to know what a single politician has done to solve a problem that’s beyond one person’s ability to solve? What has Doug Ford done? Or the actual Minister of Housing, Steve Clark? What has Weston done?
Are we really the people dumping on the ones acting as opposed to the ones with the power to take action but don’t? I certainly hope not.
