AYLMER, QUEBEC | Last week, CBC radio in Ottawa reported that Canadians are spending 18 percent more for their daily purchases than are Americans. There's a positive note here because in the last quarter of last year, we spent 24 percent more than did Americans.

These figures made the national news all day long; they prompted indignation from commentators and "ordinary Canadians." CBC interviewed people in the street from Vancouver to Montreal, and recorded their anger. Every person interviewed fell into a rant of some sort, similar to what we hear in Aylmer when someone mentions cheaper gasoline across the bridge in Ottawa.

The emotion behind these reactions -- all concerning prices of stuff -- could lead one to believe we Canadians confuse life in all its real challenges and rewards with a hypothetical life within a WalMart universe. Price is all that matters in this universe, and the accumulation of stuff is the mark of happiness. This is the WalMart universe.

Is it true that price of stuff is all that matters in our lives? We'll all disagree, but prices are about all that we do talk about. Listen in on a conversation tomorrow and check out the topics . . . price of gas, of real estate, of cars, of education, etc.

The same statistics used by the CBC have since appeared in the Citizen and the Globe and Mail; they likely appeared in other newspapers and on TV newscasts. Who can deny the price of stuff has a high priority in our culture?

At the beginning of this month, a Canadian research centre reported different financial figures. Quoting Statistics Canada, the CCPA reported that since the 1980s, the richest 20 percent of Canadians have grown richer while the lowest 20 percent of Canadians have grown poorer; in between, wages have gone up about $55 in 27 years.

In the last ten years, families with kids under 18 are working, on average, 200 hours more per year than such families did, and yet 80 percent of these families are earning less than such families did ten years ago, corrected for the cost of living.

To illustrate the growing divide between the wealthiest people and the rest of us, the report noted that in any one day, before you and I pour our first cup of coffee, the highest-paid 100 corporate executives have earned more in that morning than the average Canadian earns all year long.

Incidentally, the researchers found that all the tax cuts in the last fifteen years (from both Liberal and Conservative governments) have benefited the richest 10 percent of Canadians more than all the rest of us put together.

"This is not the Canada most of us imagine," concluded the report.

Yet these statistics were not reported on CBC radio, or in the Citizen or the Globe and Mail. No one was interviewed in the street.

If we have agreed to live in a WalMart universe and if we have agreed that our highest principle is money, why the profound silence on this growing divide between the wealthiest people and the rest of us?

Is the silence coming from us, ordinary Canadians, or does it come from our news sources?

And why would this be?

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Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/06.08