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Heffernan must have had a press conference in one of North America’s biggest cities. Not having received a standing ovation from his peers for a good six months or so now, he seemed like the guy having the last laugh, rather than the guy in a room where he was surrounded by journalists.
“In order to get that far you need ambition,” he said. “Not everyone has that, obviously. It doesn’t mean they have to be your average business guy, but they can certainly be a reasonable, responsible business guy.
“Of course I can’t say for certain that you can be a successful CEO without ambition, but that’s at least one of the merits of business for you, being capable of thinking critically.”
Of course, the business world is filled with successful CEOs with “ambitious” qualities. What they have in common is that they don’t deliver any of this to all their employees, much less workers outside of the CEO role.
Everyone wants to keep growing as an entrepreneur, considering how tough it is to make the jump from job to job, even when you are an entrepreneur. What they can’t do is deliver the dream, especially to workers outside of the most respected and famous CEOs.
Wealthy entrepreneurs and executives get a break. For them, it means having their core priorities in place and allowing them to fly by the seat of their pants.
They get to focus on “fixing” the businesses that make them millions, which is not done for everyone else. Some of their employees don’t have all the dreams that this elite few get to shoot for, and in the Toronto area, they don’t have the support. It will also be shocking to anyone who has worked in Toronto’s tech community to learn that there are thousands of tech workers in the city who will likely have to leave in the next two years.
I’m assuming that the fancy companies that have billions in funding will be able to attract enough good people to keep doing what they do for now. However, if the tech sector outside of Toronto continues to grow rapidly, and millions of working Canadians have to follow suit, things might get a lot worse.
Here are some other damning statistics about the reality of growing up poor in Toronto:
– About half of the workforce that Toronto’s tech industry employs is foreign-born.
– 27% of the tax base of the city of Toronto and Toronto Region is that of foreign-born residents.
– The median net worth of a Canadian-born resident with no university degree is $100,000, while the same person with a university degree is worth $420,000.
– The city has the third highest homeless population of any major city.
– The Toronto Federation of Labour is demanding that the government work with local tech companies and the city to find a way to fund housing for the future new Canadian tech CEOs.
– About $17,000 (Canadian) is currently spent every year subsidizing exorbitant housing costs, for each and every Canadian who lives in Toronto and has a job and a mortgage.
Canada can no longer afford to continue to support a model of life that is unable to meet the aspirations of its people. There are far too many young Canadians, and too many families who are struggling to provide a home to their families. They’ve already found it hard enough to rent housing. Their dreams will be dashed with the realization that they will not be able to afford it.
The politicians can fix this. There are ways that the city can come together and build housing of the sort that the Canadian people deserve. This is not only possible, but it’s essential if we want to stop the rat race and save the middle class.
It’s a shame that the Trudeau government can’t agree on a policy that offers homes to the thousands of new immigrants who come to Canada every year and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who will, with their jobs, move to the country before long.