A million ain't what it used to be

Back when I was coming up, a million dollars was a lot of money. If you were worth a million bucks you were considered “rich.” In a town of 50,000, there might have been a few dozen millionaires and half a dozen or so folks with a net worth of ten million or more.

Those were the “super-rich” of the era.

Today a million bucks won’t buy you a house in Toronto or Vancouver.

I’m contemplating these numbers because of something I read in my Globe and Mail today.

The story quotes a Conservative Party website as saying “Justin Trudeau has made Khadr one of the wealthiest men in Canada…”

As you know, Khadr’s lawyers negotiated a ten million dollar settlement with the government for violating his Charter rights.

Lot’s of folks are having shit hemorrages over this. Go to Twitter and search “Khadr settlement” and you’ll be mightily impressed (or depressed) at the bile emanating from your fellow Canadians.

You’d think Khadr was personally responsible for writing the Charter of Rights and then finagled his way into Gitmo, just to trick the government of Canada into violating his rights so he could sue them big time.

But back to that hoary claim that a ten million dollar settlement has made him “one of the wealthiest men in Canada.”

Not likely. In that town of 50,000 I came up in, which is now a small city of 130,000, there are today many dozens of folks with a net worth of ten million or more. Extrapolate that across the country and you’ve got tens of thousands of men with a net worth of ten million, and more than a few women too.

So when you claim that this settlement, which is entirely in line with previous settlements our government has made with other Canadians who have had their Charter rights violated, makes Khadr one of the richest men in the country, you’re engaging in something that used to be called “yellow journalism.”

I might expect to see that in Ezra’s arch racist Rebel Media, but I’m surprised to find it, unchallenged, in Canada’s putative newspaper of record.

And I’m profoundly disturbed that the Conservative Party would stoop to this level of hate-mongering.