What we should really be expecting in 2019
Jennifer Wells wishes everyone a 2019 full of gratitude, among other things. Businesses must protect our trees and focus on gender equality
Happy New Year.
Well why not leap ahead a week? If UPS can exclaim that National Returns Day, marked by peak package returns, predated Christmas by six days, then let’s get on with it.
This has not happened before, UPS tells us, because, logically, National Returns Day has heretofore been in January. Duh. Yet the 1.5-million package tally on Dec. 19 has been decreed the zenith of this season’s returns, to be followed by an expected 1.3 million package send-backs on Jan.3. E-commerce retailers have, not surprisingly, become focused on the “returns moment,” meaning that consumers say the ease and swiftness of send-backs is of paramount concern during the festive season.
The joy having thus been sucked from the holiday, let us turn to 2019. What do I wish for the ahead. I wish the city’s business leaders would raise their voices in chorus to protect the city’s trees and ravines. Come on, do something majestic.
There’s a business case for this — I’m relying on a report produced by TD Economics a few years back which placed an estimated value of $7 billion on Toronto’s urban forest. It’s one thing to value a commodity, like a storehouse of gold. But there are also the spinoff economic benefits, from wet weather flow reduction (an annual cost saving of $50 million) to pollution abatement (an estimated annual saving of $19 million). The value of carbon stored within the “woody tissues” of the urban forest? (Estimated between $27 million and $37 million.)
The esthetic, cultural and recreational benefits are obvious and impossible to financially quantify.
To those more up on this topic than myself, I acknowledge subsequent reports have concluded that TD undervalued Toronto’s urban forest. What else. I have a football wish. Bell Media, owners of TSN, should do a deal with the CBC or CTV, I don’t care which, to broadcast the Grey Cup. No Canadian should have to pay for cable in order to watch the big game. Be generous.
Street furniture. The city badly bungled its open-for-tender process years ago. We wanted to look just like
Chicago! I recall interviewing representatives from big international companies who promised to do just that. Instead, we went cheap, installed those pale blue clamshell things, which broke, and then installed those black things, with pedals, and then removed the pedals, and now we are often stuck having to push open a disgusting flap in order to dispense with said garbage.
In streetside terms, when we put on our business face to the global business community we do it not well. (Ditto, roads.)
I wish that the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act would be amended to better protect workers and retirees. Union leaders fear that federal consultations on this were left too late in the year and may result in little, if any, change. Understandable. If the federal government doesn’t stand up for the workers of Canada, then who?
I wish that business would stop making journalists write about the gender pay gap. Yes, it is their fault.
I wish that business would stop making journalists write about the underrepresentation of women in the C-suite and on boards of directors. As before.
I wish that Canadian CEOs would take the initiative to align executive pay with that of workers. We have been talking about this for four decades. Ridiculous.
Silly me. I thought the habit of rewarding chief executives for nothing more visionary than cutting jobs would have ended about the time Sun- beam axed Chainsaw Al. That was two decades ago.
I wish Toronto Maple Leafs tickets could be made affordable for those who live in the real world.
I wish I could stay awake past 11
wish the city would pay more attention to providing affordable housing for young creative types so the city wouldn’t get, well, boring.
I wish to understand why so many of the city’s roads are in an execrable state.
I wish someone would fix capitalism.
I wish the current provincial government would understand that investing in the city’s most vital asset — our young people — is the best investment they could ever make.
They are our prime resource, like trees, and like trees they spin off all sorts of positive economic benefits. What other business would stop investing in its core asset? I wish the current government would attend some remedial courses in being smart.
I wish you all a 2019 full of gratitude.