Monday, November 24, 2008

Recession Bites Harder In Ottawa

As fears grow of a widening global recession, what of the people on the street, those ordinary working families so beloved of Jack Layton. What of the kitchen tables they will soon be burning to keep warm? It's not as if they'll need them anyway, there being no food to put on them.

TDPC recently caught up with one such ordinary Canadian, and asked him how he sees his future. We'll call him 'Richard'. Until recently, Richard has enjoyed a good standard of living with a stable and reliable stream of what he described as freelance cleaning jobs. Richard had found his niche as an online cleaner, removing dirt and filth from the Internet. He'd cleaned up all around, in fact, both literally and figuratively.

But now, Richard says, his major client and major source of income has been commissioning reports into the quality of his cleaning work, and those reports have cast into doubt on not only the standard of his work, but also the very need for it. Richard sees his income beginning to dry up.

What might someone like Richard need to do to ride out this next recession? Experts we spoke to suggested that there might really be only one option - emigrate to Zimbabwe, where people like Richard and his friend Warren are still in very high demand.