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I thought Canada was cold. And then I moved to England

By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail
December 18, 2025
980 words

EDF Smart Meter

A few weeks ago, we began our Christmas season with the Advent Procession service at Great St. Mary’s in Cambridge. Like all older stone-built churches in Europe, St. Mary’s has no heating system. Despite our scarves and heavy winter coats we were shivering by the time that the choir and organist had finished, and even Rev. Clare Stephenson, who led the service, and offered us her blessing as we left, had the look of someone who was very ready for a warm fire and a glass of Christmas cheer.

The British are a proud people. They are justifiably proud of their history, still dwell on their memories of empire, can celebrate literary icons like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and more recently still have vestiges of waning pride in their rejection of Europe during Brexit. But more than all of that, the British find their greatest pride in being cold.

Before moving to Cambridge, where my wife Susan is studying for her Master of Philosophy in Musicology, I had of course heard the jokes about slippers and cardigans, and about the British obsession with not spending money on heat. What I now know is that these weren’t jokes – they were the very foundations of a national culture.

We’re renting one of the Charterhouse terraced cottages in the village of Grantchester, on the outskirts of Cambridge. It’s a lovely home, built around 1880, with a great landlord, and the 250-year-old Blue Ball Inn just two doors down. That pub turns out to be a very good thing because when our home is too cold to stay in, the pub always has a roaring blaze in the fireplace. The downside is that our bills for cask ale and pork pies are approaching what we pay for electricity.

We have a Smart Meter from EDF, our electricity company. Minute by minute a little light is either green (good), amber (caution), or red – you’re using too much power! The screen shows us exactly, to the penny, how much we’ve spent on energy as each day progresses. During the cold snap in November that daily number crossed £10. Our Canadian minds quickly translated £300 a month to $550 Canadian dollars!

What I’ve learned since arriving in Britain is that yes, everyone wears layers of clothing indoors, and that yes, likely only one room in the house is heated at any time. Old houses are drafty, and the heating systems are unlike anything I experienced in Canada. Our cottage has “storage heaters,” which take advantage of half-price overnight electricity rates (charging double the rate we paid in Vancouver) to heat large, heavy ceramic blocks inside of a radiator. In the morning when electricity prices jump (to triple Vancouver rates!) that stored heat is allowed to escape and heat the room. At least until around dinner time, when the stored heat has run out.

As I sit on the sofa, reading, with my feet curled up under me keep them warm, or while we snuggle under a duvet while watching the BBC, I’m reminded of our home in Canada. Homes there have big gas or oil-fired furnaces, double glazed windows, and (oh how I miss it) under-floor heating. I remember being able to walk from room to room and stay warm no matter where I went. I look back fondly on turning up a thermostat without a moment’s hesitation, making everything just a little bit warmer because, really, it costs so little.

Like a lot of Canadians, we’ve spent many evenings watching programs like The Crown and Downton Abbey. In both series the most memorable set pieces show people deep in discussion beside a roaring fireplace. What I now realize is that 10 feet away from the hearth people were likely shivering frigidly. Even the wealthy and powerful in Britain live half the year in the cold.

Because the heating systems in British homes are so spartan, almost every single room in the house – including the bathroom – has a small, plugged in, electric heater to “take the edge off” the cold. These inefficient little boxes do warm things up a bit, but are an expensive solution.

Although their homes and apartments may be cold, the British people are genuinely warm and helpful. When we’ve complained about being chilly, they’ve been quick to suggest solutions.

“Layer the floor; even newspapers under a rug stop the cold coming up.” “Eat something warm and calorie-dense before bed to keep core temperature steady.” “Cafés with poor ventilation tend to be warmest; linger.”

And my favourite: “A small pet is effectively a mobile heat source. Cats are the most efficient, but anything warm-blooded helps.”

Which is not to say that the British couldn’t also improve their insulation, and add weather-stripping to doors, and price their electricity a little bit more for comfort than profit.

Of course, when I look back fondly on our toasty, warm Canadian homes, I can’t help but think about how they were heated. In B.C. you might be able to use the power from hydro-electric dams, and in Ontario from nuclear power plants, but more likely your furnace still burns natural gas, or in Atlantic Canada, heating oil. We were warm all winter in our Nova Scotia farmhouse, but the oil heating is one small part of the global warming that led to this year’s Maritime drought.

The other morning, I came down for coffee and breakfast. I stepped into a freezing kitchen and found Susan warming her hands over the toaster. “Seriously,” she said, “I feel like Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Little Match Girl’, scrabbling for whatever scrap of warmth I can find.”

I smiled at that image – until I took the time to read the story that I vaguely remembered from childhood. The Little Match Girl was found frozen to death.

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It’s Only Earwax — Should You Worry?

By Barry Rueger
Published: Next Avenue
August 1, 2025
1318 words
Read on-line.

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Earwax is one of those things that everyone encounters, but nobody discusses. If you’re like me though, it blocks up your ears time after time, and you go looking for answers. The good news is that earwax — technically known as cerumen — is really not a significant health risk. The bad news is that because it’s a minor problem, you’ll find all manner of folktales and remedies, many of which are nonsense.

Many doctors recommend starting with over-the-counter ear drops.

An excess of wax in the ear canal is seen in around 10% of children, 5% of adults and increases to around 60% in older populations. Wax obstruction is more common in men than in women. Wax problems may be commonplace, but unless that yellow or brown stuff actually blocks your ear, you tend to ignore it, or maybe get annoyed when you find a little blob of it on your pillow in the morning.

I spoke to Desmond A. Nunez, M.D., a specialist in ear, nose and throat surgery (or otolaryngology) at the University of British Columbia.

“Earwax” is not really wax, like you find in a candle. Earwax is a combination of the cells of the skin of the outer ear, which are always being shed, and oils from sebum glands and other skin glands that produce substances for perspiration and temperature control purposes. All of that is incorporated into the earwax that we produce. The specific composition of earwax varies from one person to the next.

Earwax does have a purpose. Nunez explains, “It’s partly protective, so the presence of the wax in the ear canal will prevent things from getting into the ear, and also the amount of lubrication from sebum secreting glands gives you an oil base, a protection against water ingress.” Your earwax keeps your ears from getting infected while swimming.

Causes of Excess Earwax

For most people, the accumulation of earwax is self-regulating. But what about people like me who routinely find our ears plugged and hearing impaired? What is the cause of this excess earwax?

In health forums and on Facebook you’ll find many theories from people with earwax buildup, and you’ll be offered many possible causes. One favorite with people in the live music business is that loud sound levels cause wax to become impacted. The claim is that “If you are in a noisy environment, the body creates wax to protect the ears.” Other people say that regular use of over-the-ear headphones somehow causes more wax to be created. Some posters claim that “non-smelly underarm sweat” can indicate that you’ll have more wax problems, or that different allergies can cause wax buildup.

Another factor that impacts people over 50 is the use of hearing aids. Because they block the ear canal, they also tend to impair the ear’s ability to self-clear wax buildups.

Another claim is that people with Asian heritage more commonly suffer earwax problems. Nunez explains that while some genetic factors can influence what happens in your ears, it’s likely that it’s more a matter of luck. “I have a very diverse patient population base, but even within individuals of one particular demographic, there’s a huge amount of variation.”

“Other things you have to be aware of is that if you have skin disorders like psoriasis or eczema affecting your ears, that reduces the efficacy of self-clearing mechanisms. If one examines those people’s ears, you will see more wax. But I don’t think it’s because they’re producing more wax. I think it’s because the clearance mechanisms are broken down,” Nunez says.

Another factor that impacts people over 50 is the use of hearing aids. Because they block the ear canal, they also tend to impair the ear’s ability to self-clear wax buildups. (Ordinary ear buds can have the same effect.) And the wax itself will sometimes plug up the holes in the hearing aid, making them less effective at assisting hearing.

Beyond simple hearing loss, if wax is in contact with the tympanic membrane (the ear drum) it can cause discomfort and occasionally vertigo.

Removal Tips

Regardless of how your earwax might have been created, if it’s blocking your ear you’ll need to remove some of it. Once again the internet will offer a near endless array of suggestions, as well as videos, disgusting photos and people bragging about how plugged up their ears were and about the sheer volume of earwax they removed.

A much better choice for advice is your family doctor.

If you see your doctor and he or she sees excess earwax, they will likely start by telling you to use over-the-counter ear drops. The drops you’ll be looking for will be specifically for earwax removal. Other drops target infections, or swimmer’s ear. Some doctors will suggest using ordinary olive oil, almond oil or similar substances to soften impacted wax, but commercial earwax drops (which can be oil based, water based or non-water based) will include active ingredients that may include hydrogen peroxide, glycerin, sodium bicarbonate or carbamide peroxide (a combination of hydrogen peroxide and urea that’s also used in teeth-whitening products). There are also homeopathic ear drops with different herbal ingredients.

The usual advice is to administer your drops for four or five days.

Any of these options aim to soften or loosen impacted wax to make removal easier, either naturally on its own or by the doctor using a syringe. Separating facts from internet opinions on earwax removal choices can be difficult, but this is one area where there has been actual research. A 2018 review out of the NIH in the United Kingdom concluded that “using ear drops when you have a partially or completely blocked ear canal may help to remove the earwax in your ear. It is not clear whether one type of drop is any better than another, or whether drops containing active ingredients are any better than plain or salty water.” But in 2020, another study in the Journal of Clinical Otolaryngology found that drops containing glycerol, hydrogen peroxide and urea do make a difference.

The usual advice is to administer your drops for four or five days. Lie down with your head tipped to one side, carefully drop a few drops into your ear canal, then sit for a few minutes to let them work. When you sit back up you can rinse your ear with warm water and wipe away the excess.

Your doctor may also offer to syringe your ears, shooting in warm water to loosen and remove wax buildup. There is some suggestion that too much water pressure may actually damage your ears. And some places, notably Britain, have largely stopped the syringe method.

Removal Risks

Once when traveling in China, I found my ears totally blocked with wax. Our host directed me to a fellow with a market stall. With a bike-headlamp attached to his forehead he carefully scraped the wax out of my ears using a bamboo stick. It worked, and no harm was done, but my North American doctors all have been horrified by the idea.

If you remove all of the earwax or if your tool causes a break to the skin of the inner ear — the eardrum — your ear can easily become infected. Most minor ear injuries will heal themselves, but they can be painful and may need antibiotics. The other concern is that your ear wax protects against swimmer’s ear, a bacterial infection that can have serious consequences.

Vendors will sell you cheap kits with a tiny bluetooth camera, and various kinds of scrapers and tweezers for cleaning out your earwax. Despite the many videos on YouTube showing how to use them, experts all agree that you should never be sticking anything — even a Q-tip — inside your ears.

Your ears are delicate and essential. The risk of injury is just too great to go poking around in them. Instead, see your doctor.

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I want a home, not an investment

By Barry Rueger
Published: Globe and Mail
June 19, 2025
1055 words

After two years of living in France, it was time for my wife and me to come home. She went first, to Nova Scotia, to look at houses for sale. After a week Susan phoned me, excited, and said, “This is it!”

My inbox was soon filled with videos, property descriptions, and photos of a 140-year-old farmhouse at Western Head, just outside Liverpool.

It was an old, charming and quirky home, with grey cedar shingles, a bay window, and a septic tank that needed to be replaced. It has a barn where I eventually hope to add a writing studio, and it has enough land for a serious garden to grow our own fruit and vegetables.

Built sometime around 1880, it was old enough that we knew it would have hidden problems, and even before we made an offer we could see that the roof needed to be replaced. The money-guzzling oil-burning furnace would also need to go, replaced by heat pumps, or, if our budget allowed, geothermal heating.

In Nova Scotia terms, we’re outsiders. Because we’re coming from “away,” we probably paid more than a local person would have, but the house is perfect for us, with room for books and records, an office and a grand piano. We can look out the windows and see the Atlantic Ocean and the lobster boats, and we can hear the foghorn at the Western Head lighthouse down the road.

Despite all of the shortcomings, we knew we had found our home. And somehow we never once asked ourselves: “But is it a good investment?”

The newspapers are full of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plans for helping Canadians, especially young Canadians, to buy homes. The stumbling block always seems to be a concern that if governments support building more homes, the resale prices of existing houses will go down – that homeowners will lose equity.

What Mr. Carney is missing is that for most ordinary people, a house, or even a rented apartment, isn’t an investment opportunity – it’s a home. Nearly everyone that I have known has moved into their home with every intention of living there permanently. They repaint the living room and hallway because they like the new colour, and they spend weeks and years building the flower gardens because they love to look at them. They add decks, bird feeders, and lights at Christmas.

They aren’t doing this because they’re aiming to add to potential resale value; they’re making an ordinary house into their home.

Because our farmhouse in Nova Scotia is our home, we don’t really care about its market value. We didn’t buy our farm house to resell it; we bought it to live there, to watch the birds at our feeder, the occasional deer or raccoon, and to watch the family of snow hares that nests under our deck change their coats from brown to white as winter approaches.

We bought that house, and love that house, because the Atlantic sunrises are beyond beautiful, and the stars at night are breathtaking, and because when storms arrive they are like nothing we’ve ever experienced.

And when we get home after a trip, or shopping, or work, we walk in the back door and say, “Oh, it’s so good to be home.”

My parents bought their first house in 1966 in Kelowna, B.C., on Morrison Avenue. That was my home for six years, from grade three to high school. In 1972 we moved into a newly built house a few blocks away on Charolais Road. I lived there, in a bedroom with orange shag carpeting, until I left for university. My mom stayed in that house until after my father died in 1994. She then moved into a sweet little bungalow on Ziprick Road that was her home until she died in 2021 during the pandemic.

Three houses over 55 years. That wasn’t about making investments; it was about making a home.

We moved to Nova Scotia for one reason: Susan’s son Haruki, his wife Sofia, and our three grandchildren lived in another old wooden farmhouse, about an hour down the road, just outside of Shelburne. We really wanted to be close to our grandchildren, but also wanted our separate lives, so the distance between us was just right. Susan cooked holiday dinners, and I built a swing-set and slide in the yard.

Early one morning, just a few months after we finally had all of our furniture, books and sheet music unpacked, we received a distressing phone call. Haruki and Sofia’s house had caught fire during the night, and by morning had burned to the ground. The family escaped with little more than their laptops and the clothes they were wearing. Nearby neighbours brought food and bags of used clothing, and kept the children out of harm’s way.

Susan and I drove the children home to our house in Liverpool, while Haruki and Sofia, likely still in shock, watched the last of the firefighting. While we cared for the kids, their parents took the time to come to terms with what happened, and to try to plan for the coming days.

Our Liverpool farmhouse was suddenly home for seven people, not two. For our children our home was a place of refuge. Days were spent exchanging e-mails and phone calls with insurance companies, and making plans for … well, for starting over from scratch. We shared our home with their family until they decided to settle in Montreal for the summer while insurance rebuilt their house.

A home, a real home, isn’t an investment: It’s the place for family, the place that you know you can return to when your world falls apart. A home is where you hang your hat, and keep your family photos, and raise your children. It’s where kittens and puppies move in, live their lives under foot, and then pass away. It’s where your future and your past are preserved all around you, and where every room holds a memory.

I don’t believe that anyone buys a home thinking only of resale value, or the return on investment. You buy your home – or rent it, as is the case for a third of Canadians – because it’s the place where you feel safe, and where you expect to spend years, or decades, making it part of a wonderful life.

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Understanding the Different Types and Causes of Seizures

By Barry Rueger
Published: Next Avenue
Aoril 9, 2025
1313 words
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One sunny day in mid-October I realized that I was in the hospital. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how long I had been there, but I was definitely in the emergency ward at Vancouver General Hospital.

By the end of the day I had learned that my wife, Susan, had found me on the dining room floor in my dressing gown, that she had called the paramedics and that through the examinations and the ambulance journey, my eyes had been open and I was answering questions.

A week later, my new neurologist, Oscar Benavente, M.D., told me that I had probably suffered a seizure. The “probably” was because the event had happened days earlier, and he hadn’t been there to see it.

Please read the full article on-line at: https://www.nextavenue.org/understanding-different-types-causes-seizures/

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Is Your Dog’s Poop Bag Really Eco-friendly?

By Barry Rueger
Published: Asparagus Magazine
April 4, 2025
1483 words
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The story of compostable dog-poop bags is complicated—as is the story of dog-poop disposal in general.

According to some accounts, the idea of a small bag that could be used to pick up dog poop dates back to 1986, when Californian businessman Chris Crosson created the first dog-poop bag. Another claim dates it to the early 20th century, when Teddy Roosevelt got tired of cleaning up his dog’s droppings and instead would carry a pocket-sized bag for that purpose.

Regardless of who had the idea first, over the past 100 years it has been almost universally accepted that every dog owner should collect their pet’s waste. More controversial is the question of how that waste should be disposed of.

Dog waste carries diseases, so you want to keep it away from food, gardens, and waterways. Disease experts such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that dog feces can spread pathogens ranging from Campylobacter, Giardia, and E. coli, to hookworm and roundworm.

Even setting aside the disease problems, piles of dog poop on sidewalks and lawns are unpleasant, smell bad, and ick up your shoes when, inevitably, you step in them. Grabbing poop with a little plastic bag and tying the top shut seems like a simple solution—unless you’re trying to do it sustainably.
What’s your bag?

What’s your bag?

If you walk into any pet store, you’ll see shelves full of poop bags of different brands and colours—most of them manufactured in China, but some in the US or Canada. Many of them will claim to be “compostable.” The problem is how you define that term.

The group that certifies most products as “compostable” in North America is the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI). They have tested thousands of products and allow manufacturers to use the BPI certification mark to demonstrate that what they’re selling can, in fact, be composted.

The problem for Canadian dog owners is that Canadian and American rules are different. BPI explained to Asparagus in an email that “Pet Waste Bags aren’t currently accepted by most commercial composters in the United States, so BPI Certification for Pet Waste Bags is limited to Canada, where those types of products are commonly accepted by curbside composting programs.” This means that dozens of brands of poop bags that wouldn’t be approved in the US can be labelled as “compostable” in Canada.

Generally speaking, “compostable” plastics such as poop bags are made mainly of polybutylene adipate terephthalate, or PBAT. This polymer is synthesized from fossil fuels, though research suggests it could be derived from biomass in future. It is combined with plastic-alternative materials such as polylactic acid (PLA)—typically made from fermented plant starch obtained from plants like corn, cassava, sugarcane, or potato—to toughen them up while retaining the promised biodegradability.

The issue is, although PLA is considered to be compostable in precisely controlled industrial conditions, it is not compostable in home composts or landfills. One 2012 study suggests that in a landfill setting, it could take 100-plus years for PLA to complete the chemical process needed to just start biodegrading.

That problem seems to exist for most “compostable” plastics. Although they will usually degrade, sometimes in only a few years, the degradation relies on the plastic being disposed of under just the right conditions. The moisture of the compost environment, the temperature, and even the size of chopped-up particles that the bags have been reduced to all affect the composting process.

There are currently no international standards or guidelines for home-composting conditions, but companies from many countries—including some from Canada—use the Austrian “OK compost HOME” certification, which defines polymers as home-compostable if at least 90% are degraded within 12 months at ambient temperatures of 20–30°C.

Another issue is the release of microplastics from “compostable” plastics. While research is still being carried out on this, one 2021 study of PBAT in an aquatic environment found that PBAT released “a much larger quantity of plastic fragments/particles” than did LDPE, the plastic commonly used for food wraps, grocery bags, and industrial packaging.

All of this may explain why, as of 2023, BC has stopped allowing items labelled “compostable plastic” to be put in any compost. The Government of BC webpage on the issue states, “[T]hese plastics are regularly removed from composting and recycling facilities and are sent to landfills.”

Disposal dilemma

So you’ve picked up poop in a bag that is more-or-less compostable. Now what do you do with it? As is often the case with waste disposal, the challenge is that you’re trying to dispose of two different materials that need different handling. And you’re trying to do that within the specific rules and procedures put in place by your local municipality.

The starting point with dog waste is your local municipality’s recommendations. A 2019 City of Vancouver Engineering Services memorandum examining its dedicated dog-waste disposal regime (namely, the red bins located in dog parks) cites a report saying that the city has between 32,000 and 56,000 dogs. At the US Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated average of ⅓ kg of waste per dog per day, that comes to between approximately 4,000 and 7,000 metric tonnes of poop heading to local landfills every year.

Although few Vancouver dog-owners know it, the City of Vancouver launched a pilot program in 2016 mentioning the option of emptying your dog poop into your toilet, so that it can be handled by the local waste-treatment system. Your empty poop bags can then go into your household trash can.

The reason for flushing is simple, according to Dr. Love-Ese Chile, a bioplastics researcher: when dog feces go to landfill, they don’t properly compost.

“Dog waste often contains a lot of moisture,” Chile explains. “In the non-oxygen environments in many landfills, it will degrade in an anaerobic way to form methane and water.” That methane ends up being released as a greenhouse gas, which adds to climate problems.

Every plastic poop bag has to be opened and emptied out by hand to separate the bag from the waste.

However, confusingly for dog-owners, the signs at most Vancouver dog parks only remind owners that they are responsible for picking up after their dogs, and even the parks participating in the pilot project make no mention of flushing dog waste.

A 2019 memo to Vancouver City Council regarding the City’s red bins for dog waste raised some significant issues, not the least of which is that every plastic poop bag has to be opened and emptied out by hand to separate the bag from the waste. After some processing, the waste goes to the local sewage-treatment plant, and the bags—compostable or not—to the landfill. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a 2023 follow-up memo on this process notes that the City’s call for companies interested in carrying out the poop-bag-emptying process “received no feasible responses…from anybody willing or capable of dealing with this volume of waste.”

Municipalities are still working on creating good systems for handling dog feces, with little consistency from one place to another. As a dog owner, you might do better to check the resources at the Enviro Pet Waste Network. Their aim is to provide easy-to-understand, science-based information for pet owners.

The scoop on the poop

So as a dog owner, what should I be doing? If I flush the dog poop down the toilet, I’m reducing landfill waste as much as possible. If the bags are “compostable,” even better. Aside from microplastics, the “compostable” plastic bags are still greener than plastic bags made entirely from petroleum products.

What I can’t do, though, is mix my dog waste, or my compostable poop bags, with my regular compost pile. Anything containing animal waste should be kept separate from our food gardens, and that includes compost.

One option that the City of Vancouver suggests is that you create a separate compost pit just for dog feces. Detailed instructions can be found at cityfarmer.org—but before you dig a 3-foot-deep hole in the back of your garden plot, take the time to read through dog-owners’ experiences on Reddit or in gardening forums. For everyone who loves their handy dog-waste compost pit, there’s also someone who finds it unwieldy, smelly, or just not effective as a way to compost poop.

Although it’s possible to successfully compost poop, the reality is that it’s not the same as tossing your potato peels in the compost bucket. You’ll need grass cuttings or other plant material—and probably septic-tank starter—to get things working, and your success will depend on the specifics of your soil, climate conditions, and your dog’s breed, size, and diet.

Regardless of how you dispose of the actual dog poop, every dog-owner has to judge for themselves whether a little plastic bag is as green as they want to be. If not, maybe a wooden spoon and an old yogurt container is a better choice.

 

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The Problem With Low Potassium

By Barry Rueger
Published: Next Avenue
October 3, 2024
1526 words
Read on-line.

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It was unexpected when my family doctor announced that I had very low potassium levels, or hypokalemia. Aside from prescribing some of the largest pills that I’ve ever seen, and directing me to an endocrinologist, he had little to say to me. I quickly realized that I knew nothing about this essential element, either inside my body, or in the world around me.

Read the full article.

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Restaurant workers demand tip protection

By Barry Rueger
Published: The Media Co-op
May 29, 2024
1205 words

Tens of thousands of servers in restaurants and cafés across Canada rely on tips to survive. Restaurant front-of-house staff are almost always paid minimum wage, and the extra 15 to 20 per cent can mean the difference between paying the rent or skimping on groceries.

In an age of debit and credit cards, tipping your server almost always means tapping your card on a Stripe or Interac terminal. It’s fast and easy, and you don’t have to do mental math to figure out the tip amount. One question remains, though: do you know if your cheerful server will actually see any of that money?

The Halifax Workers’ Action Centre has made tips a focus of their work, with questionnaires and outreach to try and determine how widespread the problem of tip theft might be. “Tip theft” refers to when an employer refuses to let servers keep their tip income, sometimes by insisting that it be split with kitchen and other staff, but even worse by simply taking all of that money for themselves.

Halifax WAC organizer Syd Blum describes the challenges faced by ordinary restaurant employees. “Workers have a very difficult time accessing justice because the cost of lawyers is prohibitive. Nova Scotia is one of the very few provinces in Canada that doesn’t classify tips as wages. So workers are really in that tricky middle ground where, at the federal level, tips are considered income, but provincially they’re not protected, like wages are.”

The WAC surveyed restaurant workers in Halifax, and of more than 250 responses, nearly three-quarters had experienced some form of tip theft. According to Blum, “whether they were currently having their tips stolen, had previously worked somewhere where tips were stolen, or knew someone who was experiencing tip theft — it was widespread. And we cast a wide net, we didn’t just seek out people with experience in tip theft.”

When diners left tips in cash this was less of an issue. Now that almost all tips go through the restaurant’s electronic payment systems, it’s often the case that servers can’t even be sure what their customers left for them as tips.

Halifax WAC warns servers that employers may not pass-on all tips from Point-Of-Sale (POS) machines, or that tip-pooling with kitchen and other staff might quietly include a cut for the bosses. Other employers deduct credit card fees from tips.

One former Nova Scotia restaurant worker, Pers Turner, recalls a major food service company that owned restaurants and did catering menus, but refused to pay catering employees tips, even though they were added to client bills at the end of the day.

“For their catering staff, they did take all of the tips, and their justification was that they paid their catering staff more,” Turner says. “The bills for catering had the customers paying a gratuity, but all of that money went to the company.”

Denying tip protection

In November of 2023, that dilemma led Nova Scotia NDP MLA Kendra Coombes to introduce Bill 366, the Tip and Gratuity Theft Prevention Act. Modelled after similar Acts in other provinces, it would have protected workers’ tips from greedy employers.

A year and a half later, Nova Scotia’s Conservative government has decided not to move ahead with tip protection. Their argument, common among those who dismiss tip protection, is that “in Nova Scotia, tips are not considered wages and the Labour Standards Code does not address tip protection.”

Currently, six Canadian provinces have legislation protecting workers’ tip income. The three prairie provinces, Nova Scotia and the three northern territories do not. Most employers are happy to pass on tips to the servers who earn them, but I spent several hours scouring provincial Reddit groups across Canada, and examples appeared everywhere. The amounts lost are often relatively small, and servers are generally making close to minimum wage.

Blum says because the costs of launching legal action against an employer are often unaffordable, these thefts are just accepted as part of the job.

“The Halifax WAC exists because the cost of hiring a lawyer is prohibitive to most people — especially those making service industry wages,” she says. “We get a lot of people who were turned away from employment lawyers’ offices because they’re told the value of their claim would be far outweighed by legal fees and it’s just not worth it.”

The Canadian Revenue Agency has taken tips much more seriously. For decades, they have been known to audit restaurants to tally servers’ tips and assess whether income taxes have been paid on them. Now the CRA website is explicit in how the employer needs to track tips: “If any of your tips and gratuities are controlled by your employer, your tip income amount should already be included on your T4 slip.”

Despite Nova Scotia’s claim that tips aren’t wages, the CRA says that “in Canada, the amount you earn in tips and gratuities is considered to be income, and you must report all of it on your tax return.”

In other words, Nova Scotia will expect your server to pay provincial income tax on tip income, even though the province refuses to protect that income from employer theft.

Manitoba, which had been under Progressive Conservative rule for seven and a half years, took things one step further. The Employment Standards: An Adult EAL Curriculum Resource, a program designed to introduce Employment Standards concepts to newcomers while developing English as a second language, teaches students that, “Legally … the server’s tips belong to the employer, so the employer can take money from the server’s tips.”

Despite the 2023 election of the NDP’s Wabanakwut “Wab” Kinew, that remains provincial policy. In an email statement to The Media Co-op, Robyn Dryden, a policy analyst in the Department of Labour and Immigration, says: “The Employment Standards Code defines ‘wages’ as ‘compensation for work performed that is paid to an employee by his or her employer…’ [as] tips are paid by the customer rather than the employer, and are considered to be similar to a bonus rather than a wage.”

Helping servers directly

If you eat in restaurants on the prairies, or in Nova Scotia, you may need to take steps to ensure that your server receives the tips that you leave. One option is to return to carrying cash for tips, and leaving — or handing to them discreetly — a $10 or $20 bill at the end of dinner.

Alternatively, you can ask your server: “If I leave a tip on the terminal, who gets that money? Is it you?”

Blum encourages talking “to workers about this, especially as customers.”

“It’s one thing if an organizer comes in and starts talking about tip theft, but it’s another thing if people who are in the shop every day buying coffee or eating breakfast are having those conversations. We really encourage that,” she says.

For tips to be protected province-wide — something workers have been calling for — Blum says all it takes is a little political will.

“What’s wild about tip theft in Nova Scotia is that we’re not asking the government to create some kind of new program. We’re talking about a line on a piece of paper. It’s an amendment to legislation, so it would cost the government nothing.”

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I’m 68 and hired a personal trainer because I’ve always hated working out. For the first time ever, I feel great and am making progress.

By Barry Rueger
Published: Business Insider
May 10, 2024
554 words
Downloadable PDF

Barry ties his shoes on a bench at the gym.As a kid, I hated gym class and lived with my nose in a book. While my classmates were playing hockey or soccer, I was in the library on my way to becoming a writer.

Over the years, I occasionally visited the gym with my wife who loves working out, but I never really embraced fitness until recently.Exercise is important at any age, but this is especially true for older adults. After all, working out can prevent or delay age-related health issues. With this in mind, I decided to make a change.

Now, at 68, I’ve fallen in love with working out, thanks to my personal trainer. Here’s what starting my fitness journey later in life has been like.

Read the entire story at Business Insider.

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Get to Know the Global Scheme that Promotes Green Building

Published: Asparagus Magazine
November 4, 2020
1000 words

The Vancouver Convention Centre is LEED-certified platinum.
The Vancouver Convention Centre is LEED-certified platinum. (Photo by Faruk Ateş via Flickr / CC BY 2.0)

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), is a comprehensive and complex certification program for green building. Developed in the 1990s by the non-profit US Green Building Council (USGBC), it now guides sustainable construction in more than 160 countries. LEED looks at every component of a building — from site selection and construction techniques to appliances and furnishings — with the goal of making buildings safe, environmentally friendly, and energy efficient.

Sustainability Begins at Home

Although LEED is often associated with prestige buildings like Vancouver’s grass-roofed convention centre or Facebook’s water-efficient headquarters in California, LEED also certifies apartment, condo, and single family home construction. Projects earn points for meeting requirements like careful construction-waste disposal and optional features like rainwater management. The number of points earned determines the level of certification awarded: certified, silver, gold, or platinum.

Read the full article.

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How long can we support the weight of COVID-19?

Published: The Globe and Mail (PDF)
September 25, 2020
818 words

In August, I received a frantic text message from my sister. She has been our  mother’s primary caregiver for many years, but Mom is 92, settling into dementia, and now had gout. The time had come to finally help her to move out of the family home and into care.
Even though I hardly ever make the drive from Vancouver, where I live, to my home town Kelowna, obviously there was no choice. I cancelled a day’s work and was set to go.
But I didn’t. I still don’t feel entirely safe visiting my mother. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have COVID-19, but that isn’t 100 per cent certain. I’m even less sure that my brother and sister aren’t carriers.

(Read the full column)