Avoid the frustration and help your community at the same time — buy local.

Avoid the big deceit, buy local

Patrick Meagher
Farmers Forum

You’ve likely noticed that it’s hard to get through one day without hearing a string of lies.

Allow me to qualify. If you’ve spent your day with people you trust, with few or no outside influences, and you have the self-discipline not to lie to yourself, you’ve just upped your chances of a truly honest day’s work.

On the other hand, if you’ve been on the phone with a government agent and called a large multinational company for help — and got their call centre — and you’ve turned on the TV news, radio or scrolled the news feeds of big media networks, podcasters and influencers then you’ve just spent the day being served a stinking dumpster fire of exaggeration and B.S.

There’s gold out there too. There are honest people who want the truth. They can sometimes be wrong and make mistakes but they seek the truth and you can discern that.

But let’s be honest. It’s hard to get through a five-minute conversation, podcast, interview, news broadcast without the bull-sh– flying.

Big media is the worst. They talk about more than two genders, sex changes and males dominating female sport like it’s as natural as child birth. They also lie by omission as if to say that what you think is news, isn’t. You cannot get any major news coverage on the Epstein Files. There are millions of pages of documents in the public domain about a world-wide spying network and honey pot operation with satanic ties that lured world leaders and celebrities to an island with enslaved underage boys and girls. Nobody is interested in that? The U.S. government only released half of the documents and redacted (blacked-out) names of perpetrators. Protecting pedophiles too? How is this not news?

But it’s not just the media. Call a government department and try to speak to a civil servant. As in one that’s here to serve you. That’s often a lie. They initiate the conversation with a canned message telling you that aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated. So, you’re the bad guy, you’re intimidated and you still have to wait on hold for the guy who serves you.

Try making an Access to Information request with federal government departments. I made three requests more than one month ago. I got one answer from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on my question about Canadian studies on Bovaer, a cattle feed additive. The response was that the CFIA needed 690 days to get back to me. This is our government that we pay for and works for us.

On COVID vaccine injuries, the federal government shelved all of that data for 15 years. People’s lives are at stake and any information on the 1 in every 1,200 vaccinated people in Canada who were harmed or are now dead, would be helpful to researchers. Is Health Canada really concerned about our health?

Remember when the customer was always right? Now it’s the customer can wait. The bigger the company, the longer you wait. In fact, it’s a tactic. The company makes money by not hiring more employees to help you out. And, if you get frustrated trying to get a refund and give up, then the company makes more money.

Sometimes the India-based call centre will offer you a refund. You’re happy but the refund never comes. It happened to me and to a friend of mine. In his case, he asked them to send him an email with the promise to refund. They did not refund him and when he called back he was told he was never offered a refund by email or over the phone. He produced the email and got his refund. I got shafted.

Some large companies play dirty tricks. My wife’s Air Canada flight was cancelled by Air Canada. She was never reimbursed. She bought the ticket through an agent and Air Canada told her to take up her grievance with the agent. The agent said, “We didn’t cancel the flight.” She hasn’t given up but her demand for a refund has been going on for months. At what point does one give up on getting back $900? They want you to give up. Large companies will often lie about their responsibility and make their refund or cancellation policy extremely difficult to navigate online.

Companies like Netflix will often get away with charging you an extra month because who wants the hassle of fighting over 10 bucks. I tried to cancel Netflix. It took months. Meantime, they were charging me monthly fees on two separate credit cards.

Banks make up their own rules. At the Royal Bank, if you aren’t watching your bank account closely and there is a bank error that lifted money from your account you have three months to find it. This happened to an Eastern Ontario dairy farmer. The Nussbaumer’s 13-year-old daughter discovered more than $7,000 missing from a savings account that she rarely looked at. It was an error made every month over several years so the bank kept most of the money. The family pushed back. When Farmers Forum began asking questions the matter was “resolved” to everyone’s satisfaction.

What do all of these groups have in common? They have power because of their size or because you can’t reach them. You can’t walk into their office and demand to see the manager. Some online companies give you no options to reach them. Avoid companies that do not have a physical address and do not have a phone number or email address that you have tested.

Other companies are big, multinational and unresponsive. They tell you that their products and service are great but you discover it’s a lie when they give you the run-around.

Not all big companies are bad, of course, but avoid the ones that are faceless and don’t want to hear from you. Big media can be easily side-stepped as honest independent experts are now ubiquitous. We also have to up our business with the little guy or we will increasingly live under the thumb of entities that appear more and more like schemes to extract more and more of our money.

I frequent the mom-and-pop shops, the independent small businesses, family operations, places where you actually see the owners who you can meet and talk to about the product.

Yes, sometimes it’s more expensive but that’s not the point. Walmart strangled small businesses by offering cheap goods. Now they hire fewer locals and increasingly use self-checkouts and the product prices are increasing. Yes, it’s convenient and it can be a one-stop shop but much of the money you spend there flows out of your community.

The local guy who runs the local store might not always have the best selection and maybe he can be a bear on an off-day but get to know him, shop there and keep the money local.

We should be buying meat, fruit and vegetables from local farmers when we can.

Support local charities that will actually help local people. Go to the coffee shop owned by someone who lives in the community and hires local people. Increasingly, Tim Hortons and other franchises are getting subsidies to hire non-Canadians. Local government employees should live in the community. They should have a stake in the jurisdiction they work for.

The more we all live local and buy local the stronger our communities will be. Investigate who actually owns the products and services you buy. How far away from your farm do they live? Is it a world away?

Yes we can often avoid Amazon but it’s more expensive. No, we cannot avoid some products made in China and most of us need a cell phone and a computer.

But we have to stop looking at price alone and look at who am I benefitting besides me when I make a purchase.