but for the chance to vanquish the effort and ideas of others. Everyone I spoke to seemed cast in a sarcophagus of anxiety. And where did this feeling spring from? One word summed it up: change. Change was the siren call of liberalized markets; it was the only constant these people could count on. A failure to adapt to this kind of mindless dynamism would spell their downfall, and it bred a particular strain of human fear that brought out the worst in these people’s natures. Their only relief came, it seemed, from ducking down to the Path beneath Bay Street, that enormous mazelike shopping mall, to partake in some retail therapy as a reminder of why they had signed up for this life in the first place. I myself went down there for lunch sometimes, and would even run into Tiina and Regina in one of the Path’s countless food courts. The girls were always kind to me — smiling sprites who welcomed me and my tray of tasteless pad Thai to their table. Yet some simple probing revealed that they were already overwhelmed by their workloads, as if they had been with the firm for years rather than just a few weeks. And as I looked around the food court, everyone seemed to be in the same boat, shackled by years of compounded stress that may have come on in just the last four hours. What kind of life was this? I thought. How could these people not form a pitchfork-wielding jacquerie to overthrow their taskmasters? But this was Bay Street’s monopoly on their reality. It was all they knew.
My “official” interviews with members of the C-suite provided some insight into the fons et origo of this so-called culture. I got twenty minutes with each of them, including the reclusive Viktor Grozni himself. I was frustrated (though impressed) by the way they were all able to stay unflaggingly on message, as if the firm’s business models and mission statements were as finely engineered as a Lamborghini. They all pleasantly dismissed any notion that their company was in trouble.
Only Grozni, that acne-scarred oligarch, got openly hostile with me. “You’re not wearing a tie,” he smiled as he extended his hand over his desk when I entered his surprisingly spare office. “Most men wear a tie when they come see me.”
“Oh, Viktor, what is a tie anyway?” I smiled back, accepting his hand. “It’s just an arrow that points to your penis.” The interview went downhill from there. I questioned him — politely at first, then more sternly — about the cutthroat nature of ODS’s business culture, and he retorted with buzz phrases like “excellence” and “competition” and “high-performing environment.” When I suggested that his brand of competition forced employees to engage in some rather predatory practices, he welcomed me to name the regulations they were violating. When I suggested the federal government had created the very landscape that made such behaviour possible, he said, “Yes, isn’t it great that Canada finally has a government interested in growing the economy after so many decades of suffocating socialism?” And when I suggested that he had a moral obligation to good corporate governance — considering how many Canadians had their pensions wrapped up in this racket — Grozni looked at me as if I had spoken Martian. As our exchange grew more heated, I began to see him as the embodiment of that great Greek term pleonexia, which John Stuart Mill — enlightened man that he was — had written so eloquently about. Grozni’s was not your garden-variety greed, but rather “the desire to engross more than one’s share of advantages … the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of others; the ego which thinks self and its concerns more important than everything else …” The impression Grozni left me with was that my viewpoints were outdated at best and dangerous at worst. He even said to me, near the end of the interview, “The Canada you knew, Mr. Sharpe, is long gone.” “It’s Dr. Sharpe,” I corrected him, “and I think you’re wrong.” He just chuckled once, as if to say I can’t fathom a world where someone like you could prove someone like me wrong.
Back in the CBC studio during the commercial break, I was tremulous. As a stagehand came by to re-powder my brow — I was tacky with sweat by this point — my imagination began to corkscrew out of control over how my gaffe might be reverberating around the country. My heart raced as I looked over at Sal and Cheryl, who sat cool as breezes at the other end of the desk. Their poppies hovered over their breasts like beacons of respectability, while mine was probably fluttering somewhere among the eaves or gutters of Parliament Street.
I gestured to Sal to lean back in his chair with me, and spoke to him sotto voce when he did, even though Cheryl was sitting right between us. “Look, when we come back, can I have a chance to clarify what I just said?”
“Sorry, buddy,” he replied, “but that segment went way over. We only have about five minutes left, and I have several other points I want to cover.”
He sat back up and I reluctantly followed. The three of us waited in silence for the commercial break to run its course. Cheryl’s face held a patina of diplomacy, but I knew what she was thinking: that she had bested me, that by hijacking Sal’s role as interviewer she was able to cast me as the extremist and herself as the voice of moderation. With less than five minutes left, I would need all of my intellectual heft to turn things around. In the seconds before we came back, I looked up once more at Raj standing in the booth. His head was now bowed over his phone, his brow furrowed. Oh God — he was probably on Facebook or Twitter right then, watching the obloquy and snark over my blunder flood in. Was Grace there, too, gingerly defending my moment of indiscretion? Or was she still steaming over my fecklessness as a father (Philip, your daughter scalded herself), my bedroom shortcomings (I’m getting pretty used to your inability to satisfy me), or, worst of all, my complete ineptitude at keeping track of our social calendar? Oh Jesus, why couldn’t I remember what we’re doing on Sunday?
A countdown proceeded, and then the electric guitars and synthesized trumpets returned. “And we’re back,” Sal said when they stopped. “We’re talking about Friday’s collapse of ODS Financial Group with Cheryl Sneed and Philip Sharpe. Now Cheryl, you’ve taken some heat over your coverage of ODS. Even in the last few weeks, as the company entered its death spiral, you’ve remained ultimately optimistic. Can you explain why?”
“Well, of course the foreclosure of the firm is by no means good news. I know this has put undo stress on both individuals and the market. But I just don’t buy that this is some kind of apocalypse brought on by corporate malice. The truth is, ODS made some big gambles that didn’t pay off. But the Canadian economy is strong; it’s resilient. And so, too, are the people who worked for the firm. The good ones will find a way; they always do. I mean, just anecdotally, I heard from several of my sources who said that people were on their cellphones Friday afternoon, reaching out to contacts and finding other work. Some had secured new jobs before they left the building.”
“And you’re also convinced,” Sal went on, “that the pension funds that the company managed are still secure? That this hasn’t left a big gaping hole in —”
“So you feel the company has no obligation whatsoever,” I said to Cheryl, cutting Sal off, “that this is a morally neutral situation as far as the business is concerned. You don’t see what ODS did as categorically wrong.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to talk about right and wrong, Philip,” she replied without looking at me, “considering you just argued that ODS’s executive team should be arrested for crimes that don’t yet exist.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It is what you said.”
“It’s not what I meant. Look. I think what you’re doing is obfuscating the bigger issue here. The reality is, last Friday represents the culmination of what Canada has become after nearly ten years of Stephen Harper: this kind of neo-Thatcherism; this normalization of greed and dog-eat-dogism; this complete disregard for the community at large. What we’ve witnessed is our country giving neo-liberal economics a monopoly on all things moral.”
“Oh my God,” Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. “Again with the melodrama.”
“It’s not melodrama.”
“It is. Why don’t you just admit what this is really about for you, Philip? You didn’t like ODS’s C-suite as people. You found them smug; you found them indifferent to your abstract ideas about duty; and you found them ruthless when it came to the tough decisions needed to keep the business afloat. And now