"Adam Smith is going to come kick you in the balls." Nailed it. Every time an employer who makes this complaint provides enough identifying information for the internet to do a little sleuthing, they always turn out to be advertising for jobs at less than their own industry's market rate in their area.
These also tend to be operations with mediocre local reputations. They're often terrified to hire at a higher wage and post higher prices to match because they know their only edge over their competitors is price.
I knew I was going to love Jen's Raygun rant before it even started. Raygun's punishment is that, from what I've heard, she's now persona non grata in the community she values most. Nobody can punish her more harshly than that.
The "jobs Canadians won't do" is also more than a little insulting with all the anecdotes we're hearing of young Canadians trying and failing to find summer jobs. And it also just doesn't make sense to think we're in this much of a worker crisis when only 5 years ago these programs hadn't gone haywire and things seemed ... fine? Covid didn't change the market that much. And employers in the US made the same complaints, but the government didn't listen, and what happened? Workers made more money, employers adapted, and the country thrived.
Yes and no in the USA. Illegal immigration is affecting blue collar labour, particularly their ability to negotiate better wages. That is the main reason why Trump supporters are so passionate about it.
Blue collar workers in the US don't need to worry all that much. If the trend for on-shoring their manufacturing continues, (and it will given US political trends in both parties), the US is going to experience a SEVERE blue collar labour shortage. That's going to push wages higher regardless of current levels of migration, illegal or otherwise.
Possibly, although the increase in US illegal immigration over the past few years pales in comparison to the Canadian temporary resident numbers as a percentage of the population. Additionally, while some employers are willing to break the law, lack of legal work authorization does mean they're not in direct competition with US workers for many jobs.
But it's just the employers who are offering less than their own industry's "market" rate. Sometimes that so-called "market rate" IS NOT THE MARKET RATE!
If huge swaths of an industry can't get enough workers at what they _think_ is the market rate, that's a market price signal that the market rate is higher than they think it is. Market rate is NOT what the buyers of something, (in this case labour) are willing to offer. It's what the buyers offer **and** the sellers (in this case workers) will sell their labour for.
We've got whole industries who are trying to buy labour below the market rate so they're trying to buy their labour in the Ecuadorian labour market instead of the Canadian labour market because they don't like the market price of labour in Canada.
This is fundamentally no different than going to the grocery store and trying to buy a t-bone at the price you paid in 2005 and then complaining that none of the grocery stores will sell at "market rate". The market price of unskilled labour has gone up. A LOT. And the supply/demand curve doesn't care about your feelings.
I agree with all of this - I'd just note we're talking about two independent phenomena:
1. Mediocre businesses are forced to try to undercut the actual market rate for labour, and when they can't, they shift the blame onto something other than their mediocrity.
2. Whole industries can try to undercut the actual market rate for labour, and Canada is seeing plenty of this, too.
You’re right, those are two very different things.
I think the first is a smaller problem. it certainly easier to fix. You just have policy deny all TFW applications where they were not offering the most common advertised wage when they couldn’t get Canadians to take the job.
That’s easy to enforce and you’d actually get a lot of TFW using businesses to endorse that since it would harm their crappy competitors who can only undercut them on price.
The second problem that I’m talking about is harder to fix because you can’t just look at everyone’s advertised prices because they’re actually below the market rate.
But I’ve got a solution to that.
You mandate that TFW’s must be paid above the advertised Canadian rates, and in addition to that, a significant fee to the government per hour worked must be paid as a tax further increasing the cost per employee. And this tax AND the wage premium for TFWs should rise over time.
The goal here is to deliberately make TFWs quite expensive AND to signal to Canadian workers that they can work for good pay in that field thereby incentivizing them to work there.
If the reason for the TFW application really is a complete lack of available labour in that field, this is still a good deal to employers because it gives them winners where they couldn’t get any. They will still want TFWs as they will still fix that absence of workers problem.
If on the other hand, the employer is really just trying to get cheap labour and pay below the Canadian market rate for captive labour…. then this ruins TFWs for them as they’ll actually be more expensive than just paying the true market rate for labour and getting more expensive every year.
This makes perfect sense to me, and there should also be a single mandated job board where employers need to advertise for a certain period of time before a TFW application goes through. It sounds like part of the problem now is that employers will advertise on the most obscure job boards in existence just to check that box.
I'd agree that might be worthwhile, although at some point I think the continually escalating cost of a TFW through a mandated increase in the wage every single year AND an increase in the TFW fee to the government every single year would push employers to find and train their own workers and stop pretending that they're really looking.
Once you've been in power for 2 years, you lose your right to complain about the previous government.
The TFWP has been an issue for 20 years plus. And it's businesses in Canada not being willing to pay people who live here to work here. No doubt, business is pushing for it. If there's one thing our governments won't address, it's abuse by business.
The world would be a better place if everyone pulled the plug on Twitter until Elon leaves.
The economic state of our media should be a concern for all of us. Look to the US to see where we're headed. It's talk and opinion devoid of facts, if not outright propaganda.
I look forward to the ass kicking's to come after a short honeymoon for Pierre.
She didn't make the medals. The Olympics was brilliant. It was an astonishing display of the joy and ability of humanity. I'm not going to let one "hack" colour that. I get why it bugs you. I tuned out all that noise instantly. There were too many brilliant performances to focus on to let one really substandard performance wreck it. I do think it's wrong that Breaking is only in for one cycle. I don't know if Breaking is a sport. The Olympics are about inspiration. They gave it to to kids around the world...and then killed it for 2028.
On the "whatever happened to a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" question...
It's obvious what happened.
Sadly in our culture, our media and in our commentary class, there's a strong strain of believing or acting as if a statement or action is bad if a Conservative does it. If it's a left-winger person, then there are caveats.
Simple point: there's no way a Conservative Prime Minister would have survived Justin Trudeau's
black face scandal.
Why is it not racist to suggest revoking citizenship and deporting a terrorist? Because it's an LPC immigration minister saying it. If it was a Conservative minister, then it would be racist. At least to enough people to change the tone of the conversation.
I could be wrong, but I don't recall any major political figures saying that the Conservatives' strip-terrorist citizenship policy was "racist", and I do have at least some memory of Liberals criticizing it.
Glad to hear a discussion on the exploitative temporary resident programs. The other challenges is that adding so many new residents is almost certainly responsible for some of the problems in the housing (or at least rental) market and other state capacity issues. Yes, we should be building more homes, but I'm not convinced any developed country could build fast enough to accommodate the level of growth from the past 2 years. The ease of hiring low-wage workers is also probably not helping with our productivity problems.
With that said, it's important we all remember not to blame the immigrants themselves who are largely good people looking for better lives, and working their asses off to do it. If a hotel lets 100 guests make reservations when they only have room for 50 of them, we shouldn't blame the other guests. And immigration is important for Canada and somewhat personal to me: my wife is an immigrant to Canada, as are many of my friends and co-workers, and even I was an immigrant myself in the US previously. That's in part why it pains me to see what the government has done to our previously world-class system.
It may seem like a minor point, but please do not ever call ISIS terrorists 'gentlemen' like you did multiple times on this podcast. They are not gentlemen, and don't even deserve to be called men.
Before the War between the States slaves in the Southern US were not allowed to learn to read and write English. But JT seems quite comfortable with Quebec using language laws to deprive the majority of its children of that opportunity creating a captive labor force.
I don't know, Matt. When I think of the federal Liberals I don't see a righteous and smug government so much as a government that is drifting by on autopilot. Did the Liberals really mock and belittle critics of the temporary foreign-worker program, or are they so distant and out-of-touch that they feel as shocked by the expansion and criticism of the program as the rest of us? Like someone who put their hand on the stove and felt the pain too late. Compared to the Harper government which perpetually escalated tensions with critics, the Trudeau Liberals seem to be largely oblivious to the fact that they are even being criticized to begin with.
I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard.
Stefan, you conclude with, "I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard."
Wellllllll ........ if someone came from country X with malice and intent to do ill to Canada and Canadians and If they had misled Canadian authorities about their heinous background acts and activities in order to obtain citizenship then, by definition, they did not qualify for citizenship. In such a circumstance it is perfectly correct to return that goof to their country of origin.
The point is not one of dumping our dirty laundry on someone else's yard but it is instead returning said dirty laundry that someone else dumped on our yard.
Indeed. But what no one seems to consider is that this problem wouldn't exist if we didn't hand out citizenship so quickly.
I think immigration in the right quantity is great. My mother was an immigrant, my wife's father was an immigrant. But the fact is that my mother was always tied to the country she came from. That connection to "home" was always there and it was VERY strong when she got her citizenship because she got it very quickly after arriving.
So serious question... how was it in the interest of Canada to quickly give her citizenship rather than a permanent right to live and work in Canada? If she had become a terrorist would it be more or less justifiable to deport her than to deport Matt Gurney? And does one of them make more sense **for the interests of Canada** to be running the government than the other assuming they both wanted to make government policy? Should citizenship, voting and making policy be something for people who have lived in a country for only a few years or should it take decades? Or perhaps many decades or never?
I think one does make a lot more sense than the other, but it's awkward for progressive types to admit when immigrants have a different skin colour because they let ethnicity confuse the issue when it's basically irrelevant.
(The answer to my question should not change whether my mother came from Germany, China, Pakistan or Kenya.)
I think it's both. This government does come off as overly righteous (which is quite ironic given how much exploitation they're enabling through expansion of these programs), but in this case Trudeau and Miller have admitted the problem, but they seem to be stuck in some sort of analysis paralysis where they're unwilling to act boldly and the problems continue to snowball.
"I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard."
This has always been my instinct, too. They're our problem, now. If they need to be tossed in jail for life, let it be a Canadian jail. If they need to be surveilled for life, let it be by the RCMP.
I confess to having subscriptions to two of our national newspapers. But I haven't read our regional newspaper (the Ottawa Citizen) in many years. Nor do I miss it. We do have fairly vigorous local news sources through Facebook groups, and some community newspapers. But there obviously are gaps.
That brings me to a suggestion for funding of media, based loosely on the NPR model in the U.S. Listeners/viewers/readers make annual or semiannual contributions that are matched by governments. This would make the media responsive to the citizenry rather than to government, generally a good thing, while providing more funding than just subscriptions would. The level of government doing funding would be as low as possible -- a municipality, or a region -- to make the media more connected to the people served. If people want more extensive coverage, they could vote for more funding.
Sort of like substack newsletters, but for factual reporting. and with a kicker to help pay for fixed costs.
I think the taking a look at refers to misrepresentation on the application form. Its used to be a habit of Canada to get rid of citizenship for Nazis, because they didn't say they were a Nazi on the application form.
It’s always intrigued me that police, politicians and news commentators always refer to criminals, terrorists and murderers as “gentlemen” while the rest of us in the news are merely men and women. Why is it the convention to use a word meant to signify an honest, upright, honorable, kind person and apply it to the most deplorable and least deserving of that word in our society? I wouldn’t dignify a machete-wielding maniac with that epithet. Not a criticism but merely an observation…
On the “Raygun” thing, Matt thought of Rudy as a counter example; I thought of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards.
For those who were too young, Edwards competed in ski jumping for the U.K. in the 1988 Winter Olympics. He was not remotely competitive, finishing a very distant last in all events. But people loved the guy. He was treated as a hero. The IOC didn’t love the incident so much, and tightened qualification rules after that.
It’s interesting to think about why “Raygun” is a villain and Eddie “the Eagle” was a folk hero. I can come up with reasons, such as that Eddie was trying hard for a personal best and seemed to respect the sport, but they aren’t perfect explanations. Some complaints about “Raygun”, like that she was foreseeable uncompetitive, would make Eddie a villain too. Just something to ponder on fickle public reactions.
Raygun won the Oceania tournament in order to have a place at the Olympics. We can ride Raygun all we like, but it seems weird to assume that had she dropped out, a more competitive individual would’ve taken her place. The setup of the breaking competition was that one slot was allocated to Oceania. I think the problem here is that the Olympics seems to think a region of around 40M people deserves automatic representation in an event with a cap on the number of competitors. Meanwhile, no competitors from South America (apparently all the Americas can share an automatic birth). India get no entries. It’s a really weird system and should probably bear the brunt of the criticism when it comes to Raygun.
"Adam Smith is going to come kick you in the balls." Nailed it. Every time an employer who makes this complaint provides enough identifying information for the internet to do a little sleuthing, they always turn out to be advertising for jobs at less than their own industry's market rate in their area.
These also tend to be operations with mediocre local reputations. They're often terrified to hire at a higher wage and post higher prices to match because they know their only edge over their competitors is price.
I knew I was going to love Jen's Raygun rant before it even started. Raygun's punishment is that, from what I've heard, she's now persona non grata in the community she values most. Nobody can punish her more harshly than that.
The "jobs Canadians won't do" is also more than a little insulting with all the anecdotes we're hearing of young Canadians trying and failing to find summer jobs. And it also just doesn't make sense to think we're in this much of a worker crisis when only 5 years ago these programs hadn't gone haywire and things seemed ... fine? Covid didn't change the market that much. And employers in the US made the same complaints, but the government didn't listen, and what happened? Workers made more money, employers adapted, and the country thrived.
Yes and no in the USA. Illegal immigration is affecting blue collar labour, particularly their ability to negotiate better wages. That is the main reason why Trump supporters are so passionate about it.
Blue collar workers in the US don't need to worry all that much. If the trend for on-shoring their manufacturing continues, (and it will given US political trends in both parties), the US is going to experience a SEVERE blue collar labour shortage. That's going to push wages higher regardless of current levels of migration, illegal or otherwise.
Possibly, although the increase in US illegal immigration over the past few years pales in comparison to the Canadian temporary resident numbers as a percentage of the population. Additionally, while some employers are willing to break the law, lack of legal work authorization does mean they're not in direct competition with US workers for many jobs.
I think people underestimate the growth in manufacturing that’s going to happen if the US continues the trend towards isolationism.
Absolutely fantastic turn of phrase.
But it's just the employers who are offering less than their own industry's "market" rate. Sometimes that so-called "market rate" IS NOT THE MARKET RATE!
If huge swaths of an industry can't get enough workers at what they _think_ is the market rate, that's a market price signal that the market rate is higher than they think it is. Market rate is NOT what the buyers of something, (in this case labour) are willing to offer. It's what the buyers offer **and** the sellers (in this case workers) will sell their labour for.
We've got whole industries who are trying to buy labour below the market rate so they're trying to buy their labour in the Ecuadorian labour market instead of the Canadian labour market because they don't like the market price of labour in Canada.
This is fundamentally no different than going to the grocery store and trying to buy a t-bone at the price you paid in 2005 and then complaining that none of the grocery stores will sell at "market rate". The market price of unskilled labour has gone up. A LOT. And the supply/demand curve doesn't care about your feelings.
I agree with all of this - I'd just note we're talking about two independent phenomena:
1. Mediocre businesses are forced to try to undercut the actual market rate for labour, and when they can't, they shift the blame onto something other than their mediocrity.
2. Whole industries can try to undercut the actual market rate for labour, and Canada is seeing plenty of this, too.
You’re right, those are two very different things.
I think the first is a smaller problem. it certainly easier to fix. You just have policy deny all TFW applications where they were not offering the most common advertised wage when they couldn’t get Canadians to take the job.
That’s easy to enforce and you’d actually get a lot of TFW using businesses to endorse that since it would harm their crappy competitors who can only undercut them on price.
The second problem that I’m talking about is harder to fix because you can’t just look at everyone’s advertised prices because they’re actually below the market rate.
But I’ve got a solution to that.
You mandate that TFW’s must be paid above the advertised Canadian rates, and in addition to that, a significant fee to the government per hour worked must be paid as a tax further increasing the cost per employee. And this tax AND the wage premium for TFWs should rise over time.
The goal here is to deliberately make TFWs quite expensive AND to signal to Canadian workers that they can work for good pay in that field thereby incentivizing them to work there.
If the reason for the TFW application really is a complete lack of available labour in that field, this is still a good deal to employers because it gives them winners where they couldn’t get any. They will still want TFWs as they will still fix that absence of workers problem.
If on the other hand, the employer is really just trying to get cheap labour and pay below the Canadian market rate for captive labour…. then this ruins TFWs for them as they’ll actually be more expensive than just paying the true market rate for labour and getting more expensive every year.
This makes perfect sense to me, and there should also be a single mandated job board where employers need to advertise for a certain period of time before a TFW application goes through. It sounds like part of the problem now is that employers will advertise on the most obscure job boards in existence just to check that box.
I'd agree that might be worthwhile, although at some point I think the continually escalating cost of a TFW through a mandated increase in the wage every single year AND an increase in the TFW fee to the government every single year would push employers to find and train their own workers and stop pretending that they're really looking.
Once you've been in power for 2 years, you lose your right to complain about the previous government.
The TFWP has been an issue for 20 years plus. And it's businesses in Canada not being willing to pay people who live here to work here. No doubt, business is pushing for it. If there's one thing our governments won't address, it's abuse by business.
The world would be a better place if everyone pulled the plug on Twitter until Elon leaves.
The economic state of our media should be a concern for all of us. Look to the US to see where we're headed. It's talk and opinion devoid of facts, if not outright propaganda.
I look forward to the ass kicking's to come after a short honeymoon for Pierre.
She didn't make the medals. The Olympics was brilliant. It was an astonishing display of the joy and ability of humanity. I'm not going to let one "hack" colour that. I get why it bugs you. I tuned out all that noise instantly. There were too many brilliant performances to focus on to let one really substandard performance wreck it. I do think it's wrong that Breaking is only in for one cycle. I don't know if Breaking is a sport. The Olympics are about inspiration. They gave it to to kids around the world...and then killed it for 2028.
I seem to recall Justin Trudeau making a lot of the same criticisms of the TFW program in 2014. Wonder what happened to that guy.
He just says what he thinks people want to hear.
John, you say, "He just says what he thinks people want to hear."
To that I respond that I damned well don't want to hear from him.
On the "whatever happened to a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" question...
It's obvious what happened.
Sadly in our culture, our media and in our commentary class, there's a strong strain of believing or acting as if a statement or action is bad if a Conservative does it. If it's a left-winger person, then there are caveats.
Simple point: there's no way a Conservative Prime Minister would have survived Justin Trudeau's
black face scandal.
Why is it not racist to suggest revoking citizenship and deporting a terrorist? Because it's an LPC immigration minister saying it. If it was a Conservative minister, then it would be racist. At least to enough people to change the tone of the conversation.
I could be wrong, but I don't recall any major political figures saying that the Conservatives' strip-terrorist citizenship policy was "racist", and I do have at least some memory of Liberals criticizing it.
Glad to hear a discussion on the exploitative temporary resident programs. The other challenges is that adding so many new residents is almost certainly responsible for some of the problems in the housing (or at least rental) market and other state capacity issues. Yes, we should be building more homes, but I'm not convinced any developed country could build fast enough to accommodate the level of growth from the past 2 years. The ease of hiring low-wage workers is also probably not helping with our productivity problems.
With that said, it's important we all remember not to blame the immigrants themselves who are largely good people looking for better lives, and working their asses off to do it. If a hotel lets 100 guests make reservations when they only have room for 50 of them, we shouldn't blame the other guests. And immigration is important for Canada and somewhat personal to me: my wife is an immigrant to Canada, as are many of my friends and co-workers, and even I was an immigrant myself in the US previously. That's in part why it pains me to see what the government has done to our previously world-class system.
It may seem like a minor point, but please do not ever call ISIS terrorists 'gentlemen' like you did multiple times on this podcast. They are not gentlemen, and don't even deserve to be called men.
I think there is an audience for commentary content. I listen to a lot of radio and get my news that way. I look for smart comment.
Before the War between the States slaves in the Southern US were not allowed to learn to read and write English. But JT seems quite comfortable with Quebec using language laws to deprive the majority of its children of that opportunity creating a captive labor force.
I don't know, Matt. When I think of the federal Liberals I don't see a righteous and smug government so much as a government that is drifting by on autopilot. Did the Liberals really mock and belittle critics of the temporary foreign-worker program, or are they so distant and out-of-touch that they feel as shocked by the expansion and criticism of the program as the rest of us? Like someone who put their hand on the stove and felt the pain too late. Compared to the Harper government which perpetually escalated tensions with critics, the Trudeau Liberals seem to be largely oblivious to the fact that they are even being criticized to begin with.
I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard.
Stefan, you conclude with, "I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard."
Wellllllll ........ if someone came from country X with malice and intent to do ill to Canada and Canadians and If they had misled Canadian authorities about their heinous background acts and activities in order to obtain citizenship then, by definition, they did not qualify for citizenship. In such a circumstance it is perfectly correct to return that goof to their country of origin.
The point is not one of dumping our dirty laundry on someone else's yard but it is instead returning said dirty laundry that someone else dumped on our yard.
Indeed. But what no one seems to consider is that this problem wouldn't exist if we didn't hand out citizenship so quickly.
I think immigration in the right quantity is great. My mother was an immigrant, my wife's father was an immigrant. But the fact is that my mother was always tied to the country she came from. That connection to "home" was always there and it was VERY strong when she got her citizenship because she got it very quickly after arriving.
So serious question... how was it in the interest of Canada to quickly give her citizenship rather than a permanent right to live and work in Canada? If she had become a terrorist would it be more or less justifiable to deport her than to deport Matt Gurney? And does one of them make more sense **for the interests of Canada** to be running the government than the other assuming they both wanted to make government policy? Should citizenship, voting and making policy be something for people who have lived in a country for only a few years or should it take decades? Or perhaps many decades or never?
I think one does make a lot more sense than the other, but it's awkward for progressive types to admit when immigrants have a different skin colour because they let ethnicity confuse the issue when it's basically irrelevant.
(The answer to my question should not change whether my mother came from Germany, China, Pakistan or Kenya.)
I think it's both. This government does come off as overly righteous (which is quite ironic given how much exploitation they're enabling through expansion of these programs), but in this case Trudeau and Miller have admitted the problem, but they seem to be stuck in some sort of analysis paralysis where they're unwilling to act boldly and the problems continue to snowball.
"I always thought that the idea of stripping Canadian citizenship from dual citizens was just a crass exercise in dumping one's dirty laundry on someone else's yard."
This has always been my instinct, too. They're our problem, now. If they need to be tossed in jail for life, let it be a Canadian jail. If they need to be surveilled for life, let it be by the RCMP.
Also, we're going to end up with a Singapore style system, where we all have maids aren't we? And pay them like $3 an hour, right?
I confess to having subscriptions to two of our national newspapers. But I haven't read our regional newspaper (the Ottawa Citizen) in many years. Nor do I miss it. We do have fairly vigorous local news sources through Facebook groups, and some community newspapers. But there obviously are gaps.
That brings me to a suggestion for funding of media, based loosely on the NPR model in the U.S. Listeners/viewers/readers make annual or semiannual contributions that are matched by governments. This would make the media responsive to the citizenry rather than to government, generally a good thing, while providing more funding than just subscriptions would. The level of government doing funding would be as low as possible -- a municipality, or a region -- to make the media more connected to the people served. If people want more extensive coverage, they could vote for more funding.
Sort of like substack newsletters, but for factual reporting. and with a kicker to help pay for fixed costs.
One can't escape the laws of physics...
I think the taking a look at refers to misrepresentation on the application form. Its used to be a habit of Canada to get rid of citizenship for Nazis, because they didn't say they were a Nazi on the application form.
It’s always intrigued me that police, politicians and news commentators always refer to criminals, terrorists and murderers as “gentlemen” while the rest of us in the news are merely men and women. Why is it the convention to use a word meant to signify an honest, upright, honorable, kind person and apply it to the most deplorable and least deserving of that word in our society? I wouldn’t dignify a machete-wielding maniac with that epithet. Not a criticism but merely an observation…
Because grumpy subscribers would complain if I used the first words that come to mind to describe certain people, so I default to bland courtesy.
On the “Raygun” thing, Matt thought of Rudy as a counter example; I thought of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards.
For those who were too young, Edwards competed in ski jumping for the U.K. in the 1988 Winter Olympics. He was not remotely competitive, finishing a very distant last in all events. But people loved the guy. He was treated as a hero. The IOC didn’t love the incident so much, and tightened qualification rules after that.
It’s interesting to think about why “Raygun” is a villain and Eddie “the Eagle” was a folk hero. I can come up with reasons, such as that Eddie was trying hard for a personal best and seemed to respect the sport, but they aren’t perfect explanations. Some complaints about “Raygun”, like that she was foreseeable uncompetitive, would make Eddie a villain too. Just something to ponder on fickle public reactions.
Raygun won the Oceania tournament in order to have a place at the Olympics. We can ride Raygun all we like, but it seems weird to assume that had she dropped out, a more competitive individual would’ve taken her place. The setup of the breaking competition was that one slot was allocated to Oceania. I think the problem here is that the Olympics seems to think a region of around 40M people deserves automatic representation in an event with a cap on the number of competitors. Meanwhile, no competitors from South America (apparently all the Americas can share an automatic birth). India get no entries. It’s a really weird system and should probably bear the brunt of the criticism when it comes to Raygun.
I know it is part of your schtick to always talk about doing your best to avoid being sued.
However, you cannot be sued of libel for something you say. That's slander.
If you must persist with this schtick, please use the correct legal terms.
Like and subscribe!
Both libel and slander are subsumed under the act of defamation. Lawyers can worry about the distinctions. For day-to-day purposes, it doesn't matter.