Mental health, police and death: it's always about the money

Every needless death provides lessons for society, but what happened between Toronto police officer James Forcillo and teenager Sammy Yatim should get a section in a textbook somewhere.

Make that several textbooks: for police, social agencies, health care officers, municipalities and even for provincial governments.

Because like it or not, Sammy Yatim's shooting death on a Toronto transit bus had to do with money, taxes and the policies of agencies who never talk to each other, except about money and taxes.

In those textbooks, there ought to be a chapter regarding the practices and polices of police in Red Deer.

Whatever was driving the thoughts of Sammy Yatim, as he stood in the empty bus with a knife in his hand, he would have been a lot safer in Red Deer, Alberta, than Toronto, Ontario.

He'd probably be alive today, and his story might scarcely have warranted one short news story — which would never have gotten the attention of the experts in Toronto. Sad, that.

Red Deer has what known as the PACT program, the Police And Crisis Team. Right now, it's only a team of two, though soon it will become a team of four: two RCMP officer and two psych nurses.

Through the pilot, PACT received about 100 calls a month, responding to about 30 per cent of them on the scene. They dealt with about 400 clients (not suspects, clients), 85 per cent of whom have had a previous diagnosis of mental illness or related issues, like domestic violence, addictions, causing disturbances or other things.

They can de-escalate bad situations without having to shoot an unarmed teenager nine times, and then tasing him. They can pre-screen mental health cases on the way to the emergency room, saving time and money.

They can keep people out of the court system, by getting them connected with agencies that can actually help them, instead of making them worse in jail.

The 15-month pilot project that launched PACT ended this year, and cost $237,000 in tax dollars. Operating for that 15 months has been estimated to save expenses in the justice and health care systems of just over $86 million.

People in public offices like to talk about the human good when they announce spending projects, but the bottom line is always the bottom line.

Alberta Health Services was hoped to see the benefit of Red Deer's PACT program, and fund it permanently. But that didn't happen, and it's easy to see why.

A program as successful as PACT would have to be replicated all over the province, and even with a $3.66 return on every dollar spent, there just aren't the dollars to do it.

So the Red Deer RCMP and the Red Deer Primary Care Network (both funded by tax dollars), scraped through their budgets and found the money to double the program on their own. I sincerely hope they see some of the returns for the money they saved taxpayers, in their own budget envelopes.

Because in the end, if it's a public service, it's always about the money.

This week, the Ontario government announced it would allow all the province's police forces to decide on their own if officers would be allowed to carry a Taser. Officer Forcillo was not allowed to have one. Only sergeants and special forces were, and he called for such an officer, who only arrived to zap a kid who was already probably dead.

Too bad he couldn't have called a PACT team. Forcillo wouldn't be facing a murder charge, if he could have.

Shuffling responsibility for non-lethal weapons like Tasers to local forces is a real cop-out (puns always intended). Tasers cost $1,500 each, and there are 2,800 police officers in Toronto alone.

I have no idea what a PACT program in Toronto would cost, but it will probably never be tried, because nobody will take budgetary responsibility for it.

Is PACT a health program, a police program or a legal program? Budget co-operation on that scale just won't happen between these departments, because they don't talk to each other in the first place. City councils don't have the money for these things, because PACT only benefits provincially-funded departments.

Can we only do good and smart things in cities the size of Red Deer?

None of us will see one cent of the $86 million that PACT saved our region last year. It's a savings that just melts into a stack of different budget envelopes, spent on other things.

And that's why Toronto police will shoot people standing in obvious distress, rather than helping them. That's why our jails are filled — at huge expense — with people who for a period just couldn't cope. There's no money to do anything else.

Red Deer is so much safer with PACT. But don't expect to see the program grow very quickly.

Youth: the swing vote that hasn't swung yet

The Environics Institute is a successful non-profit Canadian research group that can give you a lot of information (mostly after the fact) on why Canadians do the things they do.

They can tell you why the pollsters seemed to have gotten things so wrong in the recent B.C. provincial elections. They can also give you you insights on why Justin Trudeau would admit publicly that he took a puff of the pernicious weed (and inhaled), while he was a sitting MP.

They can also give you hints on why those two issues are connected.

And, just for fun, if you look on their web site, they will tell you which Canadian “tribe” you belong to.

Environics founder and president, Michael Adams, has just written an essay for The Globe and Mail, painting with broad strokes how young voters, not Boomers, could hold the balance of power in our policies and politics — if only they would use it.

In the B.C. provincial election campaign, the NDP under leader Adrian Dix consistently polled far ahead of the Liberals under Christy Clark.

Election spending reports just released show the NDP raised about a million dollars more than the Liberals in campaign donations. A huge rise in individual donations ($4.4 million versus the $2.8 million they had raised in 2009) accounted for most of the increase.

Where did that money come from? The demographics of campaign fundraising are not publicly disclosed, but from reading Adams' article, we can surmise a lot of it must have come from younger voters.

The subset of voters under the age of 35, who are willing to give money to a political party is not likely a very large portion of the total group.

But NDP policies in the last campaign appealed to youth, something that pollsters quickly picked up and reported quite accurately. The polling picture of the population as a whole was truthfully reported — a majority of voters did support the NDP.

Too bad, though (for the younger voters, anyway) that enough young people didn't actually vote. Clark's Liberal supporters did.

Environics designs its polls for more than political voting intentions. They poll for societal attitudes.

What Environics sees, writes Adams, is that the younger people are, the less likely they are to defer to authority and institutions, and the less likely they are to seeing voting as a citizen's duty.

Far less than half of voters under 35 vote, while the national average is 61 per cent, says Environics. That means the heavy turnout of older voters will see their beliefs and attitudes reflected in government policy.

All the more reason, I suggest, why young people would become less and less interested in public policy. They don't vote, their attitudes are not represented, so they become even more disaffected with institutions.

Adams sees young people as idealistic, but not connected with institutions. They are deeply concerned about the unfairness of how wealth is distributed in society. They score highly on values of social connection, empathy and introspection, but this does not translate to affinity for the political process.

Unless, Adams suggests, a particular leader can make a strong emotional connection.

Jack Layton did that in the last federal election, and that's why the NDP became the official opposition. Take a look at your TV screen; does current leader Thomas Mulcair radiate that emotional connection young voters need?

Newly-minted Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is trying hard to make that connection. Conservative leader Stephen Harper is not trying at all.

So the more the Conservatives paint Trudeau as some kind of flake for admitting he has smoked pot in the past, the more disaffected young voters will ignore what the Conservatives have to say — about anything.

Trudeau tries to reflect attitudes that question authority, and disagreement with the current balance of income in society. He wants to see Canada's middle class restored, with the very rich holding less of their majority of Canadian wealth.

So, apparently, do young voters — if only they would vote. If they would, says Adams, the balance of power could swing widely. But only if young voters maintain an emotional bond with a particular leader, enough to bring them to the voting booth.

My sense is that Trudeau is far from being a lightweight or flake in attempting to connect with younger voters. He's looking at attitudes, not voting intentions right now. This demographic represents the only swing vote that hasn't really swung yet.

There's another story behind letter of hate

I would like to see an interview published, with a spokesperson from the Ontario Crown Attorney's Office explaining why a delivering a very disturbing letter to a grandmother in Newcastle is not a hate crime.

The one-page letter, stuffed into Brenda Millson's mailbox has been widely quoted on TV news, but the full copy available online shows how much of it has been left out of the coverage and follow-up. This note really does read like something a CSI-type crime series scriptwriter would dream up.

Max is a 13-year-old with autism who sometimes lives with his grandma in the Ontario town. He was described in a venomous cumputer-printed letter to his caretaker as “your wild animal kid.” In most jurisdictions, describing other people as subhuman would raise a red flag of hatred.

Especially if you advocate — with multiple!!!!!!! hits!!!!!! to the EXCALAMATION KEY!!!!!!!!!! — that the boy be killed.

“You had a retarded kid, deal with it . . . . properly!!!!!” says the letter.

How do you deal with a “retarded” kid (or, in this case, grandchild)? The letter answers: “They should take whatever nonretarded body parts he possess and donate it to science.” If not, the letter goes on to imply, Max is no good to anyone.

If you were a lawyer in the Ontario Crown Attorney's Office, wouldn't you consider this letter to be hate, expressed in a criminal way? In Ontario, they must set the bar pretty high.

The author, signed: One pissed off mother!!!!! even describes her hatred, for the lawyers in the Ontario Crown Attorney's Office who might have missed it. “I HATE people like you who believe, just because you have a special needs kid, you are entitled to special treatment!!!! GOD!!!!!!”

When you use “I hate” with the capslock key down, while describing a child with a disability as not human, something that should be killed to harvest his organs, and expressing direct hatred as well to people who take care of disabled children . . . well, I'm not a lawyer, but I can see where a line has been crossed.

Red Deer's daily newspaper was once prosecuted under Alberta hate laws for printing a letter to the editor from an elected member of the legislature, that was a lot milder than this.

Finding the writer shouldn't be too hard. Police just need to knock on a few doors and ask questions of neighbours. A home within earshot of Millson's back yard, where Max often vocalizes either happiness or discontent, if it has normal children in it, would probably provide the suspect.

And then, rather than having the entire world just rant at someone's gross insensitivity, we could possibly see some healing occur.

From decades of dealing with stories of tragedy, both in the Advocate newsroom, and as a volunteer for people with “special needs,” I know there's another perspective here that isn't being addressed.

On a TV sitcom, someone would say at this point: “someone needs a hug.” In its barest essence, I'd say that's probably true here. Obviously, someone isn't coping with his or her life right now.

Finding and confronting the writer would probably be the first, most important step toward a whole heap of good.

Think about the global outrage that has followed coverage of this news story. I'm sure the writer of the letter has considered it at length by now. That's the easy part.

But if we are outraged at this level of insensitivity to the lives of Max and the people who care for him, we are bound to at least try to understand the forces that would drive someone to put such evil thoughts onto paper, fold up the letter and hand deliver it to another person's door. That's the hard part.

For all we know, this letter could be a thoughtless prank gone horribly wrong. If that's the case, the writer needs to be found, and some new information delivered to the writer. Like, about the consequences of expressing hatred, and the harm that it does.

Right now, police are said to be investigating other avenues than a prosecution under hate laws. That's a bit of good news. The crown attorneys dropped the ball here, and though I can't see what police could do to pick it up again, at least a simple look through the neighbourhood would identify the writer.

But if, as a society, we are looking for better outcomes than simply identifying and punishing someone, we're dropping the ball as well.

Because behind that hateful letter, there is someone who needs a chance to confess, repent — and even to ask forgiveness. Perhaps even, someone who, with the right information, could become a potential friend.

At the very least, someone with a personal story that can add a chapter to the one we've seen so far.

One year later, it's harder to stay fit

Summer used to be the time of year when my own general level of fitness reached an annual peak. Most years, our family spends the summer hiking, biking and paddling on the river. When colder weather makes that stop, that's when I start putting on weight and losing fitness.

For five years now, summer's end has been signalled by our annual 100-km charity bike ride from Red Deer to Delburne and back. It sort of celebrated a peak of well-being, a reward for a season of active living.

This year, though I'm still “ready to go” I feel less ready than I've ever been, and I was wondering why.

Then the answer came. It's been a year now, since I stopped riding my bike to work every day.

The latest guidelines from the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (they have societies for everything these days, don't they?) call for 30-60 minutes of moderate exercise every day. That's the minimum needed to halt the slow decline in fitness that occurs as we age.

Riding to work provided that for me; everything else I did was icing on the cake, to mix metaphors.

Now, to get the same benefit from the other exercise I have enjoyed over the years, I have to add that much more, to replace the daily “warmup” of my work commute. Suffice it that it's really hard to replace the physical discipline of having to get your sorry butt to the office every day.

This comes not only as our Berry Architecture Wellness Ride approaches this weekend, and that in a few weeks city council will be assessing outcomes of its much-debated pilot project on city cycling.

This also comes with a newly published review of human health and mortality dealing with obesity. Lead author Ryan K. Masters and five other researchers combed through 19 U.S. National Health Interview Surveys taken between 1986 and 2006, and found that previous studies had under-reported the mortality that could be attributed to obesity.

Their findings held true for gender, age and ethnicity. Culling through many thousands of interviews and mortality records, their conclusion is that being obese is about three times more deadly than originally thought.

Obesity — loosely termed as having a Body Mass Index of over 30 — was shown as responsible for 15 per cent of all U.S. deaths. Because obesity is such a major factor in killers like heart disease, stroke and diabetes, it's by far the most deadly condition a person can have.

That's in the U.S., you say, where almost a third of all people qualify under the definition.

But Red Deer doesn't really have a lot to brag about in that regard.

Our annual measures of well-being put obesity rates in our city (at just over 20 per cent) significantly above the national average (just over 18 per cent), even though we are a significantly younger (and presumably more active) demographic than the rest of the country.

Just as around the world, obesity rates in Red Deer have been rising since regular measurements started being taken in 2003. As our collective waistlines have grown — including mine, as I have discovered — so does the threat to our collective health.

I have no intentions of resuming my daily commute — I'd be all dressed up with no place to go.

But it's the end of summer, and all kinds of programs resume in September. Time to check around and find something to replace the discipline of “having to get there” that kept my baseline fitness in place.

Time also to remind our city and its council that the environmental and tax benefits of having a widely-useful and safe bike commuting system can be debated endlessly. Individual cash savings are also real, but vary widely, for a lot of reasons.

But the science is in on the health benefits.

Riding to work every day is worth about five pounds of body mass. Find a BMI calculator online and subtract five pounds off your own weight, to see how just riding to work would change your basic setting. And most likely, projected health outcomes for your later years.

I can feel the difference myself in my own legs, as I push over the hill heading east to Delburne.

There are a lot of factors that influence fitness and health outcomes for a large population. But I can't think of anything (except, I suppose, everyone quitting smoking) that improves public health and wealth like living in a city that supports safe cycling for daily commuters.

The latest science shows that it's more important than we ever realized.

The Verizon deal is not good for Canada

In our household, we share a cell phone with a plan that costs $15 a month. If I were to break down and purchase a phone of my own, I would examine a BlackBerry, for patriotic reasons, but would likely settle on an iPhone, because my two-year-old granddaughter could show me how to use it.

All of which qualifies me to comment on the war between Canada's three largest telecom suppliers, and U.S.-based Verizon, which is attempting to break into the Canadian market.

“Breaking in” is an apt description of Verizon's attempt to purchase either Wind or Mobilicity, two comparatively tiny Canadian companies struggling against the corporate giants, Bell Canada, Telus and Rogers.

Verizon, which has almost four times as many customers as the entire Canadian market put together, wants to use federal laws designed to allow small startups, who don't have a lot of cash, get a foothold in this apparently not-very-competitive market.

Verizon needs no “little guy” assistance to compete head-to-head with anybody, but the purchase of a junior telecom would give it licence to access Canadian bandwidth they could sell to customers. That bandwidth was created at the expense of the three larger Canadian companies.

In other terms, it's like the Canadian government passing laws allowing a small railway company to rent the tracks built by CN or CP rail companies — at a discount — in the name of encouraging competition. Except that Amtrak bought the company which got the licence.

Rail customers might like the deal — at least at first. And in the case of cell phone services, if the federal government allows the sale (and it looks like like they want to do that), Canadian customers would probably see some early discounts.

But even in a country with a reputation for having the most costly cell phone service in the world, the sort of competition being proposed here would most likely end up creating losers. Canadian losers.

As has already happened as the telecom war has heated up, share prices of the three darling Canadian companies have dropped significantly. That may not affect you now, but it certainly affects Canadian workers with broadly-held RSP portfolios.

The telecoms are quite profitable right now (ask their customers). That has boosted share values, and made them an ever-larger share of the baskets of stocks held by RSP fund managers.

Remember Nortel? At one point it represented about a quarter of the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange, and no mutual fund manager could sell a fund which did not contain it.

When Nortel went down in flames, it took a lot of people's pension values with it.

Today, though it's hardly on the same scale, it's the same phenomenon with Verizon.

Under the laws set up by the federal government, Verizon, with its deep pockets and ability to outlast any competitor in a price war, cannot lose.

That's why share prices in Telus, Rogers, Bell Canada — and throw in the next largest telecom, BCE Inc. — have already begun to trickle downward.

Most Canadians with RSPs held in mutual funds have no idea what companies are in those funds, but you can bet a lot of them hold Canadian telecom stocks. They've been so profitable (ask their customers), and they boost total returns, so naturally they're a part of a lot of mutual fund baskets.

How's your RSP been doing these last couple years? How do you think they would perform if a U.S. giant like Verizon is allowed discount access to Canadian cell phone bandwidth they didn't even have to pay to build?

Economics is about self-interest. So in your self-interest, would you rather shave 10 bucks a month off your cell phone bill today, or see your RSP take a shave?

In the self-interest of thousands of other Canadians, let's think about the employees of Telus, Bell Canada and Rogers. Manufacturing hasn't been doing so good as an employment option in Canada, and don't even ask me about the future of journalism as a career. Please, don't.

Not everyone can be a pipeline welder, or snub an oil rig. Some good jobs will arise in the Canadian version of Verizon, but the total employment market in cell phone sales in Canada is rather finite. All the rest of the jobs will probably be folded into the existing Verizon sphere, probably far overseas.

So I don't see this deal as being “good for Canada” in the long run. I don't understand why the federal government seems so eager to see it happen.

Price competition in cell phone service seems to have improved recently. I wouldn't know, our plan is many years old. The current Canadian market is worth tens of millions a month, with plenty room for both profit and competition.

Verizon's U.S. market alone is in the hundreds of million a month. Why are we allowing them discount access to Canadian-built bandwidth under laws designed to assist small startups?

Where ever you go, streets cost money

We've just returned from a family gathering in Saskatoon. While we were there, the city was winding up its Fringe Festival on the downtown section of Broadway Ave. and was completing celebrations of its annual exhibition.

Saskatoon is a little more than twice the population of Red Deer, built with a riverine park area down the middle, that's about twice the size of ours. They have two downtown zones (one on either side of the river, naturally) which seem about four times the size of ours — or will be until we complete our Alexander Way street renovation and Riverlands development.

From what I can see during our visits, there are quite a few close comparisons between life in Saskatoon and Red Deer, if you can make allowances for size.

Both cities made good use of their river valleys as park zones, both are have a younger population demographic, and both are experiencing rapid growth and upward pressure on housing.

And both are living with challenges of meeting today's expectations of urban life, in a climate that wreaks a lot of winter damage to city streets.

Right now, groundwork is being laid for some interesting discussions in Saskatoon's next budget. As happened in Red Deer, they've had a period of spending restraint on infrastructure that got stretched a bit too far.

Planning documents call for a “B” standard for all streets and lanes (whatever that is), but their most recent inventory gives them an “E” standing. We don't need the letters to understand what that feels like.

Meeting expectations is going to take a lot of money. Above what the city is already spending on road repairs, there is an estimated $20 million annual shortfall. The shortfall is bigger than the street budget itself.

There is a long-term plan to get Saskatoon back to the B standard, but a recent poll of 11,000 residents showed six of 10 were willing to take a pretty significant tax hike to speed things up.

That parallels Red Deer, where our Ipsos Reid poll found street work was the number one service concern for taxpayers, and the only municipal sector that did not get a high approval rating.

So how big a tax hike are they looking at? Well, their last budget saw a general 4.9 per cent tax rise, a quarter of which was dedicated to topping up street clearing and maintenance.

This time around, their council is taking things quite a bit further.

There are two proposals on the table: one calls for an additional 2.94 per cent tax hike for each of three years; the other would be a special $170 levy on every residence on top of taxes for three years. Both are only for street repairs.

Council will decide which it's to be in December, and from the letters to the newspaper that I've seen, it looks a lot like discussions of taxes in Red Deer.

Probably like municipal tax discussions in any city.

Here's where I think Red Deer has handled the situation a little bit better.

Our dry period of no infrastructure spending lasted about 14 years, but we had one good oil boom after it ended. We've done a fair amount of catching up, and in that regard are quite ahead of Saskatoon.

A city twice our size, with a winter that really kicks the stuffing out of asphalt, Saskatoon spends about $16 million a year (from city documents I could find) to keep up its road system.

We spend about $12 million (rough figures, for comparison purposes only).

No wonder people there are complaining about the potholes.

The closer government is to the people, the harder the rubber meets the road, so to speak. There is no other topic that occupies near as much phone time, face time and emails for a city councillor.

Our council discovered that truth quite a while back, and I believe a majority of Red Deer residents support the comparatively higher spending in this area.

But some people are suggesting it be more, even if that means cutting back in areas like recreation, water, sewer and transit services — all of which get the highest ratings in resident opinion surveys.

City streets cost a lot of money. Roadways and parking use more surface area in our city than any other purpose. More than homes, businesses or parks.

Even to make a small improvement visible is hugely expensive. So deciding to do that needs a strong consensus.

For the most part, we've gotten that in Red Deer (there will always be some not satisfied, either way). But when a city lets things slide for too long, finding consensus for catch-up can get difficult.

I like Saskatoon. I have family there. I hope they find their consensus. But it's gonna cost.

Welcome to our world. Again

Sometime last week, Alberta premier Alison Redford picked up her special premier's-issue smartphone — the one with all the hotline numbers for all the other premiers pre-loaded. She thumbed down the list to “W” for Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, and hit the Call button.

Wall, seeing that it was Redford on the call display, answered on the second ring.

“Welcome to my world,” said Redford. “Again.”

A year or so back, Alberta was suffering from the so-called “bitumen bubble,” the price discount on oilsands bitumen that our producers must absorb because it's harder to refine than conventional crude, but notably because of lack of pipeline capacity to deliver it in the amounts producers expect when their new big projects come online.

A discount on bitumen meant a discounted royalty paid to the province, which led to a $6-billion revenue shortfall in the provincial budget.

That was then. Today, an increase in rail shipping of crude oil — how's that been going so far? — has sliced a big chunk off the discount.

Today, Alberta has a “gas bubble.” Experts call it a “basis differential” but those of us who know pain, know it's gas.

Again, because of the higher cost of shipping gas east to Ontario and Quebec, the discount on Alberta gas has grown by 85 per cent, compared with the benchmark price in Henry Hub, La. Who knew?

Compared with the price of gas from new northeastern U.S. fields, the discount measured east of Sarnia, Ont., has more than doubled in the last two months.

Because of the discovery of newly-accessible reserves on the eastern side of North America, this discount may become permanent.

The cost of shipping gas by pipeline has shot up recently, leading producers who do not have long-term shipping contracts to avoid selling to Central Canada.

We know what happens when gas doesn't move, don't we?

Even with our twin bubbles, Alberta's non-renewable resource revenue continues to climb, as production numbers rise while oil goes back over $100 a barrel.

Last fiscal year, Alberta's non-renewable resource revenues climbed to $11.64 billion, up from $6.77 billion in 2009/2010. Credit the railways, I guess.

But let's examine Saskatchewan's pain.

Globally, oil has its OPEC. Potash has Belarus Potash in Europe, and Canpotex everywhere else. Canpotex has three big members: Agrium (which is just plain big), Mosaic, and Saskatchewan's own Potash Corp.

There's a big fight going on in Belarus. Major partner OAO Uralkali is Russian-owned, and they're about as reliable a trading partner as, well . . . forget the analogy, I don't want to insult the Arabs of the 1970s like this.

Together, the two cartels control 70 per cent of the world's potash, and just like Alberta with oilsands, Saskatchewan has the world's largest deposits. If cartel members start a price war, it gets ugly for everyone.

Potash accounts for two per cent of the province's economy and 20 per cent of total provincial revenues, which, as in Alberta, is more than is collected in tax revenues.

Saskatchewan’s total non-renewable resource revenue is $2.61 billion, and the province cannot absorb a price war without some pain. Potash prices are expected to drop by 25 per cent in the coming year.

Haven't we seen this sort of thing in our province before? Like, a dozen times?

During the good times (early this year), Saskatchewan was projecting a surplus budget. Pretty hard to deliver on that, now. We've seen this movie before, too.

And the price drop threatens to cancel or delay the building of a megamine near the town of Jansen. BHP Bilton is casting a wary eye on proceeding with a $14-billion potash mine that would be twice the size of its nearest competitor.

Ooooh, megaprojects in distress. We've had a few of those. Taxpayers, watch your wallets.

In fact, all of Canada has bubble pain. Bitumen, natural gas, potash, it matters not. Our two provinces lead the nation in GDP growth, because of resources prone to bubbling out.

In good old 2011, Alberta's GDP growth was 5.2 per cent, and in Saskatchewan it was 4.8 per cent. Nationally, it was two per cent. Where does Ottawa's money come from?

I see no remedy to replace the kind of economic numbers resource extraction produces. Like gas pain, this is something you have to endure, till it passes.

Thanks, loved the coffee — and have a great day

A nationwide surge in caffeinated generosity briefly had lineups growing at Tim Hortons outlets all over Canada in the past couple weeks.

Anonymous patrons at the coffee and doughnut chain are leaving hundreds of dollars behind to buy a double-double for those next in line, thus sharing cups of joy that have spread as fast as social media can carry a message.

Last week in Red Deer, there was a Facebook and Twitter flurry following a $500 donation left at a restaurant here. Nearly everyone with a smartphone was left smiling.

CBC News reports the trend reached from Yellowknife to St. John's within days. One donor in Edmonton bought $800 worth of coffees for staff at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, as a way of saying thanks for the care given her father.

Enter the pundits, and the policy exerts on their digital rolodexes.

These kinds of events happen in cycles. And cycles like this spread quickly in our era of both instant communication and instant gratification.

Elizabeth Dunn is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. She asserts that “people actually get more happiness from spending money on others than spending money on themselves."

Giving stuff to other people may be a trait hardwired into our brains, she says. It's what has allowed humanity “to achieve the monumental feats of co-operation that have made our species so successful."

This kind of thing has even been the subject of scientific study. First, researchers asked their subjects what they thought would make them happier: spending money on something the want, or spending the same amount on someone else. Predictably, most would rather spend the money on themselves.

But after they had actually spent the money, people reported they felt much better when they bought something for someone other than themselves. As little as a $5 purchase could do the trick.

Happiness, even this fleeting kind, is widely affordable.

So imagine the boost to your psyche if you hang around to watch what happens when the gift is many times that $5. How good we must feel!

Re-enter the pundit, who wonders what the difference must be between a $500 donation for coffees for people quite able to get coffee for themselves, and a $500 donation to a charity that would provide a hot meal to people who cannot afford one at all.

Somehow, people might prefer the coffee route to happiness, says another expert, Nicole Nakoneshny, a vice-president at consulting firm KCI and editor of Philanthropic Trends Quarterly in Toronto. She told CBC News that Canadians may be re-defining their views on public generosity.

Check the Imagine Canada web site, and you'll find that in 2009, there was a significant drop in the percentage of Canadians claiming a tax benefit for charitable gifts. This could not be fully explained by the fact there was a recession on, they said. And even if one factored in the role of tax shelters (whose role I certainly do not understand), the drop was without precedent, and “cause for considerable concern” at Imagine Canada.

Not so much for Nakoneshny.

There are still a lot more Canadians giving to charity than buying coffee. In Alberta in particular, we have the second-highest participation rate in Canada (just points of a percentage behind Ontario) and the second-highest median donation rate of $370 a year.

I used to say that people who earn $50,000 a year should be giving at least $500 a year to charity, or they're not pulling their weight in society. Well, that's only happening in Nunavut, and there, only for 9.4 per cent of the population.

Nakoneshny says we may be measuring the wrong things. Many small donations that are never reported on tax forms are buying a lot of happiness for a lot of people, she says. With the rise of online vehicles like crowdfunding, people are finding different ways to back a worthy cause that aren't recorded in the official stats.

As a perennial volunteer and fundraiser, I'd obviously rather pick up a few more big cheques. But I do know from experience that even putting a coin or two into the change box at the grocery store gives your day a very nice boost indeed.

Dunn, who's actually studied this scientifically, suggests we all should give it a try. "It's definitely a cool phenomenon,” she says.

So. . . have a good day, eh?