Happy Occult Day, Everyone!

Today is the day when many of our children will dress up as witches, vampires, skeletons, mummies, ghosts and other distasteful and devilish creatures, often complete with fake blood, scary painted faces, and other realistic additions. Their teachers at school will often do the same, and then they will all party together to celebrate this super "fun" day.

In the evening, we parents will take our dressed up children door to door in our neighbourhoods. Many of the houses will be decorated like different levels of hell, with gravestones, skulls and skeletons, yellow police tape, copious cobwebs, spiders and bats, severed bloodied limbs and bloodshot eyeballs, ghosts and frighteningly realistic moving monsters. The strangers who open the door may also be dressed as sundry inhabitants of the netherworld. But you know, they will hand out candy, so it's all incredibly awesome.

Canada's Health Care System Reeks of Corruption

There are few things as sacred to Canadian identity as a universal and free health care system. Most Canadians would probably agree that it is socially mandatory to sing the praises of our socialized health care. Criticism of this system is not just an awkward faux pas, it is downright treachery. It ranks right up there with deserting from the front line in time of war.

And yet, the truth is that our health care system is terribly messed up. We can't do anything about it either, because we refuse to see, or at least to admit, what is wrong with it. Anyone who opens their mouth in a naive effort to improve the system by acknowledging its faults is usually shunned within about 5 seconds flat.

So let's look at the sacred cow. Just how messed up is our system? Let me give you a very poignant example. My husband and I recently met up with a lovely couple who happen to be family friends. They are both Canadian doctors but work in the U.S. (by the way, that is not at all uncommon, which should tell us something). 

One of the doctors was describing the flaws of the American health care system, so I brought up the point that the Canadian health care system is not so hot either. I mentioned that my husband and I have both been waiting for months now for phone calls from different specialists to schedule first appointments. It is sadly true that Canadian citizens often wait for many months before they are seen by specialists.

Apple and Facebook are putting their eggs in the wrong freezer

Apple and Facebook are on the cutting edge all right, cutting the "wo" right off the word "woman." In their latest bid for coolness, they will apparently fund up to $20,000 for their female employees to freeze their eggs, so that these employees can choose to delay motherhood while they climb up the corporate ladder.

There are so many things wrong with this policy, how to begin? Let me count the ways that this supposedly generous move actually slaps women on the face.

First of all, here comes yet another pressure to conform and perform. It's kind of like when the Blackberry was first introduced to employees at my law firm. At first it seemed like a great perk - wow, we get to have this cool gadget and take it home to play! But soon that wireless handheld becomes a chain around your neck, as you realize that you are no longer safely out of reach even in the washroom of your own house.

Now if I imagine that my law firm had been offering egg preservation...thank goodness they didn't! The message such a policy sends is this: if you get pregnant when young, then you can't be serious about your career. If you truly want to make partner then have your eggs preserved and keep up your pace like one of the guys. After all, what excuse can a female employee possibly have for not taking advantage of a free option to make herself into a man for a decade or more?