The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50840
opinion BACK PA G E BY EZRA LEVANT Government reliance breeds laziness H averford, Pa., had a crime wave this summer: seven children were caught selling lemonade without a permit. A watchful neighbour, Mr. Nickerson, saw the urchins, including five-year- old triplets, going door-to-door. He did what I think we all would do when seeing carefree youngsters enjoying that entrepreneurial rite of passage: he called 911. The Haverford Township police department sent over one of their finest to stop the children. It will not surprise you that they began to cry. According to the police officer, the chil- dren were lawbreakers — they had to have a government permit to sell lemonade. When the news of the lemonade crack- down spread throughout the Philadelphia suburb, the police department went into PR damage control mode. The identity of the responding officer was kept secret. Another officer was dispatched to tell the children they had done nothing wrong. Deputy Chief John Viola told reporters it was all just a big misunderstanding. "We all sold lemonade when we were kids," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We all went, like, who calls [police] on kids?" Actually, not everyone at the station said that, right chief? Children have been selling lemonade in Philadelphia for 300 years, but there is no record until 2009 of the local constabu- lary thinking it had better intervene. It was all a mistake says Viola — there's an anti- vending law in town, but it only applies to those 16 years and older. The anonymous officer who responded was merely show- ing enthusiasm. But stop for a moment. If it's ridiculous to arrest kids for selling lemonade, why is it not ridiculous to arrest 16-year-olds or adults selling things without a permit? If anything, selling lemonade for chil- dren is little more than a game. A teenager, and orderliness of the procedure. Such private initiative is the enemy of the striking union. They prefer the public parks turned into heaping piles of garbage, which sends a message: if the government doesn't appease the union, citizens will helplessly wallow in their own garbage. But that's the same default think- ing that says without government permits, citizens of Haverford would collapse under the strain of door-to- door lemonade salesmen. But if nosy Mr. Nickerson didn't have the police to keep his door kids-free, he could always though, might need to sell things — lem- onade, vacuum cleaners, window washing — to pay for college. An adult might need to sell life insurance to feed a family. If it's absurd to arrest children for selling things for fun, why is it acceptable to arrest grown-ups for doing the same thing out of necessity? And, putting aside moral arguments, would Haverford really degenerate into chaos without the anti-vending law? A dis- patcher and a policeman were involved in the lemonade crackdown, and two more police were involved in the PR patrol. Is it possible that Haverford's public service is perhaps a little bit overstaffed? Though it might sound odd, the first thing that came to mind was Toronto's garbage strike. The strike wasn't just inconvenient and unhygienic, it was embarrassing too, even making interna- tional news on CNN. But aſter a couple of weeks of paralysis, Torontonians took things into their own hands. The Toronto Chinatown Business Improvement Area, for example, set up private garbage col- lection, bringing in a dump truck for members who had to show their ID cards to use the service. Participants seemed impressed with the speediness 54 SEPTEMBER 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com resort to putting up a small sign telling peddlers to keep out. Others wouldn't have such a sign. Things would take care of themselves and only real troublemakers would invoke the wrath of the police. Same thing in Toronto. Those for whom the garbage strike was a press- ing nuisance made arrangements to deal with it promptly. Had the strike continued, other Torontonians might have decided that getting their parks back was worth banding together to take out the trash. Little battalions of people would form — street by street, and soon neighbour- hood by neighbourhood. Rather than the planned chaos of the government strike, there would be a spontaneous order, with everyone from do-gooder environmental- ists to mutual aid societies like the Chinese Business Association, to kids looking to make a few bucks would fix the problem — if they didn't have to have a permit. Calling the police on lemonade-sell- ing kids is the same lazy instinct as sitting by helplessly while garbage piles up in a strike. It's a learned helplessness that posits government help as the only solu- tion to mundane challenges in life. Ezra Levant is a Calgary lawyer. He can be reached at ezra@ezralevant.com SCOTT PAGE