Thursday, July 19, 2012

My role in Canada's impending demographic mess

$100,000. It is the amount of money the government offers (tax-free) to recent university graduates in long-term committed relationships to help bear the financial burden of having a child. The money is designed to account for the opportunity cost borne by recent graduates who put off entering the workforce (or pursuing further education) when they decide to have children shortly after graduation. And if you do decide to return to school right after having the child, the program will cover and guarantee a child care spot at the university you attend. They might even forgive your student loans.

Obviously, no such program exists. Rather it is the brainchild of my friend KH, who uses it to help demonstrate demographic issues in the high school classes he teaches. The program is full of holes, as any thought experiment designed to promote critical and engaging thinking should. But it will certainly not be the only radical solution proposed to Canada's impending demographic storm. The baby-boomers are hitting retirement age. Health care costs are expected to skyrocket and pension funds are likely to be emptied before my generation can touch it. And the tax base that pays for this stuff is shrinking. Canadians are having less kids and less often. Immigration policies have created a multicultural Canada, but immigration is expensive and sometimes borderline unethical -- see "brain drain".

There are all sorts of reasons young Canadians are not having kids in the same way their parents did. But it is difficult for me to really think about it without first figuring out my own role in all of it. After all, I'm part of that critical demographic wandering through my procreation years trying to balance that desire with other career and life ambitions.

For all intents and purposes, I could have a kid and get along relatively well. I'm 24 years old. I'm healthy. I'm in a serious relationship. I have a supportive family. I'm educated and figure that even in this market I could find a job. My financial situation is comfortable. I like kids and I think I might very well like to have some kids in the future. But why do I not want to have kids right now?

Monday, July 16, 2012

The wacky world of hockey tickets...

Have you ever tried to buy tickets to an NHL hockey game? In Canada, it ain't easy and it ain't cheap.

Over the last year I have jumped deeply into the world of NHL hockey tickets. It is a wacky world. And there is much more going than meets the eye.

Let's first take a look at the pricing of tickets. The average cost of a ticket in Canadian markets varies widely: Ottawa ($56); Edmonton ($60); Calgary ($60); Vancouver ($65); Winnipeg ($82); Montreal ($82); and Toronto ($114). Of course, these are just average ticket prices, so you can often find seats in the upper decks for cheaper than the average price. But even then, lots of Canadians can't afford that. In Toronto, the face-value (that is, the price charged by the Maple Leafs) of upper deck seats rarely go lower than $65. Moreover, lots of teams use outlets like Ticketmaster to sell single game tickets, which likes to charge all sorts of convenience charges, much like you would find for concert tickets.

But this is far from the whole story. In some markets, the likelihood of actually finding tickets at these prices is negligible. In Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg and Toronto, demand for tickets far outstrips supply. Most tickets in an arena are reserved for season ticket holders, so the remaining single game tickets get swept up very quickly - sometimes you can get lucky finding a single seat by itself or grabbing last-minute seats given up by someone else, including players. Apply the standard rule of economics: when demand outstrips supply, prices will go up.

This has spawned secondary markets. The days of scalpers standing outside an arena offering tickets at a significant markup are gone. The internet is a far more efficient vehicle. Tickets can be found from private sellers on sites like Kijiji, Craigslist and EBay. But like any purchase from a stranger online, you run the risk of being screwed over. They could just give you fake tickets, like some unfortunate Winnipeg fans found out the hard way. More legitimate sites have popped up, including the behemoth StubHub. But the convenience of availability and legitimacy has a price. For major market teams like Toronto and Montreal, ticket prices on StubHub usually exceed face value by 200-300%. And even then, you can't be guaranteed a quality product.

But isn't selling above face-value illegal? Technically, yes. But so is crossing the street on a red light. The enforcement of scalping (selling tickets above face-value) is incredibly difficult for police services. In big cities, already cash-strapped police departments often have bigger fish to fry. Fraudulent ticket charges can grab some attention, but even then it isn't very easy to troll the internet looking for the culprits.

Some teams have taken it into their own hands. The Winnipeg Jets, caught in a frenzy of interest when the team announced its return to Winnipeg, made it very clear that if any season ticket holders were caught selling tickets above face value, their tickets would be revoked. They weren't kidding. Hundreds of tickets have been revoked, including a professional ticket broker in Richmond, Virginia who spoke openly about his intention to sell at a markup - he didn't seem to realize that saying such things on the record to a reporter, my Dad, might have some consequences.

But teams like Toronto don't appear to have much interest in doing so. They really don't need to. The tickets they sell are already bringing significant revenue to the team. Moreover, most of the tickets on the secondary market are sold by season ticket holders. When your team is as terrible and as engrained as the Leafs, a deep investigation of your longtime ticket holders - some since the 1930s - could be a tad unpopular. Indeed, the Leafs actually seem to be in the business of apologizing to their fans.    

Getting your hands on season tickets can be next to impossible. Teams in Canada have waiting lists, but even then, you're in it for the long haul. In Vancouver, the list is currently sitting around 3,300, which is supposed to take 10+ years to get through. The team charges you an initial $150/seat fee to get on the list, and you pay an annual $50 fee to remain on the list - $25 of that goes towards any future ticket purchases. In Winnipeg, season tickets last summer sold out in only a few minutes and the team was forced to cap the waitlist at 8,000. Many of those have since dropped off the list. In Toronto the list is estimated at 4,000, but with a retention rate above 99% you are looking beyond 20 years before getting a chance to grab tickets.

In order to speed up the process, Maple Leafs fans can turn to Personal Seat Licenses (PSL). Season ticket holders can pay a one time fee to the Leafs to purchase a license to the seats, essentially making the seats a legal asset. Depending on the price point of the annual season tickets, the one-time license fee could vary from $5,000 - $40,000 per seat. Apart from the tax benefits of this legal asset (if the seats are under a business' name), the PSL can allow people to jump the 20 year queue. Let me explain: Say you have a pair of Leafs season tickets you no longer want or can afford. You can only transfer the tickets within your immediate family, but nobody wants them. If you decide not to renew them, the next person on the waiting list has the right of first refusal to the tickets. The owner of a PSL, however, has the right of first refusal to the seats on the license. Say you have a friend who loves the Leafs and desperately wants your season tickets. You can purchase a PSL from the Leafs and turn around and sell the license to your friend for a price over and above what you paid the Leafs. For example, you buy a PSL for $10,000 from the Leafs. Then you sell your PSL to your friend for $20,000. You've made a $10,000 profit. Since your friend now owns the PSL, when the seats come available, he has the right of first refusal. No need to wait 20 years.

This method of jumping the queue is becoming ever more popular. There is even a company that brokers these deals.

Thankfully, for most hockey fans the best seats are in front of the TV. And with HD technology getting more affordable by the second, high quality hockey in the comfort of your own home (or pub) is well within reach. But, admittedly, there is nothing quite like being in the arena, caught up in the frenzy of the crowd. Too bad it's so wacky to get your hands on some tickets.

*Chris is Toronto Maple Leafs Season Ticket Holder and the tickets have been in the family since the early 1980s. Here's to hoping they make the playoffs again in his lifetime*   

Thursday, July 5, 2012

More Musings from the Mid-point

I like Karen's post a whole lot, so I thought I'd do the same! Here are some things I've learned so far:

1. Somedays I really worry that I'm making peoples' lives worse. For example, I'll look back at how I handled something, and think "... so I could have done that better ...". And then I wonder if someone's life will fall apart because I didn't do my job better. It's a really big responsibility doing legal work, and I feel that there's a lot of pressure that comes with peoples' trust. But in reality, I really won't make or break peoples' lives. If someone is determined to get something done, they will do it. If I don't provide all the information the first time they'll come back again a second. If someone is determined to not get something done, they won't do it, regardless of how well I do my job. People have agency! We just help. We're not perfect, but that's okay (as long we're not negligent).

2. Trust your instincts and have faith in your work. This is something that my supervising lawyer told me the other day. We have instincts for a reason. A few weeks ago someone (who I had helped a client face in a dispute) came in to the centre to make a complaint about me. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since I help clients with disputes against a whole host of people who would rather not be confronted with legal action. I didn't think I did anything wrong, but it made me really second guess my actions, which then made me really nervous and feel very bullied. When I spoke with my supervising lawyer to ask if I was in trouble he said "you did nothing wrong - except be too hard on yourself".

3. It's a small world. Sometimes, even a vague description is enough to give away information that is confidential. Especially in a small town! When in doubt, don't talk about it.

4. Just because we care doesn't mean we can. I'm really tempted to say to everyone who walks in the door that I can help them, as much as I can. Unfortunately we turn people away sometimes - for example, the centre's funding covers poverty law, and excludes family law (even though they sometimes intermix). And sometimes we turn people away because what they're asking is too high liability, and should really be done by a lawyer. A lot of the time I just want to wave my arms and say "They can't afford a lawyer!! We're the best service they can get! Can't we just do what we can??". But the answer is we can't. My supervising lawyer asked me why I thought I should help someone with a divorce and I said "because I care!". To which he responded "well so does her hairdresser - doesn't mean they should be providing legal help". Fair enough. But I wish there was more funding to help low income people with family law issues.

5. Life is better when you have evenings off.

6. If you transplant radishes, they will all die. Same for beets. Pretty much any root vegetable.

7. If you make a goal to score one goal during the soccer season, make sure you specify that it's a goal for your team. Or you might score that one goal in your own net. During your last game. And lose 6-0.

8. Despite being the "common law", the law's not intuitive. Just because you have a lot of very legitimate complaints doesn't mean there's a remedy for you. The law's not a mix and match system of "here are the things someone did to me" and "here's what I want as recompense". It's instead a highly complex set of paths and you have to find your way to one of them and ride it to the end. I guess the purpose of equitable remedies is to provide more flexible solutions, but imagine how hard it is for someone to self-represent and argue that they should get an equitable remedy. I mean, I hardly understand what/ where the court of equity is.

9. Self-care is important:



Cheers,
Sharon

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Musings from the mid-point

I'm halfway through my summer work term and I thought it might be a good time to take stock of what I've learned so far. Most of is it completely unrelated to law.

1. Court forms are long, complicated, and impossible to fill out correctly on your first try. Sometimes the court registry staff takes pity on you and tells you what to change, and sometimes they don't. It's frustrating as a law student, but almost insurmountable as a self-represented claimant. This can be a huge barrier to justice if the claimant has poor literacy skills. This can also be a huge barrier to me ever filing anything successfully. I'm on round 3 right now!

2. I should have taken a computer repair course. I'm pathetic at solving computer problems, but almost everyone else at my work is worse. I'm one of two people who knows how to PDF documents. Any time there's a serious problem, we're all hooped.

3. Secondhand training about active listening from Sharon has saved my butt more than once. When you work in poverty law, a lot of clients have had bad experiences with governments and other agencies. A lot of what they need is to believe that someone is really and truly listening to them...

4. ...but I'm also not a counsellor. As our pro bono lawyer says, he's the worst, most expensive counsellor his clients will ever have. I don't want to hear my client's entire life stories. I'm getting better at cutting people off.

5. When people find out you're in law, they will launch into a long, convoluted tale of woe. They want your legal advice on problems that you can't believe they are discussing with a complete stranger. At parties. At the grocery store. In the checkout line at Home Hardware. For God's sakes, people, I can't solve your problems and I don't want to hear about how your conniving half-sister cheated on her husband and stole your inheritance. Or maybe I do.

6. If you have any money to your name, write a will. Otherwise it's a total mess, especially if I'm the one helping your spouse/kids.

7. People from Penticton don't eat brunch. Or really understand what it is. If I opened up a brunch place here, I would have to advertise the concept of brunch. BRUNCH IS THE BEST MEAL OF THE DAY.