TORONTO — Residents of an upscale condo development in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood are protesting recently announced plans to build a Food Basics supermarket next door, which they say puts them at an elevated risk of catching “poor”.
“Look, I’m not a doctor – I make way more money than they do,” began marketing executive Jasper Greenwood, who moved into his $1.7 million, 2-bedroom unit last fall. “But it doesn’t take a medical degree to understand that the fastest way to get poor is by coming into contact with people who already have it.”
Poverty affects nearly 30% of children and families in Toronto, an epidemic that Greenwood insists can only be eradicated through the scientifically-proven method of gentrification.
“By cutting off poverty’s access to food, shelter, clean drinking water, and opportunity,” he explained, “those who suffer from it will either be forced to take their sickness to a more hospitable environment, or die off altogether, which protects the rest of us from having to see it, or worse, contract it ourselves.”
Greenwood added that, in the meantime, higher-end grocers like Metro, Loblaws, “or ideally, Whole Foods” provide socioeconomically advantaged, or “untainted” Torontonians with a “safe space” to procure the organic, nutrient-rich foods required to sustain their already significantly higher life expectancy rates, as well as to share ideas on the best ways to spend all the money they expect to make from selling their homes in five years.
“Personally, I’m leaning toward starting up a foundation that saves at-risk youth from succumbing to poverty by addressing the systemic and institutionalized factors that create it in the first—“ he began before breaking into an extended bout of uproarious, debilitating laughter. “Oh god, can you even imagine? No, I’ll probably just buy another boat or something.”
