Ethical Sourcing & MEC: You Got to Go Through Hell Before You Get to Heaven

Jet Airliner

Goodbye to all my friends at home
Goodbye to people I’ve trusted
I’ve got to go out and make my way
I might get rich you know I might get busted
But my heart keeps calling me backwards
As I get on the 707
Riding high I got tears in my eyes
You know you got to go through hell
Before you get to heaven

   by Steve Miller

Ninety years ago my grandfather said goodbye to all his friends and the people he trusted.  He immigrated to Canada to make his way. With his small savings added by loans from his family, he bought passage on a steamship for Vancouver and paid the mandatory $500 head tax to enter Canada.  Ottawa desperately needed cheap labour to build rail lines, dig coal mines and harvest trees – effectively to develop the West. 

The Chinese were ideal workers with one exception, they were of the wrong color.  As labourers, they were formidable, accustomed to harsh conditions and long hours.  And they would work for about half the market rate.  The only drawback they were not of European stock and thus threatened to dilute Canadian culture if large numbers were given entry.  To manage this necessary but distasteful flow, the Federal government imposed a hefty entry fee, which applied only to the Chinese.   

The day my grandfather left his village in southern China was the last time he would live with his wife.  Canadian immigration laws prevented Chinese wives from joining their husbands. Husbands could return to visit their families, as my grandfather had done, but they could not sponsor their wives to migrate here.  The reason was shrewd and simple. Prevent spouses from coming here and Ottawa can cap the Chinese population and even induce its decline via natural death rates. 

It took several decades for Canada to evolve from its racist immigration policies.  During that period, my grandfather worked in a string of low status and low pay jobs.  He was a labourer, houseboy and cook.  I don’t recall how he felt about all of this but I do believe he came to terms with his lot.  His adopted homeland, despite its flaws, presented a security and opportunity that escaped his country of birth.

The Chinese are everywhere.  Their diaspora really took off in the 19th and 20th centuries.  This first wave mostly emigrated from Southern China bringing with them to the world the now all so familiar Cantonese dialect and style of cooking.  Currently, China is undergoing a second wave of migration.  It’s estimated that within the last 25 years, 140 million labourers moved from farms to the cities.  And partially because of this migration, Chinese cities have grown from 170 million inhabitants to 540 million.  It’s the largest shift of any population in modern times and the fastest rate of urbanization known to human history.      

The sudden growth of Chinese cities poses huge problems for Beijing.  First, the doubling or tripling of urban dwellers places enormous pressure on city services (e.g., schools) and infrastructure (e.g., waste removal). Second, a giant migratory workforce (estimated to be in the 100 millions) shifting homes frequently makes it extremely difficult to administer universal programs such as health care.  And finally, intensive urbanization invites a host of socioeconomic problems like ghettos or crime and ecological pressures as in depletion of water tables or the rise of car cultures and related pollution.  How China deftly handles these complex challenges will underscore it’s modernizing efforts. 

The current diaspora in China is really not that much different from the earlier ones.  Like my grandfather, today’s migrant workers have left their homes and traveled afar to find their riches.  They too will perform grueling work in quite unjust settings and for little material reward.  And at the end of their journey they would have toiled incredibly hard for modest gain.  But their hard work will open the door for future generations, as my grandfather had done for his.  If we can understand this sacrifice of one generation for another, we then can take rightful comfort in the verse "you got to go through hell, before you get to heaven".