Take this, America!

Get this, you pathetic gutless Americans who tremble in your PJs and fake croaky voices when you want to take a sick day to get over that last beer you shouldn't have had on a Wednesday night. Stand up and fight for your wellbeing like your northern neighbors!

The Canadians have five weeks of vacation and eighteen sick days a year. Now they are fouling up the entire Lake Ontario for their unjust treatment. I saw and smelled their courage myself! And let me tell you, the city workers whipped the city like it's nothing but a sack of garbage.

Don't get me wrong. Canadians are the nicest bunch I've ever encountered. My flight from Toronto was delayed for six hours. I would have got no more than a roll of eyes from a United Airlines agent. Canadians felt so bad for me that the customs officers let me go off wherever I wanted, an Air Canada agent gave me a tour of the downtown, and another one sneaked me into the airline's gold members' club. I'm now sitting in a reclining couch surrounded by expensive business suits and sipping a glass of wine.

Just don't mess with their benefits!

A whole chunk of Lake Ontario shore has been turned into a dumping ground. Toronto's civic workers have been on strike since June 22. According to Bloomberg, "The strike closed pools, city-run child-care centers and many other municipal facilities in Canada’s biggest city. Garbage pickup for 500,000 homes and as many as 20,000 small businesses has been scrapped. Applications for city permits and licenses is suspended and Toronto’s island ferries are halted."

Here's the crux of the dispute. The city currently allows its civic workers to bank their unused sick days and cash them when they retire. The cash-strapped municipal government wants to scrap that perk, and the unions said "Hell no!"

"The city wants more than a pound of flesh," said Mark Ferguson, head of Toronto Local 416 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. "And we’re not prepared to give it to the city.”

So the union fenced up with blue tarp an area the size of a football ground. Toronto's residents are driving their garbage and disposing it into that designated area themselves. Cars are lining up obediently at the entrance. A guy wearing a baseball cap and an orange hi-vi vest with the union logo is direting them into the dumping ground. Two other guys in similar costumes sit nearby in beach chairs sipping coffee.

Lake Ontario tumbles gently beyond the piles of garbage bags. Joggers and bikers dart by the blue tarp.

"We are lucky that it's been cool and hazy lately," the Air Canada agent who's driving me said. "Imagine the hot steamy July we usually have! Wow!"

Let's just say, even with such lenient weather, the smell of thirty-three days' worth of garbage from a city of over a million is still mighty potent.

The agent, my kind volunteer tour guide honks and waves to the picketing workers. "You've got to support the union!"