Bitter chocolate

>> Wrapper suggests kids will travel to New York, but all young chocolate-sellers get is a business trip to Chibougamau

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

Quebecers have gotten used to the sight of heart-tugging young children selling large bars of chocolate to finance some dream. They may even buy one to, as the pitch goes, "encourage" the child, satisfied in the knowledge they're helping some kid purchase his or her hockey equipment or finance a class trip.

What Quebecers are less well aware of is that these kids are often nothing but travelling salespeople, going around with an adult monitor to shopping malls all over Quebec to make money for themselves--and the chocolate bar distributor.

One young seller was recently in a Montreal shopping centre foodcourt "fundraising" for a group called the "Troupe des jeunes voyageurs du Québec." "Help our youth to reach their goal!" reads the wrapper, over artists' renditions of Calgary, Niagara Falls, New York City, Toronto and Vancouver.

But these young voyageurs are more likely to go to Rouyn-Noranda and Chibougamau than New York City. They're just one of a number of troupes of young chocolate bar sellers, some as young as 10, who travel up and down the province selling chocolate bars, staying in motels at night and haunting shopping malls by day--supervised by adult monitors, but basically left to their own devices. They're recruited through word of mouth, and classified ads in local newspapers promising that the sale of "superb" chocolate bars will provide the money "to buy a computer or anything else you dream of owning."

Contacted at the phone number on the wrapper, Mike Baker, owner of the Longueuil chocolate bar distribution company MIBA, says the voyageurs are about 30 kids from ages 12 to 18--"from foster and single parent homes"--who get to see Quebec and parts of Ontario and the Maritimes thanks to the efforts of his chocolate company. They sell chocolate three days a week and sight-see the rest, Baker says, with weekends spent at home. Of the $3 made from each chocolate bar, the child keeps $1. MIBA, which despite the philanthropic language on its wrappers is a for-profit company, keeps 65 cents. The remaining $1.35 goes to finance the trip and the supervisor's salary. MIBA does not provide for the children's food, but does pay their motels. Parental consent for each child's sales trip, Baker adds, is mandatory with his company.

According to the Quebec City's daily Le Soleil, a 10-year-old Montreal girl selling chocolate for MIBA two summers ago was found in tears in a Chicoutimi shopping mall, a stop on a province-wide sales tour with a group of other child-vendors. She told police she hadn't eaten all day and had been scolded by her monitor for being a whiner who wouldn't have any money at all if she didn't hurry up and sell some bars.

Though the case made page one in the Soleil, no charges could be laid against MIBA because everything was perfectly legal. According to Quebec law there are no minimum age restrictions on workers, and parental consent is not needed for children who want to become travelling salespeople. And as long as children aren't being mistreated or forced to work beyond their capacities, neither can Youth Protection intervene.

This fall, the National Assembly is expected to vote on Bill 50, which would make it illegal for children under the age of 14 to work without parental consent.