browneassociates

DOGMA AND PREJUDICE

2012-01-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

These are very interesting times.

I just read an article in the online media that those with socially conservative views are disproportionately (though not always) less intelligent than others that do not hold these views. I would assume this group would also fall under the same types of people that believe everything candidates like Stephen Harper feed to them about how tax cuts create jobs, and how we have to keep bowing to the corporate gods, or we will be hit with financial disaster. I didn't buy it then, nor do I buy it now, but then again, I have a higher level of tested intelligence than average.

The actual article raised a level of consternation in the many communities I published it in today, likely for good reason. People who swallow the corporate line, or buy into Christian fundamentalism, don't like to be told they are stupid. They are not stupid, in my view, but the issue of integrative complexity was well known even when I was in university many years ago. At that time, many published studies found a higher level of integrative complexity among those who did not hold extreme views, both on the left or the right, as well as those that were able to acquire critical thinking.

It is unfortunate that most of the politicians elected these days do not appear to have a high level of either integrative complexity or critical thinking skills, especially if the believe the bile they spew out at the voters during elections. It is either that, or they know the largest common denominator of the general public is less educated and they can hire media spin artists to make people believe what they want them to believe. I have a business education, as well as other disciplines, and in one of my year one courses, the professor told us that corporate tax cuts do not lead to more jobs. This professor was an economist, specializing in behavioural economics and fiscal policy. He taught me both micro-economics and macro-economics, as well as a course in how economics impacts on public policy.

I also don't believe anything the fundamentalists try to shove down our throats either, where they want to mix their own personal religious and moral beliefs with the policies of those governing us. We seen what happened when the Women's Christian Temperance Union pushed for and successfully passed prohibition during the 20's and 30's. All this did was create a very large underground and mob-financed network of booze cans and other illicit gathering places for alcohol consumption. One can argue that the main reasons for its success was because they also supported the women's suffragette movement, also supported by other groups.

To me, these people are the same individuals who believe that somehow testing applicants for welfare for drug use is an effective tool to prevent fraud. While many places have implemented this policy, it was found to be an expensive, cumbersome program that yielded few positive results. These people are stingy when it comes to giving people enough to live on and remain healthy, but will spend unknown millions on tests that might result in the denial of benefits to less than 2% of those tested, while at the same time feeding into more misguided public hysteria that the amount of welfare fraud is actually much more than it really is. My suggestion is to test the politicians first, then test everybody else. In fact that was a proposed amendment to another state's provisions to do just that, and bingo, the bill was withdrawn.

Many of these politicians, many of them with limited critical thinking skills, and many born and raised with a silver spoon in their mouth, understand very little about how their laws will impact people on the ground. They talk so much about getting "government" out of the face of the population, yet this right seems to exclude a portion of it: the poor. I tend to be a follower of the categorical imperative, in place by theorists like John Rawls and Immanuel Kant. The categorical imperative, in short, means that if you are going to make a rule, it must have universal application upon both the ruled and those making the rules. Rawls would argue that one making the rules should, in preference, not be aware of their social position or level of power, once the rule was made and passed. The person would not know if they were a king, a peasant, a merchant or a working class person, and as such, would ensure that such a rule would be fair, as it could very well apply to them too. It was the universality of a rule that would place lawmakers at a vulnerable position they only wished to impose on "outsiders", that caused them to withdraw that legislation. The issue here is most social conservative rulers tend to believe these issues do not count for themselves, as they see themselves as being morally superior to others.

At the same time, persons such as myself, neither a ruler or a naive person, can get very irritated and despise getting lied to. During the election campaign, I pretty well let one of the representatives of one of the mainstream parties "have it" when they parroted a clause in their campaign book that if their party got elected to power, they would allow the higher earner of a family to write off up to $50,000 of their income to the lower earning partner, to reduce the total family tax bill. Not only is this an expensive proposition, but it also assumes those that will listen even HAVE $50,000 or more in annual income. I discussed this with people on a Tim Horton trek, which is defined as meeting people at coffee shops, cafes and other low budget eateries to ask them what they thought of this concept. Almost all of them said they did not even earn a total HOUSEHOLD income of $50,000 and they questioned who will actually benefit from a measure like this? According to economist, David McDonald, those individuals earning $100,000 a year or more would benefit the most. My questions upon reading reports on this particular proposal was, where are the $100,000 jobs? Most of the jobs around here pay next to nothing.

The same people proposing this income splitting exercise also push the idea of one parent, usually the women with this particular Christian sect, to stay home and raise the kids, while the man works and brings home the money. Even in situations where a husband actually earns that much, it still isn't right for the woman, as her marriage to him is not guaranteed, his health and his future employment may not be guaranteed and who is to say what will happen if he got hit by a Mack truck the next day? How will she continue to financially keep her family together? Not only is that type of set up scarce as hen's teeth, but it is certainly bad for the female half of the family, should disaster strike. One might argue against divorce, that it is against Biblical principals and so forth, but to me, so what? How does that decrease the divorce rate? How does that decrease spousal and domestic abuse? How does that decrease the chances that the sole earner becomes disabled or absent from the family due to reasons outside of his control?

The problem with Christian fundamentalism is that it is not practical, not realistic and if it were policy, it would be very expensive, if not difficult to enforce. Those espousing these philosophies do not see any difficulty enforcing it, or even want to consider the costs of the same, even as they might consider themselves "fiscal conservatives" as well. To me, this is just hypocrisy at its best, and its precepts only benefit the most powerful people of society.

This is the same about the question of abortion. Many people reading this are horrified by the idea of abortion. They listen to the "right to life" and evangelical types carry on about how women should not be permitted to have an abortion, yet their own precepts if you believe Thomas Aquinas that stated that a fetus was not a "person" until it was ensouled, which meant that life in Aquinas' vision started at some point well after conception. Certainly, the Catholics and other fundamentalist Christians felt abortion was always wrong and sinful, but they certainly disagreed fundamentally as to when life actually began. On a practical basis, the pro-lifers do not have an answer as to how they will physically prevent women from acquiring abortions they feel they need anyways. One wonders if these same people, who believe so highly in the right to life, and for the welfare of the women involved, would recommend we return to the days of back street abortionists that ply their trade with coat hangers and Coca cola douches.

I once had a discussion with my mother who is devoutly religious in the Jehovah's Witness faith. She complained about the increasing numbers of people in our country who came from abroad and have learned different customs, practices and ideas, and want to continue to practice them here. She is one of those people who think if you come to Canada, you do everything the rest of us do. Unfortunately, if this was taken literally, we would not allow Muslims to practice their faith, wear their head coverings, or take part in their Friday prayers. Doing this is "not Canadian". So, is it okay for somebody like my own family members to tell somebody else who feels and believes as much in their own religion and culture as she does hers, that they should not be able to practice it once they cross our borders? The shoe can easily be on the other foot, and she as a Jehovah's Witness is familiar with the history of persecution against her own religion. These acts took place in Canada, and in other countries, they were even more extreme, and sometimes people of this faith were put to death. In the Holocaust, they were also a group of people targeted for round up for the death camps. Of course, this is NOT okay ... so why is it okay to attack people of OTHER religious faiths? As we speak, there is a growing animus in North America and Great Britain against Muslims, both within and outside their faith. This is no more right than the prior attacks on persons of Jehovah's Witness faith.

As a non religious person, I sometimes feel under attack because some religious people, particularly those of more fundamental sects, believe it is wrong not to be a believer. I would not call myself an Atheist either, but I just don't have the strong "black and white" narrow integrative concepts of right and wrong. Atheists and other non believers are seen somehow as morally inept, approving of all sorts of sins and iniquities. This is certainly far from true, as most non believers are very highly moral and ethical. We just don't get fed our moral and ethical concepts at church, only to do the opposite at home.

There are other people who push for "freedom of speech" which is just a disguise for a push for their right to express, provoke and promote hateful and discriminatory behaviour towards others. They want to remove the right of human rights commissions to find certain persons guilty of promoting hateful speech, or printing it. While there are some issues with how hateful speech and expression is defined in the Canadian Human Rights Act, it needs to be revised, not repealed. Freedom of speech is a fine thing, but there are limits. One cannot print or say something damaging about another person the writer or speaker knows to be untrue. One cannot cry "fire" at the back of a crowded movie theatre. One cannot also willfully promote the hatred against any particular group. However, these people try to argue they are only saying things, not doing anything. The evidence shows that hate speech hurts.

There were a few nut bars in the 1980s, for example, that went around telling everybody, including teaching children at schools, that the Holocaust during the second world war did not happen. Along with these statements were very disparaging statements about the Jewish community itself. Does free speech include something like this, which would certainly spark very negative behaviour by some persons against members of the targeted group? Evidence of this is well known in Great Britain since persons with disabilities were removed from society's idea of being a protected class, and the number of hate crimes against persons with disabilities has been growing, along with policy makers more willing to deny benefits for them and force them into deeper poverty and deprivation. Writer Katharine Quarmby has tracked the history of hate crimes, how they evolved from words, attitudes and prejudices and then into actions against individuals with disabilities. Almost 300,000 persons with disabilities were exterminated in Nazi Germany as being "life unworthy of life", and well before Hitler's campaign against the Jews began. The public attitude towards doing this was softened through a massive propaganda campaign, not unlike what we hear about today, about how persons with disabilities aren't "contributing" to society, and how wasteful it was to allow them to have and raise children. In Great Britain, these spiteful attitudes have made it to policy makers and disability allowances have been largely discontinued for a significant portion of the population of persons with disabilities. Very few of them are moving into jobs, as policy makers had hoped, but instead are committing suicide, getting involved with other crimes and losing their housing. Many advocates in Ontario are fearing the same attitudes might be imported here.

Personally I do not like most of the conservative candidates of today, because most like to outdo one another as to how much they want to trash the poor, attack racial and religious minorities, and so forth with proposed policies. In the United States, a good watch of the Republican primaries and the debates between each of the candidates to lead the next election against the current President Barack Obama should be instructive for people who are concerned about our future. Many want creationism to be replace teaching about evolution in our schools. They want to run the country on "Christian principles" (or more accurately, THEIR own Christian principles). They want to continuously lower taxes on the wealthy and on profitable corporations, thinking somehow this will spur an economic recovery. (Newsflash - corporate and personal taxes have been declining for the past twenty years, and it doesn't look like the US is in any kind of recovery yet). Listen to their arguments with an open mind. While you may believe some of their moral principles, ask yourself whether forcing the same on a diverse population is really the best thing to do. If I were in the US, I would probably have to vote for Obama, not because I necessarily like his record, but because I want to keep something more horrible out of my life.

Unfortunately, much of the Republican type dogma has come to Canada and into Ontario, where corporate taxes have been cut without consideration of their impact on the increase of the size of our deficit over the years. Only recently we got a report that states that corporations are not using their gains to hire new people or increase investments. It's not that they ever did, as my economics professor taught me when I first started my business courses in the 80's. In fact, many of them, including Electro Motive Diesel Company, or EMD (now under Caterpillar) have locked out their workers and are taking the companies back to their headquarters. In the case of EMD, this is Indiana. EMD took a billion dollar tax cut before all of this happened, now it just wants to shed its 500 workers and move on.

There are lots of connections between prejudices, low education and a lack of forethought. I do believe if EVERYBODY sought to educate themselves about these issues, and questioned their political representatives about them, and make them answer these questions truthfully, we might just start to see more accountability and less lies being fed to us.

Your thoughts?

OCCUPYING THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT ... and a growing fight over inequality between the rich and poor!

2011-11-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

As we hear more about cross-continental evictions of occupy sites in the hundreds of cities and towns across North America, the Occupy Movement is shifting into Occupy 2.0. There are reasons they evicted the occupiers from their sites, and it had little to do with neighbours and others being uncomfortable with tent cities and people wandering in the parks after midnight. If this was the case, this by-law would be enforced year round, even when homeless people obviously sleep in these parks, particularly the summer time. Think about the synchronicity in which the various sites were being evicted; nobody denied being in conference at the same time to plan to stop the camp sites. But in many ways, by doing the evictions, the powers that be did the Occupy Movement a favour.

Like Niagara, we moved into Occupy 2.0 ... The occupiers haven't gone away; they just went underground. They are reaching more and more people. Tonight, I attended the monthly Philosophy Cafe that gets held in a downtown coffee shop. About ten to twelve of us at any given time talked about the significance of Occupy Movements across the continent, and whether we felt this was in for the long term or short term. Only two of us present have actually participated in an Occupy Movement; the fellow next to me was involved in the camp at St. James Park in Toronto, and I am sort of involved here. Of course I invited all the people there if they can come, to come to our next general assembly to see what Occupy Niagara is about. Occupy Niagara is on Facebook and anybody can keep track of it to learn when our meetings are, and who is involved with what ....

The people involved in the Occupy Movement are not ragtag hippies, drug addicts and homeless persons, although a few in some sites have been homeless. However, the key here is that even the homeless persons contributed to the sites in a meaningful way. They taught the rest of the folks how to live outside. Others like myself were not in a position to do so, but many people were eager to do so, but as other Occupy Movements have shifted to the next phase, we did too. Most people involved in these communities are working people, a lot of them young, but many are very old or middle aged as well. Many are students, and others are seeking jobs despite a hefty student loan and a poor job market. At the last general assembly, I spoke to a man who had two university degrees, and a college diploma, but was stuck on ODSP. He was recently terminated from a job that he enjoyed and excelled in.

Others I spoke to are business people or working people, many of whom had financial resources of their own to contribute to the cause. Others are like me, who can stand on the hilltops and tell people where the Emperor is walking, and what he is not wearing. In the meantime, the mainstream media is trying to track what the Occupy Movement is doing. We have had mixed coverage in our own region, but the Toronto Sun, both the print and broadcast version, painted those involved as being over-entitled and looking for handouts. Well, I had once written here that about many wealthy persons before, because many of them are over-entitled and seek handouts, but we don't hear about too many of them in the Sun Media, do we?

The Sun Media, as well as some other networks, try to make unionized workers into the demons that caused this recession, when in fact, they fail to recognize that there is a top 1% of the population, which likely includes the ownership of the same media they work for, that earn millions of dollars per year and likely work less hours than most of you do. In my view, nobody is worth millions of dollars per year. I don't care what they do. The government, who acts as their puppet, continues to dish out corporate welfare and tax cuts to this bunch under the delusion that somehow this wealth will trickle down to the rest of us. As someone once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. If it worked in the U.S., their economy would be booming, and there would be such a shortage of workers, that they'd be taking way more immigrants than they are and among its own citizens, anybody that wants a job would have one.

Our politicians say that the Occupy Movement makes sense in the U.S. because of their over-entitled bankers that crashed the economy, and then rewarded themselves with multi-million dollar bonuses after they were bailed out. While Canada might not have the SAME problems, it is as somebody else once said, "Same shit, different country". This video tells the truth about Canada's banking systems, and how the producer claims that part of our deficit is also attributed to high interest rates from the PRIVATE banks that the government borrows from to pay its bills ... What? Did you actually think the Bank of Canada did this? Of course not! Take a look!

While all of this is happening, people living in Ontario who care about poverty and disenfranchisement should note that a commission headed by Don Drummond, an economist, formerly of the federal Minister of Finance, and the TD Canada Trust, has been set up to help the provincial government implement its own range of austerity measures. These cuts and costs will most certainly hit the poor the hardest, as once again, the Premier has promised that only the Health and Education ministries will be spared cuts, but not social services, housing or transportation, etc. that help protect the poor. Given this alone, it is easier to know that the death by a thousand cuts McGuinty government has set deliberate policy decisions to hurt the poor, hoping that maybe they will all die off sooner to save their corporate friends a few bucks. They cannibalized the special diet program, and have kept both OW and ODSP rates well below the real rate of inflation. People receiving these benefits are moving into less and less safe housing, if they can find any at all, and many eat so poorly as to suffer the strangling effects of long term malnutrition. All this, whilst, Don Drummond gets his $1,500 a day consulting fees, and advises his comfortable friends in the government, most of whom just quietly received raises of tens of thousands of dollars each (by appointing almost every non-minister a parliamentary assistant or committee chair). Sneaky, sneaky.

At the same time, we watch sign posts from other countries, such as Great Britain, where they are radically culling their rolls of the Incapacity Benefit (similar to the disability benefit here), which would cut their monthly living allowances and expect them to find non-existent jobs. They did the same thing in British Columbia a few years back only to see at least one suicide a day of persons being reviewed for disability benefits eligibility. It makes me wonder where people get their intelligence from, or more particularly their math skills, when it comes to dousing people like this with a substantially lower income (as costs continue to skyrocket) and then to push them out the door to look for jobs that no employer has any obligation to hire any of them for.

Unfortunately, this ideology may become closer to Ontario than we would like to believe. Last year, Frances Lankin, former head of Toronto's United Way, and Munir Sheikh, former Head Statistician who resigned when Harper made his bone-headed decision to cut the mandatory long form census in 2010, were appointed to head Ontario's Social Assistance Reform Commission. Ontario's largest civil service union, Ontario Public Service Employees' Union, recently published their concerns that Lankin had hinted that one of their recommendations would be to allow municipalities to administer BOTH OW and ODSP, which would spell disaster. This would be a way to help cull the rolls of ODSP, and force many more on the lower paid and more punitive system of Ontario Works, which is certainly not going to serve the majority of people who have major barriers to employment. One wonders when our lovely government who thinks there are so many jobs out there will begin to force employers at gun point to start hiring qualified persons with disabilities, particularly when so many able bodied people are out of work.

Henceforth, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out now that by doing this, the two programs will now be closer integrated, and persons with disabilities won't have a hope in hell of escaping many of the punitive rules that now impact Ontario Works recipients, such as asset stripping, family as a benefit unit (when this should have been set to individual a long time ago), unreliable delivery of cheques to guarantee one's homelessness, etc. Somebody out there ought to occupy the offices of Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh if indeed they are planning to recommend this bone-headed idea, which will only set us back by decades.

Your thoughts?

AMONG THE INVISIBLE ...

2011-11-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

One day on the bus heading downtown, I met a man who appeared to be in his forties, and clean shaven. He was carrying a small briefcase and a local newspaper. We started to talk, and he was able to intelligently discuss the news, the politics of the day, and issues of tomorrow. When I asked the man what he did for a living, he told me he was on the Ontario Disability Support Program. One would not know this, unless he told you. I can only assume his disability is invisible and probably creates barriers that nobody can see, and are usually unaddressed by legislation like the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. He may or may not be able to work, but one would guess that he would not dare venture to explain his disability to an employer, fearing instant judgment even if he could benefit from some type of accommodation.

I also know people in the region who have disabilities that people can see. They use wheelchairs to get around, work with seeing eye dogs or wear hearing aids. They can acquire 'disability' aids from the Assistive Devices Program (ADP), and if they are on ODSP, they can get the 25% balance paid by them. That is a good thing, and there is no argument or reasoning to put a stop to this, as people need what they need to function and to participate in society, regardless of their disability. This is the same with respect to the Disability Tax Credit. At one point, of no value to people that earned little or no taxable income, the Disability Tax Credit is now the gateway to the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP). This Plan is set up primarily for children and young adults that have family able and willing to contribute, and whose disability qualifies them for the Disability Tax Credit. Unfortunately, those with invisible disabilities cannot qualify for the Disability Tax Credit without almost pleading themselves incapable of living independently and making their own decisions. This applies to some people with invisible disabilities, but people with visible disabilities who could live independently, are mentally competent and even hold high level jobs, can qualify for the Disability Tax Credit.

More than 80% of the people on the Ontario Disability Support Program, or ODSP, have disabilities that are invisible, whether that be mental health issues, learning disabilities, epilepsy, intellectual disabilities, brain injuries, among many more. Most of these people, particularly if their disability is episodic, do not qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. Therefore, even if they had supportive family and a good environment around them, they cannot save for their own retirement, which is doomed unless the person wins a lottery after they turn sixty five. These people will be forced to rely solely on public pensions, or "seniors' welfare", which does not equal the poverty line anymore than ODSP makes it to the poverty line. Henceforth, after sixty-five, an ODSP recipient loses many benefits, such as dental benefits, eyeglasses, full ADP coverage, among other assorted health needs that one can argue people might need even more AFTER they turn sixty five.

At the present time, the only ODSP recipients that will be able to enjoy any kind of retirement at all are those that qualify for the Disability Tax Credit due to a largely visible disability, have family or others that are able and willing to contribute to the RDSP pot, and were young enough to receive the benefit for enough years to make it worthwhile when it started. Others applying for ODSP, including spouses, have to drain all of their retirement savings, as well as any other "rainy day" funds down to a bare minimum, and forget about ever retiring out of poverty. I can't say what percentage this would be, but I would estimate about twenty percent at the outset would benefit from the Disability Tax Credit. It is no small wonder many financial writers say that this tax credit is "under-subscribed" - it is not under-subscribed, but its eligibility criteria is so restrictive that only a minority of people with disabilities are eligible.

Even for people who are not on ODSP, but would like tax relief of this type. After all, you don't have to have only the stated restrictions to have added costs due to your disabilities. If you were a teacher, for example, with bipolar disorder, or a registered nurse with a mild form of schizophrenia, you might not even WANT to try to make yourself eligible, as your professional body might begin to investigate your competence to practice in your area, because in order to declare the tax relief for a mental disability, you have to be incapable or only able to do with help or very slowly, a number of mental functions, even if you can competently handle other functions. For example, if you are unable to balance your cheque book, you can forget about your career as an accountant, or if you have difficulties making decisions, you can forget about your career as a nurse. Yet, if your disability left you in a wheelchair or visually impaired, while these limits are definitely difficult to live with, you can still be a lawyer, a company CEO, a nurse, an accountant, or whatever, given specific software and other accommodations available to you, and get your tax credit and an RDSP. This makes many persons with disabilities reluctant to apply, which means that this benefit becomes under-subscribed, as visible disabilities are probably only about 10% of all disabilities that are possible.

In various groups I worked with, it is difficult to work with a lot of the individuals involved. When one of the groups I met with discussed the social assistance review, those with highly visible disabilities felt that only they should receive the higher amount of income support, because after all, they have "higher disability costs" than say, somebody who has a mental health issue. I dispute that, but this is an impression that many people have. I also met people who have various invisible disabilities, such as multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, narcolepsy, migraine syndrome, post-stroke recovery, certain types of brain injury, and related disabilities, that may leave one not markedly restricted from any of the activities on the disability tax credit list, but they certainly do have major disability related costs. Persons with multiple chemical sensitivities often cannot do their own shopping or yard work because of the smells, the released fragrances of various products in the store, that even if they are not buying the products, they are nevertheless exposed. Chronic fatigue sufferers vary in their needs, but living alone, they may not be able to prepare their own meals, keep their homes clean, or even drive. If one lives where there is poor transit, they can spend hundreds even thousands of dollars on taxis or paying others to drive them, or do work for them. They cannot recover most of these costs, and therefore, many do not expend it if they cannot afford the upfront costs.

Living with an invisible disability has many effects on a person. Because the disability cannot be seen by others, unless the other person is either also disabled in a similar way, or a loved one is, they feel misunderstood and their problems and issues minimized by their community. In the past, when I employed staff for projects I was involved in, I tried to understand invisible disabilities, as well as the more obvious ones. This is something that is difficult to do, even for somebody like myself, as the person needs to disclose to me first. In one case, the person was frequently late for work, appeared sluggish sometimes during the day, and at times, rushed to complete projects at the last minute. He did good work, but these limits concerned me. Instead of applying disciplinary measures, which I had every right to, as the lateness was almost everyday, I asked him to tell me what he needs to help him do his job better. I told him I didn't want to see him rushing everything at the last minute; was there something I can do for him? He disclosed a number of issues, including narcolepsy, migraine syndrome, and other similar health issues. I asked him to tell me what makes him feel better. I learned that a half hour rest during the day, and flexible hours to meet deadlines would work. Once I applied that, his work was excellent and high quality.

Unfortunately, most other employers during that time frame in my life would only take the hard line about the lateness and the sluggish performance, and wonder if there were other problems, usually of a social nature and not disability-related. Over time, as I became more experienced in managing people, I accommodated persons who had care giving responsibilities, daycare needs, as well as those with other kinds of problems, such as English not being their first language. All of these people turned out to be excellent employees, and performed well when accommodated and understood. The accommodations were provided privately, and in a flexible manner, so that the person's privacy was respected, while at the same time, results were still expected. In one program I ran, there was a large outreach component to it, when it was funded. One of my staff was visually impaired, while I had others that were able to drive. Prior to the outreach role, the visually impaired person spoke to people on the phone, used the computer to type reports and simple correspondence, as well as counseled people in the office. She wanted to do outreach work. Given that Niagara has poor public transit, especially between communities, I had the two other staff persons do outreach outside of the head office's city, and I allowed the visually impaired person to conduct outreach within my city, using public transit to set up meetings, and organize sessions with stakeholders. She did well, and I was able to increase her work hours as well, which she wanted.

When a person with an invisible disability is not accommodated, it impacts on them psychologically. They begin to notice their disability more, and how it makes them different and less than, as opposed to just needing another work around. They can become very discouraged and become less motivated to try new things. Many will not even apply for jobs that appear to be not open to them. Employers need to learn about what is actually required in a job, not just what is nice or how a job is typically carried out. An outreach worker for my earlier project would typically drive to the various locations of the meetings we set up, and meet with people in their homes, or in public places, such as a Tim Horton's. In my mind, all I needed was an outreach worker that knew how to use public transit, and was fairly mobile in terms of using it, and can handle the "people aspects" of this job. For the person with narcolepsy and migraines, he would not have been able to carry out a full work day, if I had not found a quiet place he could lay down for about a half hour a day. Given that rest period, he was as productive as everybody else.

Most jobs can be restructured or accommodated if an employer knew how to think outside of the box. These accommodations did not cost my company very much, nor did others actually notice any impact on their own workloads as a result of my ability and willingness to accommodate the needs of these very capable people. If employers continue to not think outside the box, more and more people will be unable to work for them, or won't even bother applying for the job. I live in a region where almost every job, even office jobs, require candidates to have their own driver's license and vehicle. Why? If I was the employer, there would actually be very few jobs that would require these qualifications, even in a region like my own. If a person needed to travel sometimes outside of the office, I would instead put, "job involves some travel throughout the region for meetings and presentations". Whether the person conducted themselves to these meetings by personal vehicle, by bike, by bus or even by chauffeur, that is not my concern ... my concern is can they function at these meetings and carry out these presentations? The only jobs I would require a driver's license and personal vehicle are for jobs in which they are required to drive, such as bus drivers, taxi drivers, couriers, delivery people, limo drivers, etc.

The same would apply to many other "qualifications", such as ability to type. What if the person was unable to type, but were quadriplegic? There are computer programs that would allow that person to do exactly what I am doing now. My question would not be, "Can you type?", but "Can you use any kind of computer or other device to produce documents, reports or letters, etc.?" (if that was part of their job). If these things are so common sense to me, how come other people in charge of human resources and employment haven't caught up yet?

We have to move forward and away from "old school thinking". We have to see jobs in terms of what you need as a result or required outcome, not a process or typical means of completing the job. I hear all the time from people with disabilities, both visible and invisible, about how they wish they can work, or wish they can even volunteer for somebody, but employers and agencies don't even think beyond first base; that is, they don't consider that people need different ways of coming into their building, as well as accessing all the necessary amenities within it. Just as I would never dream of leasing an office in a multi-story building without an elevator and doors wide enough to admit even powerchairs, employers should be thinking the same way. If a visually impaired person applied for a job at my office, and they seemed to be the best candidate, I would certainly endeavour to learn how my computers can work with that person, such as what software, what website design styles, etc. would work the best for them. I would even think of how a phone can be designed for that person's use as well. These things are not that expensive, and if all employers, all facility managers, all service providers and others, considered the importance of these things, there would be less of a need for ODSP and more of a meaningful and rich life for millions of people with disabilities of all kinds.

And back onto the topic of the Disability Tax Credit, wouldn't it be wonderful if the tax credit actually related to YOUR true costs of your disability, and not just some imagined or conjured set of restrictions that appear to leave many people out, and as a result, substantially disadvantaged when other programs become tied to it?

Your thoughts?

OCCUPY THIS!

2011-10-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

We are hearing more and more about this Occupy movement. It started quietly with a group gathering in New York City under the rubric of OCCUPY WALL STREET. At first, the main street media did not pick up on this, until many people began to publish this movement in the alternative press and online. When this happens, the mainstream media begins to catch on. This group of several hundred or several thousand have gathered in a park near the financial district of New York City, referring to themselves as the 99%. As this protest continued, some of the so called 1% people, particularly the young of Wall Street tycoons, came to support the rally.

Once the mainstream media hit this, the social media went like wildfire, organizing OCCUPY protests in several hundred other cities across the United States, and there are even budding protests forming on October 15, 2011, up here in Canada. Our own federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty made a statement that he understands the concerns of the American protesters, but not the Canadian ones, because after all, our banks are more regulated, and our banks did not get bailed out in the same way they did in the U.S. But this is not it. There is a growing movement against the growing inequality of both wealth and income. According the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, it appears that our income/wealth gap is growing now at a more rapid rate than that of the U.S.

At the same time, we just had two elections: one, a federal one, and another, a provincial one, where the two main parties were unable to reach the community of voters they believed they had, by believing Canadians are a lot more better off than we really are. For example, Tim Hudak certainly misread many families when he went around to promise that the higher earner can transfer the first $50,000 in their gross incomes to the lower earning or non-earning spouse. Sadly, the vast majority of those that Hudak was communicating this to don't even have an entire household with $50,000 a year. People are still losing their homes, their vehicles, and going bankrupt. High earning manufacturing jobs are a cliche of the past. The vast majority of new jobs are low paying, with few if any benefits.

Instead of addressing the obvious, our politicians, particularly of the Liberal and Conservative persuasion, just talked about taxes. I wrote in this column before why I don't give a damn about taxes, because it doesn't help my family whatsoever by even a major tax cut. All I know I will be feeling are more out of pocket costs, for things that used to be delivered "free" through our governments without a commensurate increase in my income to pay for these added costs. At the same time, costs of staples, such as groceries and transportation are going up, well above the rate of inflation. If there were an OCCUPY Niagara movement here, I would certainly join them, as I know at present I am working for literally nothing, because of ODSP rules related to my spouse's disability, and inability to find a work around to enable me to actually keep my earnings, and use them to support my family instead of subsidizing the government's ODSP program.

Many other people have stories to tell as well. They are working two or three minimum wage jobs, and still cannot make ends meet. What the government fails to recognize is that it costs money to go to work, but none of these costs are reimbursed, particularly to employees. They have to have a means of transportation, and for those of us in Niagara, this means a car, because even though a job is minimum wage, the shifts are at all hours and do not commensurate with the local bus schedule. If one does not drive, they have to pay at least half their day's pay to taxi fares, which again, makes it not worthwhile keeping that job. Further, I am reminded by my trade union friends that the labour movement created the 40 hour work week and the weekend, but this is so foreign to me, this argument has fallen on deaf ears, as I work a MINIMUM of seventy hours a week, for what adds up to far less than minimum wage, when all costs and claw backs are in. My weekends are usually spent catching up on sleep, often lost if I have to work a lot of early days.

There are also people who are allegedly among the poor that enjoy bashing other poor people, by trying to tell others to stop whining about their situation, or they "should just learn how to save or how to cook from scratch or how to can fruits and vegetables for the summer", etc. I certainly don't have the time to do any of this stuff, and even if I did, I have neither the equipment or space to do so. If someone does, more power to them, but they need to recognize the advantage they have. Even if they can do this today, they have to be mindful that it is primarily the poor that is going to be paying for the deficit that the wealthy created by receipt of overdone tax cuts. What they can do today, they will not be able to do tomorrow. The question of adequacy is going to come up for them as well, and very soon.

Also, some poor folks get a lot of outside support, whether this be from family, or from local organizations that actually do support people in their goals (which would be a treat to find around here). They naturally assume that EVERYBODY has access to this type of support. As I said before, there are likely only the number of people I can count on my left hand among my clients that can count on additional financial supports from their families or close friends. For most of those among the low income group I serve, they are utterly alone. This is why I believe we not only need to address adequacy, but possibly the rules FIRST, so that those that work can acquire the same amount of money and keep it without any clawbacks the same way their counterparts can with family support can (albeit through little or no effort, except having a loving and more importantly, wealthy family to draw from - the ovarian lottery again).

The people I meet at Tim Horton's, at the bus terminal, at drop in centres like Start Me Up Niagara, or downtown or in the park, do not have families. Even among those that do, many have been disowned by them, or if they still communicate with them, the families themselves are in no position to help. Poverty begets poverty. The sons and daughters that turn eighteen in families where one or both parents are on OW or ODSP are now supposed to become the main breadwinners, and somehow obtain a job that pays enough to support the whole family, never mind save up to get the education they need and deserve in order to get themselves out of poverty. I meet many of the young people at a drop in centre called The Raft, who have been dispelled from the family home as young as fourteen or fifteen, expected to make their own way. A few others have been turfed out at eighteen because their parents cannot afford the financial hit that their now adult children's earnings will have on their ability to keep house and home together.

This is a prejudice and it is based on social class, a class that more and more people are falling into, simply because Employment Insurance, Worker's Compensation, Long-Term Disability and other traditional social safety nets are disappearing, and in order to get onto OW/ ODSP, the family has to spend itself down to the point they have nearly nothing to rely upon in the event of emergencies. Ontario Works determines eligibility month over month, often holding or suspending an individual or family's cheque for spurious reasons, of course, quite often leading to economic evictions and other forms of legislated and bureaucratic imposed desperation.

Parents are competing with their children for the same part-time after school minimum wage jobs they are trying to get to help them pay for post-secondary education. The quiet tsunami that is coming that the federal and provincial governments have failed to plan for is the fact that less and less people have anything saved for their retirement, if they will ever be able to retire at all. The government provides a limited public pension for seniors, but even at its maximum, still falls far below the poverty line. The only reason today that not as many seniors are in this boat than will be in ten to fifteen years from now is because those over the age of fifty five today are more likely to work in places that offer defined benefit pension plans. However, even these employers are cutting the pensions back and/or reverting them to defined contribution plans. Even a defined contribution plan is much better than most young people will be receiving from their employers today.

As I said, this will spell economic disaster and it is not even being considered. Those that earn below poverty incomes do not go to the movies, do not eat out, do not buy new clothing, do not travel much, do not buy books, do not buy online, etc. and for those businesses that rely on a plurality of the population to be able to do this, will no longer be in business once the big economic wave hits. Tax cuts to corporations do not create the jobs these right wing tax slayers promise. It only leads to higher deficits, whereby future cuts to reduce these deficits will fall primarily on the lower income groups. Yes, Jim Flaherty, a lot of Canadians DO have a reason to occupy whatever streets and to reclaim their very communities from the 1% that is killing us all.

What is needed is a G20 Summit where all the world's leaders of the richest countries decide to withdraw all financial support from profitable corporations and to stop contributing to wealthy persons' stock portfolios. If these governments truly have faith in the market economy, they would demand that their corporate stakeholders are willing to live by their own sword, as well as die by that same sword. I don't buy the "too big to fail" argument. If a car manufacturer is failing, it is because there are not enough people with the money to purchase new cars from them. Until that changes, they should have to live with the same belt tightening exercises the rest of us do. If their CEOs cannot get the company out of the red, then they should be fired without any severance or pension entitlements. This is never heard of, because the market place philosophy is not shared by the corporate elite. It is a socialist government for them, while we live with Ayn Rand's ideas below them. Even when the bailouts were given to failing companies in the US, executives ended up getting golden parachutes of multi-million dollar packages, while more and more people line up at the breadlines.

In Ontario, they have been making noises for some time about how there are too many people on ODSP. What does this mean? Even as part of the discussion document handed down by Commissioners Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh, there is reference to the growing caseloads for ODSP. So, does this mean we start to throw people off ODSP, or tell them all to get a job? At the same time, I do not see the Ontario government putting any employers at gunpoint to hire people with disabilities. Again, it is free market for people with disabilities, while the companies they apply to get more and more tax cuts, and they continue to hire who they want anyways. Many of these same companies would hire chimpanzees if it were possible to do that and get their work done; it is the cost of labour that attracts these companies to go to far flung developing countries so the CEOs of these same companies could save even more dollars for their usually wealthy shareholders.

Before ANY government tells YOU to get a job, ask them first for THEIR job. It is likely you can probably DO their job anyways. If they don't want to give up their job to hire you, then tell them to create a job for you. The reality here is there are no employers that are willing to hire people with disabilities, particularly in any of the "good jobs", and even people on social assistance are looked down upon by prospective employers simply because they are on social assistance. I know them. I talk to them all the time. They tell me people on welfare should just "get a job", but as an employer, they would not be willing to hire any of them. They leave it up to some "unknown" employer to do this, while I know for a fact, there are none.

I was once asked by a dear friend of mine who just got re-elected by a squeaker how I would respond to a very public road show put on by the Taxpayers Federation of Ontario, who visited all the campaign offices of every candidate during the recent provincial election to warn them against raising taxes. I would simply ask them to fess up about what is on line 150 of their most recent income tax return. First, I bet it is at least six figures, or they wouldn't be bitching so much about taxes. Next, I would ask if they had two choices: one, to keep the income they currently receive and pay the taxes they currently pay, or two, to earn $20,000 a year and pay NO taxes with the same expenses they have now. We all know that nobody is stupid enough to pick number two, but the fact is, if they want less taxes, they better tell the politicians how to help those that are in number two at no fault of their own, or you simply don't give a damn what they think. I know I would probably say this, and this would certainly lead to the first female politician assassinated if I ever ran myself for politics and got elected. But, our politicians have to be more bold and learn to say NO to their corporate benefactors. They do not need our help.

Your thoughts?

THIS ISN'T OUR DEBT AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO PAY FOR IT!

2011-09-28T21:22:00.001-07:00

In 2008, we encountered a massive global recession. This recession was tipped off by the financial industry, as well as a few people that allowed certain scams like the subprime mortgages, financial collapse of major banks and related public companies. The recession moved worldwide, as thousands upon thousands of jobs were shifted to low cost countries (e.g. where labour can be bought for a dollar a day), or simply lost altogether. Manufacturing used to rule Ontario and upheld the so-called middle class. Supposedly in the "best interests" of the country, American and Canadian governments threw trillions of dollars at the failing banks, failing manufacturing firms and the subprime mortgage sector in some sort of twisted rescue mission. Most of us never received a penny from this spending episode and probably never will.

While governments and big companies pat each other on the back for helping one another "miss that bullet", little did anybody know that people were still losing their jobs, losing their homes and losing their position in society. Average incomes dropped dramatically, despite rising costs in food, housing and transportation. Our respective governments declared some kind of victory against the recession beast in late 2009 or early 2010, pretending that everybody was all doing well again. We hear news reports that as of June 2011, we now have more jobs than we did before this recession hit, so now that we are doing so "well", governments are telling US we better start tightening OUR belts because there's this huge deficit here and we lived high off the hog for too long. That's funny. I can't recall ever having so much.

These reports piss me off more than anything else, because I, like most readers, know things are not good again. Newspapers are celebrating the advent of 100 new call centre jobs in Fort Erie. Wow! One hundred more minimum wage workers to prop up the wealthy corporations that retain the centre as their client ... at the same time, I am watching us continue to bleed manufacturing jobs, so men and women in their fifties and early sixties are now thrown on the street with no options, other than a minimum wage call centre job. At the same time, every second person I talk to is receiving some kind of social assistance, whether this be EI, Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support, CPP or other long term benefit that doesn't pay all that much.

Yet we undergone both a federal and now a provincial election where our politicians and candidates for political office continue to lie to us by pretending everything is as good as it was before the 2008 crash. They promise us tax cuts, from ....? I almost drilled a new one into the rear end of one of the local candidates when they tried to sell me on this whole "tax cuts lead to jobs" mantra, which I explained in earlier posts why that is a lie. It irritates me to no end how politicians will go to the lowest common denominator to try to convince people of lies they heard over and over and over again, yet in reality, when these policies are put into place, NOBODY is better off other than the very rich! We have to stop voting for politicians that lie to us, and do not tell us the truth of where their policies will be taking us.

If you want health care cuts, or to pay more out of pocket for various services, including health care, community services, education, and so forth, then go ahead and vote for your tax cuts. Chances are you are not making $93,700 a year as a family, which these same politicians wildly claim as the "average" as they sweep the province this time around. The less taxes people pay, the less money there will be to pay for health care, education, social services, roads, bridges, and so forth. However, politicians were a bit reluctant to cut these services, so they went even further into a deficit. Deficits are caused when the government is not taking in as much as it spends, and when taxes are cut and cut and cut, there is less and less and less money in place for governments to use for health care, schools, social services, etc.

Tell me the truth: Did YOU feel any impact from any of these tax cuts? Maybe a bit extra, so you can buy one more double double each month? That is about all the average person will feel from these tax cuts. The very poor do not benefit at all, and with the onset of the HST, the very poor are likely paying as a proportion to their total income, MORE taxes than the top 10% of earners. The McGuinty government of course is being ratted out all over for promising not to hike taxes, but then later on, adding new taxes. So what, Hudak, I don't give a rabbit's behind over taxes. I read your platform. Which one of these taxes are YOU going to eliminate? None. However, you want to cut taxes for the wealthy and big business more and more as each year passes, just like McGuinty did. I know Hudak understands that tax cuts to corporations and wealthy persons does not create new employment. After all, he has studied economics, before he turned to politics. But unfortunately, we have a mediocre community that includes many high school drop outs and people that believe anything that is told to them, and all that matters is votes. They might as well try to convince us that moon is made of blue cheese!

Hudak did make a statement in his platform that his government would allow people receiving ODSP to earn more money and keep it, but there are no details as to how he will go about this. There is no promise to make real changes to this system so that people receiving ODSP can get married without getting their incomes cannibalized, especially if they are NOT able to work but their spouse can. What in the living Hell does a spouse's income and business affairs have to do with their other half's disability? Maybe if somebody told me where this comes from, I might believe them, but I have yet to hear any plausible excuse for a policy like this, which only entraps and subjects the disabled partner to abuse and diminishes their independence at best.

The second one is even more interesting. Hudak is painting himself as pro business, pro jobs, and pro entrepreneurship. Well, will Hudak get rid of the entangled rules that any ODSP recipient or their spouses have to deal with if they choose self-employment as their way of making money? Self-employment income is not counted in the same way Canada Revenue Agency counts for other businesses, yet we wonder if Hudak will allow ANY business to be treated the same. Either tell all businesses they are not allowed to hire staff, not allowed to deduct costs for conventions, not allowed to deduct costs for professional clothing and appearances (especially if this is part of the job), etc. and see where that gets you. So Hudak, either you are for small business and for increasing the number of jobs or you are not. Which is it? Dalton McGuinty has given these same people the same wimpy excuse year after year about how they do not want to "subsidize" businesses with ODSP, yet on the other hand, the McGuinty government will throw Samsung $7 billion, Silicon Knights $2.8 million, GM almost $3 billion dollars .... yeah, now I get it.

The poorest of the poor, the entrapped poor and their families and the "working poor" are supposed to continue to pay for these subsidies and benefits given to the rich and to large corporations they will never benefit from, even though these same entities have been busy sucking out of the government trough for years, leading our government into this huge deficit they are saying is there now, and because of that, WE but not THEY have to tighten our belts. I'm sorry. THIS IS NOT MY DEBT. I OWE NOTHING. The more of us that can say this and really mean it, the more impact it will have. If there is a debt that has to be repaid, take it from those that benefited in the first place from all the largess.

Take it from the multi millionaires that pay less tax as a percentage of their incomes than the people that clean their offices. Take it from the corporate executives that paid themselves bonuses after their companies went tits up and got government bucks to "stimulate" the economy. Take it from the $3,000 a day consultants that worked for e-Health under McGuinty's watch, who had the nerve to charge their Tim Horton's on top of it. Take it from your so-called "average" family that makes $93,700 a year and up.

One of my MPPs in my region asked me how I would respond when groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation show up at their door crying poor because they do not want to pay any more taxes. I told him to ask each and every one of them present to bring in their last year's tax return and show him line 150. I am willing to bet my first born that their incomes are all in the six figures and they can damn well afford the taxes they are supposedly paying, and probably have more loopholes than the average person anyways if they want more write-offs. Ask them to make a choice: earn the money they are earning or more likely receiving right now, while continuing to pay the taxes that they allegedly do, OR earn only $20,000 a year and pay NO taxes, and still have their current expenses. I am curious which one they would pick. Are you?

To me, it is people in the higher income brackets that benefited from the spending and tax cuts that led to this monstrous deficit and it is THEY and not US that should be tightening their belts and giving up more. This era of the selfish has to end, as it is driving all of us into the ground. These same people do not want to help the poor other than their "charitable donations" to food banks etc. - (no thanks). At the same times, poverty is costing every man, woman and child each year over $2,700 according to a study by the National Council of Welfare, but would cost less than half to eradicate it.

Some of you people reading this probably wonder what I have AGAINST the rich. Actually, I don't have anything against the wealthy. I have many friends among this upper middle echelon and so forth, and I once made good money in the past where I had few financial worries. However, when I made the good bucks, I did not care about the taxes, as I believed if I made more, I should pay a little more than those that earn less than I do. Taxes create a civilized society. This does not mean we do not have the right to criticize HOW our taxes are spent, as there are likely ten thousand different ways governments can save money without cutting services, and to use their resources more efficiently. What I am critical is the growing passive acceptance by the public of the growing gap between the very wealthy and the very poor, as well as the decimation of our middle classes.

Some might argue that companies will leave if they had to pay more taxes. This has never been proven. Companies do leave jurisdictions, usually for a variety of reasons and not necessarily because of taxes. Many times, it is labour costs. There are companies that move to Canada as well because employers are not stuck with a bill for health insurance for their employees. Others choose a location because of the pool of labour available, the number of people with particular skills and expertise. However, as I said before, there are probably a few companies that would be eager to hire chimpanzees in exchange for a clean cage and bananas, if they could do it. The very wealthy often do not seem to want to share their wealth, even though it is their best interests.

First, the work of the lower and middle echelons of their companies effectively keep them in business, and in turn, with a public with an acceptable level of income, there are more consumers for the corporation's product or service than if this inequality is allowed to continue as it has. People on the bottom end of the income scale do not eat at restaurants, do not buy their clothing at department or clothing stores, do not buy their books at bookstores, do not go to the movies, nor do they buy computers, iPads, cell phones or even cars. When companies that supply these things have less consumers, because more and more members of their communities are unable to afford anything beyond their housing, these companies eventually fail. Henry Ford, when he set up his factories, knew that he had to pay his staff enough money so they can afford to buy his product, or he would not sell enough cars to enough people to make any money at all.

I tried over the years to tell politicians how to achieve this aim, how to do true stimulus, and how to deal with objections by the selfish and senseless. I also tried to show politicians how to achieve change without killing people, or putting people into positions where they feel they must take their lives, or they develop health conditions where they slowly die. All of these things seem senseless or illogical, but when you think of it, when more of us are healthy, costs for our cherished health care system go down and become more manageable. When we have not only sufficient funds for bare physical survival, but also for meaningful participation in the community, everybody is richer, from the butcher at the corner, to the farmers at the market, to the chef that runs the downtown eatery, to the man that owns the movie theater.

This is all common sense to me. How come our leaders seem to be losing their way?

... A COMMUNITY THAT IS DYING TO THRIVE

2011-09-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

As I might have stated before in this blog, I live in a very conservative, willfully ignorant and at times, divisive community. At the same time, there are elements within this same community that are trying to present themselves, and become a cultural force and eventually a political force.

The Region of Niagara lacks organized opposition to the current destructive path our governments are taking us down: the path of austerity for the poor, and socialism for the rich. When I personally speak to people, or discuss issues in informal groups that gather in coffee shops, at street corners, at Tim Horton's and other places, without triggering a reply, these individuals reflect the same kind of worries and concerns that I illustrate here on this blog.

At the same time, I met many ordinary individuals that, while they are generally kind, funny and productive with their lives, they do not understand the culture of the "other". One such man met with me and we had a chat about the economy. He told me that they should limit people's stay on welfare for a short period of time, and then force them to get off the system. As attractive an option that may be, I ask, where will these people go to when their time is up? He told me, "They'll get a job". This is the thinking of people who have likely not spoken to or met with somebody who is struggling to get off welfare. If they would "get a job" at the end of their time on the system, they surely would get a job earlier before the clock stops ticking, in my not so humble opinion. This is because that is what they want: a job. At another forum, a participant posted that there were almost 500 jobs listed on the Job Bank, a program offered by Service Canada. I then asked if they knew exactly how many unemployed workers there were, and whether all we needed was 500 jobs to create full employment. If Niagara has 9 - 10% "official" unemployment rate, chances are it is double that in the "real unemployment" figures, given many people have long since given up looking for work, or have accepted work that is not full-time or permanent. This would mean up to possibly 40,000 people in Niagara would be seeking employment, or deem themselves to be grossly underemployed.

As a professional service provider that works in the community, I see what happens at the grassroots. I ask questions all the time. To the man who told me that the welfare recipient at the end of their time would get a job, I asked if he would hire that person. After all, he runs a small construction company and he is growing his business. He told me he would not hire that person. I then ask him, if he would not hire this person, what gives him the idea that "somebody else" will? He did not know. I know why, although he might not quite understand why. These problems are always considered to be somebody else's problems, not our own. We talk a lot about what employers "should" be doing, but as employers, are we willing to actually take these issues on, and do our part in the public interest?

I spent time working on the AODA Standards Development Committee, and met many wonderful, smart, intelligent and outspoken individuals: some were spokespersons for organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the colleges, the universities, and the civil service, while others were individuals, including entrepreneurs and persons with disabilities themselves. I don't think a single human being in that room felt that persons with disabilities were unworthy of being hired and offered promotions, and so forth, equivalent to their peer groups. The debates were hearty, passionate and at the end, compromise was reached, sometimes while standing on tenterhooks. It reminded me of a process that one learned judge told me when I first started practising: "You know when a mediation worked when all parties to the mediation end the session with their lower lips to the floor". We all walked out at the end of our final submission happy in some ways, not so happy in others, but we can live with it.

I returned to my own community to find a lot of the knowledge and passion lacking in many otherwise intelligent, well-meaning and positive people that are considered our community leaders. Report after report here points out that there are openings in jobs, but no takers. This is not because people are lazy and do not want to work, but because there is a disconnect between the employers that want workers, and the workers that want jobs. Nobody is integrating this puzzle, to create the mosaic the Niagara workforce needs, which would become an inclusive and improved labour force, as opposed to leaving the low waged, insecure and "bad" jobs for the people on welfare and disability, while keeping the "good jobs" for people who are already part of their own networks.

The other day, my husband and I were walking down the main street of downtown and I pointed out to him where various businesses shut their doors, others opened theirs, and others are having difficulties. Niagara College moved its employment program downtown, and Business Education Council moved downstairs from where it was previously located in the Landmark Building. They are promoting "older workers", many of whom were thrown out of work and have the expenses of a mortgage, kids in post-secondary education, car payments, and so forth, but nowhere to go. I just hope this organization is not fooling the older workers by making them believe there are good jobs out there. This is particularly interesting given that I did take a scan of the Job Bank selections when that individual pointed out there being 500 jobs, and most of these jobs are low wage, temporary or otherwise, not appropriate for an adult that has financial responsibilities.

At the same time, candidates are sweeping the area for the next provincial election saying only if we threw more tax cuts at rich people and their companies, we can get more jobs and investment in the Niagara Region. I am angered at these politicians, both as a business graduate as well as somebody who has an IQ beyond her shoe size. These tax cuts were in the making over the past couple of decades. If this worked, Ontario and Canada would be booming with employment opportunities. It would be a worker's paradise, where a worker can walk into a company and pretty well name his or her price. However, the "full employment" definition kept creeping up from 2% to 4% to now, around 6%, meaning that somebody in the federal government knows that tax cuts are not doing the job that politicians are trying to tell us they do.

Canada and Ontario have to begin to deal with the social safety net that was designed for a time when we really had full employment and short term mean short term. and people with disabilities were not being squeezed out of having any quality of life like they are now. The simple fact is that business thrives only when people buy from them. If everybody around them is poor, and the business is not selling a good or providing a service that is as base as rent and perhaps, groceries, then that business will suffer with at least a couple of million people in Ontario that just are not buying anything. People who are poor do not go to the movies, do not eat out at restaurants, do not buy clothing from the clothing stores, do not buy big screen TVs, do not buy cars, and if they have an old car, do not get gas very often and from what I have seen, many have tried to drive without insurance. All of these companies that do not have these buyers are receiving less revenue, and as such, are not as able to hire as many people as they would otherwise be able to, had this whole group of people been able to participate in the economy.

Giving tax breaks to wealthy people does not grow jobs, at least in the way politicians are claiming. Even a millionaire family of four only need so many groceries, clothes, gas for their car, and will only eat out so often. There is an equilibrium in terms of how much a consumer will purchase to receive their maximum satisfaction. What the wealthy do with the rest of the money is what is important, and research has shown they do not spend the rest of it in the community. In general it is divided between savings, and non-labour intensive purchases, such as a family vacation to Disney World.

If they are business owners, the tax cuts come AFTER they hire their last staff person. A new employee is a complete write-off for taxes, and tax liabilities are transferred to that employee and not the company. The money that is left is profit, and that is what is taxed. A company that is charged less tax on the profit is not going to suddenly need and desire to hire more staff. Instead the company will divide the profits among shareholders or reinvest it into long term financial instruments. No company I know of will hire more staff just because they feel like it; companies are not charities. Staff are utilities in helping the company get its work done, and to get paid. If a company can hire chimpanzees and robots to achieve the same goals, they might just do that - but fortunately, this technology has not reached the state where this is possible.

In this election, the Progressive Conservatives, under Tim Hudak, is all about tax cuts. There is very little new spending other than a 6% boost to health care, to reflect what is status quo now at the federal level. McGuinty's agenda is similar. Both parties assume that the average family income in Ontario is still $93,700 - likely taken from the last Census. We know this has substantially changed since the recession of 2008, but we have no numbers since Harper scrapped the long form Census. The whole idea of allowing families to split up to %50,000 off the high earner to add to the low earner's income is insulting to the majority of people that don't even earn close to $50,000.

Further, Hudak's talk of providing relief to families means nothing to families where one of the spouses is on ODSP. ODSP conscripts the working spouse into its rules, thus creating a family income that is capped at best, and at worst, leads to family break-up with the disabled person losing all benefits and income of their own, leaving them susceptible to abuse and isolation. The working spouse can work all they want, even around the clock, but they will not be able to bring their family out of poverty. In situations where the working spouse is self-employed, ODSP's rules about self-employment put the family's financial health into even further jeopardy with rules against the self-employed spouse hiring employees. What? Isn't this government about helping business and creating jobs, yet it will not allow these businesses in particular to hire employees? The effect of this is that it caps the self-employed person's income, as it is impossible to earn on their own more money to get the other spouse off ODSP so they can live more normally.

I talk to people about this all the time. 95% of the people I speak to are shocked about this, as they never knew any government in Canada would do this to people, and punish spouses of persons with disabilities. I point to the relatively low number of people on ODSP that even bother to get married, and yes, they understand that. I also helped a gentleman get onto ODSP a few weeks ago, and when his case was transferred, he called me to seek advice on what he needs to do to leave his wife, as her income left him qualified for nothing. I warned him that if he does leave, ODSP will require him to file a lawsuit for support against her to get as much of her income as possible, so she will continue to have to subsidize ODSP anyways. This is ODSP's way of continuing to shift more of its costs onto persons with disabilities, a group that can least afford to pay this cost.

These people are in the market, on the street corners, in Tim Horton's, or who run their own businesses, and they ask why one person's business is not allowed to hire employees, but others are? Perhaps, if Hudak was that concerned about removing the "burden" from families, he can start right there. If he does, I can guarantee a groundswell of support from many people in the disability community. If they stopped counting spousal income against the very low rates of the person with a disability, the family income would double without the government adding a single penny to the program. I say this, because what I see happening are spouses that are stopping work and then living on the other's disability allowance, because they are finding working to support the WHOLE family too exhausting. On a similar note, a friend of mine was working three minimum wage jobs and ended up on ODSP now, because the human body was not built to work without breaks, for very long hours at a time, and to burn to the candle at both ends. If I hired you to work for me, and made you work sixteen hours in a day, without paying overtime or minimum wage, and in fact, asked you to pay me back half your wages, I would be convicted by the Ministry of Labour ... why is the government allowed to do this to those that are trying to get ahead through self-employment? This is why some of our small businesses downtown had to close down in a hurry, because the entrepreneur was not able to support his or her family on less than fifteen cents on the dollar. Think about it.

Those objecting to hiking corporate taxes whine about losing the incentive to invest. What do you think these rules and regulations do to potential entrepreneurs that are attempting to work themselves either off ODSP, or to increase their family income as a family with two incomes, instead of one limited "see saw" income that caps the worker at a level well below the poverty line? Does fifty percent of the income of politicians come off their spouses, if they are working or receiving any money from another source? I doubt it.

The walk to the market each day is fraught with people wanting a piece of my time. I am the one who took an international fit to get regional transit in this area. I am the one that asks the questions that need to be asked. I litigate whoever needs to be litigated. I am not afraid. But the whole world became much smaller for me over the past few weeks, trying to do computerization of all my files, while still trying to get some essential work done. The days are getting shorter and the night falls, making it lonely once again, when I don't want to be alone.

In the day time the buskers are out. At one time, right after Jack Layton's death, one of them was out by Coffee Culture singing from a script. She was singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and the words to this made me cry. Like when is this going to end? When are we going to see less people die? One of my clients told me about three who died from a drop-in centre in one month alone. I used to do this as the executive director of the Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network. I attended a lot of funerals, and organized a lot of memorials.

I am so afraid if the political people that get elected this October 6, 2011, do not want to learn about the "other", and re-focus away some of their priorities from constant tax and service cuts, and start listening to the people that matter, that we will be organizing a lot more funerals and memorials for people who die in their thirties, forties and fifties, after living a life of Hell.

Your thoughts?

JACK LAYTON'S LEGACY - 1950 -2011

2011-08-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

It was early last Monday morning my son announced he just heard that Jack Layton, NDP Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, had died of the cancer he had contracted in July 2011. We we filled with hope that he would be back fighting in spirit in Parliament on September 19, 2011, when Parliament resumes.

I watched the State Funeral he was given yesterday. One of the songs, Hallelejah, by Leonard Cohen, was one of the songs that was played to him apparently in his final days. At his funeral, Steven Page, former front man for the Barenaked Ladies sung it at the Roy Thompson Hall, with grace as members of the audience on both the inside and outside had tears in their eyes. The other one was with the original singer, Lorraine Legato, of Parachute Club fame, singing Rise Up. Reverend Brent Hawkes talked about his Sunday sermons, he would check the balcony above and he would find Jack and Olivia in attendance.

To me, Jack Layton was a big part of how Toronto became the wonderful place I find it to be today. I am so fearful that the recent election of Rob Ford is going to destroy that community. Jack Layton stood up for inclusive communities, and for a long time, Toronto tried to be an inclusive community. I always envied those who lived there for their lives, and today they are interwoven in the Toronto legal, social, urban and political landscape, while I, as an outsider can only come when I take part in something province wide.

But, I want to tell you about Jack Layton. I have met him numerous times, many times as a young person when I was all NDP-idealistic and even presided the riding association at one point. I belonged to a group called ACT for Disarmament, which was a fight against the cold war, something both my husband and I recall as being big in the 1970's and 1980's. We would have marches here by the federal MP's office at one time when the Landmark Building was actually a federal building. We would travel to Toronto, and join the larger peace movement there, led by Toronto's ACT for Disarmament.

Jack Layton would be involved. I remember his face, simply by looking at what he looked like in the 1980's. He would sometimes speak, and make various venues available to us. I loved Toronto then, as it was so much bigger and more powerful and it was branching out to Niagara in those early days with our rag tag group, which still seemed to attract hundreds to our own local demonstrations and Hiroshima and Nagasaki awareness days in the park. I remember listening to the music in my ear, especially of We Built This City by Jefferson Starship. Ben and I were young then, both of us in college during that age, and even afterwards.

You see, Niagara was not always the drab, conservative, do-nothing, bend-over-and-let-me-let-you-screw-me type of community like it can be now. There were at least fourteen activist organizations that had my name on them somewhere. At the same time, I fought major battles before I was trained in the law. One was being denied access to university funding and education, and the other was an action I had to take against the very old fashioned CMHA at the time for their decision to expell me because of my politics at the time. I organized the clients of the agency to teach them demand better, and ask for jobs there, or to become volunteers so we can run our own programs to some extent. Apparently, a substantial petition was taken to force them to take me back, as well as a legal action, which attracted Ontario Division and United Way to the table, a nightmare I was not going to allow to stop until they stopped excluding me. I ended up joining the Board after I came back and served there for many years, and was eventually awarded a lifetime membership.

There was also the Unemployed Action Alliance. I pass the old Grantham Township Building in St. Catharines everyday. This was 145 King Street, where a drop-in centre, advocacy and support services were provided for the city's unemployed. We held the clout to bring the Mayor and city council to the table and make demands for things like reduced bus fare, and free activities like a large picnic for the unemployed, where I eventually met my husband (who was volunteering for the event). We would also demonstrate, do protests, as well as enjoy Christmas dinners at behest of the local labour leaders. We responded to the rhetoric of the day about those of us that were unemployed, that said we were lazy, did not want to work, and resisted a version of workfare that being introduced at the time.

I was in college then, first taking my legal clerkship and then later fighting throught the Ombudsman and the MPP office for my OSAP. I was a force to be reckoned with, as I was not happy to let people tell me I cannot do this, or cannot do that. I lived on my own since I was a teenager, and always trying to adjust to the rules that either enabled me, or confined me in many respects. Somebody I met in Toronto told me to talk to Mel Swart, then an MPP for the NDP representing Welland. They told me I was not capable of going to university, and further, OSAP would not qualify me, so I fought. I still have the letters I wrote, until the NDP took me up as a case in the legislature, and because I received very little support from my parents (even for signing a damned form!), I had to do things the hard way ... I still remember Mel phoning me to tell me that the Minister approved my application for OSAP by order-in-council, and I could get information for this from the finance department at the university, which I did.

While all this might not seem to be about Jack Layton, he was in my life throughout this whole period of time. I was in the NDP. I would attend provincial and federal conferences, as well as attend meetings where NDP leaders would come down to do a meet and greet. Jack Layton sat at my table at a couple of these conferences. He encouraged me to apply for co-operative housing, which I did. I remember Jack standing up and stating why the government had so much against co-ops ... because the people in them were politically aware and can push for change.

It was a few years later that Jack Layton was attacked by the Toronto Sun because he and his wife, Olivia Chow, were living in a downtown housing co-operative and at the time, collectively were bringing in over $100,000 a year. This was all based on the public's ignorance of the philosophy of co-operative housing. While co-operative housing IS a form of social housing, it is not necessarily a "low income housing". It is part of the co-op mantra to include people from all backgrounds, all incomes, all races, all religions, etc. to live in an intentional community. If it were so wrong for Jack and Olivia to live in their co-op at the time, why didn't mine evict my family when I used to make approximately $85,000 a year on my own? You just don't get your rent subsidized when you earn good money, but you are not excluded.

These were the days when the latter half of the baby boomers were beginning to speak out, and the earlier baby boomers supported us. There was a large movement to develop cooperative housing in the Niagara Region during the 1980's and early 1990s from what I remember. That is why there are a considerable number of these projects in the region today, even though much of what we did back then has become depoliticized and individualized by those that didn't want the change.

I began to go to Toronto a lot in the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. On many of these occasions, we would meet in places where the political movers and shakers of Toronto met, and we would interact. In the early 1990's, I was given a special invite to Niagara-on-the-Lake's Queen's Landing, where then Premier Bob Rae and his Cabinet were having a meeting, and we not only were able to stay for the public part of it, we were able to socialize with them afterwards. I remember speaking to Frances Lankin at the time, then made Minister of Economic Development and Trade. There was a similar meet and greet in Toronto, where Jack Layton was also present among the invitees, and at that time I shared a table with Premier Bob Rae, and his wife Arlene Perly Rae.

I was just getting out of school in Toronto, and supporting myself through a variety of consulting contracts, both for the federal and provincial government ministries, as well as for private non-profit organizations. After my 10 1/2 year adventure in university was over, I had no job waiting for me. I continued to be a consultant until I became an executive director of the local Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network, a job I held for three years which allowed me to see both sides of an issue, changing my politics considerably. I still have downstairs all the copies of the Niagara Survivor's Journal we ever published through that organization. Later, I accepted similar jobs at the provincial and federal level, until I was exhausted. Upon returning to my roots, I started up private practice again and eventually situated my office next to Start Me Up Niagara, an organization which was formed and funded through one of the jobs that I held over the years.

When I read Jack Layton's history, he did not have a work history like "everybody else's" either. Neither did I. There were no organizations begging for my services (apart from my expertise as a consultant or now as legal representative). I found that the timing of my job search hit every major recession in my career path, leaving employers with no openings for new people, just those who have already been laid off. At one point, I did bluntly ask how I could make myself into somebody that has already been laid off there so I can have a chance at a job. Experiences like this led to some of my more centrist positions on issues. But, regardless of what stage of my life, Toronto was always there for me.

It could be for the peace movement, the NDP, contacting various legislators to get issues pushed, conferences, and even some of my schooling. Eventually I worked on contracts in Toronto, and this has always given me a positive feeling about Toronto. To me, Jack Layton and his wife, Olivia Chow, were very much a part of moving Toronto into a progressive metropolis. Over time, I used Toronto as a way to be surrounded by progress, even in the law, as I once went around taking pictures of the Ontario Court of Appeal, the Law Society, the University Avenue Courthouse, the Human Rights Tribunal, etc. This was the location where the power sources were, and how they generated themselves out to the broader province of Ontario. I would attend conferences, accept various appointments, and do other work in Toronto, simply to get away from Niagara, which since about 1998, has become a very apolitical and hostile environment in which to live. The last anti-poverty conference was held in the mid 1990's, and was organized by me and my agency.

Today I have been so proud to see some people come out. Niagara has been dull for so long, and we have been so isolated. The political epicentre here is Start Me Up Niagara, and my legal office, it seems. There are scattered people in Welland, but they've never concerned themselves with the interests of others in the region, where our problems are just as bad. I have to unfortunately be politically neutral in my direct dealings with government agencies, as my legal office serves many interests. Being involved as a young person with the NDP, then spending some of my time working with the Progressive Conservatives in the 1990's gave me a good bird's eye view on how the inner political workings work, even though I am not interested in any political party now, although I will work with whoever wants to get the stuff done that I want to see done.

During the last federal election, I was torn. I liked both candidates for the Conservatives and for the NDP, but I liked Jack Layton better than Stephen Harper. On May 2, 2011, Jack Layton made an excellent victory and concession speech to a very large crowd of cheerful supporters, and Stephen Harper glowed in his victory in finally achieving a majority government. In a way, Canadians all got they wanted. We got rid of separatism in Quebec with an orange sweep over Quebec, and the NDP won an unprecedented number of seats, placing him and Olivia in Stornaway, an honour never given to an NDP member of Parliament in all of history. Conservative supporters also got the majority they long sought after.

During the election campaign, I was very impressed with the NDP ads. They were not mean and vicious against other parties and other leaders; they were cheerful, optimistic and powerful. When he spoke on election night, he was so optimistic, and I bet every Canadian across the land except for those whose heads were deeply in the sand did want to see a Canada for all Canadians "where nobody gets left behind". Various election ads, such one about small businesses, health care, and leadership. Many of these commercials during the election ended with Layton speaking to a large audience saying, "We won't stop until we get the job done!".

And then last Monday comes along. Jack Layton is not coming back. He died at 4:45 a.m. last Monday, just after a meeting I was part of at Montebello Park planning an anti-poverty response to the provincial election. It is like I lost a major limb, or a large part of my heart was cut out ... it is more than a "now what?". Is this the end of an era? I hope not. Canada has become too lean and mean lately. While I resented a lot of the political correctness, union issues etc., during the Bob Rae era, I wanted so badly to see a progressive movement like one led by Layton that did not push these issues that turned too many off the NDP.

My family watched the State Funeral on Saturday. It was Stephen Harper that approached now widow, Olivia Chow, to offer it. The procession was wonderful, a celebration of his life, and how the people of Toronto gathered in the thousands and thousand on sight and mourned and others of us mourned across the nation ... not a dry eye in this land. But what do we make of this? Jack Layton wrote a final letter to Canadians from his death bed, which I was not able to read in its entirety. There is too much of me in it, too much of my time in Toronto in it, and too much of dawning realities in it ... a mother-in-law with possible cancer in the liver, a friend of mine just diagnosed with another type of cancer, and how Layton - a hero in the minds of so many Canadians - just was felled by the same thing.

The Letter to Canadians is inspiring me to act, to act against cancer, to act against the destructive influences of the ridiculous right, to find a way to unite Canadians, to find a way to help us find ways to love one another, to help one another, and to teach one another, and how to empower one another. A text version of the letter is available here

In closing, the final words resonated with all Canadians: My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.

And we'll change the world.

All my very best,
Jack Layton

SECRECY IN NIAGARA REIGNS!!!

2011-07-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the Social Assistance Reform Commissioners had been in the Niagara Region earlier this month?

OK. You are probably asking: (1) What is a Social Assistance Reform Commissioner?; (2) Whatever they are, what were they doing in Niagara?; and (3) Why should I care? I spoke to people in the broader social services and legal community and they were aghast as usual, but then again, given our recent "consultations" on the HIP (or Hospital Improvement Plan, anaethema to anybody in Niagara who even sees these three little initials), this is sort of the expected thing that goes on around here.

First, late last year, as a part of the Poverty Reduction Act, which was passed provincially and agreed to by all three major political parties in the Legislature, the Provincial Government appointed Frances Lankin, of former NDP Cabinet and Toronto United Way fame, and Munir Sheikh, made famous by his departure from Statistics Canada when our wonder Prime Minister decided we can do away with a major part of our National Census, to go on the road to consult the community on how to make social security programs and systems work better in Ontario. It is not limited to Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and will encompass housing, training, employment supports and related programs, to see how people can improve their lives (mostly by returning to work, but not necessarily) and to streamline the systems.

Anyways, the Social Assistance Review, is arms length from the government, although it includes some civil servants who have been seconded from their jobs in other parts of the Ministry, as well as some external researchers. On visiting their website, we learn about who they are, why they were appointed and what kind of job they are going to do. There are numerous resource documents being posted to their website, one of which they have asked for from me, which will be made available to them as soon as some minor adjustments are made to it. They have made a commitment to visit twenty-two Ontario communities to meet with social service people, agency folks, advocates and people who have direct and "lived experience" with both programs.

While each region was asked to set up their own meeting, and how they set it up was up to the regional contacts, not the Commission itself, almost all of the meetings set up around Ontario were public to some degree. By the term "to some degree", I mean, some of them were organized by anti-poverty organizations that reached out to others and basically set it up conference format. Others like the one in Hamilton, opened up its convention centre, and opened it up to anybody that registered in advance. However, when Niagara set up theirs, they shut it up tighter than a drum the minute they agreed to a date with Commission organizers. I looked it up the minute the Ontario calendar was put up, and made a phone call and email to the persons identified as contacts for Niagara.

The first thing they said was that it was "full". Upon further probing, I learned it was not even open to anybody in the "public" to begin with. Nevertheless, I feel badly that the Commissioners did not have the best opportunity to hear about some of the unique challenges presented by persons in Niagara. I am not saying the people there or even organizing the event did not have good intentions; I am saying it was completely wrong to exclude legal advocates like myself, and probably about thirty or forty other persons (easily) that I can bring with me that have "lived experience" to speak for themselves as to their own personal dilemmas created by either program.

So, as usual, I created my own hornet's nest, not because I am trying to embarrass anybody, but trying to show people what consultation and community inclusion actually involves. I personally never felt included in this Region (for a number of reasons), even though I lived here since 1983, and the least these people could have done was to make an effort to seek my input, and allow me to bring a few individuals I feel would be representative of the Niagara community of "lived experience". It is not that I don't have other ways of making my views known and articulated, because I am involved at other levels where I have provided comprehensive input, and will continue to do so with selected groups. It is that segment of the community I work with that were very upset to know this happened, and they were forfeited an opportunity to present their stories in person. As one of them told me, "there is a difference if I were presenting on my issues face to face, than even if I put it in writing". This particular woman single handedly organized a poverty forum a couple years ago with almost a hundred people in attendance. Why wasn't she invited?

There is symbolism in my presentation, different than anything I can ever write. I was gently prodded by a friend that reminded me of a story I relayed to my local MPP while the Mike Harris government was in charge. This story created a greater interest among even those with financial conservative leanings, when they understood why the policy of making oneself "permanently unemployable" was not a good thing. It killed somebody here, and as executive director of a local community group at the time, I made this an issue, which in turn led to a lot of the push province wide around the ODSP eligibility criteria we have today. I read about myself in Hansard, on Google, in the special collections department at the library, and in other records, and I envy the perseverence and energy I seemed to portray in those days. My friend, who I shared many of the links with, said I can do this again.

I am concerned that somebody might be worried about too many people going on ODSP and not going off, and who might want to tinker with the definition of eligibility once again, therefore putting more vulnerable people at risk. There have been musings by the current Minister that there were too many people on ODSP and the definition of disability is "too broad". This Minister has also been in charge of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, almost leading one to believe that this hugely watered down Integrated Accessibility Standard is going to get employers province wide to suddenly open their doors to people with disabilities. As I tell people, because I was also involved in this process as well, that the standards are an important step, but it is not going to cure the labour market of most of its ills. To tell a person on ODSP who is trying to work, for example, that they will no longer qualify for the higher benefits this program offers, will discourage any of this effort from going further, or worse yet, lead to more people like Stella Mae Williams (the name of the person who chose suicide over likely and imminent eviction when she was cut off her then Family Benefits cheque for trying to keep a part-time job).

I mention this incident because it happened right here in Niagara, and our beloved Peter Kormos, took this to the legislature, as just another example of how mean social assistance rules can become. I wanted the Commissioners to hear about Stella Mae Williams, and others like her that did not become known through the legislature or through my usual publicity pushing efforts. I wanted the Commissioners to know some of the people by name that I have known, year over year, who have turned to suicide, as opposed to continuously living in abject poverty and alone in this world that is created by ODSP, as well as its predecessor, Family Benefits. The rate of break up in relationships between ODSP recipients and working spouses is very high, over ninety percent of those I have known have split, while the so-called divorce rate for the rest of us is about forty percent. Some ODSP recipients have died, while others continue to live desperately alone.

In my community, I am a paradox. I work professionally as a paralegal advocate, taking cases to courts, tribunals and appeals all over. Many times, I attempt to mediate solutions between parties to get something for both sides, at times in very difficult circumstances. While most of my cases are typical events involving companies, individuals, employers and others, and all of them are very important to me, as all have a legitimate issues that need to be dealt with. About twenty five percent of my caseload is poor, many of them trying to qualify for various disability benefits, or to deal with some other circumstance, such as trying to seek health care that is not available in Ontario. I see the world that nobody else sees, other than some of my peers, as well as folks that work directly in social services. I see for myself what has not worked over the years, and I hear from people all the time what would make things work better for them.

It is unfortunate in our society today, there appears to be an addiction to charity and other ineffective solutions, which only deflect the issues, and continue to fail the people they serve. The culture that is created within the charitable context solidifies the dichotomy of our community between us and "those people" (who would be the intended recipients of charity). Donors are told to feel good, be proud and some even seek their fifteen minutes of fame for running major campaigns to support these charities that in the end produce nothing. It is unfortunate in places like Niagara that people that run these kinds of charities have more say about what should be done than those that live the issues. I am not saying that those that run these charities are bad people or do their work with ill intentions; they fail to understand the effect of the dichotomy this creates, and how it impacts on the self-esteem of the people that are provided for.

In other words, I missed my opportunity to tell the Commissioners what my people tell me they need to become more financially self-sufficient or to bring their families out of the kinds of desperate circumstances that lead them to the door of these charities. I value the adage that if you feed a man a fish for a day, he will not be hungry today, but if you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime. We need to get more people that think like me on board to make sure that we stop covering our gaping wounds with band aids and congratulating those that provide the strips. We need more people that can heal the wounds, and make people whole, or at least to the point, where they can choose.

If anybody in charge here in Niagara is reading this, I certainly hope they make attempts to contact me, as I need to belong, and teach people how to stop the bleeding. Your thoughts?

ANOTHER FEDERAL ELECTION GONE - NOW WHAT?

2011-05-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

The recent federal election was a very difficult one for many people. We heard about many of the "dirty tricks" being played such as midnight phone calls, phony calls from Election Canada to tell people their polling station is moved, or false reports that one can only use Photo ID to vote with. These tricks were well publicized, and hopefully being seriously investigated and charges laid where possible. However, there were other things going on that were less publicized, and has only reiterated the position I have taken in my last blog entry, "From We to Me". Over the course of the election, there were reports of low income people getting "egged", racist remarks being openly shared in public forums and poor bashing once again becoming a national sport. These techniques, as well as the dirty tricks cited above, are no less of a vote suppressor for those that might otherwise have exercised their right to vote.

We hear about stories in developing countries, where their democracies are very fragile, where people are getting threatened if they dare oppose the ruling party, or they get rewards for promoting the dictator for yet another term. People get punished in these countries. Many have lost their jobs for exercising their right to vote for an opponent, others had their cars bombed or their homes broken into. In this election, right here in Canada, people's cars were vandalized if they were parked in a yard where a political opponent is being supported. There were also allegations of a fire bombing, as well as bar fights over the election. These things that happened here can only move a small amount further, and our country's democratic principles are no further advanced than those of a banana republic.

Unfortunately, many of the problems that surfaced during the election did not stop. Ardent supporters of the now majority ruling Conservatives are holding it high on top of others that they are "better" than those that supported other parties, morally superior because they supported the "stability" of Harper ... one of them even commented that we now don't have to worry about having regular elections. Hey, dictatorships have that too, where people don't have to worry about elections, because they are never called and when they are, they are certainly rigged in favour of the incumbent. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Ghadafi, Robert Magube, Fidel Castro, and many others felt they did not need elections. Why not? They were costly, inconvenient and who wants to bother with them anyways?

The poor bashing sadly continues too. It is so remarkable how the wealthier classes refer to "their" money, when in fact the majority is inherited or otherwise unearned through investments or other means. I stated in another blog why the wealthy do not work as hard as the rest of us, and please don't try to disabuse me of that notion, as I know too many people who worked themselves to death practically, who were by no means wealthy, while wealthy people would complain that increased taxes would only curb their lifestyle somewhat. Again, this is a pestering inconvenience for them to pay their own way in the society in which they live.

Throughout the election, I asked people if they can afford private health care. Ardent supporters vehemently deny that Harper or anybody in his government will ever cut health care. Well, there is plenty of history on the web with Harper's name on it, and his continued antipathy towards medicare. Ardent supporters did not want to read these articles, as they were blinded by ... whatever it is that made them feel Harper was so inviolate. Some would argue that having a parallel private and public health care would lessen the wait list for the ones that cannot pay. Well, this has been tried in many jurisdictions, and unfortunately, this only made those that cannot pay wait much longer and in some circumstances, get inferior treatment. Many of these same people blocked me on various websites because they could not win an argument with me. I don't care. I do not need their ignorance on my computer anyways; let them go pollute other people's mind space.

One person tried to get me to commit to six months of this government and then return to say whether it was good or not. I'm sorry, we ALREADY HAD FIVE YEARS of this same government and what is going to happen in the next four is the same that has happened in the last five years, except the ongoing hyper-partisanship and destruction of opposition opinions will be on steroids. This already happened, as Harper could not even give Parliament a chance to open or even give a Speech from the Throne yet, but he had already re-appointed two Senators that resigned their positions to run in this election and they lost, only to be put right back in the unelected, unaccountable Senate.

In 2006, Harper ran a reasonable campaign to clean up the Senate, clean up spending, make government more accountable, make government transparent, make leaders in the government accountable to their constituents, and to reign in things like AdScams under the Liberals. I was one of those that was fooled by this platform, and they got my vote in 2006. They had FIVE YEARS to make it right, and they only made these things worse. We have government hiding key issues about Afghanistan, the G20, secret papers that have been left with a Cabinet Minister's girlfriend, a Cabinet Minister that ordered a document altered after it had been signed by the parties, and then lied about it, and lack of answers regarding how much corporate tax cuts, fighter jets and private prisons are going to cost the taxpayer. They were found to be in contempt of Parliament, yet they get elected again.

My faith in some Canadians is not very high. As somebody coming into my polling station on election day jokingly suggested, voters should have to pass a basic civics and economics test before they get handed a ballot. Of course, as electionn workers, all we can do is smile and take their identification, etc. and send them to vote. Apparently, there were pro-Harper ads playing on the radio the day of the election, which is apparently against the elections law. But they got the majority now, so nothing is going to get done about that either.

People around me are nervous about Harper. I tell them there is probably not much we can do, other than watch what other people are finally doing in other parts of the world and standing up to their governments. Harper is going to make us all pay for the billions of dollars in handouts to his corporate friends, corporate tax cuts, untendered contracts, among other things, so that the deficit that was created from these ill informed decisions will be paid for by the rest of us that neither created the deficit or had any benefit whatsoever from the spending that led to it. I ask my ardent Conservative "friends" if they can identify ONE job that was created as a result of a corporate tax cut, they couldn't even do that. Because they know that taxes are only applied AFTER the jobs, equipment, research and development, administration, etc. are paid for ...

I am far too educated and intelligent to believe in any of this bunk anymore. In some ways, I wonder why I even bother voting, and perhaps I should join the growing group of non-voters who are fed up with this archaic, corruptible "first past the post" system that can only be manipulated to lead to huge majority governments with far less than 51% of the popular vote. With more people voting against him than for him, Harper SHOULD try to govern for all of us, but I am not holding my breath.

My guess is people will be understanding what I, as well as many other Canadians have been saying about this, in about two or three years when they find their economic circumstances have not improved one iota, and they seem to be paying more and more for the same basket of goods and services and paying more out of pocket for health care and other so-called "public services".

THE MOVE FROM A "WE" TO "ME" GENERATION

2011-04-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

Let me say something here about this current election. It is a fight or a clash of values of Canadians. The rhetoric and personal agendas has never been so intense in prior elections, even the one in 2008.

I consider myself a follower of politics, at all levels of government, from local, to regional, provincial to federal. I also vote pragmatically, not ideologically. I base my positions on issues only on peer reviewed research and broader based objectives that have something to do with the greater interest of the Canadian public, as opposed to what is great for me. If I voted on the latter, actually no party would speak to my issues, so I probably wouldn't be voting or I'd spoil my ballot. But because I vote for what I see as the greatest interest for the Canadian public, that means I will reject policies that will only benefit high income earners, people of particular ethnic or religious agendas (such as the religious right), or people who believe in "my party right or wrong" (and remaining uncritical no matter how many scandals that party has been involved in or is accused of engineering).

I consider myself intelligent and well-educated and I do approach this election with substantial critical analysis. I live in a region that has a 12.5% post-secondary education rate, below the norm of 27% average across Ontario. Being one of the 12.5%is uncomfortable to say the least, even more uncomfortable having an IQ that is at least well above the average. With it comes a critical thinking capacity often lacking, even in some of the politicians. I also know that some polling research has been done to show that those that are better educated (at a university level), female and urban dwellers tend to vote against Conservative parties. Those with higher incomes also tend to vote Conservative, but this was strangely not universal.

My whole problem with the Conservative Party of Canada is that it is not actually a Conservative Party. The federal Progressive Conservative Party founded under the auspices of John A. McDonald has no ties to the new Conservative Party whatsoever. As a Toronto-based colleague advised me, the new Conservative Party is no more than "Republican wannabes" that desire to move our nation so far to the right that it loses complete touch with the people. They desire to become American. The current Conservative Party started from a western rump of dissatisfied PCs known as the Reform Party, and to some extent, the Western Separatist Party. This Party formed about the same time the Bloc Quebecois formed and for the same reasons, but philosophies were regionally biased.

The Progressive Conservatives under Brian Mulroney ended up to be so unpopular with the Canadian people, not because of any right wing politics (as he wasn't really that far to the right), but because of its accent on federalism (as per Bloc Quebecois, aka Lucien Bouchard's departure from the federal party to lead the new Quebec-based party). As well, people hated Mulroney because he was the father of the GST, which he used his majority to cram through the Senate and use a special clause of the Constitution to add eight more Senators to force this agenda. Others found him unpopular as well, due to his blatant abuse of Parliament and excessive patronage appointments. (Does this all sound familiar, Harper watchers?) After he resigned as leader, Kim Campbell succeeded him as Leader and the subsequent election she called found the PCs with only two seats to its name.

With the growth of the Western rump known as the Reform Party, initially under Preston Manning, and then later under Stockwell Day, and the frustration among moderate Conservatives in Canada seeing a "split vote" among the so-called right, a demand to "unite the right" took place. The Progressive Conservatives were right of centre, but did largely govern from the centre. The Reform Party wanted bold new policies, including many that challenge Canadian values outright, such as the right to universal health care, maintaining an equalization formula between Ottawa and its poorer provinces, and maintaining national standards. Canada was also valued as a peacekeeping nation, as opposed to an instigator of war.

Stephen Harper was never a member of the Progressive Conservative party, or at least had any influence. He did however become a policy advisor to the Reform Party. As policy advisor to the Reform Party, he was critical of the Canada Health Act, as it smacked of "socialism". He would make presentations to various audiences about how Canada had to do away with the Canada Health Act and experiment with privatization. These remarks were not made in an intellectually competent manner, such as those coming from some health economists like Robert Evans might in trying to raise issues in how health care delivery may need to change over time to accommodate an ageing population, to focus on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, to keep drug costs down, etc. Harper's proposal was to scrap universality, invite private health care, and allow people to carry private health insurance for the basics, despite the fact that private insurance will reject almost anybody with pre-existing health conditions (unless you are part of a very large group, such as a large employer like General Motors or the school board). He also attacked the vast majority of Canadians in a famous 1997 speech.

When Stockwell Day became leader of the Reform Party and was forced to express his allegiance to the Canada Health Act (or this would have gone to millions of voters on national television if he didn't), Harper scurried out of there to his new job as Vice President of the anti-medicare and secretive organization, National Citizens Coalition. The National Citizens Coalition, founded by Colin Brown, a very wealthy insurance executive, in 1967, was set up specifically with the goals of preventing the passage of medicare in 1967. While it continues to push for private health care, the NCC has taken up a number of other causes as well. One such cause was the case of Stephen Harper versus Canada, which was an attempt on Harper's part on behalf of the National Citizens Coalition to fight spending limits by third parties in election campaigns. Fortunately, the Supreme Court of Canada put a kibosh to that idea, but this is certainly an idea that Harper will likely take with him to a majority government.

Do Canadians feel it is okay to have large corporations fill the election coffers of candidates and political parties and "buy" off politicians to do their bidding for them? If this decision were to be reversed, say by a new law that Harper might try to pass under a majority, how fast do you think private insurance companies will be paying millions, if not billions of dollars, into a campaign to scrap medicare? Don't think it can't be done. In the U.S., where such spending limits do not exist, the insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry and other related industries have fought and successfully prevented Obama from reforming health care to enable all Americans to access at least basic care.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, Harper left the NCC to join the Alliance, which was then supposed to be more of an amalgmation of the Reform and some PC politicians. As the head of the Alliance, Harper asked why Canada could not join the Americans in the Iraq war. Remember that war that was sparked as a result of a belief they will find "weapons of mass destruction", and even when it was proven there were no such weapons, U.S. President G. W. Bush started the war anyways. It was the Canadian Liberal government at that time that said no to the Iraq war, and thus, possibly another economic sinkhole not unlike Vietnam in the late 1960's-early 1970's. Unfortunately, the Progressive Conservative Party under the then leadership of Peter McKay dissolved into the Alliance in the awkward merger of the "right". Harper's desire for war appears to current with his government's push to pay up to $30 billion on jet fighters, despite his concern about a deficit on the other side of his mouth.

The effect of this is that most of the politicians of the PC era literally disappeared or were forcibly swallowed by the merger. To add to it, the leadership style of Stephen Harper did not include any of the "big tent" style often valued by its former Progressive Conservative Party. As the head of the Alliance, he pushed a law and order agenda, and when the Liberals put forth the gun registry bill, Stephen Harper allowed a free vote on this, and he himself voted in favour of the registry, not once, but twice, before finally changing his vote for the third and final reading, to opposition of this bill. (Yet in 2010 and 2011, he called other MPs a "flip flop" for changing their minds on the gun registry - as hypocritical as he is).

Eventually the Canadian Alliance voted to change its name to more closely reflect its politics. In coming together on this, the new party's founders wanted to recognize the different members of the founding "coalition of the right". It started as the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, or C-R-A-P, for short, which was shortly thereafter caught on time, until the name "Conservative Party of Canada" was accepted. However, like Joe Clark and others, people should not be fooled by the name of the new party; it is just the Reform Party in new clothes.

The new coalition of the right made it difficult for the Liberals to win a subsequent majority under Paul Martin. However, Paul Martin did win in 2004, and it was then that Stephen Harper got together with Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Deceppe, and new NDP Leader Jack Layton, to form some type of "alternative" to Paul Martin's then minority government. This was in an agreement with Stephen Harper's name on it, and he certainly would not have signed such a document had it meant that he would not become the new Prime Minister. Harper will continue to this day to say he was not planning to take over as Prime Minister, although the other two players who were at these meetings, recall this was exactly Harper's plan. For him to be hypercritical of so-called coalitions today when he himself attempted one in 2004, is more like the kettle calling itself black. I am also certain that if Ignatieff won a minority Liberal government, Harper would attempt something similar. Don't kid yourself. Harper's obsession with coalition has nothing to do with this - he wants to keep voters' minds off health care and other important issues.

The Liberals were unable to play down the Adscam and Sponsorgate scandals, which led to Harper's first term in Parliament. He won a minority government in 2006. During his first term, he ran a relatively centrist government as he was cautious, not wanting to see the opposition vote him out on a motion of non-confidence. However, as time went on, the partisan games grew. Into the second term of a minority government, Harper wanted to present more of his true colours and play to his base, especially those in Alberta. In the fall of 2008, the global economy sank, at least in part due to laissez-faire banking regulations in the US and extensive bank bailouts all over the world. Canada still got hit, as did almost all of the western world.

In the fall, Finance Minister James Flaherty, the then see-no-evil, hear-no-evil and speak-no-evil (especially the "r" word), and Harper wanting to throw a "trial balloon" as a first step to his eventual goal of allowing wealthy contributors unlimited access to the electoral process (by first removing the per vote subsidy given to all political parties garnering more than 2% of political support), wanted to table an economic statement. There was no mention of job losses or even a dip in the economy in this Economic Statement. When Stephen Harper went on tour to Welland right after John Deere closed its doors to over 800 workers, Harper told the news media his priority for the area was to intoduce a ban on candy flavoured cigarettes.

In return for his denial of these job losses, Harper was then faced with the potential of a Liberal led coalition government propped up by the NDP and supported in confidence votes only by the Bloc Quebecois. Instead of facing the crucial vote that would have likely resulted in that coalition government, Harper ran away from this conflict and prorogued Parliament instead. During the prorogue, Harper had no choice but to listen to the opposition parties and his government put out the economic stimulus budget of 2009. While there was some benefit to infrastructure investments across Canada with the economic stimulus budget, it was too short lived to create jobs of long-term, permanent nature. Manufacturers were still bleeding jobs across Canada, espcially in Ontario and Quebec.

Some conservative supporters want us to believe that all the jobs that were lost have since returned, but that is not what most of us on the ground are seeing. Our unemployment has not dropped that much, and for those returning to any job, usually took a substantial pay cut - from $30/hour to $10 an hour. Many more people have to take two or more jobs to survive. I know this, a dear friend of mine who worked three minimum wage jobs to support three children on her own recently took a heart attack, and is now unable to return to any of her jobs, and will now likely lose her house that she "won" in her divorce settlement. I know several others who have worked for a long period of time, such as twenty years or more, for Niagara's major manufacturers and since their layoff, have either been unemployed, or working at low wage staffing agency jobs ... most of them have lost their homes, their marriages, and in some cases, their health. I met one of them a couple weeks ago begging for loose change on King Street. I could hardly recognize him, as he looked like he never shaved for a month, and he told me he lived at Salvation Army. Four years ago, he was married and working at a local factory.

The Conservatives are coming back to us to tell us to vote for them to keep the economy stable and strong. Because Harper would only allow staunch supporters into his visits, he would hear nothing from the people I see everyday and those who I see bundled up with several bags of their possessions at Tim Horton's, who used to work and pay lots of taxes. All they want now is a break. He refused to take more than five questions a day from reporters, and this includes the full campaign day, not at each campaign stop. If he is asked about health care, Harper tries to avoid the question. He does not want to vow allegiance to the Canada Health Act, particularly has he has not once enforced the act during his five years of governance, even when clear breaches were taking place in Quebec, BC and in Alberta, with the development of private clinics that attracted medical personnel from the public system to offer quick services to those with money to pay for them, while leaving those without funds to wait even longer with even less doctors and resources to turn to. Harper's position on health care alone should concern Canadians about his true intentions under a majority.

I ask Conservatives online to tell me ONE example of when Harper's government has attempted to enforce or even warn offending provinces of their breaches of the law. These people, because they cannot name even one time, nor can they prove that Harper will not scrap medicare, try to divert the topic to how I am spreading conspiracy theories, or even worse. Well, if I am, then they might as well include the dean of business at McGill University, about half of Canada's economists, most provincial governments, as well as even some former Conservatives that I know who have talked to me about this topic. We are all spreading conspiracy theories. All I can say is once they get their coveted majority, if they manage to brainwash or scare enough Canadians into voting their way, I will then be in a position to say, "I told you so". I am so certain about this, that I am writing about it here. I have never been wrong about these types of things in the past.

They key is how health care will go. Will he openly scrap medicare, or will he just let it starve a painful death? Murray Dobbin, who sits on the board of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, does not think it would be politically correct of Harper to try to kill medicare. He believes he will just let it die, and let others kill it, after they get less and less money to pay for it. Transferring tax points instead of transfer payments is one way to nullify the Canada Health Act. This way, there would be no way for Ottawa to financially punish provinces that allow blatant violations of the health act. Under McGuinty, we have seen cuts to health care, as a direct result of decreasing transfer payments from Ottawa. Health care used to be delivered to the provinces in 50 cent dollars. Now Ontario only gets about 24 cent dollars from Ottawa, which of course forces health care to comprise more and more of the provincial budget (even though the amount of health care isn't actually increasing one iota). We have seen de-listing of many treatments, including foot care, physiotherapy, chiropractic, optometry, etc. Many drugs as well as being de-listed, or only being offered in their generic varieties.

Canadians who are well off do not notice this at all. They often have gold-plated private health plans that pay for most drugs, physiotherapy, chiropractic, foot care, private rooms, dental, etc. Well off Canadians, although not likely the very rich, are those that complain the loudest about their taxes. These are the Canadians apart from the most wealthy that can afford to pay more in taxes. Most of these people have their homes paid for, own two or three cars, have live-in housekeeping help, go on real vacations at least once or twice a year, and can afford to pay their children's college or university tuitions. Yet they complain about paying another penny in income taxes. They are part of the "me" generation. In my view, they are so concerned about themselves, people like me don't have to be concerned about them.

The Conservative platform was analyzed by analysts of various political persuasions and not a single one stated that their "tax cuts" will favour families that have a total income of less than $80,000 a year (esp with only earner), or individuals with less than $90,000 a year. The average Ontario HOUSEHOLD income is about $80,000 a year, but this $80,000is comprised by more than one income, usually two or three incomes. The type of household with a single income earner earning $90,000 or more with an at home spouse, comprises less than 5% of households. Those earning $90,000 on their own are in the top 5% income bracket. The tax break reads that the higher earner can put up to $50,000 of their own income onto the income of non-earning or lower earning spouse. Well, the average and median incomes of Ontario individuals are much lower than $50,000 - period. Most people do not even earn $50,000 without having that much to "give away" to a lower paying or non-earning spouse. Most have an earning spouse, most of which don't make much less than they do anyways, or perhaps is not making too little to benefit this way.

I did a straw poll of people downtown one day. I just talked to people in Tim Horton's, at the bus stop, by the farmer's market, and various others who were downtown on business for whatever reason. Only one person I met admitted to earning more than $50,000 a year (e.g. a lawyer friend of mine, partner in his firm). Virtually all of those who were married had a spouse that was also working. When I read out the exact proposal for this income splitting from the Conservative platform book, only one person felt they "might" benefit from it (even though on closer examination, he wasn't sure when I showed him the chart supplied by TD Economics). He thought that because both his and his wife's income approached $80,000, it might work ... but he realized that he wouldn't benefit much because he makes only $45,000 and his wife earns $32,000, which is pretty close to the national income averages.

I also reviewed the tax free savings account proposal, where people can double the amount of exempt income to keep in them. I asked how many of the people I spoke to even heard of a tax free savings account. About half of them did. Only three that I spoke to used one, or had such an account in the past year. They were nowhere near the maximum allowable even at the current rates. I ask why, and they say they are only able to save so much money. A report by TD Economics recently said more than one third of Canadians are unable to even pay for basics. This does not include the broader segment of our population that is unable to save, or put aside enough money for retirement. This is a substantial group of people that can't even pay the bills they have, and many of them are deeply in debt. This is now, in 2011 ... for those reading this that don't believe this, you are spoiled rotten, and probably part of the "me" generation - only believing you pay too many taxes, that you want to pay for a Lexus instead of a Toyota, or a cottage, instead of just a vacation. Those in the "me" generation know no hardship, and consider these above choices the hardest they've had to make. There were not a lot of people I met like this before the latest recession, but now there are many.

After 2008, I noticed a lot of anger erupting from various corners of society. At one time, Canadians valued a "we" system of politics, a system that benefited all of us, and at the very least offered equality of opportunity and freedom from discriminatory acts. People would answer in political polls their support for universal health care and a progressive system of taxes; those that earn more, should pay more, with the exception that if a business actually does create high paying jobs, perhaps some assistance should be given to help the company keep the jobs in Canada. But after 2008, those of us that were still doing very well, and I know many of these people - they are *not* getting the income from the private sector, but are often teachers, firefighters, engineers working at Ontario Power Authority, road workers, etc. - most of their money is coming from taxes. Yet these same people complain the loudest about the amount of taxes they pay. Even autoworkers who have been bailed out by the billions also complain about the taxes they pay. When I ask them how much they earn, the lowest income among those that stated an answer was $70,000 a year (e.g. a police officer). But if I ask them if we make cuts, should we make cuts to the departments they work for? Oh no, don't do that!

They want cuts to health care, because people "abuse" health care by going to the emergency wards with sniffles. That's not my experience when I speak to health care workers, but their proposal that people pay a fee to go to the emergency ward will only keep people away that have real emergencies. So, I tell them about "so why don't we cut our taxes by stripping your gold plated health benefits coverage, and have you just live by OHIP like the rest of us?" No, no! Yet they are willing to cut OHIP coverage for those of us that don't have a choice. This has all come down to a politics of "me". They do not want to see any cuts in any programs that affect their employment, or any other programs they benefit from, but have no problems cutting the funds available to those that don't have the money or access to gold-plated public service jobs or benefits like they do.

Not all public service workers are like this. I know many teachers, nurses, doctors, and even police officers that worry like hell what will happen if the safety net is cut even further. These people are educated enough that some people will find ways of getting their needs met by crime, and feel that our public services have already been cut to the bone (which I agree to). I have known people who have been unable to buy both food and rent with their social assistance cheques, and it is only getting worse, that they live on the streets, and use their basic needs pay for eating out once a day. One of these guys is in a wheelchair. I don't even want to know what he does at night, or where he sleeps. I have had clients that live in their cars, after they have lost their homes, following job loss, despite 20 - 30 years with a single employer. Governments say they listen to the people, but I don't think they do. We walk on different sides of the tracks, obviously.

Governments are trying to resolve both ends of their problems, by reducing taxes for those that are graduating into the "me" politic, and cutting services to those that need the "we" programs, which is most of us really. Since the politics of "me" started, I have known more people to go to the streets to obtain the drugs they need to deal with what they feel is ailing them. To pay for that, they become small time dealers themselves. I have seen a rapid increase in prostitution among both young males and females, usually starting under the age of 18. I have a few of them come into my office, unable to recall their histories, because the street drugs have wiped out much of the "me" in them. They can't even begin to understand the "we".

The government knows that maintaining poverty in its current state is going to cost them a lot more over time than it will even if they spent billions to make sure nobody lives in need. They know the added costs to the health care system that is caused by poverty. They know that all, other than a very few people, in prison were living in poverty before they got there. Governments know they are throwing good money after bad, by keeping the resources away from those who need them the most. By enabling charities, poverty becomes entrenched and only allows the "me" population of givers to assuage their guilt for failing to ever walk in their shoes or even begin to understand recipients of these programs actually need. Yet, those in know among the "me" generation know darn well that those that receive charity actually do get nothing, not even the hope that things will ever get better - while the "me" giver becomes a hero, and can save a little on their taxes.

Those following the growing group of "me" thinkers just think if we denied health care to those that can't pay will save us all money when they die of their illness anyways. Do not believe this thought has never crossed the mind of our own so-called democratic governments. Just because they cannot take the weak, the frail, the elderly and the disabled behind the woodshed to shoot them dead, or send them to work camps, does not mean they can do the very same thing by attrition. Even if we adopt that attitude about health care, which the U.S. already has, we will be seen as spending way more money per capita, as health care usage per capita is only at its highest when people are at death's door.

Frankly, if it was all about tax dollars, it would be much cheaper just to provide the care, and try to alleviate the causes, including tackling poverty and malnutrition. I live in a country where conditions like scurvy, rickets and TB are not just issues of the past, but they are here today, alive and well in Niagara Region (as well as other places). These are conditions usually found in the very poor, homeless and malnourished. If people had money for food, and safe housing, instead of just $10 left after they pay their housing, they might not be as sick as they are.

Personally, I don't care about the people who live in the "me" politic, simply because they care a whole lot about themselves and just themselves, so they don't really need anybody else to worry about them. If I were in politics, I would be enforcing laws against tax evasion, and making it public who the tax cheats are. I would be encouraging boycotts of companies that pay little to no income tax. If those of the "me" politics want private health care, I will tell them to make a choice: private only or public. If they choose private, they will barred from ever using public health care, even in emergencies. They should have private coverage for that, and if they don't or get turned down because they are already sick, don't turn to the public and suddenly want it both ways. The same would go for health care providers. If they choose to work in a private clinic, they will be barred from receiving any payment from public health insurance. They, too, can't have it both ways. It is only then will these "me" people will realize how much these things really cost on their own, and why these issues matter to other Canadians.

There are lawsuits brought by organizations that issue tax receipts to those that donate to them. That means somebody else (including many of us that disagree sharply with the objectives of these organizations) pays the taxes the people that donate to these organizations don't pay. These organizations are unabashedly partisan and primarily ideological. They include the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, and various think tanks like the Montreal Enterprise Institute, that believe in no government, just control by the wealthiest among us. Most espouse the removal of minimum wage, health and safety laws, and other protections for those not wealthy enough to not be concerned about these things. These organizations are paid for and run by the "me" generation of people who don't have a clue about how other Canadians live. The best I would do as a government is to remove their tax exempt status.

Fore example, the Canadian Constitutional Foundation has filed lawsuits against Ontario to force it to allow private clinics for those that can pay, meaning leave the rest of us with less resources. They stem from situations that otherwise have merit, but should instead lead to a lawsuit simply to make OHIP pay for the services that these people were forced to pay for elsewhere. However, that is not good enough - they want to take away YOUR access to health care, so these people can pay out of pocket to get instant service, while you and I will likely have to wait longer for less doctors to serve us. I have not seen any clear evidence from any peer reviewed resource that states that having a parallel private and public health system would reduce wait times for the rest of us, only for the wealthy that will get help right away. I ask people that support private health care for even ONE study, they come up empty. They don`t even answe me when I ask them if they can afford private health care. They just don`t imagine THEIR Conservative government doing that to us, but take it from those of us that are cynical. I would be frankly shocked if the Conservatives entered into a majority government and throughout their five year term, did not dismantle some aspects of public health care.

Now, for those of you who have not voted yet ... please read this to understand what our life might be like under a Stephen Harper majority. We will not have any poverty help at all, because as one of his candidates said, "Canada has eliminated poverty" (e.g. Chris Alexander in Ajax). When he did say this, he was severely heckled by many people in the crowd. Even if jobs are being created as we speak, they are more likely to be the minimum wage jobs that do not support families, than the type of jobs people held in the past that allowed us to have a middle class. In the meantime, if those who are making good money in the public sector, and you ALL know who your are, it might be a good idea to stop dissing taxes, as it is those very taxes that the rest of us are paying to keep you in your high paying jobs.

For thinking voters that still belong to the "we" generation, do what you can to prevent us from getting a Harper majority, or any majority as far as I am concerned.

MAKING LIFE BETTER FOR ONTARIO'S CITIZENS WITH DISABILITIES

2011-03-27T22:30:00.001-07:00

Last December, the province announced a comprehensive Social Assistance Review. This is part of the all party supported Poverty Reduction Act, passed approximately two years prior. The purpose of this review is to achieve the following objectives:

Review Objectives

The review commission will create a concrete action plan to reform Ontario's social assistance system. A reformed system will:

■help get people back to work
■be part of a larger income security system that includes municipal, provincial and federal programs
■share responsibility for improving the outcomes of low-income Ontarians with municipal and federal governments as well as the people who rely on social assistance
■be simple to understand and access, and provide people in need with basic income support in a fair and equitable way
■work well with other municipal, provincial and federal programs outside of social assistance - including education, training, housing, child care and health benefits - to support employment
■respect the autonomy, responsibility and dignity of individuals and recognize that clients are best placed to decide how to spend their money to meet their needs
■be efficient, financially sustainable and accountable to taxpayers, and
■meet its intended purpose as a system of last resort

Unfortunately, there is no stated objective to reduce poverty among those that receive, or must rely on these social programs to survive. Also, while a stated objective, the present system does more to discourage work than it does to encourage and maximize the benefits from paid work for such individuals and families.

Among my colleagues, there is as much fear and trepidation as to what this review might recommend, or result in, as there is excitement. This concern was outlined in a previous blog entry of mine. Treating persons with disabilities as part of the welfare system is the first biggest mistake of our social safety network, as this effectively prevents individuals from forming families and those with families from getting ahead financially.

As of the time of the 2006 Census, 68.6% of all families consist of two married persons, while an additional 15.5% of families in the 2006 Census were living in a common law relationship. Accoding to the Ministry of Community & Social Services, as of February 2011, 77.3% of the entire ODSP caseload consists of individual persons living alone, while an additional 8.75% are single parents with dependents under the age of eighteen years of age. This means approximately 84% of ODSP recipients are unattached, while a roughly equal number of non-recipients are attached in some way.

According to the National Council of Welfare, the greatest risk of poverty falls on to those who are unattached. When risk of poverty was selected by family type, unattached individuals, married couples and families, were compared, unattached individuals were at least five or six times as likely to live in poverty than those who were attached, or were a part of a family.

One would think logically, then why don't more ODSP recipients get married or involved in a common law union? The answer is obvious, if you are either one of the many unattached ODSP recipients, or one of the 16% of the caseload that is part of a marriage or common law union. If one member of the couple works, their income cannibalizes the recipient's income proportionately, regardless of whether the recipient has earnings of his or her own or not. The non-disabled spouse is obligated to fully support the disabled spouse to an extent that is beyond what is required by law in non-welfare situations. For example, if the disabled spouse was in receipt of worker's compensation, CPP Disability, Long-Term Disability, or any other income, even earnings, these sources of income are completely unaffected by the non-disabled person's income and assets, even though in those cases, the non-disabled person has an equal obligation under law to support their spouse. That means the working spouse goes to work, gets taxed on every dollar they make, and after that, they lose an additional 50% of their income to ODSP. In effect, they are paying more taxes than are required of millionaires!

If a spouse wants to bring their family out of poverty, they must either work in a job that pays them at least $70,000 or $80,000 a year, with benefits, or work the equivalent of 2.5 jobs to keep their family OFF benefits. Conversely, the person with the disability loses more and more of their independence the more money their spouse earns. This is setting people up for some pretty horrible situations: Many times, spouses do not feel obligated to report their income to ODSP, and thus will not disclose their income to their disabled spouses and thus will not declare their income, getting the disabled person in trouble with ODSP. Henceforth, this type of intrusion in the family unit results in a large number of break-ups. In virtually all of the break-ups I have seen for this reason, resulted in ODSP forcing the non-disabled spouse, now separated from them, to pay support - even if they have to sue. Now the non-disabled spouse does not only have to support themselves, they now have to support a second household, while the disabled person does not net a single penny more than they would if they were on ODSP alone.

When this issue is raised in some parts of the community, some common retorts come back about why should well-paid lawyers or teachers or business people be able to keep all of their income if they marry somebody on ODSP? The answer is simple. These people get to keep all of their income if their spouse is working, is on WSIB, is on CPP, is on LTD, or whatever else, apart from ODSP. The tax system takes care of any alleged inequities. If they split up with their ODSP recipient partner, they would still have to pay support as they always would have, regardless of the lower income spouse's source of income. Under the current law, working spouses are required to do more than their obligation under family law, and suffer greater penalties if the relationship does not work. That is why there are so very few people married or living common law that receive ODSP. Thus, their opportunity to escape poverty by marrying somebody is closed to them.

Self-employment is often an option for persons with disabilities that cannot fit in the regular workplace. Many people who start their own businesses carry on and become quite well off, as a result of their own efforts and subsequently, the business supports them. Unfortunately, for those in receipt of ODSP, the rules prohibit any moves that can help get a recipient out of poverty. The self-employment directive, or Directive 5.4, has been set up to keep a recipient and/or their family in poverty and relying on ODSP in perpetuity. Less than 2% of those on ODSP are receiving self-employment income (reports from Ministry sources). Many people who were self-employed have stopped working in their businesses, once the barriers put into place by ODSP are discovered and affect them.

First, the self-employed person cannot hire anybody to assist them. The person is supposed to be the sales person, the accounts recievable, accounts payable, receptionist, researcher, delivery person, service provider, etc. For businesses beyond being a dog walker, babysitter, crafts person, or writer, the business is going to need to grow to accommodate increased business and service demand. A business owner can't tell its customers that "No I can't serve you because if I do, I will need to hire somebody else to help me and I am not allowed to, so I have to keep my business small and non-profitable". First, a business person would be stupid to admit this, as customers would not patronize a business that is known to be operated by somebody with a disability ... due to stigma. Second, this business is not permitted to write off expenses to attend networking sessions with peers, or to purchase career related clothing to help present a positive and business like image to their customers.

If the business person is any good, the customer base WILL grow, and it is beneficial to ODSP for it to do so, as over time, the earnings will increase and in many cases, eventually take the person and/or their family off ODSP. By sticking to the original directive, the person ends up working very long hours every day, often risking exhaustion and then possibly compromising product or service quality as a result of not having paid help to take care of the administrative matters. In a decent business, the telephone might ring twenty to twenty-five times a day. There may be as many as thirty to forty e-mails. Somebody needs to respond to them, or the customers calling or emailing will be upset. However, responding to the calls or the email does not result in billable time, so the time spent doing these items takes away from time that is paid.

ODSP's objection is they don't want taxpayers to subsidize a business. This objection is moot given multi-billion dollar handouts to corporations each year, as well as regularly FUNDED programs for consumer/survivor initiatives, as well as a number of other "community economic development initiatives". Any employee funded under a business operated by an ODSP recipient would be paid for from the business' earnings, unlike the consumer/survivor businesses, such as those run or started by groups like OCAB, or Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses. While this is not an objection to these types of organizations, the government needs to be consistent with its policy applications and objections. If they do not want to let ODSP recipients that operate private businesses hire employees, then stop handing out money to banks, insurance companies, automakers, etc. and discontinue funding for all alternative businesses.
Because the above actions are not going to stop for various policy-based reasons, then the rule against hiring employees must cease.

With this policy in place, we are forcing vulnerable persons to work very long hours, completing all tasks associated with the operations of a business, and replete with limitations imposed on them by their disability. They are expected to be superhuman. Even people without disabilities that operate a business have their limits, and will definitely seek to hire a helper at some point when their business starts to grow. Instead of deducting the money paid out as 100% and thus, risking the family's base income, ODSP should connect these self-employed persons to business consultants to help ensure they hire the right kind of help, obtain the best marketing assistance, and so forth to ensure the business works well. Income that goes to the owner is still declared, but all income going to other workers, or to other purchases should be exempt as it would under Canada Revenue Agency rules.

A further complication of this issue is when one starts or is involved with a business subject to special regulations, such as the Health Profession Regulations Board, the Teacher's College, the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, or the Law Society of Upper Canada, there are other regulations imposed on the business in order for it to keep running, such as continuing education regulations, conference attendances, technological training workshops, and so forth, that ODSP also fails to exempt. The directive only allows conferences where income is being earned. These workshops are necessary to meet the conditions of one's license. At the present time, I know of a few contractors, tradesmen, a registered nurse that practices naturpathic medicine, a self-employed counsellor, a couple of lawyers, and a trades writer, all of whom are considering quitting working altogether because of the ODSP rules restricting their businesses. ODSP needs to ask itself if it is better to keep them working, or to have them sit at home and continue to collect ODSP in perpetuity.

One of my contractor clients has been unable to break the barrier because of this, as in order to be considered credible and able to bid on large contracts, he needs to have paid help. He can't make an adequate living on "Joe jobs" like painting window sills, and installing the odd set of blinds. He needs to be able to access and utilize the labour of other workers in order to even take on larger residential jobs. Another client wants to set up a limousine company, but will run into significant difficulties if he is unable to acquire more than one vehicle for his business and to hire somebody else to do the work, when he needs a break, or wants to grow his business beyond small jobs. In particular, these regulations also apply to the non-disabled spouses of ODSP recipients. Why? What purpose does this serve? How do these regulations help the self-employed recipients or spouses of recipients earn more money, grow their businesses (thus make them a more secure source of income over time), or improve their working conditions?

Some recipients live in subsidized housing, and for these people, it is impossible to start or become involved in self-employment anyways, due to regulations in subsidized housing that irrationally prohibit this. Again, over 70% of businesses that operate outside the home (e.g. operate in a commercial office or industrial space) started in the home or in a garage. Without the chance to start, these would be entrepreneurs are not going to be working, thus setting a further precedent in terms of time spent in subsidized housing and thus increasing the wait list for others waiting to move in. For these recipients even working is severely curtailed. In a report, our own John Stapleton reported on the insanity of these regulations governing earned income and subsidized housing, when it crosses over from income from social assistance. In this case, the recipient was in supportive housing, and as she worked more, her rent went up by a ridiculous amount. She soon fell into arrears, and the only way she was able to budget was to quit her job, and stay on ODSP only. How does that help people return to the workforce?

Another issue is savings. Even if somebody on ODSP was miraculously able to work and put away some money, they are limited to a total of $5,000 in "liquid assets", meaning that if they do not qualify for the generous provisions of the Registered Disability Savings Plan, only issued to those with very severe and visible disabilities, they will retire poor. They will rely only on government provisions for retirement, and given that most of these people live alone, they will definitely be living below the Statistics Canada poverty line. A non-disabled spouse has to drain ALL of their retirement savings in order for their disabled spouse to qualify for ODSP, and after that, cannot replenish this fund, no matter how hard they work. What good does this do? How does this help the economy? This is yet another reason why ODSP recipients cannot get into relationships.

A final issue is earnings themselves. The government was good to increase the amount of money one can keep from working by increasing the percentage of earned income one can keep, and adding a $100 work benefit to offset the small percentage of workers that would lose out on the 50% proposal alone. However, this new policy does not exempt any income. The fifty percent starts from the very first dollar earned, until the person earns enough to migrate off ODSP. For many people who accept minimum wage employment, for example, they feel they are losing, as they are bringing in what they see as less than minimum wage for every hour they work. One Conservative MPP recognized this issue, and attempted to push for an exempted earnings bracket of $500 per individual, and if that person is married, $700 (although as a Coalition, we proposed $1,000 if they still keep the benefit unit). This money would be exempt from any deductions until after they earn more than that amount, then the 50% deduction will kick in.

The province will bitch and complain about the size of their deficit. Don't let them do this, or white wash this deliberate ploy to keep people with disabilities under their thumbs. As long as they keep pouring money into tax cuts for businesses, regardless of whether they hire anybody or not, or worse yet - handing out money like they did with the auto sector, or paying for frills like eHealth, the OLG, multi-million dollar consultants, and so forth, there are NO excuses. Their existing policies and directives keep people in poverty, regardless of how hard they work, or how they try to organize their financial affairs. Normal exits from poverty such as a job or business, or moving in with a spouse, are not available to this population like it is for other people.

Yet the government has a policy on its books that ODSP recipients and beneficiaries can recieve up to $6,000 a year in gifts from "family and friends". There is a lot wrong with this. It is presumptuous: it assumes that all recipients have family members that are only itching to pour their hard-earned monies into the accounts of their loved ones on ODSP. In my experience working with ODSP recipients, I can count the number of recipients that have family that is that supportive on my left hand. Most recipients that have family at all cannot benefit from this, as their own families are also on ODSP (e.g. genetic disabilities), too old or frail themselves, or dead. Others are too far away. A few have families that have completely written them out of their lives, and fail to contact them, let alone provide "gifts". Why can't an ODSP recipient who is able and willing to earn make up this $500 per month for themselves, particularly if they are unable to access any "gifts" from family and friends?

Further, this whole "gifts" policy treats persons with disabilities as some type of charity case. Many do not want to be considered a charity case. When people come into my office to appeal their ODSP benefits, most are tearful, upset and ashamed of being required to ask for these benefits in the first place. Must we punish them some more to make them look like society's Timmy and Tammy? This is not a request to remove this provision, but to equalize earnings, or perhaps make earnings even more exempt because of the cost of obtaining these earnings. As far as I am concerned, a non-disabled spouse should be exempt - period, or at worst, exempt in terms of $500 per month per member of the benefit unit, including themselves, if they are going to be kept as part of the benefit unit ... at least that way, they are providing a "gift" from family of sorts, that should be equivalent to a gift from say, one's parents or siblings. Why is a "gift" from a parent or sibling exempt, but not exempt if it comes from a working spouse? The inconsistencies and ideologies that mount these policies are not only confusing, but unfair for many groups.

The final issue is definition of disability. This is one of the concerns that has led to rifts within the legal community about these programs. Ontario does have a fairly generous program compared to other programs in other provinces. A disability program should not require one to be "permanently unemployable" or "severely disabled", but must present proof that they have a verifiable disability that leads to substantial restrictions in a number of areas, such as working, caring for oneself, engaging in relationships, interacting in the community, etc. but not all of them. The existing definition works fine, with some cases to be reviewed in a set period of time, if it appears the disability is of a time limited nature. Others are long term, and should be subject to rapid reinstatement if a job does not work out. Restricting the definition of disability only results in more long term cases on Ontario Works, or people cycling in and out of Ontario Works without ever getting permanently back into the labour force. I know many people who are on OW for years at a time, simply because they lack a family doctor to assist them with their ODSP application, or they have unrecognized barriers. For example, an inability to drive, in itself, as long as the reason for it is medical, should be deemed a substantial restriction that should qualify one for disability benefits.

People who consider themselves fiscal conservatives will consider the cost of these proposals, and scream. However, the cost of NOT doing these things will keep people on ODSP for life, and the numbers of those with earnings will continue to remain very low. Indirectly, medical costs associated with depression, poverty, isolation and social exclusion will more than make up for what has been "saved" by keeping them on this punitive system.

Your thoughts?

PROTESTING FOR A BETTER LIFE

2011-02-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

We take it for granted that we believe in a democracy.

Perhaps, we take it for granted that we do not live in a police state, where every action of ours is watched and punished when it moves against the state's ideology. Over the past year though, I begin to question that assumption as well.

But are taking all of this so much for granted that we do not see our democracy and freedoms diminish before our eyes? All around us, people in other countries, both democratic and autocratic are taking up arms against their states.

The power of the people at this stage will one day be written into our history books and be representative of change in our world history. I watched proudly as the people of Egypt took up peacefully against their own government dictatorship of 41 years demanding none other than Mubarek's resignation and a state where people worked, participated and moved freely within.

People around the world watched as Mubarek publicly resigned, left his office in Cairo and turned over power to the military that is now setting up a constitutional commission and is attempting to develop a new way of electing its leaders.

In Greece, people protested the new austerity crisis, where government is reacting to cut more and more and gut what represents to its people of its democratic and social institutions, as more and more Greeks live in poverty and can't find jobs. This angst has spread to Europe, where France has once again faced its own people pushing to moderate the austerity agenda and restore certain worker's rights.

In Ireland, where North American leaders have pointed to where corporate tax cuts have "worked", unemployment has recently hit a crisis point whereby many Irish companies are closing after being in business for generations. The concentration of wealth has never been so horrid worldwide as it is today, a mere repeat and exacerbation of our life just before the Great Depression.

In Great Britain, the new Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition led by David Cameron, promises to make deep cuts to almost everything that walks. Benefits for the poor have been decimated, health care for the elderly and persons with disabilities tightened up and housing councils are being sold to private interests. Voters seem to vote for leaders without agendas, without plans, other than to cut what is there, but not to hurt "the job creators" - or big business, despite the fact less and less jobs are actually being created.

This movement should concern us, and perhaps we should pick up pickets and do the same here. At the present time in the state of Wisconsin, newly elected Governor Scott Walker and his Republican dominated House have decided to press ahead by moving the clock backwards on worker's rights and even the right to collectively bargain as a union. One might think, "I'm not in a union, so this does not affect me", but this is only its most visible target. Health care and social benefits to the elderly and persons with disabilities have also been slashed.

What happens when a state gets this way? To me, this is not nation-bulding, and I would NEVER support any political party or leader that seems to go on this track. A governance plan of cuts and more cuts, means no nation building at all, no cohesion and no respect for the people that paid into developing it. These types of cuts invariably always wind up costing the public more money out of pocket for services we used to get for "free" or low cost, and in general - we tend to pay more out of pocket for these things than we get back in any reductions in taxes paid.

Taxes pay for civil society. Cutting the services that taxes pay for reduce this civility to much of what our society is becoming - rich against the poor, blacks against the whites, Christians against the Muslims, etc. The "other" groups become the ones responsible for the circumstances we find ourselves in. News outlets and call-in talk shows come out with allegations that people receiving income assistance from the state are pushing the whole nation into debt, when there is scant evidence to back any of this up.

A new poll that was published in Saturday's paper by Angus Reid indicated that the federal "Conservatives" hold a 13-point lead over its rival Liberals. When broken down by education, those with less education tend to support the "Conservatives", while those with more education tend to vote Liberal and somewhat NDP. Males tend to be more "Conservative" than females in all education groups and regions. I put quotes around the word "Conservative" because Stephen Harper's party is NOT the party of John A. McDonald or John Diefenbaker. It is an amalgam of Republican wannabes from Alberta, Preston Manning's Reform Party and Stockwell Day's attempt at pushing for an "Alliance" between the federal parties of the right. The former Progressive Conservative Party died the day Peter McKay agreed to the merger.

Canadians that support the "Conservatives" have no clue that the old Progressive Conservatives, even under the likes of Brian Mulroney, no longer exist. The party is now the party of the "slash and burn" variety, whereby Canada's historical ties to human rights abroad and within has diminished, its commitment to equality and ending poverty non-existent ... corporations will take care of us, if we only cut their taxes down to zero. Let the CEOs decide what social programs we need, they want to say. Stephen Harper said himself as the policy spokesperson for the Reform Party that Canadians would not recognize Canada once they would be done with it.

Canadians are either wilfully blind or are swallowing the hype from the increasingly Fox News like media in our own country that makes the Conservatives seem as moderate as their former counterparts. Yet, Canadians, when asked the right questions would understand why a majority government of this type might not be good for the majority of us. Most of us cannot afford to cover more of our health costs out of pocket, or pay into private health insurance for basics. We might have some problems with the idea of charter schools (where many of them are funded by private corporations), whereby wealthier families would be hands down able to provide a good education for their kids, while poorer kids will attend schools with diminishing and non-existent resources.

Yes, these things are provincial and Harper is federal. However, Harper has control over the purse strings, and can make decisions such as the "trial balloon" that he mysteriously allowed one of his favoured Cabinet Ministers to float over us this past fall to cut over $50 billion in transfer payments to the provinces and let the provinces have full autonomy over their own issues. (Normally, Harper is not fond of letting any of his Ministers speak out of turn, so this "trial balloon" seems to have been strategic). Then, with a fellow tax cutter like Tim Hudak, possibly forming the next provincial government in Ontario, it does not look good for Ontario.

I worked and made very good money by mid-1990's standards when Mike Harris was in government. Mike Harris cut our provincial portion of taxes by 30%, and basically to be honest, I did not spend more money in the community. I just paid down debts and put into investments like RRSPs and so forth. This is the same thing that 99.9% of other well off taxpayers did. Very little of this influenced job creation.

At the same time, the community around us became a war zone. People on welfare lost their homes, frequently moving from one place to the next, and children changing schools multiple times per year. I counted over a dozen suicides that were directly connected to Harris' cuts in his first year alone in my community. As I changed careers and moved on into my current legal practice, I still note a large number of my families undergoing foreclosure, people losing their teeth to various health conditions and not being assisted with dentures, social housing falling apart, gun shots in my neighbourhood, a substantial percentage of young people hooked on crack cocaine and working the streets, and people stopping us asking for loose change.

More and more of my clients are being screened for jail terms for non-violent offences, all in the name of public deterrance. I fail to see how a jail sentence is going to help many of these people, except keep them out of the legitimate labour force for a few years until we can secure a pardon for them. Of course, people don't want to go to jail, but the whole punitive thinking has been proven by peer-reviewed research to be ineffective in stopping crime, or even rehabilitating offenders. Harper is building more federal facilities to store people in, until they are released and have no choice but to commit another crime, when they find nobody will hire them, their families have disappeared and they have no money to rent or lease an apartment.

Cutting the taxes paid by businesses or by wealthy citizens is not going to create jobs. Jobs are created because a company needs a worker to do a certain job, not because it pays less taxes. It is the very nature of business to try to cut corners by hiring fewer people if it can get away with it to produce more. Businesses are not accountable to our government or to its employees, but only to its shareholders. If a corporation can show it can cut costs and reap a major profit, then the CEO gets a huge bonus, and the shareholders walk away with bigger dividends.

Tax cuts do not spur spending by these businesses, particularly on jobs or increasing the salaries of workers they already have. If you work at Wal-Mart, know that the corporate taxes they have been paying have been sloping downward for the past decade or more, but have your wages gone up any? I thought so. There is only a certain amount of spending that better off people will do; it quickly declines at its maximum marginal value. Businesses, as with families, only spend up to the point of its maximum marginal output. You will not purchase more gas, more groceries, more clothes, etc. than what you and your family need, even if you had a ton of disposable income left over after these necessary items are purchased. Once this slope is crossed, the future is considered and that is where investments and other non-economic drivers come in, e.g. retirement planning, paying off debt.

A better approach is not to bail out the banks, the automakers and other companies that probably caused themselves to go insolvent, but to provide assistance to those at the lower end to either obtain better jobs (e.g. infrastructure investments), increased income supports (e.g. employment insurance, social programs, pensions), and reducing or eliminating punitive rules in social programs that prevent incentive. If I were unfortunate enough to rely on social assistance, and was only able to purchase a roof over my head, the only "stimulation" I am providing is to my landlord, and not to the grocery store, the bookstore, the movie theatre, the Swiss Chalet, ther neighbourhood bar, etc. because I have no more money to spend at these other places ... the consequences of not eating well are well known, and I suppose it creates more jobs for the doctors and hospitals and pharmaceuticals, but given that much of this is publicly funded ... this is why health care is eating up more and more of our budget.

All I know is there might be a federal election around the corner, and I hear so many people tell me they trust Harper with the country's future. I don't. I have seen what he has done to the Senate, with the census, with political financing, with corporate tax cuts (while increasing some taxes on lower and middle incomes), increasing spending by the billions on fighter jets, planning G20's in the midst of Toronto and then falsely arresting over 1,000 people in it, etc.

I would be willing to hear what good Harper has done, but that is so miniscule compared to the harm. This is not a government that is based on a plan, a strategy, with the interests of all Canadians but instead it is a government of ideology. If Harper got a majority in the next election, I would love to be the one that does the polling, except this time I will ask the correct questions, and I am sure people will be very sorry they have voted this majority in.

Who to vote for? I think this is part of why some are moving to Harper, because the Liberal leader does not present well, and the NDP does curry favour with the public, as they do have ideology of their own. What we need is a better voting system, one that allows us to vote for a candidate of our choice, separate from the leader or the party of our choice. One can still vote for a local Conservative candidate, as there are many smart men and women in this party that are running, just like in any other party, but vote for a different leadership.

Unfortunately, none of the big parties will go for it, as they see this as eroding their base, and preventing majorities. My question would be then: What is the benefit to our country of majority governments that run roughshod over the rights of all Canadians, do whatever they like, regardless of what they campaigned on, and then destroy the country or province, and then leave a huge deficit for the next government?

I tend to prefer minority governments myself, with the power and movement for coalitions, both temporary and long-term, depending on the issues. That is how many western European countries operate, but why not ours?

Your thoughts?

THE TALE OF TWO NIAGARAS AND THE DSBN ACADEMY

2011-01-30T12:26:00.000-08:00

There has been a recent announcement by the District School Board of Niagara about their plans to create a "DSBN Academy" aimed at educating students from low income families, and to encourage more of them to move on to college or university. This announcement came out of the air. It was not campaigned about in the recent municipal election, nor was there a period of public meetings or consultations on the topic. Again, this was yet another idea from some Sunshine Club member deciding what was "best" for low income families, especially with nary an organization that speaks for low income families in Niagara -- despite the region having the second highest rate of unemployment in Canada.

The response to this issues was predictable, according to the Board chair, but they are pushing ahead with it anyways. They have several "partners" on board, such as the YMCA, Community Care, Brock University and Niagara College. The post-secondary institutions may soon host this "school", but even that is not guaranteed. Community Care is on board, of course, so they have a permanent place for their "poor" clients, as opposed to making an effort to get people out of poverty to begin with so they wouldn't need segregated schools of this type in the first place. The YMCA also offers employment programs.

My first question was, "Did they ask a single low income family if they wanted a program like this?" Of course not. I did. Not a single one of those that I asked will enroll their children in this school. In the regular mainstream school system, there are thousands of low income children in attendance, and some schools are better than others at addressing the problem. The schools that do the worst job of it expect the parents or the students to identify themselves as "in need", and then be given "charity". Because only a small minority of such families in this position come forward this way, the number of low income families is grossly underestimated. Moreover, most of the low income families I know do not even go to food banks or other agencies for help, because of the shame and ridicule they feel they will get in response to their request for help.

Even on Face Book and on the public section of websites for the newspapers themselves that published the story about the new school, it is opposed at least 5:1 by the public, many of whom are also low income themselves. I know for the period of time in my youth when I was from a low income situation, I was not eager for others to know about my situation, so I kept a lot of my feelings and experiences to myself. I would not ever consider asking the school or anybody outside for help, nor did any of my friends that found themselves in similar situations. There is no evidence to suggest any of this has changed, where children are coming to school without boots, saying they "forgot", the same with their lunches ... easier to forget than to admit there are no boots or lunches to be found. I am also aware of at least two families with kids that say they are "allergic" to pizza on pizza days, or simply don't feel like going on that camping trip.

The school board tries to tell parents to come forward with their situation and ask for help, but in my experience through working with these families, this often came with other strings attached, such as Children's Aid getting called, teachers expecting less of the students in these circumstances, or unnecessary referrals to "diagnose" the child with some type of ADHD or other mental illness de jour. Parents know these risks. They hear it happening to others in their housing complex, or to their friends and neighbours, and then they do not want to dare. It is less costly to do without than to put onself in the spotlight of being amongst the "unwashed, unclean and generally less valued" of our society. I have heard many earfuls given to me, even when I suggest a trip to community care, emergency welfare assistance, etc. I can only imagine the horror that would be felt by their kids who would not only have to self-identify to their teachers, etc. of their situation, but to their neighbours, etc. when they see them bussed off to the "poor kids' school".

The other issue with this school is that students not eligible for enrollment if either parent is college or university educated. This continues to feed on the stereotype that people are poor because they are not educated and lack skills. I have come across many well-educated low income persons, many of whom do not even readily admit being low income because of this stereotype that also blames them for whatever it was that did not lead their status to rise with their education. Many live at home with their parents, attempting to stay off the welfare rolls. Others attempt to continue their schooling, at least on a part-time basis. Others are working in low wage, low skill jobs that don't even require any education to do, as they have been screened out of better paid work for various reasons.

The other requirement is that parents have to put in 15 hours a month in volunteer time for the new school. Again, there is a broad assumption that even though they are bussing the kids in from all over Niagara, that the parents in question have their own means of transportation to do this volunteer work. Niagara always had a belief that everybody living in the region can drive and has access to a personal vehicle, and if they don't for whatever reason, it is because the person is a drunk, a drug addict or did something criminal to "deserve" having lost their license. Most non-drivers in Niagara do not fit that description at all, yet they are ridiculed, blamed, attacked and belittled, and left out of most opportunities that Niagara's employers reserve only for drivers. The one study that I am aware of is that among adults that use employment assistance services in Niagara, 93% of them do not have both a driver's license and a car.

While their education would be streamed to college or university attendance, and these students would be guaranteed summer jobs, it would also seem to me that the resources, limited as they may be, will only be taken out of the maintstream schools where the vast majority of low income students will continue to attend. For those remaining students, or those that apply and do not get into the Academy for whatever reason, will only continue to remain close-mouthed about their circumstances and try to survive the mainstream school system that will only be more hostile to them, as there will even be less resources to go around.

To me, more work needs to be done to get the PARENTS out of poverty, as opposed to trying to stop what some call a "cycle of poverty". The cycle needs to stop at the children's parents, not at the children themselves. If a parent has financial resources, then there will be less of a need for a "poor kids' school" in Niagara. While politicians continue to pretend the recession is over for people in this region, as well as most of Canada, they ignore the fact that there has been little job recovery. I am still talking to adults that don't even care if they work minimum wage, etc., who are having major trouble even finding part-time minimum wage work at a Tim Horton's. If there was a job recovery, there would be nobody like this.

The problem that people do not see is that I understand people's lives from an ethnocultural approach. This is how people live out their lives on a day to day basis, what they talk about, what they look forward to, who they hang around, how they set up their homes, etc. If you speak to people who live in long term poverty in Niagara, they do not talk about being part of anything, like a community group or even a church group. They do not talk about working out a gym, nor do they talk about going for a recreational swim or a skate. They purchase most of their clothes at thrift stores, if they have extra money at all. Most have never been to other parts of the region, measured in lengths of time in years, not weeks or months. They have friendships, but they are usually unstable, or only with people who are in similar circumstances. Only a minority of them attend agencies for assistance; when I ask them why, they say that the agencies in question "won't do anything". They never talk about going to the movies, eating out, going on vacation, or anything.

When I speak to people of the middle or upper middle classes of Niagara Region, they speak of activities they have enrolled their children in, some involvement they may have had with their children's schools, a recent trip the family took up north to "relax", or a garden they are attempting to grow in their backyard. They talk about books they've read, meetings they've attended, or items they recently heard discussed on the news. Some like to talk about their "gadgets", as many people like to use electronics that seem to be falling in price over time ... they talk about their iPods, iPads, Black Berries, cell phone plans (and which ones are a rip off), as well, where their family went to eat last weekend. Occasionally, there may some discussion about investments, particularly in who is best to work with, and how badly or how well they fared in the recession.

Among the better educated middle and upper class, politics, economics, theories and medical advances become more of a topic of discussion, and these people appear to be more inquisitive and open about different ideas. Among the lower income people, I only hear questions, "Do you think McGuinty is going to give us a raise? What do you think is going to happen to my special diet allowance?". To these people, the "rich" are a monolithic group of people, who the lower income people perceive to be receiving a disproportionate amount of help for their issues. Whenever I try to explain that people are very different from one another even within their respective economic positions, the lower income people find it hard to believe. That there is as much unhappiness among the middle and upper classes is hard for them to believe as well, although the source of their issues tend to be very divergent.

However, among lower income people, the issues are less divergent, as lower income people are unable to experience the same range of experiences as people in the middle and upper middle classes. Low income people don't concern themselves as much about the stock market, or the economy, because they do not feel they are a part of it, even though many of these issues also have some impact on their successes as well. It is not that they do not want the same things as anybody else. They do. When I ask low income people what they want, their answers are very similar to what the answers are from middle and upper income families. They want their own homes, good schools for their kids to go to, good health, an interesting job, to take a trip somewhere, etc. The difference is that the lower income people often don't have the range of experience with many of these issues as others do, and tend to involve themselves less with their children's schools, with the community, etc. than others do.

However, because the lower income people want the same things as others, they do not want to be be distinguished by others as "poor", and they are very much aware of how most others think about them. If you were in a situation where others would typically think negatively about you, would you be public about belonging to this disadvantaged group? Mental illness is a good example. Many people suffer from this issue, or have family members that do, yet many people, regardless of wealth or lack thereof, refuse to seek help from the traditional "mental health system" because of its power to label one and deem you to be "different" and "not like other people". Poverty has a similar impact on one's experience - most try to hide it. A recent study on food insecurity found that 1 in 8 people are insecure with respect to being hungry at least part of each month. Yet less than 1 in 5 of those food insecure persons ever sought help from a food bank.

I do believe if there was a voice for low income people in Niagara, this "poor school" would be a non-starter. The lives of Niagara's poor have been and continue to be depicted and assumed by Niagara's non-poor, usually those that have some degree of power. To me, this is unacceptable. The poor should have their lives determined by others, no more than the lives of other people of at least some means should be. If the education bureaucrats really wanted to find a way to decrease the drop-out rate among poor students and get more of them to attend college and unversity, there are other ways to do this. One great example is called Pathways to Education, which was started in Toronto's lower income neighbourhoods, and has since spread to other communities. The success of this program is unprecedented - drop-out rates have been cut to less than 20% of the percentage they were prior to the introduction of Pathways, and the number of participants going on to college or university have substantially increased to a level that is closer to those from non-poor families.

The difference with Pathways is that it is conducted in the child's home school. They do not go anywhere else for this program, nor do they line up for a special class or some other tell-tale location for this program. Nobody has to know about the child's participation in this program if the child chooses to keep it this way. The why of Niagara's public board choosing the segregated option is obvious to me; they why not of choosing the integrated option is not so obvious. Hopefully, there will not be enough poor families registering for this school to make it worthwhile, so it would have to be cancelled and perhaps, Pathways be put on the table.

Your thoughts?

BE GOOD TO YOUR NEIGHBOUR ON CHRISTMAS AND BASH 'EM ON THE HEAD THE OTHER 364 DAYS OF THE YEAR

2010-12-25T22:29:00.001-08:00

I don't know about you, but while I like Christmas, I have little tolerance for the hypocrisy of the charitable sector and the upper middle class and some wealthy families in our country. Many of these people are quite active in "adopt a-family" campaigns, "give a child a Christmas: and "Christmas hamper" programs that they forget that the other 364 days of the year, these same people bash the same people who they just sponsored for these Christmas charities as "leeches", "lazy", "failures", etc. While I don't think ill is begotten by these campaigns, but little thought is given to the targets of them, how they feel about being adopted, pitied, awash with charity and fake neighbourly love, while at the same time, other days of the year, punished for their very position and circumstances.

This does not include all people of upper middle class or wealthy sectors, but a good amount of them. This also applies to "back to school". Newspapers are awash with media poornography dealing with how "wonderful" some company or organization has been to raise so many dollars from all of their "fortunate" (therefore, respectable and heroic) members to donate to all those "poor, pathetic, down-on-their luck failures" in our society. While they would never identify such persons as failures, an alarming number of people that give to charities consider those that receive from the same to be failures. Surveys have been done of staff in the charitable sector, and it was found they are just as likely to hold prejudicial views of those that approach them for help that members of the general public do.

For example, it is believed by these people that people are poor because they do not manage their money well, that they were wrongfully discharged from psychiatric or penal institutions, that they have no skills or lack a high school education. This is becoming less and less the norm; in fact, the norm of those that turn to charities are people who are really no different than members of the general public. Poor bashing originates from the necessity to create "otherness" in the population of the poor and homeless. People that donate to charities think they still have their jobs because they possess a work ethic and "work hard". Research originating from Jones and Harris blames the "fundamental attribution error" for this way of thinking, where if something horrible happens to somebody, that that person is somehow to blame for their circumstances and if something good happens, that person somehow did something to deserve it. This attribution error has self-serving properties, as it assuages those of us that are not falling on hard times that it will not happen to us, as we lack the internal qualities we attribute to those that these things happen to (e.g. lazy, mentally ill, a criminal). I shown readers in an earlier blog that laziness does not only reside in some of the jobless, but many wealthy and working people too. Wealth today is less likely to be earned as it might have been decades in the past.

In the recent Toronto municipal election, people elected Rob Ford because he appeared to be "an ordinary guy". People like Rob Ford and his brother, Doug Ford, both ran and won in the past municipal election. Both grew up as and remain to this day to be multi-millionaires. They own a company that was handed down to them by parents and likely grandparents that started it and made it successful. One only need see that if either Ford has enough time to be full-time councilor and Mayor, respectively, they are obviously not "working hard" in their business that they seem to be so responsible for. Being a member of a corporate board of directors or an owner of a large company is really not that much work. You just pay other people to run it for you and stop by once in awhile to make sure they are doing a good job. It is likely other people, perhaps, other members of the Ford family or perhaps, even hired management is doing the real work in this company. While I am not saying the Fords are doing anything wrong or their gains were ill-gotten, they cannot realistically portray themselves to be "ordinary guys". In my view, a single parent that works three part-time minimum wage jobs to keep her family's head above water works much harder than any CEO and nobody will convince me otherwise.

They, like most other wealthy people, won what is known as the Ovarian lottery. The "ovarian lottery" was named by Warren Buffet, one of the world's richest men, one of the few who will actually speak out about the nonsense of further tax cuts for the wealthy. Most wealth, high incomes and high level opportunities are inherited in some way - either by money given to them by living parents to complete their education, a business successorship, an inheritances after the parents or other close relatives die or similar circumstances. More about Buffet's analogy is written in Linda McQuaig and Meil Brooks' book entitled "The Trouble with Billionaires".

Before those of you reading this think this is a "left wing" commentary (which I don't understand as I don't relate well with the so-called left either), this book and its analysis was rated very positively by the managing editor of the National Post, typically a small-c conservative publication. There are others that are not as famous that also speak out about the wrong-headedness of further tax cuts for wealthy people. Tax cuts for corporations has never been proven to increase the salaries and benefit levels of those working for these companies, nor have they proven to distribute wealth or even opportunity equitably among the whole population. The founder of Wal-Mart, for example, was also one of the world's richest men, but we know people working at Wal-Mart earn very close to minimum wage. The same applies to the Weston family who still owns the largest stake in Loblaw's grocery stores and most workers in these stores are minimum wage and part-time.

Moreover, in their latest book, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everybody, comparisons among so called "rich" nations are made and various factors, such as infant mortality, incarceration rates, prevalence of certain kinds of health conditions (such as diabetes, heart disease), high school graduation rate, etc. were compared on the basis of a single independent variable: the gap of wealth and income within the nation's population. Wilkinson is an economic and a medical epidemiologist that is a full professor in London, England. His co-author, Kate Pickett, is also a professor of epidemiology and is a Career Scientist with the National Institutes of Health Research.

In Harper's Canada, the only real career path of the future will be as a police officer, a correctional services worker, a probation and parole officer, security consultant and other "criminal justice" type careers. Harper's current agenda of being "tough on crime" is going to prove itself to be not only a dismal failure, but a financially irresponsible one as well. Our crime rate has actually dropped over the past couple of decades, as an aging population is less likely to breed a new (and growing) generation of violent criminals. Further, research cited in Wilkinson and Pickett has shown that non-violent offenders entering the penal system are further away from being rehabilitated and are more likely to commit further and more violent crimes in the future. In this age of "zero tolerance", economic distress is increased among those caught up in it who can ill afford to adequately defend themselves. Even the Provincial Offences Act of Ontario has taken on a very heavy handed approach to many of its offences, making more of them "strict liability" (which means there is less flexibility in defending oneself as well as range of penalties available regardless of the defendant's circumstances). The goal here is to send more and more people to jail, more and more people to destitution and more and more people into circumstances where they can come out much more distressed and recalcitrant.

I don't care what proponents of tougher crime laws want. They have a false sense of security with tougher crime laws in place. They tell us, "if people just think before they commit the crime, then they won't get punished". That is easy to believe from a middle class, supportive familial context, where opportunities, money and resources are not a problem. Those of lesser circumstances are not necessarily more violent, but they can get caught up in things that will now can result in a penal sentence. This list includes failure to pay child support, failure to appear in court (e.g. sometimes it is hard to notify somebody of their court date when the defendant does not have a fixed address), driving under suspension, alcohol and drug related offenses, prostitution-related offenses and some property related offenses. Yes, these things can result in jail terms. They say there's no debtor's prison in Canada, but there are more than a few ways where unreconciled debts and fines can eventually put one in jail.

Persons with mental health issues can sometimes join a diversion program where they can participate in a treatment program instead of going through the penal system, and for this group of people, this has proven to be effective. However, most of the people who are caught in these cycles are not always involved in the mental health system, have few supports outside of the same people that got them in trouble in the first place, and very little money. A broader crime prevention and neighbourhood rehabilitation strategy would be much more effective than a "get tough" approach on crime. Open, supportive and non-traditional supports to persons living in disadvantaged situations can prevent people from going that direction in the first place, or get them to change their behaviour.

I am not opposed to tough sentences for child molesters, murderers, organized crime, etc. In fact, I would also like to see a "tough on crime" movement for corporate crimes, such as tax evasion by company executives, pilfering of pensions funds from employee trusts, embezzlement, contractor fraud, etc. by so-called "white collar criminals". These sorts of "white collar types" are least likely to go to jail in Canada, even though they destroy many lives and are often unrepentant for what they did and usually repeat their crimes many times before they finally get shut down. If they do go to jail, it is usually for short terms and usually in favourable conditions (e.g. minimum security, early release for "good behaviour").

It is so ironic that those that support continued and increased inequality in our society seem to believe that "welfare fraud" is a huge problem, while corporate fraud is not. It is in fact the other way around, especially given the government's own statistics, as cited by others. This information came up during the inquest into the death of Kimberley Rogers, who was convicted of "welfare fraud" for having the audacity to use OSAP to get her college diploma while trying to get by on a very reduced welfare cheque. Rogers ended up getting house arrest and being barred from receiving welfare as her penalty ... as a result, she fell very far behind in her rent and was basically a prisoner in a very overheated apartment lacking air conditioning during that hot summer. She died, while she was also pregnant with her first child. Welfare fraud was studied and was found to constitute less than 1% of all monies paid out to recipients. Income tax evasion or fraud is known to be much more common and involve greater amounts of money, but only rarely gets prosecuted. The reason for this is that those that subvert our income tax laws often have the resources of highly skilled accountants and tax lawyers and can afford to front a strong defense, if charged.

At the same time, the same people that endorse policies that lead to a more unequal society tend to give to charities that do nothing to advance the interests of the poor. I have yet to find a single person who was brought out of poverty as a result of seeking help from a food bank, a homeless shelter or any similar charity. After they get their nourishment this month, they will only be hungry again and in need of help the next month, all the while those giving and perpetuating these charities continue to benefit from charitable tax deductions and other ways to hide their wealth. To me, a business would do a hell of a lot more for the poor by hiring people off the welfare rolls, qualified to do the work of course and paying them decent wages. For those they cannot hire, they can sponsor scholarships and trust funds to allow low income people to get a post-secondary education and/or to develop their own assets.

Organizations like Social and Enterprise Development Innovations provide an alternative to perpetuating poverty among the poor and treating them so much like outsiders like we do now. There are programs they develop to assist low income people into developing their own businesses, setting up individual development accounts and furthering their education. The Metcalf Foundation of Toronto also sponsors research and programs that assist in change development as well, much of it through awareness of how current welfare programs serve to keep people in poverty. Social class mobility in Canada has substantially declined since the late 1980's, given the tightening of social program eligiblity and the softening of the labour market. To argue that everybody has equal opportunity may be true, but for many, that opportunity is very, very difficult to access when society continues to put barriers in place to those that need this access the most.

Your thoughts?

WINTER IS COMING ... So is Christmas

2010-11-29T21:24:00.000-08:00

Winter is coming in Niagara.

We haven't had much of the "white stuff" (or snow) yet, although other parts of Ontario have already had their first snowfall or maybe their second or third by now.

At this time of the year in my region, Out of the Cold revs up its engines and our Public Health Department issues weather warnings when the mercury is dipping too low to bear. Stores have been chiming in for Christmas since the first of July, but are really chiming it in now ... in mid-November, the annual Tree of Lights celebration takes place with the Mayor pressing the button to light up City Hall like a flame. I always wondered what would happen if the Mayor ever pressed that button and nothing happened.

Television begins to show recurrent seasonal movies and holiday themed episodes of regular series' like House, Boston Legal, etc. All day Sunday, movies showed Santa here, Santa there, and commercial jingles everywhere. In the papers, at least one or two writers beg for people to put Christ back into Christmas. I am always puzzled when people say this.

That only makes me laugh as it is known fact that Christmas does not originate from the Bible or even Christianity itself. It actually has Pagan roots. Early Christians compromised with the Pagan leaders of the day to accommodate their celebration of "Saturnalia" with the timing of "Christmas", or as determined, the birth of Christ, which has been never specified or dated anywhere in any Bible.

To prove my point, if Christmas was a Christian holiday, how come virtually everybody, including representatives of the Kitchen Sink, celebrate it - Christian or not? Holiday decorations are wrapped around public buildings, seasonal ornaments are brought out to adorn reception areas and Christmas lights light up the sky by our City Hall. In recognition that Canada is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-faith society, at least the powers that be have included signs that represent Eid for the Muslims, Diwali for the Hindu, Hanukkah for the Jewish community, as well as Christmas for everybody else, it seems.

A couple years ago, somebody created a major media flap about a Christmas tree that was on display in a courthouse and later removed by the allegedly "politically correct" administration. The reason for its removal was that some Muslims might be offended. Personally, I have yet to meet a Muslim that even cares about where Christmas trees are displayed. However, this whole perception of who will and will not get offended by the ubiquitous Christmas symbols is a moot point ... I am not terribly religious myself, but if people want to celebrate Christmas as a religious rite or use it as excuse to get drunk, I could care less.

I enjoy Christmas only because it gives me a much needed break. In my family, we do decorate our home, enjoy some eggnog and exchange some gifts, but that is not the highlight of what we do during the holidays. Holidays for me is family time. Or for those who are not fortunate to have family, a time to spend with friends or to share with others. I have spent some Christmases in the past serving the homeless and lonely a Christmas meal, or joining a group of people for drinks and relaxation. A few times, all I did was eat and sleep.

Unfortunately, however, Christmas has become an occasion to further divide the social classes between the "haves" and "have nots". A friend of mine once stated this is when all the hypocrisy comes alive. Indeed, many people suddenly seem so damned caring at Christmas time, while they turn their noses down at the same people on the other 364 days of the year.

This year I wanted to give the incoming regional council something special, a new mascot of sorts. I met with an artist and educator that specialized in prehistoric creatures. He not only provides artwork, but will soon be planning workshops to students and small groups on this enigmatic period of our planet. In admiring the names of many of these prehistoric creatures, I asked if he could create a "Niagarasaurus Rex" for me, based on the Tyrannosaurus variety. I wanted it placed on a large plaque with a caption that is timeless and can be hung right in the region's chambers - in a location that the TV cameras filming regional council meetings can't miss when they cover council sessions. He told me that he probably wouldn't do something like this. (He never said why, but I assume doing this would insult the dinosaurs - I would somewhat agree).

As Christmas passes in Niagara, we go through a very depressing period of time in January and February where nothing really happens, unless Valentine's Day is a big thing for you. The days get busier for me, as I am usually dealing with crisis after crisis among those that come through my doors. There is not a lot of mental health support for people in Niagara, although we have lots of people seeking it or needing it, or both. One cannot take a relaxing stroll down certain downtown streets in Niagara without encountering people engaged in drug deals, involved in the sex trade or getting drunk. Downtown can be an awful place after dark. In the spring, I get a flurry of new auto accident cases, as many people here still don't know how to drive in the winter and get struck. It is not necessarily the victim's fault; usually, it is the other drivers, many of whom still use cell phones as they drive or even drive while drunk.

After Christmas is over in Niagara, we don't hear about the homeless, the poor and the less fortunate anymore, because as my friend said about hypocrisy, most people only believe they exist once a year and even daring to question the political priorities and economic policies that led to them being here in the first place for us to garnish our guilty hearts with over the holiday season is even more politically incorrect than removing a few Christmas trees from the courthouse lobby.

I can only hope for a Christmas gift that I will never receive and that is the experience of boundless diversity and human tolerance and acceptance of people as they are in Niagara (as well as everywhere else),where anybody can be who they are without judgment, without criticism and without exclusion, and no person will ever have to rely on the periodic and irregular goodwill of others for their basic survival.

As somebody who has worked in the legal profession too long and before this, in social work, I have seen too much abuse of those by the so-called goodwill of others.

Your thoughts?

INCOME INSECURITY FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

2010-11-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

Madeleine Meilleur, the Minister of Community and Social Services, has been making a lot of noises lately about how there are too many people on ODSP, and how it is too "easy" to get onto ODSP. These comments have been made while community groups have tried to meet with her to open discussions on the special diet changes that are forthcoming, whereas the Madame Minister had promised that "not everybody who gets the special diet today will continue to get it under the new program". These two statements are code for big cuts ahead and as advocates, we need to be alert to these sorts of trends and comments.

As posted here before, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has made a ruling that the Ontario government, even under the guise of a "special program" cannot discriminate between disabilities without rationale. These cases were taken to the Human Rights Tribunal with the assistance of the Ontario Human Rights Commission after a former Minister of Community and Social Services amended the special diets program into a supplement program for persons with any one or more of 42 arbitrarily selected medical conditions. People without these medical conditions, or only a few of them and who experienced a decrease in their allowances, filed this Complaint. The Tribunal stated that in part, the government did discriminate against many of the applicants, and set up a test to determine eligibility that would meet the Code. Instead of complying with the Tribunal's Order and paying its bills, the government then turned around and decided to scrap the special diet altogether to replace it with a yet to be identified "nutritional supplement".

The history of the special diet file in Ontario is tainted with the fact that Madame Minister and members of the public that think like she does believe that people are using the money for something other than food. Well, maybe some folks with a little more money can actually pay rent and eat in the same month, which is something that Madame Minister never bothered investigating in the past. This issue was admittedly brought forth by community groups as a method to get a much needed increase to one's social benefits allowance to cover nutritious foods, while the government of the day remained twiddling their fingers at the switch, while more and more recipients became very ill with poverty-borne illnesses. It is stated that the real value of ODSP and Ontario Works' (or welfare) benefits have declined to a level below their value even at the time that Mike Harris exercised his axe on this program in 1995 and cut benefits by 21.6%.

A parallel and complementary campaign called Put Food in the Budget should have made Madame Minister aware that people cannot keep a roof over their head and eat well in the same month even among those that don't have medical conditions requiring a so-called "special diet". Residential rents and other utilities have skyrocketed in price, especially since the Liberals have passed several bills that are jacking up hydro and heating costs for everybody.

Last year about this time, the Minister appointed a Social Assistance Reform Advisory Council (SARAC) to advise her on the scope and depth of a proposed social assistance review as promised by the government during its so-called "poverty reduction" consultations. SARAC came back and made a very indepth comprehensive set of recommendations as to scope and latitude of such a review (and involving a broad range of social programs at both the federal and provincial level), but lately, we are hearing noises that the only place this review will actually be taking place is within Madame Meilleur's Ministry.

While advocates do welcome a review, we also have some concerns that the Liberals will use this review as a means to cut the program further and cut an unknown number of persons off ODSP, under the assumption that some of these people "can work". Madame Minister is not alone in her assumptions. Last summer, Richard August, of the Caledon Institute, wrote a paper that was critical of disability programs as such, that they tend to discourage people from re-entering the labour force and queried as to whether persons with disabilities should also have some type of labour market participation requirement in order to receive benefits. Echoed within this report and a subsequent Caledon study, which I will outline later, is some type of attempt to draft a sharp delineation between persons with disabilities that can work and those that cannot work.

Of course, there are persons with disabilities that can work that are on various disability programs. Idealistically, in a perfect world, almost all persons with disabilities "can work" at something, given the prescriptive removal of physical, technological, attitudinal and policy barriers. To me, this is a moot point, because nobody is forcing employers to hire anybody with a disability. In fact, most employers will not hire anybody with a disability, if they had a choice. Anyhow, the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (or the OECD), which we often hear about, and includes just about every so-called "rich" nation, has come up with a similar report of its own.

While the OECD praised Canada as being the country with the most stringent criteria for eligibility for disability programs, it nevertheless attacked all disability programs as removing people from the paid labour force. Again, it leads the question as to what kind of work obligation, if any, should be imposed on persons with disabilities, in order to remain eligible for benefits. It rigorously compared workplace-based disability programs that attempt to re-engage the disabled worker back into the workplace, and tried to discuss how similar programs can be established for programs like ODSP, AISH (in Alberta), CPP and Quebec disability.

While any advocate worth any salt would love to see an increased focus on assisting persons with disabilities to go back to work, or to enter the labour force for the first time, we are also quite cautious. To me, a program of this nature would not represent placing people with disabilities in jobs that will take them out of poverty and meet their educational, skill level and interests. I have spoken to employers that viewed themselves as "progressive" in the past. They hire "lots" of people with disabilities, they say - all in the mail room! Another program I am aware of was placing people in call centres, probably one of the most unstable, stressful and low paid type of position there is. Proponents of these types of programs don't care if a person "likes" their job or can live on the income derived from it, just that they want them all off benefits. This is unfortunately the way governments, including that of the provincial Liberals, seem to be going.

At the same time, groups like Caledon Institute are proposing a federal Basic Income for "persons with severe disabilities". The word "severe" is code for the fact that most persons with disabilities will not likely qualify for it, if it is ever in place. Proponents of this program want only those that qualify for BOTH the Disability Tax Credit and CPP-Disability allowance to be moved onto Basic Income. While the proponents argue that nobody should lose on such a proposal, meaning those currently on something like ODSP should continue to receive it, Caledon is stepping into potentially dangerous political territory, although I don't believe this is the intent of the report's authors.

At the present time, there is no "basic income" at the federal level apart from CPP Disability and a range of non-refundable tax credits available to some of those with disabilities. The federal government has always thought the legwork for this type of thing would be best left to the provinces to sort out. However, the trends that I am familiar with started with the Enhanced Verification Policies of the former NDP government under Bob Rae, when those who were approved for the former disability program in Ontario, then known as "Family Benefits Disability" were required to pursue ALL available income sources to which they could potentially be eligible. The list of potential sources of income included federal CPP, as well as other "first payers". If eligible for CPP-D the province would then take the monies granted through this or other programs and deduct dollar for dollar from the person's provincial disability income. This continues under ODSP.

The federal government has made several attempts to tighten the noose around the number of people drawing benefits from the CPP-D program. I have noted that even though the Federal Court of Appeal has ordered that such benefits be granted on more than the basis of disability alone, and that other factors, such as age, education and objective real world criteria must be taken into account, the so-called "real world" elements tend to be put on the back burner in light of medical evidence showing unequivocal severity of disability, e.g. lab reports, MRI's, etc. (which again is contrary to much common law in this area). One of my clients that had a leg amputated was said to be able to do "sedentary" work. At age 54, with a grade nine education, I was unsure what type of sedentary would he would be able to find. He finally was approved at the appeals stage. This has been the reality with CPP internally, and then lately, at some of the Review Tribunals, and even in a recent slew of Pension Appeals Board decisions. One has to be considered unable to work in any substantially gainful employment to qualify.

The Disability Tax Credit (DTC) is also tough to get, depending on the type of disability a person has. While the DTC does not rely on data excluding one's capacity to work, it takes a strictly functional definition of disability, whereby in practice, those with enumerated physical restrictions, such as walking, speaking, seeing, or hearing, are favoured, while those with less clear but invisible impairments have greater difficulty getting this benefit. More than 70% of persons on ODSP are receiving it due to a so-called invisible disability, whether that is mental health disability, intellectual disability, brain injury, or learning disability, and about half the remainder have physical disabilities that are not likely to meet the DTC criteria due to their episodic nature or the fact they do not fall under any clear criteria, e.g. chronic pain syndrome. I have successfully won appeals for persons seeking the DTC for "invisible" disabilities in the past, but such persons have such a degree of handicap that they are not only incapable of working, but frequently unable to care for themselves.

The Caledon Institute would give a Basic Income to those that qualify for BOTH the DTC and CPP-D, theoretically leaving the balance of persons with disabilities on ODSP. This all looks good. Let us assume that a federal government adopts this Basic Income approach. While it will provide more than ODSP, recipients will still live significantly below any poverty line, as they would be treated like senior citizens that are eligible for the GIS. They get a maximum of $14,000 a year, well below the $20,000 a year to meet the poverty line. But regardless, let us assume, they got more than that, and they can live okay on it. I already stated how the trend to uploading and downloading and offloading has started and has only sped up with abandon in the past few years, how nobody seems to want to be the first payer of income support for persons with disabilities.

Under such a plan, we are risking the Ontario government under the present or even a new constellation seeing this as an opportunity to offload "persons with disabilities". They may see this as an opportunity to save money by believing they no longer have to pay "extra" to Ontarians that have disabilities, and can get away with putting the balance of them on Ontario Works. After all, not meeting the federal criteria of being unable to do substantially gainful employment means that one can work, right? There is no LEGAL obligation on the part of Ontario to keep its ODSP program, given the federal Liberals dumping the Canada Assistance Plan Act several years ago. Any right wing government may view this as an opportunity to out do Mike Harris and do a real dump this time.

Do not think this won't ever happen. All we have to do is look south of us to the U.S. Many of us who thought the wacky Tea Party gang was a disorganized rump of angry people are now convinced that such right wing directionless thinking is actually in style and quite popular. Go to any newspaper website and read the comments section of any article that deals with social issues. People north of the U.S. border think with their wallets and think tax cuts are good, and any tax or fee is "bad", regardless of what services the taxes fund. The province's own Auditor General as much as accused the majority of people getting the dietary supplement as getting it through fraud, and that there are "overpayments in the billions" that must be put under immediate control, and subsequently he commented on the number of people receiving Ontario Works for two years or more.

Madeleine Meilleur does not want to meet with any community groups; one of the Coalitions I belong to has asked many times only to be told she was too busy. Some of our colleagues have met with her political staff, and of course, none of us are getting any answers as to what is going on, or what is being planned. The Put Food in the Budget campaign has been turned down completely because we are in a massive deficit position. There is always money to pay for $3,000 a day consultants, high priced hospital bureaucrats and huge expense accounts, but no money to feed the poor or to at least give all Ontarians an equal opportunity to take what Ontario offers.

I am not trying to frighten anybody, but we have to stand up to this attitude, which I describe at best as apathy and at worst, an actual conspiracy to attack the poor once again with yet another Mike Harris like attack. In economic recession, the poor have to wait for relief. In economic good times, the poor have to wait for relief. When do we stop waiting and start seeing the same benefits as other persons in Ontario, and be given to tools to utilize the wonderful resources this province otherwise has to offer?

Your thoughts?

NOW THAT MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS ARE OVER, WHAT NOW?

2010-10-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

I have spoken to many people during the most recent municipal election. Many of them told me they did not feel it was worthwhile voting, as the politicians would do nothing for them. I find out where they live, and I learn that not many of their neighbours vote either. Yet these are the very people whose needs are neglected at election time. According to the Hamilton Spectator, low income voters are less likely to vote. Political wannabes know this, so they focus their campaigns in vote rich neighbourhoods, where people are most likely to vote: seniors, homeowners, business owners, middle and upper income, etc.

During this election, I worked hard to try to convince people not to vote for politicians simply trying to get in on a promise to cut taxes. Wealthy individuals would never be happy, in my opinion, until they paid next to no taxes on any of their income or assets, yet they still expect the best of civil society to develop around them, e.g. low crime, good schools, good hospitals. I stated unequivocally that I could not care less about taxes, just the quality of services we are receiving and how our tax dollars are spent.

Unfortunately, Rob Ford, known in many of Toronto's circles as a "bull in a china shop" got elected on an anti-tax, anti-government and anti-establishment platform. What always bothers me about these elections is that voters do not choose to educate themselves on their candidates, and ask these same candidates the right questions. After Rob Ford's victory was declared on CTV in Toronto, his supporters were interviewed where they likened him to an "ordinary man". In fact, Ford is not an average man and does not have a clue how the average person in Toronto lives. He was born into a wealthy family headed by his father Doug Ford Sr., who also served as a Member of Provincial Parliament, and between he and his brother Doug (Jr), they inherited the family printing business, which was already a successful company when they took it over.

His platform, which was almost exclusively based on "ending the gravy train at city hall" as he referred to it, won him many supporters, many of whom believe there is lots of "fat" to cut in any government budget. Ford campaigned on cutting taxes, without cutting services, something I find a tad impossible, if you might ask. His claims were challenged by his opponents. When Ford was confronted on what specifically he would cut to reduce taxes, he was incoherent and could only come up with examples, such as cutting out free Metro passes for city councillors, no more $12,000 goodbye parties, and so forth. The specifics proposed would not even come near what he feels he could save in four years in costs.

In terms of staffing, he wanted to promote a strong customer service platform, returning calls within a specific frame of time or always having a human being to speak to, etc. which all sounds great, but when Ford later states he will only allow the refilling of half the positions left vacant due to retirement or other causes, the math shows there would be less staff available to return calls in a specified time, and less staff to manage the phone lines to provide a "live person". His customer service declaration runs counter to his idea of cutting staff. Further, from which departments will staff be cut from? To try to argue he can cut taxes and spending without affecting services is a fool's game.

The reason I chose to provide Ford's campaign as an example of optics in politics, and how far from reality these things are, is to also illustrate why some voters are not voting, or perhaps spoiling their ballots. I am not a voter that would be persuaded to vote differently, if I were given information about Ford's personal life and controversies, which were well publicized during the election. I don't care if he was ever arrested for a DUI, or was ever accused of domestic violence, or whatever the opposition has tried to use to dissuade people from voting for him. In my view, all political leaders have something hiding in their closets. What I am more inclined to support or not support is whether or not that politician is eager to work with all of a city, not just those that voted for him.

My views take me to Niagara as well, where I unfortunately have to live, until I can afford to move out of this cesspool of 1950's antiquated thinking and endless reliance on industries that are rapidly moving out of not only Niagara, but perhaps Canada as well. This dream was so much alive that even somebody that works at General Motors got elected, likely at least in part because of that reason. I would prefer to see my region forget about bolstering General Motors up above all other possible ways to keep and to turn our economy around. Has anybody ever heard of a place like GM KNOWINGLY hiring anybody with a disability? Of course not ... which in part is why Niagara has such a huge volume of ODSP recipients and an increasing number of applicants, not surprisingly many of whom are former factory workers -- our region not recognizing the environmental, health and other hazards faced by these workers, as well as the general false economy that was present in the 1980's when the number of GM workers was at its peak, how grocery stores, rental housing, car sales, etc. were all priced to what GM workers could afford and not the whole community, esp. if you were not one of the fortunate ones to have a job there.

Niagara's political representation has to work to represent all of us, not just those that drive a car, or work at General Motors. Niagara Region has to respond to the needs of all of its residents, whether they get their living from a wealthy business and live off the dividends, or if they are long term welfare recipients. Broad based considerations are best at the municipal level, e.g. better transit, improved streamlining for business regulations and reduced "red tape", taxation set to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour, intensification of development, and greater public input into the political processes. A single regional office needs to be set up where all by-laws for each municipality are streamlined and funneled through that one office, allowing for one person to be a point person for any business setting up anywhere in the region.

Politicians also need to be willingly educated on the needs of a diversity of the population they govern. One individual phoned my office shortly before the election in an attempt to get my support for his candidacy in my ward. He admitted he knew nothing about transit policy or where improvements need to be made. The best way these people can be educated is to be forced to do without their car for a whole month, getting around the city or region using available forms of public transit or taxi, and only then they will realize where the deficits lie. It is too easy for those that drive to not consider the needs and realities of those that don't. It is too easy for those that have a large, fancy $500,000 home with a swimming pool and paid housekeeper, to recognize the realities of those that do not have these privileges.

Of course, I admire any individual that sticks their neck out to run for any level of politics, as today, politics has become more of a contact sport, with politicians and candidates becoming the target of the electorate's wrath and anger about almost everything that is wrong in their lives. This is why I was not too thrilled when people bashed Rob Ford about his so-called "skeletons" in his closet, as I couldn't care less. But if Ford is trying to get into power to take away valued services from me that I pay for, for the sake of saving me a few dollars a year off my taxes, it then raises my interest and likelihood that I would not be supporting him.

Those around me telling me they did not vote are usually the ones that continue to complain about buses not being on time, about a city hall clerk being rude to them, about a by-law officer ignoring their concerns, etc. These things are what elections are about. I made transit into an election issue here, and several candidates did campaign on this issue, both at the local and regional level. There were many others that also worked on this, as well as other important issues. Now that the election is over, our jobs don't end as voters. We need to remind these newly elected or re-elected politicians about what they campaigned on, as well as what concerns us the most.

I am concerned not just about transit, but about jobs for the transit to take us to, and they must be jobs people can make a career of, not just "survival jobs". A region that is founded primarily on the lower paid service sector is a region that is not going to grow, and its tax base is going to shrink, and people will leave ... Niagara has complained for so long about keeping young people in the region after they finish their education, and efforts in the past four years have not resolved much of this. I am not only seeing young people leave, but people my age, who are sick and tired of the loss of jobs, and lack of recognition for their own talents by whatever local employers that we have left.

The school board elections were an interesting campaign, as a lot of the issues were based on school closures and declining enrollment. The school board trustees cannot do anything about the declining enrollment. The declining enrollment originates in a different sphere than their sphere of control. With less and less young people staying in Niagara, that means less people are hooking up and procreating here in Niagara and therefore, there are less children to supply the schools with work in this area. The natural consequence of this is to close or amalgamate schools. However, some trustees did have some positive suggestions to counter school closures by viewing it from a perspective of having smaller schools, smaller classrooms and a more specialized curriculum. I voted for these trustee candidates, and one of them as far as I know did get elected.

Unfortunately, there were some individuals elected that do not have a grasp on many of the issues, and could not give a damn about learning about them. I can identify a few of them in Niagara, and wonder why people think the way they do. One person said, "this guy is going to cut our water bills down". I told him I highly doubt that he or anybody else on council can do a damn thing about our water bills, but did he read about anything else any of these candidates were campaigning on? He said no. As some people say, "people get the government they deserve".

Most voters did not vote for Rob Ford because of his platform, but they voted for him because in general, they were either voting against something else or someone else, or they were supporting the "underdog" syndrome. Even the Toronto Sun scoffed at many elements of Ford's platform, although they backed the man himself. Despite Ford's wealth, he identified himself as a kind of outsider in Toronto politics. That idea can attract voters. Unfortunately, people did not take the time to learn about Mr. Ford and his ideas before they marked their ballots. I anticipate he will be faced with many gaffes during his term of office, much like his prior colleague Mel Lastman did. Ford is also going to have to work with a very disparate council, some on the far right, some on the centre right, some in the middle, and some on the left, and even a returning councillor that once led the Manitoba Communist Party - all of whom have an equal mandate to be there as does he.

My city's election was more of the same, with positions filled by people who are similar to those that left them. The Mayor was re-elected, not only because he had scant competition, but because many people do support his agenda and the work he did in the past four years. Many other mayors were turfed in Niagara in favour of somebody else, usually one of the city councillors that chose to run for mayor in their respective city. This further diversifies the make-up of our new regional council, which is sworn in after December 2010. Their first order of business is picking a regional chair, usually from somebody from among them, although the law permits the regional council to choose somebody else.

I think our job as voters is to now follow these people to make sure they do not take us another step backwards on many issues that they reluctantly moved forward on, through only mere baby steps. One thing I do not want is somebody to offer me to save what would amount to $16 on my taxes, but force me to cough up more money out of pocket for taxis, for instance, because they do not recognize transit service as important as roads and bridges. I don't want these people to cost me more. I do not mind paying a small amount more on my property taxes so that we can all be assured of better and improved services.

I just don't want to participate in what seems to be a popular race to the bottom.

MENTAL HEALTH REPORT PROMISES TO TURN THE CLOCK BACK ON HUMAN RIGHTS

2010-09-08T22:00:00.001-07:00

In August 2010, an all party Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions that has been working quietly across Ontario for a year to gather stories and feedback from individuals, organizations, professionals and law enforcement, on how to fix Ontario's mental health and addictions system released its final report with 23 recommendations. The report was praised in many quarters as it represented members of all three major political parties working together to produce this report, united in their experiences as they moved from town to town to hear stories from family members, a few "consumer/survivors", organizations and others on their own observations, experiences and assumptions about both mental health issues and what to do about them.

The report itself released on August 30, 2010, can be found on the site of the Ontario Legislative Assembly's Committee Reports. It is in a PDF format, which may be inaccessible for some, but there are likely sites online that may provide a copy of this public report in Word or text format. The report itself took up 63 pages, and is based on 25 days of public hearings and written submissions, and follows up an earlier version of this report, an Interim Report published in March 2010.

I downloaded both of them and read through them, keeping a supply of Tums handy in the event some of the terminology and recommendations made my stomach turn. While there are many positive recommendations, such as "removing silos" and blending services that would incorporate both mental health and addictions, and setting up a focused agency within the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care dedicated to these issues (similar to Cancer Care Ontario) makes some sense. Provision of better training to primary care physicians and nurse practitioners and others directly involved in the care of persons with mental health concerns is also a good thing. The report also recommended the obvious: funding has failed to follow the person, as he or she leaves the hospital and returns to the community. It is said the system is based on an acute care manner, whereas after the hospital stay is over, the person simply returns to whatever routine they left before they went there. Mental health has always been the "poor cousin" of other health services, taking a mere fraction of the system that claims to treat many more people than its funding assumes.

The report went into depth about the stigma of having a mental health problem or diagnosis, and what can be done about it. Frankly, I had to laugh at that section, because absolutely nothing is being done about this. This is not something that the Ministry, for example, can make a "feel good" commercial about, showing successful actors, musicians, athletes and business people, who have all experienced mental health issues, and are now recovered, thanks to the miracles of "modern medicine". The report begged for a champion, who can lead the fight against stigma against persons with mental health problems. The reason there are no takers for this position is because the mental health system, if adopted by such a champion, militates against somebody ever taking such a role. A content analysis of the verbal input into the committee hearings revealed a lot of prejudices, some of them developed by the media, and others brought to them by the "single case history" syndrome, about persons with mental health problems.

Most of the lay input into these hearings were family members, or associations representing family members, of persons with mental health issues. Their concerns are not to be disregarded. I am a family member survivor of a suicide, as well as a spouse and friend of another person who has struggled with mental health issues. I have also personally experienced some difficulties earlier in my life as well. In addition to this, I worked in mental health for ten years of my life, and currently in my practice, work with many clients that have moderate to serious problems with depression, psychosis, suicidal thinking, post-traumatic stress, and so forth. I don't relate well to what many of these family members were asking for, because there is a better way of dealing with these things than locking people up and forcing them to take treatment to which they may not recover. The Committee heard from some individuals with lived experience of mental health issues, but obviously not enough of them. I could count their numbers on my left hand.

The report only glosses over concerns about the human and civil rights of persons diagnosed with mental health conditions. This has been a recurring theme throughout, that somehow, the fact that people have rights, is somewhat detrimental to the health and well-being of the person. For example, the report notes "we are troubled that so many witnesses have experienced difficulty in obtaining care for family members who are clearly very ill, yet refuse treatment or are too quickly discharged from hospital. Many told us about their need to go through the complicated Form 1 or Form 2 process - involving the police or justice of peace - several time before their loved one was adequately treated. One family told the Select Committee that their son was not admitted to hospital until he threatened to jump from a four-story building ..." In these glimpses into the lives of these witnesses, forced treatment was good, personal freedom is bad. What was not shared with the committee were the results of this treatment and the quality of these people's lives afterward.

In the Interim Report, it was mentioned over fifty percent of the people on ODSP are receiving it for "mental health reasons", leaving one to wonder why such a huge percentage of people deemed disposable by our society are also labeled with some type of mental health diagnosis. I know when I worked in the mental health field, I did a research project, part of which included calling a random sample of employers in a random sampling of industries across Niagara, and learned that out of over 100 employers interviewed, only one had knowingly hired a person with a mental health history (and this person was their nephew). Several of them made jokes about people with mental health problems, while a few repeated certain stereotypes they felt were true about people with these experiences. A tire store told us that they were afraid that somebody like this would blow up the tires. Another said they would worry about what kind of mood the person would be in each day. Another one implied that persons with mental health issues were the same as persons with developmental disabilities. If employers think this way of persons recovering from these conditions, it is no wonder the majority of them seem to be sitting on ODSP - no matter how well educated, skilled, willing to work, etc.

About their rights, the report went on to note the following "Rights advocates cautioned the Select Committee that involuntary admission and treatment are such grave violations of autonomy that society has to accept these risks and dangers. They also warned that psychiatric drugs can have serious side effects to which many people are reluctant to expose themselves ..." This is fine until the report continues ... "the Select Committee believes, however, that the right to autonomy must be balanced with the right to be well. The Select Committee also believes that our present laws tie the hands of health care professionals and families and have contributed to the criminalization of mental illness, where individuals need to be arrested in order to receive care. While Ontario undoubtedly needs better access to community supports and hospital beds, some people will not avail themselves of such services because it is the nature of their condition to deny that they are ill ..." Grab those Tums!

So what if somebody denies they are ill. So what if somebody refuses to receive treatment they don't want or feel they need. I know of many cancer patients, diabetics near end stage renal disease or cardiac failure, etc. who have also done the same thing. They did not want yet another intervention to prolong whatever it is they consider to be ailing them. Do we force diabetics to submit to insulin treatment if they somehow refuse to take steps to control their blood sugars and dietary intake? Do we force a person with cancer, even one who is dying and who is loved immensely by her family, to accept yet one more round of chemo and radiation to hit her body with yet more poison to sully the quality of the balance of their lives? While the Committee members learned about the path many of these unfortunate souls took to get treatment or have it forced on them, the Committee has failed or neglected to explore what happened to these same people afterward. Hearing the story from a mother, a father, a brother, an uncle or an aunt, doesn't cut it for me. I have met too many people who have been through forced treatment to know that this is not the answer. One has to ask if one has to force treatment on someone, is this treatment really that beneficial?

I am alive because I refused treatment when I was much younger. My spouse is alive, because I personally weaned him off three highly risky psychiatric drugs he was given, which in fact drove him to the emergency room several times until he was free of them. Others have had to experiment with different drugs in cooperation with their doctors until they found something that agreed with them. This was done on a voluntary basis, in the case where a person was given a choice. I know many who are no longer with us to tell their stories because they died of complications resulting from these drugs, or from the restraints or a combination thereof. There were numerous coroner's inquests in the 1980's, that were called as a result of "psychiatric patients" dying either in the hospital, or off grounds as a result of something treatment related. These inquests took place before the laws that exist today were passed, which are the very same laws the Select Committee is suggesting we return to.

Further on it states "we have received testimony that other jurisdictions have broadened involuntary admission criteria by expanding their definition of harm, without unduly jeopardizing autonomy (my comment: this is a very difficult tightrope they are pretending to walk). For example, these jurisdictions consider the threat of all serious harm, not merely physical harm. They also permit treatment in cases of involuntary admission. The Select Committee was particularly impressed by British Columbia's mental health legislation ..." The report goes on to state that psychological harm might also be considered as a criterion for harm. This frightens me as "Big Brother". A similar change to child protection legislation was made under Mike Harris in the late 1990's, which resulted in tripling the budgets of child protection agencies across Ontario, merely as a result of over-interpreting harm. As most child protection workers are not well trained in cultural, psychological and child-rearing differences in poor families, families of persons with disabilities and families of differing ethnic origins, these families instantaneously became a target for child protection laws in the late 1990's whereas up to 87% of all apprehensions involved children living in low income families.

One may ask if child protection laws that were more loosely defined helped save any child from harm. We can't prove it did, nor can we prove it didn't, which is the very difficulty of these types of programs as they are very rarely evaluated on their merits. They are merely funded on the basis of emotional reactions and "bad case scenarios" reported in the media. However, we have seen the results of many families that have been broken up for unwarranted reasons, former parents turning to drugs and alcohol, welfare benefits dropping leading to the loss of homes, other children, divorce, etc. The child protection agencies do not see these after effects as "their problem" as their responsibility, they say, rests solely with the child. One can find lots of personal stories about this system on other websites, such as fixcas.ca, Canada's Court Watch, and the Foster Care Council of Canada. These are not just disgruntled abusive and neglectful parents that got "caught"; many of these people were forced to sue to regain their dignity and families. Now the Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions wants to police irritating, bothersome and offensive conduct, by criminalizing these people anyways. The Select Committee protests the idea of criminalizing so-called psych patients, then proposes a set of laws that will restrict or remove their civil liberties anyways, even if these persons committed no crimes.

My experience in working with people dictates that mental health services must be delivered in a timely, non-stigmatizing and voluntary environment, that is free of threats and influence. Many are fearful of entering the system voluntarily, fearing that somebody will later force them into another part of the system involuntarily. Others have told me they do not want to be seen entering or leaving buildings that are known to house mental health services. People in registered professions suffer in silence, fearing that if they disclose and ever end up in treatment that their capacity to carry on in their profession will be questioned. People prefer not to tell their employers about their mental health issues, even though many of them do have serious disabilities. Some use recreational drugs or alcohol to help "cover up" their disabling symptoms, fearing their employers, neighbours and others know. Doing this can lead to even worse problems, as we know. While I know that it is fact that a significant minority of people with mental health problems as serious as schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder, do hold good jobs, the majority of these people are "hidden" - fearful of what their employer might do if they find out. Their fears are not unjustified, as in a recent case before the Human Rights Tribunal and later upheld by the Divisional Court does show how erratic an employer may react upon receiving information about an employee involving a serious mental health problem. People with mental health problems want to work just as much as anybody else, and to use the full range of their skills and education.

These facts still remain despite the fact that in cultures where persons with a serious mental health diagnosis, including schizophrenia, recover socially most of the time, when they are accepted, included and given a role or meaning in their lives. Richard Warner, a psychiatrist, studied schizophrenia in various cultures and found that in cultures where a person would return to a socially meaningful role, usually a job and a place in their community, they recover. As frequently stated by direct consumers in their testimony to the Select Committee and thereafter ignored, "a home, a job, a friend", is what they need, just like the rest of us. This concept was tested in modern western society, which with its obvious limitations and implications/stigmatization, it has been found that a model based on Sen's "capabilities-informed agenda", as opposed to today's damaged identity management, is a preferable approach.

This report not only attempts to skimp on civil liberties, but also on patient privacy as well. Later in the report, there were references to family members concerned when they approach health care providers treating their family member, and fail to obtain information over the "privacy act". This personal information, like your personal information about your diabetes, your STDs, your breast cancer, your HIV, etc. cannot be released without your consent. The same presently applies in health care for mental health clients. under the Personal Health Information Privacy Protection Act. The report lends itself to some eerie recommendations that also concern me, as it stated "... recommended that the language of the Act be amended to clarify that health information may be disclosed to reduce the risk of 'serious psychological harm', as well as physical harm. The Select Committee believes that this is a reasonable amendment ..."

The report further states that "The Select Committee was also informed that British Columbia's legislation permits the release of personal health information to health care professionals, family members, and others involved in a client's care without the client's consent for the purposes of 'continuity of care' and if it is in the best interests of the client (my comment: "best interests" as determined by whom?). In other words, you can be an inpatient of a psychiatric ward and have a sister who would love to get hold of your money, come onto the ward and be provided your health information so that she can then use this information to take over your finances. This type of information sharing is dangerous, not only in situations like this, but I have seen it alienate the person from their family entirely. Families are not always loving, caring and therapeutic, nor do they always have the best interests of one another in mind. I have seen more dysfunctional families, than functional, intact ones in my career. Would you like your family members to know all of your personal health problems, unless you deliberately permit the flow of this information? This suggestion, of course, would be only for mental health issues, and not for patients with other diseases or conditions.

The Select Committee, while it does not make specific recommendations, through its words as cited above, would like to set up a committee of family members, health care professionals and "consumers", to come up with recommendations. My money is on picking those individuals that seem to be of like mind to the Select Committee. While there are mental health 'consumers' around that might agree to these things, most do not. People generally want to live their lives with as much autonomy as possible, and to make choices about their lives and take responsibility if they make the wrong choices. By not permitting persons with mental health problems to make the wrong choices, they are not being permitted to make any choices at all. Please be assured I was a participant in the earlier drafts of various mental health laws that we have today, such as the Weistubb Report, the Fram Report, as well as the legislative committee that preceded the Graham Report, of the 1990's. These reports were also drafted by experts, including those with lived experience, such as family members and consumers. These reports resulted in the Health Care Consent Act, the Substitute Decisions Act and the Mental Health Act amendments. I also took the Toronto Star to the Ontario Press Council in the late 1980's for their portrayal of "victims" of mental health conditions as being incompetent, helpless and suicidal, one hand or homicidal human beings, on the other, despite study after study that shows mental health diagnosis does not increase the probability of somebody being violent, and they are certainly within the same range of intelligence and skill base as the general population.

The report leaves the uneducated reader with a set of assumptions about people with mental health problems:
1. They are incapable of making decisions for themselves;
2. They have or need caregivers in their lives;
3. If they refuse treatment, it is a symptom of their illness;
4. A whole system of paid staff and institutions and programs need
to be developed to control these people; and
5. Family members should be able to dictate or control the lives of
their errant loved ones.

If I brought these assumptions to the people I presently know who are living with some type of mental health diagnosis, including the serious ones, most will say the following:
1. Let me decide how I want to live my life, but please help
support me so that I can reach these goals;
2. I don't have or need a "caregiver". I can look after myself,
thank you very much. If I need help, however, please make
sure that it is available when I need it.
3. I should have the right to accept, refuse or negotiate treatments
for all of my health conditions. I do not want decisions made for me;
4. If I want help from the system, please provide supports that I can
access readily and will not threaten me with incarceration if I
refuse some of their help, or want to do some things my way; and
5. Let me choose if I want my family involved in my life or not.

After reading this, what I find is true is a dearth of VOLUNTARY, SUPPORTIVE and HOLISTIC resources for persons in crisis. If a program was non-threatening, and promised to give the person a sense of safety, the person will go. If they feel they will be coerced into something, they will refuse. It is our human nature. We continue to spend more money on hospitals, acute care and involuntary admissions ... taking this money away from much needed community-based resources. I am constantly being told as a legal professional to "get my son some help, even if you have to help me force him to". I refuse to do so, or participate in this. When their family encounters this individual, he is stubborn, angry, delusional, confrontational and downright scary. Yet, when I meet with him, he calms down considerably. His best hope of remaining well, unfortunately must be to stay away from the source of tension - their families, at least for now. I also meet with the family separately to talk to them about how they need to take care of themselves, ensure they remain healthy and strong, and how they can be supportive if and when the person returns to them. I am always armed with resources - support groups, websites, books, articles, etc. to assist the family member to de-stress and learn to let go.

It is very hard to let go. I know it. My brother committed suicide when he was twenty years old. He was three years older than me. Prior to his death, he reached out to me, talked to me a lot, spent a lot of time with me ... for years, I felt badly, and wondered if there was anything I could have done to prevent him from doing this. Twenty years later, I finally reached the realization that there was likely nothing I could have done. I finally forgave myself for the years I dwelt on this "if only" type of thinking. This doesn't mean that suicides cannot be prevented, but it is my absolute conviction that forcing people into treatment against their will is not the answer. This may prevent the suicide for today, but will not prevent it from happening later.

In the meantime, one needs to understand the difficult time we are giving people with this type of diagnosis. If they won't even share with me what is wrong with them when they come to me to appeal a disability claim, who will they share it with? I have had young men come into my office and cry about how their knees are so bad, they can no longer work. It is only after I obtain past medicals, clinical files and medical reports, that I learn that there may have been a mental health issue. We are keeping mental health problems in the shadows by attempting to treat their bearers differently than others suffering from other medical conditions. We are disrespecting their autonomy, their privacy, their rights, and then pretending at the same time, we considered all of this, and only discover the damage done when it is too late.

I don't know when the time will be when the major stigma connected to mental health issues will ever go away, or if it ever will. However, I believe in the recovery concept or the newly developed "capabilities-informed agenda", as opposed to focusing on the deficits of these human beings. When all of us, including health and legal professionals, neighbours, employers, teachers, and others, begin to think in the same way, perhaps then, the major stigma of these conditions will go away and for once, these often beautiful and creative people will feel free to be themselves.

Your thoughts?

THEY'RE ENTITLED TO THEIR ENTITLEMENTS!

2010-08-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

During an investigation into some alleged wrongdoings on the part of key Liberal party ministers and officials during "HRDC-Gate" and "Sponsorgate", one former Minister David Dingwall, who eventually moved on to head the Royal Canadian Mint, told a Parliamentary Committee that he was "entitled to his entitlements". In another investigation, Brian Mulroney was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by accepting up to $300,000 in cash from an alleged German arms dealer shortly after he stepped down from his job as Prime Minister. These cash deposits were allegedly not put into any bank accounts, but a safety deposit box, which raised a number of eyebrows. Mulroney made a voluntary self-disclosure to Canada Revenue Agency years later. There was an expensive public inquiry into this matter, leaving many questions still unanswered and probably Karlheinz Schreiber probably ended up more tarnished than Mulroney did. But what would happen if you are I did the same thing?

At the provincial level, we learn about private consultants working for $3000 a day, plus benefits of disbursements, such as tea and crumpets from Tim Hortons. These consultants allegedly worked for e-Health, although I suspect they did other work in "communications" with the provincial government, likely to communicate their intention to cut the special diet program to poor and disabled persons with medical conditions requiring them to eat specific foods at a higher cost. All that got into the media, unfortunately, was one consultant's tab for tea and crumpets and the fact that a large Liberal-friendly consulting firm got a sole-source contract to achieve this e-Health program. This billion dollar boondoggle, like the federal one on sponsorships in Quebec, was stopped short of a scandal and Ministers resigned. Yet at the same time, none of the consultants had to pay a single penny of their "hard earned monies" back. Earlier, another Minister handed over $200.000 to a cricket club in his riding. These stories are running ad nauseum; even Mike Harris pushed Ontario into a significant debt after awarding Anderson Consulting a $284 MILLION sole-source contract to develop the computer systems for Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program ... and when there were errors, this same government had the audacity to bring them back in and pay them millions of dollars more to correct the mistakes they shouldn't have made in the first place!

During our recent recession, both provincial and federal government handed out tax dollars to the banks to the tune of over $50 billion, as well as to General Motors to the tune of $16 billion, while many workers lost their jobs and could not get on to Employment Insurance. In the U.S., George Bush as a parting gift to Obama, put the U.S. treasury over $1 trillion dollars into debt bailing out their banks and mortgage companies, many of them of which got saddled with bad loans and foreclosures. They also apparently own General Motors now, as some now call Government Motors. AIG, one of the loan companies bailed out, immediately paid its executives million dollar bonuses. After all, all of these people were entitled to their entitlements.

In Ontario, a woman named Eleonore Clitheroe was terminated from her position at Hydro One, after she raked in over $2.2 million in her last year, and upon looking into her expenses, it was also alleged that she expensed hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses, such as limousine rides for her children as well as renovations for her upscale home. She naturally took the government to court and sued, it appears this likely got settled out of court. However, recently she got herself in the news again litigating over her "rights" to a $35,000 a month pension from the province, when she is apparently only receiving one in the paltry lower $25,000 level ... she argued with the court that she, too, was entitled to her entitlements.

Public sector workers, ranging from teachers, to fire fighters, to police officers and other workers "win" at least 3% raises each year for the next three years, until they start all over again. This, while many of us are losing jobs and cannot afford to pay anymore. Municipalities and school boards are helpless, as the province forces them to pay what arbitrators tell them to pay. It must be nice having a job in one of these sectors. They certainly aren't hiring anybody else, no matter how qualified you are, because if anybody at all is going to get the jobs, if there are any new openings, are those that already worked there ... so the rest of us either have to accept leftover jobs, like call centre, Wal-Mart and burger flipping, or invest in a time machine to bring us back to the 70's and 80's when new jobs were coming up in these fields and get hired then.

Workers in these public sector jobs have no right to complain about their salaries. Sure, they work hard, but so does the minimum wage doughnut shop worker. So does the teenager that fills your gas tank when you go to a full-service gas station. You say you went to school for a long time to get what you want ... not necessarily true. Teachers need a minimum of a four year degree, plus an educational degree which is one or two years. I know people who have been to school much longer and owe way more in student loans who are now stuck greeting shoppers at Wal-Mart, because virtually all the "good jobs" are in union shops and closed to the public. I know many teachers in my region, and they are the first to complain about the high cost of living here. I say, yes, try making it on less than half your salary.

Others work in the private sector in jobs like General Motors, TRW, US Steel, etc. and make over $30 an hour. They tell us they work hard. Sorry, people who make minimum wage also work hard, and yes - you can also be making minimum wage too if it weren't for the hard work and bargaining power given by others to make your job a good job. My bet is you had NOTHING to do with making your job a good job, other than being lucky enough to apply for the job at the right time and get in. To me, that is luck and not hard work. Others are single parents and get no pay at all, and they "work hard" too ... probably harder than many of the men that complain about their taxes. Some of you "hard workers" are self-employed, but the money you had to start your business probably came from your family, or perhaps the business you run belonged to your family and you got a place in it just because you were born there. So what, that means nothing to me. This doesn't make you more deserving than anybody else ... but time after time, it is YOUR TYPE OF PEOPLE who spend time on their computers at work instead of working, who bash the poor at websites, such as that for the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star and other places, where comment can be shared online. They always use fake names. I suppose they don't want their employers to read the sites and find their signatures there and esp. marked during working hours.

Personally, I have been involved as a teaching assistant and course coordinator at the university where I earned two of my degrees. I would say about half of the students attending my classes were not able to put a simple sentence together. My marking and teaching philosophy was often criticized by these students because I would mark them for grammar and sentence structure, as well as whether they were picking up anything from the course. I've had students bitterly complain to my department's chair that they had to get an 80% or more in the course, or they would not get to teachers' college. Yes, folks, many of these people just might be teaching your children today. After all, they are entitled to their entitlements.

I've known other students that never bothered showing up for lectures and would make an occasional appearance in seminars, usually looking half snapped up or on dope. In order to keep up, they paid other students for their notes and there have been occasions where plagiarism was caught red-handed. In these cases, I rightfully brought the papers to the department chair for her review and she agreed with my assessment and we gave them zeros. One of them came storming in about how his father works for such and such a law firm, and so forth, and how the school will get sued, and so forth ... I told them then to their face that I don't give a shit. Perhaps, he can go to his father to have him teach him how to write too, as that would be a great start before going to teacher's college. Very few of these students were on OSAP. A few made it quite clear they were from well to do families and did not have to take out a loan or work at all, and I believed them, because they certainly didn't work on their school work either.

Outside of school, I was also involved in consulting for a number of non-profit and publicly funded organizations. In many cases, people worked there for years taking very large salaries, and in one case, paying board members to attend meetings and help keep them in their jobs (despite not doing their job, of course). In another case, an individual would write reports for the board about the various meetings she went to or conducted, and when somebody checked this out - this person did actually nothing at all. There were no meetings and the people she spoke to did not exist. People often get into these jobs because they know somebody, whether that be a board member, the executive director, or somebody else closely tied to the organization. It is rarely about what they know. In fact, there is no law that prohibits publicly funded non-profits from hiring their relatives, high-school drop-outs or even those that have just come out of prison for fraud. This does not mean they all do this (as many organizations do care about their image -- but surprisingly not all of them), but without controls, many such organizations do fall to this. The only requirement I am aware of is vulnerable sector checks with the police, which is required only for organizations that work directly with vulnerable adults or children. However, I am not sure if the same is required for their executive director, or their accountant (although some such organizations do pass policies to cover everybody).

After many years of seeing this, I can honestly say there are not a lot of hard working people out there. Those folks that have a good job today think they did this on their own, when this is likely not the case. They likely knew somebody where they worked, had parents or friends connected to the business at some point or others who "encouraged" them to apply and gave a good word for them, or they had parents pay for their university education and possibly even their first car, so they are well out of the starting gate before their less fortunate peers even hear the starting gun. Personally, I don't care about these people and do not believe for a second, they work hard at all or they are even deserving of the good salary they make. People who read this can also relate to how on a day to day basis, they have to talk to you so-called "hard workers" in your positions, whether this be in government, insurance companies, health care organizations, car repair shops, or whatever ... and the rate of satisfaction with your customer service is pretty low. I been there. I know.

However, it is precisely this group of people and the well-paid public sector workers that do the most poor bashing. They try to convince people that they can just get "any job" and be making a middle class income within a year. First, somebody on welfare is not going to get a good paying job - ever. Studies have been done on this. Even when somebody on welfare is pushing themselves hard and takes any job for survival, they tend to cycle on and off welfare and low paying, short-term jobs. Very few are able to further their education, or get promoted in the jobs they do get. A teenager at 16 that starts working at McDonalds is not going to become its manager in the next ten years. Maybe even twenty or thirty years. We know that working at this low level does not improve their salary over time ... their wages stay the same and only increase if minimum wages go up. Ask people who work at Loblaws and Wal-Mart how often they get raises. Call centres are a bit better on the wage front, but most people do not last more than a year. I also know that very few people who are on welfare can ever move beyond a "paycheque to paycheque" situation to being a wealthy, even upper middle class person. It does not happen, not in the 21st century.

But at the same time, many of these well-paid workers get all summer off, full dental benefits that even cover cosmetic dentistry, a retirement income that many of us in the leftover sector can only dream of, as well as other things that they did not earn or work for. I know a few employers that pay people a couple of bucks more an hour just to show up! I asked them why they do this, and they tell me that many of their employees book off a lot. Office workers have been found to spend at least 30 - 40% of the time in the office on their employer's time on the computer doing personal transactions, whether e-mail, visiting personal websites, or chatting. Some employers have strict policies on this, but in larger companies it is difficult to track specific people. But I read the racist, ableist, classist and bullying comments on websites day after day, and the same pseudonyms pop up during all hours of the day, regardless ... I only wish their employers would check on these workers more often, and I suspect if they did, many of them would be on the unemployment lines right now as I speak.

I also see workers taking "personal days off" when they call in sick. This happens all the time. In a large employer you are allowed up to ten days during a twelve month period of "emergency leave days", but this doesn't mean you have to get paid. In the late spring, I've watched several people call in sick and they were at the beach, or they were heading into a bar. I heard them talk to their employers into their cell phones, saying they were sick as I watched them enter a bar on St. Paul Street ... or similar situations. Yes, they are entitled to their entitlements. I also know them when they come to my office at the other end and learn they have been fired, and ask me to represent them against their employers. Yes, there are many bad employers out there, but there are many, many bad employees. One employee apparently stole over a million dollars from her employer over seven years so she can gamble. A lot of fraud takes place by employees, we only hear about the big cases. A friend recently reported that a moving company took all day to complete what would have been a three hour move so they can bill for the whole day, as opposed to a few hours.

At a non-profit organization, there was a policy on "time in lieu" because the agency couldn't afford overtime, so as a result, they contracted with their employees to pay overtime in the form of time off equivalent, such as if they worked an hour overtime, they got an hour and a half worth of time off. Concerns were raised when I did some board training about the "abuse" of this policy. Staff seemed to spend a lot more time going to meetings and conferences than they did doing their jobs, and unfortunately, they got a lot of time off in lieu as a result! We had to re-work the policy limiting the number of hours per month they can claim for outside meetings or conferences, and anything over that was their own time - period. Even for the approved meetings and conferences, they had to be directly related to their job, and approved ahead of time by the program director.

I read in the paper that teachers are being pressured not to take marks off for late assignments, or for grammar/spelling, and to pass people more readily. Teachers are being pressured by students and more likely, their parents, to give their kids good grades. I am so pleased I had the backing of the university administration when I was in charge of my courses back then. I certainly hope things are the same now, and that these so-called hard working poor souls did not take advantage and push themselves through to "earn" undeserved credits.

Unfortunately, while nobody questions the billions of dollars that go out the window each year in tax breaks, corporate bailouts, questionable stimulus programs, and so forth, these same people bitch about the less than 2% of our gross domestic product that goes out to support low income, disabled and unemployed workers. They go on websites and claim to "know" that at least half the people who are getting disability are not in fact disabled. How do they know, I wonder ... I guess they must all be doctors and have all examined these people personally. They also seem to claim people on welfare get grossly inflated amounts of money, and query if they are really better off working. They say they are entitled to lower taxes because they "work hard", but people on assistance aren't entitled to anything more than say somebody who committed a crime is. As for whether YOU work hard, I say, PROVE it! The burden of proof is on YOU, if you are telling others how hard YOU work. I already know most of YOU do not work hard, and most of you lucked out in getting your better paying job, or got connected through somebody you know, and not because of what you know (if you know anything at all).

Nobody questions that 20 - 30% of tax returns that are filed fraudulently, at least in part, many by wealthy people who are abusing loopholes, or self-employed contractors accepting cash payments, etc., depriving the treasury of billions and billions of dollars a year, yet YOU focus on the less than 1% of people who are unfortunate enough to be on welfare that might be getting something extra they might not be entitled to. And YOU are entitled to your entitlements. I don't have the right to question you as to why you seem to be able to sit at your computer all day and evening writing racial and prejudicial epithets on websites, while you claim to work so hard. I don't have the right to ask who your employer is, so I can verify your information. For all I know, you could be on house arrest for drinking and driving or something, so don't give me any pity party stories about how hard you work, because I know you don't work hard at all. If you really did work hard, I would not be hearing from you on the web. You wouldn't have the time to go online! I have some time because I work online, and I am self-employed in an office, and it just takes a couple of minutes for me to check email, and various sites.

I hear whining and complaining from some of you saying you pay 50% of your income in taxes. In order to do that, you must be in the top 10% of income earners of Ontario, and I personally would rather make what you do and pay the taxes, than earn a lower income that doesn't attract as much taxes. So quit your bitching! You have nothing to complain about.

If the rules that applied to people that work who are on welfare applied to you, you WOULD be bitching! Not only would you have to pay taxes and regular deductions from whatever you earn, you lose an additional 50% of your pay. If you have a disability, and cannot work at all, and are forced to live on the Ontario Disability Support Program, and you are married and your spouse works, 50% of anything he or she earns AFTER TAXES is deducted from YOUR cheque! Most of you would be crying bloody murder by then, as most of you are in families where both of you work, and no matter how much either one of you earn, it does not lower the other spouse's income. I tell the government to change this rule, keep the spouses out of it, regardless of income, assets, savings, whatever ... keep them out of it and if the disabled spouse cannot work, give them their OWN income. They tell me they can't do that because then they will be making a middle class income as a family. Hey, if that disabled spouse WERE ABLE to work, he or she WOULD be making a middle class income ... so the government's position on this is that if you are disabled and unable to work, you deserve to be poor. You are also deserving of remaining single, unless you can find a spouse who is willing to take full financial responsibility for you and your disability requirements ... good luck to that today!

Some people with disabilities are self-employed. You think you can get off welfare or ODSP through developing a good business plan and "working hard"? Think again! You are NOT ALLOWED to hire paid help. That means if you are running a farm and it comes to harvest time, you have to do it ALL by yourself, and work around the clock. I wonder if the same could be said for those that own General Motors and other companies, that they should not be allowed to deduct the monies they pay to their staff to help run their plants ... there would uproar for sure, as there should be in this case too! They are also not allowed to pay off personal debts, so even though their ODSP and whatever they have left of their earnings is rarely enough to meet their own or their family's needs and they often have to put payments on credit card so they can eat or buy school supplies for their kids, they CANNOT pay back these debts.

Yet it is okay for them to declare personal bankruptcy every few years. I think if you have concerns about this, you should write to me and I will PROVE every one of my allegations about welfare and ODSP rules. If all businesses and employees had to live by these rules, our country would be bankrupt and nobody would be paying into the system ... their traps and tricks number up to 800 rules that keep people on the system and keep people poor, no matter how hard they work.

And ANYBODY can end up on welfare. Don't think it won't happen to you. If you bash the poor today, and I later learn you end up needing help, I certainly will be less than sympathetic when you start to complain about what it is really like when you come up to the other side of this very bad coin and complain when it happens to you.

LET'S ALL DO THE G20 HOP!

2010-06-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

What happened last weekend in Toronto?

All I hear about is how some "Black bloc" riots started in the streets of Toronto, after breaking away from a massive peaceful demonstration organized by others, such as labour groups, women's organizations, anti-poverty groups and development organizations (like World Vision).

Unfortunately, the media missed the massive demonstration and the messages were lost. I am in contact with literally hundreds of folks who either were part of the protests, or who just happened to be in Toronto at the time of the "riot". What appeared to happen was "surreal", as described by one of my contacts.

Between 10,000 - 20,000 people arrived on the streets of Toronto early in the day, some bussed in the night before, some arriving that morning and others who live in the Toronto area. I watched wearily from the couch as the all-news stations gave blow by blow videos of the events.

For some time, there appeared to be large gatherings of people and even larger gathering of police, many on bikes, others in riot gear. For the most part, the police were there to keep an eye on things. Many of the organizers of peaceful protests were actually working with the police and included them as parade marshals to ensure no nonsense prevails.

However, at some point in the mid-afternoon, individuals previously hiding among the legitimate protesters grab themselves and relocate elsewhere to get changed into black clothing. The black clothing is par for the course for this method of rioting - a way to remain anonymous and organized for a short period of time and then vanish back into thin air. So, as the stories were told, about 100 of these people all black clad ran ahead of the others and began to do destructive things, smashing windows, throwing projectiles at police and eventually torching police cars. Many also spray painted various themes on other buildings and vehicles, mainly "No to G20". It was interesting to watch, as these people were on film.

They did not actually vanish, as the media did portray several of them changing clothes by Queen's Park, trying to hide behind legitimate protesters. What was interesting was, did anybody else notice somebody who first came in their street clothes, and then suddenly returning to the sidelines to change back into them? A media cameraman noticed this, and inquired about their change of clothes and one of them attempted to block the camera so as to hide who they were protecting. One would wonder how stupid these people are to do this openly in front of multiple cameras, and likely undercover police officers and other hired hands taking pictures of the events.

The television then showed several police cruisers going up in smoke, and there were strangely no police around for some time. There were lots of witnesses, as well as probably the people that started this arson. It was hard to tell who was who, as people naturally being curious creatures, many would creep in there to take pictures or simply stand on the sidelines to watch the action. Some reported that a few people cheered as the cruisers went up in flames. I can't confirm or deny this.

Eventually it appeared that arrests were being made. As protesters were headed back to Queen's Park, police using video tapes and photographs of the scenes and watching as people changed, they managed to grab a few of them, cuff them and bring them to a temporary detention centre set up for this event. I heard it was even worse than this. There was cause for criticism and concern.

Prior to the G20, or the G21, as I called it, coming into town, all sorts of stories entered the media, and new words or phrases were added to our collective vocabulary: perimeter, security, integrated security unit, public works protection act, etc. Most lawyers interviewed for these stories hardly heard of the Public Works Protection Act, although government advocates cited this as being in effect since 1937. However, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms came in later and has precedence over all of this, or so we thought.

Anyways, people were told that if they walked within five meters of this "red zone", which was within the perimeter protecting the world leaders, one would be forced to show identification and explain why they are there. Normally, one does not even need to speak to a police officer, let alone show identification (except in lawful circumstances, or if done so voluntarily). Well, if you were also carrying a purse, a book bag or back pack, the police would automatically assume the right to search as well. They were allegedly looking for bricks, rocks, home-made bombs, weapons or even sharp objects. However, news of this new law was not made clear to most people walking their dogs, taking a stroll or going for their morning jog ...

I was told that not everybody was questioned. For example, if I showed up by the perimeter, I don't think I would get the same treatment that a young man would get, particularly if the young man was also of colour, or of a south Asian descent. I am in my late forties and look it, and in general, when I am in Toronto, I dress well, so the police would assume I have nothing to do with the protesters or any "Black bloc", so they did target certain groups. I know this because colleagues of mine in Toronto told me they were never bothered, while many young and racialized persons were hauled in for questioning.

However, after the "Black bloc" incident, the police were under severe criticism. The federal government promised about $1 billion worth of security, although this tab kept going up and up as time progressed. As this tally increased, the amount of criticism from armchair protesters like myself went up. Armchair protesters are people that write about protesting and criticize governments without actually physically showing up. Some of these people also include reporters and editors in our favourite newspapers, among those that remained inside. Others did go out and report on the external "events", while others were allowed in to report on the actual G20 discussions.

There were questions about how much security dollars were being used for this international gabfest among the twenty richest nations of the world, and prior to that the eight largest countries. The G8 was held in Huntsville, at Deerhurst Lodge and despite some protesters showing up, this event ran swimmingly. Things just began to turn bad when the G8 became the G20. Helicopters, motorcades, police cruisers (mostly RCMP), were traveling on closed highways or in the sky into the city, and somehow, they got into the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre. Some leaders brought hundreds of staff, others only brought a few. Hotel rooms were completely booked across the downtown.

Anyways, many of the demonstrators wanted to approach the perimeter. I always think this would have been a good tactic, but not to do anything violent. Once there, all of them would sit or stand purposely with their signs and chants, but no violence, no rocks, no Molotov cocktails, or even any attempts to get beyond the fence ... but police were too wise on this. They not only wanted to keep demonstrators out of the perimeter, they wanted to keep them completely out of the whole area around Front Street, University Avenue, etc.

But it was the lack of police presence when the Black bloc went wild ... we are spending over a billion dollars and we couldn't even get a few police officer to put an end to this rampage on time. As a result, many businesses were destroyed, vehicles defaced and the whole streets looking more like Afghanistan than Toronto. Toronto Police Chief Blair did a press conference later on, some questions answered, some he refused to, and some he genuinely didn't know ... he cut the conference short, not wanting to make this G20 gabfest an international embarrassment to the world. Police continued to work through the night, rounding up anybody they thought could be connected to these crimes, although many of these people weren't even protesters, and there were considerable complaints - hence, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms vanished by Order in Council by Cabinet on June 2, 2010?

Demonstrators then moved their protest to the temporary detention centre where they demanded the release of various detainees. Apparently, it was not pleasant in there. People were denied phone calls, being asked to use buckets for toilets, and not being fed for hours, and when fed, maybe a cheese sandwich. How true all of this was, will best be left to an inquiry, but these conditions did not even seem to meet the Geneva Convention for Prisoners of War, let alone protests ...

The next day, the police made up for lost time, as another one of my contacts said. They sent a video of police encroaching on a peaceful demonstration by the detention centre. After refusing to move back, there was tear gas applied and crowds moved back. My contact lived across the street, and her film showed a journalist coming into her house at the request of a police officer that warned her about the tear gas, that it can go through windows, go through doors. She went inside, closed all the windows and doors, and let the journalist come in as well, until it blew over.

There were many more arrests during the day. Some people reported being street blocked, another term I never heard before, where police would trap a group of people into a very small area and force them to stay, as one of their officers goes through to conduct searches, and arrests others. They employed buses to send people on, and according to my contacts, many of these people weren't even demonstrators. They were subsequently shipped off to the temporary detention centre to be processed, and only when somebody came for them, some were released without bail (on officer in charge), while others were held for bail hearings. Four courts opened their doors on Sunday in order to process about five hundred people, some of whom were let go and others were released on a couple of thousand dollars in bail. Some had court dates, others had their charges dropped.

Nevertheless, this was a terrifying intervention into the human rights of many of these people, some of whom were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Others were arrested simply because they "should know they should not be behind a police line". Others were searched randomly. Suddenly the purchase of a gas mask becomes a crime. Many did this because they anticipated if they had to get through some of these protest areas, they did not want to get caught in the blast. Lawyers from the Movement Defence Committee were organizing bail hearings, releases, sureties, etc. Some high profile individuals were also caught in the snag too.

Police did this overtime on Sunday, supposedly to make up for what critics said they did not do on Saturday. No, nobody died from any of these interventions, but it was certainly terrifying and possibly traumatizing for some. Raking them all in and letting the courts figure it out is not necessarily the best approach, but this is the approach the police eventually took. Perhaps to show the public that these billions were being spent in visible ways?

Another of my contacts told me that twenty people came from her city, half of whom were of native descent. She told me earlier this evening that virtually all the natives continued to be in hold, while the others (non-natives) were released. Another one of my contacts viewed the mayhem from a Wheel-Trans van, which liberally took her throughout the protest zone, as well as the riot zone, and she took pictures and put them on youtube.

It is said over 900 people were arrested, although many were released without charge. There is a call for an inquiry into this G20 Hop! Some want a complete audit by Auditor General Sheila Fraser of all the summit and post-summit costs Others want to see a review of how civil liberties were dealt with, and whether or not this was actually legal. Businesses and individual residents affected by this path of destruction want somebody to pay, notably the federal government for choosing this location for their billion dollar picnic.

I don't know what the outcome of this should be, although I am uncomfortable with the way so many arrests have been carried out without any apparent provocation. I recall my training and how people react when given the uniform and the authority to do things, unchecked. Stanley Milgram did a number of experiments, where up to 68% of his subjects knowingly "tortured" a group of a confederates in the other room by moving an electrical shock device up to its maximum. Zimbardo had led a number of experiments, where subjects were placed as prison guards and were permitted to discipline the confederate prisoners, and it appeared that abuses and breaches of authority were something also that came in with the donning of the uniform.

At the same time, if you were a police officer, what would you do? Whatever you do, you are going to be attacked either way. You will be attacked for being too soft if you don't do something, too hard if you go too far ... there is no happy medium, and this is an awful position to be put in.

Maybe we will throw all these issues in and let the courts figure it out.

A PEDAGOGY OF PRIVILEGE

2010-05-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Some of the people who read my blogs try to allege assumptions about my political views, or my background, or what I am doing or not doing to "help others help themselves", put in a kinder context. Die hard conservatives, or at least people who have convinced themselves that they must support this ideology or be considered a "fringe group", accuse me of being a left-winger. I don't consider myself a left-winger, as many of my friends on the left accuse me of being a conservative of sorts. In the history of blogs here, I have opposed unions, opposed public housing, queried about the accountability of so many government hand-outs, opposed the bailouts of big business, opposed the HST, as well as questioned many facets about the social work and poverty-based industries.

On the other hand, accepting a hard-right ideology to me is no different than accepting a hard-left ideology. I've met and spoke to people who label themselves conservative that cannot engage in an intellectual debate about the topics they claim to oppose my opinions on. One in particular tried to claim climate change was a hoax, but could not claim knowledge or familiarity of a single peer-reviewed study that states this as fact. The person instead insisted that the one individual who brought the issue up was responsible for doing the "homework", not him. To me, this just indicated that this individual actually knows quite little about this topic, but his chosen ideology dictates to him what position he takes.

In turn, they personalize every statement their opponents make, and make assumptions about where they are coming from, as opposed to responding with like arguments that support their own position. I am in the legal profession, and in order to work in this field, I better know how to raise both fact and law to back any argument I make or expect to lose. In other words, to many of these right wing ideologues, anybody that does not agree with them are "socialists" or in the US, "liberals". Those on the left broadly label those on the right as being "greedy". I consider myself a radical centrist, because I believe that politics is the art of compromise, and that public policy should be based on expert review and evaluation, as opposed to political persuasion. Unfortunately, most people base their votes and opinions on stereotypes and when it feels good to put others lesser than themselves down, in order to make themselves feel better.

However, apart from those on the two extremes, there are heuristic reasons why some people tend to make assumptions about others, or blame others for their own misfortunes. In my experience, the very wealthy and even self-made wealthy tend to be more liberal and broad-minded in their vision as a whole, than many in the upper middle class and/or unionized working classes. Individuals who are very wealthy can self-exclude themselves from elements of society they find distasteful or bothersome, and in their own small way, many of them try to make things better for those in difficult circumstances. Foundations bear many of their names, as well as several I know that own companies take specific people under their wing to develop them as persons, increase their skills and eventually hire them. People with this kind of wealth have choices, and for the most part, they realize that.

However, those in the middle and upper-middle classes, have a differential view of how little their personal choices took them to where they are, versus circumstances. Very wealthy people also tend to be well-educated, and growing up, are almost constantly reminded about how "lucky" they are. The kinds of problems that develop in wealthy families tend to come out differently and impact people involved in a different way than the same types of problems for those in middle and upper-middle income families. For the most part, wealth is shared, either through inheritance, through family ties and through cultural connections, such as association with others in the same country clubs, associations, university alumni, etc. The sense of belonging among the wealthier parts of the country does not rely on what one's neighbours think, or what charities they support ... The problems arise in wealthy families are when love is bought with money, and the support does not go with it ...

However, in the middle class and upper middle classes, there is a lot of control, albeit usually as a benevolent dictatorship over the lives of their offspring. Those in the middle and upper middle classes want to emulate the wealthy because they want to be there someday themselves, even though their chances of making it there aren't large. In families, there is programming on the basis of gender, friendships, morality and values, and cultural leanings. While this "benevolent dictatorship" is in effect, offspring in these families also benefit from a large amount of support: cultural, social, emotional and financial. There is a lot said about older kids nowadays not leaving home until they are well into their twenties, and sometimes early thirties ... the offspring witnesses what their parents have been able to take from the world and benefit from, while they themselves fear not being able to do this for themselves. Yet at the same time, there are more parents than there were in the past that have funded or helped fund their child's post-secondary education, helped them purchase their first house, or even paid for a honeymoon when they get married ...

I know this through my own observations of ten and a half years floating through the post-secondary education system. During my time, there were students relying largely on OSAP, but over time, these numbers have dropped, as parents were more able to provide this support. New financial instruments made it possible for middle income parents to provide this type of support. Further, parents of older children often have more than one vehicle in the yard, and encourage their children to learn to drive shortly after they are legally able to. Vehicle ownership and use is as much of a cultural inheritance, as is one's cultural assumptions of what a parent owes their children with respect to post-secondary education. There is a perception among the middle and upper-middle income families that vehicle ownership, purchasing a home, and graduating from university, is a way to "make it".

However, with these new cultural norms, develops a new form of cultural privilege. If you grew up in a family like this, it is difficult for you to picture what it is like for somebody that did not. Some families have the means, but refuse to assist their children into adulthood; others simply cannot afford it and those offspring often have to resort to the public system to obtain what they need, and from past experience, I know this to be a crap shoot. Unfortunately, there are more people who are privileged in a middle to upper middle class type of way, than those who are not, which has led to this biased heuristic.

For example, a child from a low income or working class family knows that they are different from the time they enter the school system. The school system is set up to replicate the values and mores of those that appear to comprise the majority of parents in their catchment area. Those that run for the school board, and those that serve in high level staff positions at the school board also have the same cultural background and privilege as most parents. Those parents of minority situations, poverty, disability and other "differences" are only active or heard from when it comes to special needs children, because that is where the run of the mill educational system neglects people in the most overt way.

It is not that teachers and principals haven't heard of poverty, as you can probably ask any of them and they will relate stories to you about the girl that wore summer shoes to school in the winter or the boy that never had a good winter coat. They don't see these cases as being in the majority of their classes, but these people are noticed. Unfortunately, most teachers and principals alike tend to buy into the same ideology that if someone "works hard", they should be able to escape poverty. Maybe, because their parents worked hard and paid for their education, and they were then able to take advantage of their family's backing and purchase a home, keep family in the loop, and enjoy these types of relationships that not everybody has. To many of them, they think they can do good for the impoverished students by buying a pair of boots for the girl or a coat for the boy, and pretending this will make the school experience for these children better. Unfortunately, more often than not, it doesn't improve things ... the new coat or the new boots might be appreciated (or not), but the family these children come from are not given one added opportunity, one route of escape from poverty or one smidgen of hope.

While the middle or upper middle class teacher does not view it this way (that an act of charity can actually hurt the self-esteem of a child or family), they do not understand what happens in the cultural context that the child lives in. Let me give you an example: e. g. this was a situation I personally witnessed. I visited the home of a new employee I hired at a business I managed about fifteen years ago. Her son who was about eight or nine years old at the time, came home from school with a new pair of boots and a gift voucher for a nearby grocery store. He told his mother that his teacher gave these items to him, after they noticed he wasn't wearing any boots that particularly difficult winter. The boy appeared angry and embarrassed, and the mother who was also my new employee, took the boy to another room to talk privately to him (and not in front of me). I learned later that she and her husband have been struggling to pay bills on Ontario Works for a year or so, and did not even want to tell me about that.

I explained to her that she will not need to worry about that anymore because her job will definitely take them off welfare for good, and that I hired her for her skills and abilities, not for some picky criteria that many employers today use. The long and short end of this was that she made the best employee I ever hired, in any of the places I ever managed or operated. For those naysayers that say that those who work hard will avoid poverty, this woman was an example of somebody that worked hard almost everyday of her life, raising two special needs children, and trying to work around their needs, while making only enough to supplement, not get her family off assistance. She later told me that she felt honored to be working in the organization that I hired her for, and that she found it hard to believe that I actually accommodated her with respect to her health conditions she had at the time, as well as issues concerning one of her young children.

This is something I felt I had to do as an employer, not for her or for anybody in particular, but in order to keep that office running, and have good people working there. I had an obligation as an employer to do this. I was never one to go out to buy a pair of boots for a kid, or give them my daughter's old winter coat, as an act of charity. I was always more interested in what I can do to address the issue to begin with, and do it with dignity. But then again, I was not somebody that was raised in a stable, two-parent, loving household either ... While I am sure both of my parents loved me in their own way, their own mistakes, personal lives and other issues, took precedence over their concern over my welfare as a child. On my own since my teens, I realize what a value a stable household gives to individuals and ensures almost a poverty-proof life for that child, esp when emotional, social, cultural and financial support are all combined.

I was always somebody who would make sure that anybody working for me would include their costs, mileage, parking and other expenses, so they knew they were supported in the work they were doing for my office. I did this for others, despite others never doing this for me. In another office I managed, I sought funding specifically addressing the skills of two individuals in the office I knew were the lowest paid, so I can increase their hours and total pay, without as much as asking for increase in my own salary. These things all took place in the 1990's, during a time of so-called retrenchment in social programming. It is sad, however, when the administration was taken over by somebody else, with a completely different philosophy as to what constituted qualifications, work ethics and results. This individual was really no different than many of the employers I find around here, believing there are no human variables, just a right to exclusionary practices.

Many people find it hard to believe over thirty percent of Niagara residents do not have a driver's license, or lost it for whatever reason. I bump into these people all the time, those who were unable to get around to get their licenses, those who lost them due to a medical problem, or were never able to get it. Virtually none of them are working for much, if at all. Those that have grown up with the kind of supports I describe above, actually believe that the men that don't drive must have got there for a reason, e.g. drug abuse, not paying child support. For the women, it is assumed they have a husband or some other sugar daddy that makes the big bucks, so all they are looking for is minimum wage work. These same people, after saying something like that, are embarrassed after I tell them why I don't drive ... not feeling bad for what they said, but being caught with their words. I am sure I might have educated a few of them over time, but this does not push people out of their comfort zone.

There are middle class folks worrying about losing their jobs, marriages falling apart and people getting into serious accident and illnesses, making them worry about their future all the time. There are folks that conduct a lot of research for example to reassure this sector of the middle class to convince them that they will never become homeless, because they want to make it look like those that DO become homeless are mentally ill, substance abusers or ex-inmates of psychiatric facilities - make these people in worse circumstances appear to be authors of their misfortune in some way, or at least so much "out there" that the same thing will not happen to them. Well, if one has never been involved with any of those things, they're safe, right? At least, that is what the political agenda of this type of research is about ... when in fact, none of these people are safe. I am a witness of this, watching a man who worked for a factory for twenty-eight years end up on the street, another man lose his home after a messy marriage break-up and he lived in his car, and so on ... these stories are not that uncommon, and none of them have mental illness or alcoholism to push them there.

These same middle class folks get reassured that if they "work hard", they will make it. At the same time, other privileged folks, perhaps secure (for now) in their jobs, tell the public under an assumed name of course, how people on welfare don't want to work, and how there are plenty of Tim Horton's jobs available, and everything. If I took this one woman that I referred to earlier that I hired in a fairly well-paid position to a Tim Horton's, she would never be hired - she had two university degrees, a special needs child, and a propensity for migraine headaches, which would throw any normal employer off base ... but she delivered fine for me, because unlike others she apparently worked for, I accommodated her. And even if Timmy's weren't so picky, there will have to be at least 800,000 new openings in places like this in order to get everybody off welfare ... but one can dream, right?

The same people who argue these points claim themselves as charitable and how they would help a deserving person, which is nice to hear, but neither he, nor I, nor even 100,000 people like he or I will be able to help everybody who needs help on an individual self-selective basis like this. In fact, the most needy will be left out, which is why the state took these functions over. Remember the story of Dorothea Dix, who fought to take the ill, the poor, the dying from run-down poor houses into state-run facilities, where they would receive the care and help they needed. And when these institutions became overcrowded and inhumane, people like Claire Hinks, and others fought for their right to live in the community.

Today I am doing something like this. I am continuing to fight for people's right to not only live in the community, among us, but to contribute what they can ... and be given respect and opportunities to do the same. I don't have a background of privilege, whether that be cultural, social, financial or familial ... but I do in fact believe in people, and because people of privilege exist ... I don't feel I need to assist them, as they have this support already. Why do they need me to push and advocate on their behalf, when they already have the resources they need? I am there to provide this to those that truly need the help, ask for it, and provide this assistance in a dignified manner ... so these folks will for once, or once again, feel that they belong - something that no charity, now matter how well intended, can ever do for them.

Your thoughts?

THINKING FOR A LIVING ...

2010-05-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

The last entry in the blog about rights, obligations and privilege drew a lot of blood from my followers. For many, they find my blogs intellectual and heavy on the intellect; others read them and assume meaning and ramifications that are nowhere in it. However, for followers of Kant, Rawls and even classic Locke, people seem to get how my comparisons work. This is the respect for the integrity of the person, regardless of what position they are in society. It bestows both rights and responsibilities on all citizens, and as such doesn't differ because somebody has a million dollar mansion, and the other is on welfare. As equal citizens, we all reap what we sow, and deserve full integrity of our person as we make choices. I critique society's view of the poor and disabled, and separated them into a context of how some see a split between a "deserving" sect and an "undeserving" sect, which always befuddled me, as this context cannot be reasonably decided by an outsider who is not in the shoes of the other. How come something as easy for me to understand is so difficult for some others to wrap their heads around?

In the context of my professional life, I learned to accept and acknowledge all kinds of people, their behaviours, cultures and attitudes. When I first began to work independently in private practice, many things people would say to me bothered me, or shocked my senses. At times, I thought the walls had ears in my old office, as many of the words of the people who have come to see me over the years are reflected in the aging process, and the ghosts and creak of the old building I was in. Over the years, the personification of my environment is such that I learned to find it easier to tolerate and understand, rather than to judge and criticize. I met people in all walks of life, all persuasions, all orientations, all attitudes, and many who have done some terrible things, or have had terrible things done to them. Many have come to me to rant, often loudly, about the injustices and idiocy of the legal system, the very system where I make my living. I can only nod my head, the customer is always right ... the system is what a person perceives it to be, I have tried to fight a lot of fights, which many clients sometimes believe we should have won, but there are no guarantees. I walked into the courtroom many times believing we had a solid case, only to lose, as well as other times, walking in believing our chances were sketchy at best, but we surprisingly win!

My friends ask me how do I deal with the stress of it all. I don't. I sometimes have to walk away. It is not good to carry that much sorrow inside, and then try to understand why this much pain is possible. An instant distraction is what is needed, or I do not do well with continuing what it was I started. Like many of you, I walk the streets of my community, and I see people fast asleep on the benches around the market square, or in the doorways of business buildings on the main streets of downtown. During the day, these same people and others are making their rounds asking for change. To me, these people are no more welcome than the solicitors for some charity standing on the street corner, accosting as many passers by as they can, only to try to part you with your money. This is not the problem; it is merely a symptom. A society that is working well would not have the charities soliciting people on street corners and disparaged people trying to knock up other people for "spare change".

My downtown can be a beautiful place, and in fact, I love it in the spring when the buskers make their way and do an impromptu act across the old courtyard, or by the market, as throngs of people make their way inside to shop for produce and other foodstuff from our local farmers. My downtown can be as informal as my walking into Tim Horton's, meeting various colleagues seeking a coffee after court, or a friend seeking to speak to me about the latest on anything. I walk downtown during the day if I suffer from information overload at the office, only to get it from a different angle in the streets. A true sign of spring is when the city workers begin to water the plants in their holders all along St. Paul Street ... the water dripping from the hose down to the sidewalk below contrasts directly with the beaming sunlight beating down from above. Crowds of people on patios, casually chatting over expresso and iced coffee, as others cycle by ... the relaxed nature of a downtown attracts the positive nature of people.

After I return to the office, I continue on my exciting, and sometimes, dreadful journeys. I preside over some devastating issues, where regardless of which way a party moves, somebody gets hurt. My role is to minimize the damage. I work on litigation cases, which I gather information, conduct a search of parties, draft a claim, assemble it, issue it and file it, and then figure out a way to serve it on the unsuspecting parties these papers are going to. Other times, I write and seek information, and provide feedback to a person as to which way they move their pieces on this ever emerging chessboard. It is just when there are too many chessboards, or too many pieces missing, when I become frazzled. To me, things need to fit together, and resemble calm. My job is to find out where these pieces fit, because they always fit somewhere, just not always where you think they should.

I live a life that some tell me they envy, where I encounter, work with, engage with and partake with, all ranks of life, including the millionaires, the paupers, the persons with disabilities, the legal professionals, the artisans and the poets. Each day, taking a dose of each adds a different something to my world. I have had jobs where I have directly worked with senior government officials, including Cabinet Ministers, whereas the next day, I am assisting somebody who had been evicted from their home to find another. I have been in the worst hovels of this region, even remembering many of their addresses, and have been in the fanciest million dollar homes and private enclaves of the wealthy. I've been in the non-profit sector, where I fondly remember publishing the newsletter, and presenting our position to Parliamentary committees. I still do a lot of that, except today, I share my knowledge and experience with coalitions that are doing their damnedest to change so much of what is wrong.

Being self-employed, some believe I can do and say as I wish, but this is not necessarily the whole truth. In fact, most of the time, I am buried in work, and it is also my role to protect myself from being submerged in minute details, anxiety about what I am to do next week, and the week thereafter. Some tell me I am courageous to take on the region with respect to bringing transit to everybody, but this is something that has pestered me, and it would certainly pester me more, if I sat on my hands like the others did, and just hoped something will happen. As a protagonist, I need to make things happen. I can't sit on my hands when things are so wrong. I knew how to tell as a young child when something around me was wrong, or when somebody was treating me in a way that was improper. I always felt things physically, and in many respects, I can only describe the pain in physical matter. It comes down to that personal integrity thing again; part of my personal integrity involves being and belonging, as well as practicing citizenship rights, and where others do or do not do something that prevents me from fully exercising the same is when my world needs to be shifted right. Things need to change.

It is a falsehood to assume that all people are created equal on this planet ... inequality certainly cuts in a predictable fashion, with some people deemed to be "hard working" and thus "deserving", while others are not so deserving ... but few ever question why the "deserving" seem to be over-represented by individuals in groups that are not traditionally disadvantaged. More whites than blacks curiously end up in the "deserving" pile; more able-bodied than persons with disabilities end up in the "deserving" pile. More men than women end up there as well. This is no accident. One might argue that women, persons with disabilities and blacks do not "work hard" or all come from "bad seed" that seems to keep them back, but we know that as a society, we tend to individualize traits, as opposed to trying to analyze them from a broader world perspective. This is reminiscent of Kelly's attribution theory, where the worst of a situation makes it more the fault of the person it happened to ... almost upstaged from concrete operational thinking, Jean Piaget's analysis for children in their developmental stages. For the most part, those in the "undeserving" category face barriers to their success. This is not the fault of the people with advantage, but it is the fault of those that put policies and programs in place, and distribute wealth and income, or who make hiring decisions.

As I stated earlier, if such policy makers, employers, government officials and others in power, were to learn how to put their feet into the shoes of the other, and govern as though they do not know where they will end up once the rule, policy or law is passed. They may be a pauper, a millionaire, a storekeeper, a student, or a person with a disability. Regardless, the universality of the policy would apply, and unfortunately, we cannot train our rulers to think this way. Our rulers are only concerned with how to retain their jobs as rulers, and not how to truly govern and lead. As long as problems and despair only belong to other people, the rulers of today are not sufficiently dismayed as to find ways to relief them of such. They apply the band-aid, or they apply the punishment, whatever way the wind is blowing at the time. Not a nice way to intellectually determine the world ...

But, as part of my profession, I often have to guide people to make decisions, sometimes decisions that are very difficult, and no matter how we decide, somebody can get hurt. As a leader, I try to balance it the best I can. The result is usually the best result we will get, although I know somebody is hurt. I was once told by a judge that we know a mediation has been successful when both parties walk away with their lower lips dragging across the floor. That means each party takes something from it, as well as gives something up. Much of this is the art of compromise, the skill of making people retain connections, the ability to enable others to figure out how to solve their own problems, not something that is valued highly these days.

I don't know what day or year I will ever hang my hat, or if this is ever going to happen, but I want to leave the world I live in with a set of rich memories, rich understandings, and a philosophy and belief on how to lead, how to change and how to know when it is time to fight.

Your thoughts?

RIGHTS, OBLIGATIONS AND SOCIETAL PREJUDICES

2010-04-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is not a good year to be poor, nor is it a good year to be disabled.

Personally, I don't know if there ever was a good year to be poor or disabled, but 2010 seems to be representative of a retrenchment or backward movement on any minor achievements we might have achieved in years prior. This time, ignorant Joe Taxpayer is getting his way in his spiteful attacks on the poor and disabled, considering that "his" money is supposedly being "wasted" on the same ... I suppose Joe Taxpayer will also win when the number of indigent funerals go up in every municipality in Ontario as a result of Joe Taxpayers uneducated and unsophisticated understanding of our obligations as a community ... while I would love to be a fly on the wall when Joe Taxpayers' taxes go way up after our health care costs, correctional costs, educational costs, and everything else goes up in the face of society's backwards flowing attitudes, this is not the topic of this particular entry.

This entry is about rights, obligations and privileges. This is being framed from the lens of a human rights perspective. Let us define our terms first: (a) Rights are variously construed as legal, social, or moral freedoms to act or refrain from acting, or entitlements to be acted upon or not acted upon. While the concept is fundamental to civilized societies, there is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights. It has been used by different groups and thinkers for different purposes, with different and sometimes opposing definitions, and the precise definition of the concept, beyond having something to do with normative rules of some sort or another, is controversial. Nevertheless, the concept of rights is of vital importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology. (cited from Wikipedia).

Rights can be further divided into "natural rights" and "legal rights". Natural rights are rights that exist regardless of law and are constitutional in nature, and cannot be taken away from anybody. Everybody has these rights, whether they are black, white, rich, poor, male, female, gay, straight, etc. After many years and many forms of government, countries got together in 1948 and formed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although most countries are signatory to this document, thus agreeing in principal as to what natural rights all persons have, the actual document is not necessarily enforceable but forms the basis of each signatory's own constitutional and quasi-constitutional approach to human rights. In Canada, we brought this document into our Constitution in the form of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and in 1985, three years after the rest of the Charter was signed, the equality provisions under s. 15 were passed, thus entrenching existing Human Rights Codes and making them broader and more inclusive in terms of the definition of equality under the Charter.

Natural rights supercede any legislation. No government is allowed to take rights away from persons who are resident in countries that have signed on, and who have ratified these rights. For example, our Canadian government cannot suddenly declare a police state, where people's homes, cars, vehicles and other personal space, can be searched and anything and everything within being taken and used against us, without due process of law. "Due process" over the years has gradually meant something and provided various guidelines to police services and the courts, but in light of it, people have this natural right and it must be upheld.

Legal rights are rights that are granted to citizens as a matter of law. These are sometimes granted to certain citizens that qualify, such as citizens over the age of 65 being entitled to an Old Age Security pension, or persons who have legal residency, citizenship or a special work visa, to take a job in this country. These rights are doled out by legislation, which when passed must also meet constitutional standard as well. In other words, rights passed by legislation cannot be contrary to what the rights in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms say, except in certain circumstances (but these over-ride sections are not the topic of this entry). These rights can often be tested and reviewed by the courts, and once a decision of the higher courts is made, it becomes binding on all lower courts. Many of our legal rights are also privileges, such as the privilege of driving. In no province of Canada, does anybody have a right to drive a vehicle. However, the law states how any person can become eligible to be granted driving privileges, and how they can be revoked.

Another sub-topic of rights is positive rights and negative rights. Natural rights, as deemed under our Charter include both kinds of rights, as do rights deemed under legislation. Positive rights are rights to a benefit, a service or a privilege of sorts. For example, legislation might spell out under what conditions a person has a right to receive welfare. Natural rights have been ruled in many regards in respect of accommodation issues, such as the Eldridge decision and the Tranchemontagne decision. Both decisions here, as well as others, prescribe certain obligations on the part of government to provide certain types of accommodations and entitlement to persons. Negative rights are the rights to avoid or to have officials refrain from doing something to you, such as search your person without any lawful reason, or to detain you without any lawful purpose. These are the most common rights that most of us recognize, especially if we watch too much American television. While many of these same rights apply in Canada, they are not the same design and scope as those in the United States. For example, some people think we have unfettered freedom of expression, which is a natural right and included in our Charter, but there are more limitations on that right in Canada than there is in the United States. Even our libel and slander laws differ in terms of our absolute and qualitative defenses as well between the two countries.

An obligation is sort of the other side of the rights coin. This is what the rights-holder's responsibilities are as a citizen. An obligation is a requirement to take some course of action, whether legal or moral. There are also obligations in other normative contexts, such as obligations of etiquette, social obligations, and possibly in terms of politics, where obligations are requirements which must be fulfilled. These are generally legal obligations, which can incur a penalty for unfulfillment, although certain people are obliged to carry out certain actions for other reasons as well, whether as a tradition or for social reasons. Obligations vary from person to person: for example, a person holding a political office will generally have far more obligations than an average adult citizen, who themselves will have more obligations than a child.[citation needed] Obligations are generally granted in return for an increase in an individual’s rights or power, also cited from Wikipedia.

In general obligations are legal obligations, often set out by legislation and would include any duty or responsibility a person has, usually in exchange for certain rights, such as the right to vote or own land. Such obligations might include payment of taxes prescribed by law, as well as maintaining one's property in accordance to city ordinances. In terms of natural law, one might think of mores or normative conventions any society would hold, such as an obligation not to commit murder, steal anything that doesn't belong to you or to infringe upon another person's bodily integrity (e.g. don't rape another person). Normative conventions and mores are usually prescribed in law, but in terms of social convention, they tend to be followed by most people. When those few fail to adhere to these norms, every society has a way of dealing with the offenders, whether by specific or general deterrence, and how this applies to any specific society is usually prescribed by legislation. Again, models for punishment must also meet standards set out by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as any punishment a state can mete out to an offending individual must not run afoul of the Charter. The Charter also prescribes how a person can be heard, represented and even appeal to the courts when they feel their punishment or conviction of an offense was unfair.

This is a very general picture of how rights and obligations are actually set out in law. However, societal prejudices continue to exist against the poor and persons with disabilities. With regards to persons with disabilities, the citizenship model has not been ratified by the general public yet. Members of the general public fall into two main spheres of thought about persons with disabilities: the charitable model, and the punitive model. In general, the public does not understand the difference between the "welfare poor" and the "disabled poor"; henceforth, those that do tend to lean more on the charitable model. I will explain each model as each lies with respect to natural rights, legal rights and obligations.

Under the charitable model, societal proponents view the individuals as "deserving" of entitlements. They understand there is some obligation on the part of society to provide limited entitlements to those they deem "deserving". Different spheres of the charitable model provide certain indices as to how much of this obligation should be on the "state" and how much should be on the "community" (meaning volunteers and family). In my view, those proponents have been moving slowly away from state obligation to charitable obligations, while continuing to fail to understand there are still natural laws to which apply to either situation. For example, our federal Conservatives provide no direct benefit to persons with disabilities, other than the Canada Pension Plan (Disability), which is limited only to those who have paid sufficiently into the program, and even then, the allowance is insufficient to pay for subsistence. The assumption that is made with the Conservatives by its unspoken nature of this program is that "family and friends" would make up the difference. The Conservative proponents have all grown up in kind, middle class upbringings and have "family and friends" who are not only willing, but are also capable of providing a top up should the need arise. This is based on an ethic that all families and friends help one another in times of need, a fantasy for most persons with disabilities that I know.

To further this, and the Conservatives clearly understand there is not a forever component to "family and friends", so they invent the Disability Tax Credit and its tie to the Registered Disability Savings Plan. They have been convinced by some family groups such as the Canadian Association for Community Living and Schizophrenia Society of Canada, that some provisions must be made available to their kin should the disabled kin survive them. This is based on the assumption that the person with the disability is unable to do anything for themselves, or to become independent. Again, this is not a citizenship model, but a model based on charity. With the closure of institutions, families do have some reason to be concerned, and even those like myself that reject the charitable model do understand there is a need for transition. Families now have a way of setting up a Registered Disability Support Program (RDSP) for their siblings or kin who have "severe" disabilities. Again, this also implies a dichotomy between persons with disabilities that are "severe" (meaning they can't do anything for themselves) and other persons with disabilities (who are now moving towards the sphere of the "undeserving").

This is seen with regards to the eligibility criteria for the Disability Tax Credit, which must be applied for and approved prior to setting up an RDSP. It is easy to understand why somebody with a physical disability can qualify. Sam, aged 40, is the CEO of a financial consulting company. Ten years ago, he got severely injured in a skiing accident and now relies on a power wheelchair for basic mobility. Sam had modifications done to his vehicle, and is able to transport himself to most places, but does require the assistance of attendants for basic personal care, such as feeding, toileting and shaving. After Sam's rehabilitation, he moved slowly back to his position by gradually taking on more responsibility after he re-learned his functional tasks, and has been able to resume his high-paying job as the CEO of a financial consulting company. Because Sam has high disability related costs, and will continue to rely on personal attendants for the rest of his life, he qualifies for the Disability Tax Credit. This Tax Credit is worth thousands of dollars of non-refundable tax deductions that Sam really could use to help offset his expenses. Further, Sam is able to set up an RDSP, which would benefit him substantially should he ever become disabled enough to have to leave his job. His retirement income is intact, as he is eligible for at least three "marked restrictions" outlined in the application. If his income drops below a certain amount, the federal government will also add contributions until he turns 49 years of age.

On the other hand, Jean, 35, has bipolar affective disorder and is a chartered accountant. She can function most of the time, but does have periods of time that she has to take off from work to either go into hospital or to adjust to new medications. She works at a private accounting firm as an associate and at the present time, has been attempting to move up the ladder to "make partner". Jean does not qualify for the Disability Tax Credit, because if she did, she would have to at least 90% of the time, be "markedly restricted in performing mental functions necessary for everyday life". This is defined as:

Mental functions necessary for everyday life include:
Adaptive functioning (for example, abilities related to self-care, health and safety, social skills and common, simple transactions);
Memory (for example, the ability to remember simple instructions, basic personal information such as name and address, or material of importance and interest); and
Problem-solving, goal-setting, and judgment, taken together (for example, the ability to solve problems, set and keep goals, and make appropriate decisions and judgments).
Important – a restriction in problem-solving, goal-setting, or judgment that markedly restricts adaptive functioning, all or substantially all the time, would qualify. Examples of markedly restricted in the mental functions necessary for everyday life (examples are not exhaustive):
Your patient is unable to leave the house, all or substantially all the time, due to anxiety, despite medication and therapy.
Your patient is independent in some aspects of everyday living. However, despite medication and therapy, your patient needs daily support and supervision due to an inability to accurately interpret his or her environment.
Your patient is incapable of making a common, simple transaction without assistance, all or substantially all the time.
Your patient experiences psychotic episodes several times a year. Given the unpredictability of the psychotic episodes and the other defining symptoms of his or her impairment (for example, avolition, disorganized behaviour and speech), your patient continues to require daily supervision.
Your four-year-old patient cannot play interactively with peers or understand simple requests.

According to this definition, even if Jean was only capable of holding a job at McDonald's, she would not be eligible! If Jean tried to apply for this benefit and qualify, her peers and her professional association would certainly try to force her to attend a "fitness to practice" hearing to see if she was even capable of acting in her profession. Yet, even though Jean functions in her profession, she spends thousands of dollars a year on medications (because the firm does not have a good drug plan for its employees) and spends other monies on psychotherapy, alternative medicine, Tai Chi and other therapies that help Jean keep balanced and able to do her job. Because she is not able to qualify for the Disability Tax Credit, she has excessive disability-related costs that would only be covered in part by other provincial plans (such as Trillium Drug Program). Because Jean is unable to keep as much net income as her peers, despite earning it (and having to put more into her care costs), she is unable to put much away for her own retirement. Therefore, she would not benefit from the RDSP either, and would probably retire much like many of us do ... or not retire at all.

But this is a charitable approach, because it implies the family and friends once again can and will contribute to the person's RDSP, and if that person were on provincial government assistance or some other income where they would not benefit from tax reductions, these tax reductions can be transferred to their "caregiver". Sorry, Mr. Harper, some of us do not want or need "caregivers" and while we are capable of caring for ourselves, we do need help with the expenses - something that is not available to persons who, for disability-based reasons, are not able to drive, or who require other types of services. The cost of living for non-drivers in a region like mine are at least 30 - 40% greater than for those that have access to their own vehicle. The Conservative types would endorse "volunteer drivers" to drive persons with disabilities to medical appointments, but certainly not to work-related appointments or to the office, as required. Again, this assumes the person is completely unable to contribute. If they are, they are edging towards not being among the "deserving".

This means that in the language of rights and obligations, the person with a disability under the charitable model has few, if any, obligations, and "special rights" which are different than citizenship rights in many ways. "Special rights" means they become a Timmy or a Tammy to their family and are worthy of pity and charitable consideration only, but are not expected to think for, or act for themselves. This translates essentially into somebody else making key decisions for them, such as medical decisions, residential decisions and possibly even handling their money. This would be particularly key for those that actually manage to qualify for the Disability Tax Credit under any type of invisible disability, and a bit less so, if the disability is purely physical (although there are charitable aspects to the treatment of these persons too, particularly in their portrayal as not being whole persons).

Monies for hiring or retraining persons with disabilities have diminished over the past few years. At one point, the federal government was making lots of efforts to reach out to the disability community and hire qualified persons from within its ranks, under the assumption that persons with disabilities were citizens like everybody else, but who just required adjustments in their job descriptions to ensure they can fulfill the essential duties. Monies for Opportunities Fund, for example, have been pared back over the years, no longer providing start-up costs for self-employment proposals, or substantial amounts for a college or university level education. Even some of the Canada Study Grants and other federal bursaries for persons with disabilities have become more restricted in their applications. If a person with a disability cannot do it "like an able bodied person", they don't get to do it at all. Provincially, the employment supports programs for persons with disabilities exclude training altogether and rely on a person's employer to cover these costs, where possible. The model for funding was found to be most applicable to those seeking low-wage, entry level positions, and not necessarily those that would qualify for higher paid, professional work. As one person told a forum I manage online, "the job of ODSP is to keep people on ODSP". This would keep the essential dichotomy between "severe" (deserving) persons with disabilities and soon-to-be "undeserving" persons with disabilities. Issues of retrenchment have been reported by the Council of Canadians for Disabilities.

Further retrenchment has been noted at the provincial level, where persons with disabilities are continuously being swung between the charitable model and punitive model (which will be explained below). Its primary income support program, Ontario Disability Support Program, remains thousands of dollars below any known poverty line and is impossible to maintain a modicum of dignity by living solely on it. Its shelter allotments imply that all recipients should and must go to live in subsidized housing, something which I commented earlier on in this blog - and is not necessarily an empowering environment. ODSP, of course, provides for up to $6000 a year in "charity" or "gifts" from family and friends, yet they ruthlessly claw back earnings from employment sources. Again, Ontario wants to present persons with disabilities as Timmy and Tammy for the "family and friends" part of the community that have pity on them. In tune with the federal government, the provincial government has exempted all assets in an RDSP, yet will not allow one to keep an RRSP, or even start one without major clawbacks. In a recent Toronto Star article that focused on a private members' bill by Toby Barrett, a Progressive Conservative MPP, that would allow ODSP recipients to keep up to $700 a month clear before clawbacks, increase their allowable assets, exempt RRSPs, as well as several other positive moves, Madeleine Meilleur said she could act only on welfare rules concerning gifts, shared accommodation, financial windfalls and suspensions. The council’s other proposed changes – including asset and earnings exemptions—would be too costly for a province facing a $21.3 billion deficit, she said. It is cheaper to treat us all like charity cases, but too expensive to allow people to move towards independence and live in dignity.

Further on this same budget, Madeleine Meilleur has cut what was known as the Special Diet Allowances (SDA) that was given as a "top up" to both Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program cheques from the budget. This "top up" helped persons with serious medical conditions to pay for proper foods so that their health conditions would not become worse. She called this move appropriate because it was "unsustainable", given that the program cost $6 million in 2003, and in 2009, cost over $200. Contrary to what the Minister says was the cause for the increase, it was not fraud that increased its cost, but awareness (simply as a result of the provincial government keeping this program under wraps for years before it was "discovered"). This retrenchment is more deeper than this, which will be discussed further in the "punitive" section of this rights and obligations discussion. However, to be "charitable", Meilleur proudly announced that the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care will be offering a "nutritional supplementation" program that she had stated on several radio and news articles will be much more narrow than the existing SDA program.

The Ministry of Health in Ontario has not been known for demedicalization, community living and promotion of independence of persons within the health care system. Persons who have fought for community-based mental health programming have noted that over the past several years, less funding and not more has been given to this portfolio, again assuming those with mental health problems are either completely incompetent and need to be in hospital or are well enough to do without any care at all. Given my knowledge obtained through ten hard years of lobbying in that industry myself, I do not see this "nutritional supplement" being given to those who are living independently or in any way as a health promotion or prevention initiative. By cutting this special diet, I can assure you that there will be increased demands on hospitals, nursing homes (yes ... younger people on ODSP are frequently sent there when they are unable to eat well in the community ... I have had clients this happened to), and psychiatric hospitals. The move is away from independent living and demedicalization whatsoever. Retrenchment also removes the right to make choices. I wouldn't be surprised if some people (with mental health problems) will some day have to show up for their needle in order to continue to collect their ODSP cheques, which is the case in many U.S. jurisdictions.

The next set of problems fall under the other perspective that Jean and Joe Public share besides the "charitable" model. This is the punitive model. More and more people in Ontario are prepared to write anonymous comments in newspapers, letters to the editor and in blogs about how "the majority of people on disability aren't really eligible", and how people on ODSP are really just lazy and tried to qualify for ODSP because "it pays more". This article and subsequent comments is just one example of how Jean and Joe Public think. According to Robert J. Lifton's analysis in his book, Nazi Doctors, when the German government under Hitler began to experiment and then euthanize persons with disabilities as "life unworthy of life" and "useless eaters", there wasn't a major groundswell of public objection over that either, so I'm really not surprised. At least with the charitable model, disability is not seen as your fault. Under the punitive model, it is.

Under this discussion on rights and obligations, persons with disabilities under the punitive model have a whole array of obligations that other citizens do not have, but very few rights. Jean and Joe Public believe they should have the right to police the spending of everybody on social assistance. They should not have the right to cable TV, a telephone, new clothes, a car, a beer now and then, or even the right to order a pizza. "People in need", according to Jean and Joe Public are supposed to have it as rough as prisoners under house arrest do. They should have a right to a roof over their head, but just that ... maybe a room for single people, and small apartments for families. If they are pushed into living among drug addicts, criminals and so forth, so be it. People "living off the system" do not deserve to choose where they live. They are not entitled to cable TV, Internet, a cell phone, etc. They are literally supposed to remain a prisoner in their own home, in order to be considered legitimate in Jean and Joe Public's eyes. On top of this, those getting "social assistance" have to look for work and accept ANY job, no matter how poorly paid, how insecure, how abusive or how unsafe ... if other Canadians do not want to take these jobs, so be it ... people on the system should be forced to. While Jean and Joe Public can demand and wait for jobs that meet their middle class needs and qualifications, the lousy jobs they don't want to take and will never take themselves should be reserved only for those on the system.

The ironic thing is Jean and Joe Public say people "on the system" should be working by picking up litter for the city, cleaning toilets at bus terminals and doing whatever nobody else will do, but yet if they do, how come any "employer" that agrees to take such persons to do these things is not asked in turn to pay them the same union scale wages that Jean and Joe Public would expect? When the question of workfare is raised, one must ask about what the MUTUAL obligations of employer and employee are in these circumstances ... if one is obligated to find work, an employer should be in turn obligated to hire and pay decent wages. If Jean and Joe Public won't work for low wages, why should anybody else? Unfortunately, people like Jean and Joe Public do not see the connection here, and what are mutual obligations, as in their mind, the only party that has any obligation is the one "on the system". In law, this is impossible, as these conditions cannot even form the basis of a legal contract, let alone any kind of fulfillment of any obligation on either side.

Further, because Jean and Joe Public reserve the right to judge, proscribe and stigmatize those "on the system", what impact does this have on the natural rights of the person being judged, proscribed and stigmatized? Remember, in our earlier discussion, I pointed out that natural rights cannot be taken away by anyone, even the police without due process. This includes the right to privacy. Do I as a nosy and rambunctious writer have the right to enter into Jean and Joe Public's home and during their dinner time, tell them they should not be smoking because I have to pay taxes to cover their health bills, or they should not be drinking any wine, because I might have to later pay for addiction treatments, and so forth? Maybe I should have the right to give Jean and Joe Public a drug test every once in awhile to make sure they are not "using"? Of course not! Joe and Jean Public would object to this being done to themselves, because they have a right to privacy. Yet, I am paying for their choices, so why can't I have a say about them? Why does this not work both ways? If it is good enough for somebody on social assistance to be held in literal house arrest, and having to give in to drug tests whenever somebody else wants to be nosy, why isn't this good enough for Jean and Joe Public? Justice works both ways.

The same thing applies to Jean and Joe Public's delusions that driving is "free" and covered entirely by their own pockets. This delusion holds no further weight than bus riders believing they are paying the full freight whenever they drop a few dollars in the fare box. Let us put this into the perspective of charity and rights, and see how drivers would accept this. Drivers take driving for granted so much that they actually believe they should not be paying for public transit "because we never use it". That is fine, if again it worked both ways. These same people may agree that some charity like the Lion's Club should be fund-raising and paying for buses and drivers for "disability" transit, but that's all ... of course, people with disabilities are all charity cases, remember?

How about the proposition that I bring forward that we ask the Lion's Club and other charities to start raising money to pay for roads, highways, pothole filling, parking lots, and other things that drivers take for granted? Drivers would say, no way, because we pay for the privilege of driving! Well, researchers like Todd Littman and the federal Department of Transportation disagree with Jean and Joe Public. Yes, drivers pay for gas, insurance, car loans, etc., but they do not pay for ALL of what they use ... in fact, non-drivers like ME are paying for all of this as well, to the tune of over $6,000 per driver!!! Maybe all of us that do not drive should withhold our taxes, and then demand that Jean and Joe Public fulfill their obligations in paying their own way in driving, by paying the full freight, in much the same way they expect the poor and disabled to do.

Don't worry, Jean and Joe Public, if you can't afford it, we can get fundraisers to cover the cost of roads, parking and other infrastructure that you cannot personally pay for ... after all, you are a "deserving" couple, aren't you? Even then, you understand, Jean and Joe there will be times you will not be able to use the roads after 7:00 p.m., take any routes out of town, or travel down your own boulevard, simply because we couldn't raise enough funds in order to allow you to do so. There is a huge provincial deficit, you know, so we all have to practice restraint. If you are reading this, and have any ounce of intelligence, the price of restraint is usually borne by the poor and lower working classes.

As bizarre an example as this, this is exactly what people in the public want to do to persons with disabilities and the poor. To Hell with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. To Hell with orders from Human Rights Tribunal. To Hell with what is right, and to Hell with what is true justice in passing policies ... As I once stated here about the philosophy of Immanual Kant, the categorical imperative, in order for a policy to be just, it must be universal. If I make a law or a rule, I cannot always assume that I will end up to be in the position of the rule-maker, and as such, I should expect myself to be in any position whatsoever, and be as subservient to such a rule as any other. As such, if I have natural rights under the law, and nobody can take them away from me, why is it that some people feel there should be only obligations and no rights or only "special rights" to classes of people that they themselves distinguish themselves from, or feel they will never be a part of?

My own opinion through hard experience with this whole special diet thing is simple. The government knew they would lose the case entitled Ball, et al v Minister of Community and Social Services, even before it started getting heard. This is part of why they hired these $3,000 a day consultants to advise them of what to do. It wasn't all E-Health; these consultants had other jobs throughout the business of government. Part of this job was to help the government dig itself out of this embarrassing decision (before it happened, of course), draft the rote correspondence that would be received by anybody who queries the Minister about the special diet that was about to be cut, and to decide the next move. The government of course timed the Auditor General report carefully, and provided the materials to the Auditor General upon which he relied, it was planned ... the Auditor General is usually more careful about his homework, and would check with people for definitions of "over-payments", policies on "special diets", etc. and would not be commenting on things that are not law, such as how many people spend more than a certain amount of time on welfare. I know this discussion is next. I would not be surprised if this government's next step is to put a stopwatch on the amount of time people can allegedly spend receiving financial assistance ... or else what? Life in the streets? Death akin to the way Kimberley Rogers died?

The government knows that when a bombastic report that is riddled with errors and misconceptions comes out to the public, that brings very small numbers into seemingly large numbers, pasting every single person on assistance and most on the special diet as "frauds" and that somehow a very substantial group of people are all collecting $250 per month from this "special diet", the uneducated, unsophisticated and pardon the prejudice, readers ... the very stupid members of the public respond like Pavlov's dogs did to those bells ... they salivate at the thought of making other people suffer. Of course the government knows a large contingent of the public will believe these fairy tales, and will support this move to make the poor pay once again for the sins of the deficit. The decision by the Human Rights Tribunal is handed down. There is a 90-day period of case management by the Tribunal for the lead cases to see how the government reacts, so cuts will not be made during this period of time. After? A different story altogether!

The Ministry of Health has its program already designed. Nobody is going to convince me in a million years that there will be an equivalent or better program through this Ministry, when I know there are very limited measures that Ministry can "envelope" its funds. There are transfer agencies (e.g. hospitals, health centres, agencies, nursing homes, etc.), OHIP fees (e.g. doctors, nurse practitioners) and drug benefits. Funding requests are measured in number of beds, full-time equivalents, consulting fees (e.g. psychiatrists). There is no set up for individual transfers in this Ministry whatsoever, unless you are a direct consultant to the Ministry of Health and employed on a contract basis (e.g. such as one of those alleged $3,000 a day types). The Ministry will not be cutting cheques to individuals for "special diets" or even nutrition supplements, as the case may be. They will be providing these "supplements" through their transfer agencies to people in long term care, in dialysis, cancer wards, homes for special care, as well as persons requiring CCAC (e.g. people with feeding tubes) and to some extent, some people may get Ensure supplements and the like by special prescription only.

The government wants to wait until diabetics go blind, lose a limb, have a heart attack, lose their kidneys, etc. before they will offer a single penny in supplementation. This is the same for any other condition, unless the condition is marked weight loss. Obesity will get no support, as the public thinks these people have enough to eat anyways, because most people have absolutely no knowledge that cases of obesity are just as much about malnutrition as those with severe weight loss. As few as 10% of those that currently receive the SDA now will get it when the program changes Ministries. The cost of health care in this province will certainly rise, so the McGuinty government can then tell Jean and Joe Public that its government is spending more on health care ... is this not a great thing for something most Canadians value?

What makes me laugh is the implication that there will be several months to "allow for transition" for those currently in receipt of this program until the new program is in place. What are the other people (who will be cut off) supposed to do? Save up from their measly, paltry cheques for the future needs of their nutrition? Please don't even humour me. This is the same excuse the Minister gave after she cut the Winter Clothing and Back to School Allowances from ODSP and OW families, by saying the new Ontario Child Benefit will be more money overall allowing these families to "save up" for these things ... I laughed so hard then, I fell off my chair then because I also knew most of the OCB was also being clawed back from OW and ODSP benefits, so there was very little gain compared to families that did not get social assistance. The problem now is I am not laughing, because I know certain politicians do not understand the history behind what they are doing and are bound to repeat it.

Yes, work at Tim Horton's and never get out of poverty. God will bless your soul.

RATIFICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY: WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES?

2010-03-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Federal Government proudly announced that it was the 84th nation to ratify the International Covenant on Human Rights for Persons with Disabilities. In the same breath, they pat themselves on the back to announce how much of a leader Canada is in implementing equality provisions as cited in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and administratively through our Human Rights Codes. While political commentators, including this one, are pleased this was done, the plight of persons with disabilities is far from improved. In fact, many uninformed bigots continue to try to attack what few rights we have, as cited in a recent letter of mine in the local newspaper. Carol Goar acknowledges that we still have a very long way to go before people with disabilities have equal citizenship rights.

What is telling in particular are the comments that readers are allowed to contribute to any article, editorial or news items of interest to my local paper. In this paper, probably like most online newspapers, the same few seem to contribute. An individual identifying himself as "seekthetruth" and another individual that are both white males, espousing a Christian view and somehow feel that Christians are somehow under attack by human rights commissions. This is far from the truth as I am aware of Christian issues being raised in workplaces, and the rulings favouring the worker that was discriminated against due to their beliefs (such as a Jehovah's Witness' right to refuse to participate in decorating a store with Christmas decorations, and in another case, an employee denied the Holy Day off from his job to partake in his worship). As another poster stated, it is people like "seekthetruth" and people like him why we need human rights commissions. Both individuals were well-employed and never personally experienced discrimination, and at least one is enjoying a healthy retirement income. The myth that people are hired on the basis of merit has been quashed awhile back, while all the intolerant were asleep.

People with disabilities are drummed out of the workplace in many ways, which white males who are secure in their jobs, do not see or understand. Injured workers get refused a modified work position. Some are ultimately put out of a job because the worker is deemed unable to perform the essential duties of their job, so instead of trying to find alternative work for them, the person is "separated" from their job instead. They end up on welfare or if they are really lucky, Ontario Disability Support benefits, and denied even the basic tenets of the dignity of a decent job. It is not all white males that are like this, as I have represented many white males before the Human Rights Tribunal for various reasons, e.g. disability discrimination, age, sexual harassment by a female boss.

Connection to a full-time decent paying job is too often the only key to social and community participation for people. Once separated from the job, the person's self-esteem and their overall health is impacted. People with disabilities do not want to be on social assistance any more than anybody else does. Many are over-educated and well-qualified to take on work that seems to be available only to "relatives" of the boss, or to able-bodied persons that are screened in through seemingly innocuous criteria, such as a valid driver's license and a vehicle, and other potential criteria that persons with different types of disabilities cannot manage. These screening mechanisms serve to keep people out of jobs, not put them in. Then, folks question why more than half of persons with disabilities are "out of the paid labour force", or unemployed. Regardless of education level, a person with a disability does not enjoy equality to their non-disabled peers. The Canadian Association of Professional with Disabilities has formed for the purpose of promoting their members into getting into jobs they are qualified for instead of being steered by employment counselors to low-wage call centre and retail jobs.

I know many well-educated persons with disabilities who are stuck on ODSP: social workers, lawyers, former civil servants, a librarian, a forensic accountant, among many others, that employers claim they need, but refuse to look beyond their nose to seek people who may speak, move or communicate differently to join their staff and offer their many varied talents. Last summer, I sat in a circle around a food stand downtown, where I regularly met with people with disabilities: one in a wheelchair who taught martial arts as well as is a licensed social worker, another attending school for forensic psychology, and another one who was an engineer in his day ... all of whom on welfare or ODSP. Somebody needs to look at these things and take responsibility for this great loss to society.

I read an article today about older drivers. Competing interests include safety and the right to live independently. I reviewed the article in depth, and it does not say how many younger people are subject to the same removal provisions for their driver's license. It is not only a senior's issue. To me, it is fine to take somebody off the road, but you need to provide alternative transportation so the person can continue to live out their lives with relative independence. As a non-driver in Niagara, apart from work related travel, which is hugely expensive, I am house-bound. I would love to travel to my in-laws, to the beach, to Fort George, to Niagara Falls, and just hop in a car and go ... but these things taken for granted by people who drive, is another area where ignorance also plays a major role in keeping people with disabilities down.

On a group that I help run called odspfireside, I have heard from persons living on ODSP who are forcibly single because if they as much enter into a relationship with somebody else, that other person is forcibly included on ODSP, without choice. The "spouse" ends up having to work enough to support both of them, even if it means they have to work two or three jobs to keep things afloat, until the benefit unit ends up with two disabled persons, instead of just one. ODSP recipients are put under scrutiny, and treated as non-citizens through various fraud prevention initiatives, which has only led to fear and loss of integrity on the part of those entangled with what was called the "800 rules". While the focus of the report is Ontario Works, ODSP is just as much part of the suspicious trap people are placed in.

In recent days we had a positive decision concerning special diets by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, stating that the 2005 amendments to it were unfair and discriminatory in many cases. In the legislature, Minister Madeleine Meilleur, who has among her different portfolios, social assistance, persons with disabilities and AODA, had mused about how expensive the program is, and has not quelled any of the rumour that the government is about to scrap it so it can cut the deficit.

Because the case came through the Human Rights Code, it is likely that many of us may attempt to press the reprisal provisions of the Code if the government considers this tactic, but these things are barely scraping the surface of all the discrimination persons with disabilities encounter, simply because they have the same desires and interests everybody else has. I found myself, if I chose to sit at home and do nothing, I am left alone, but when I wanted something, whether that be an education, a job beyond Mickey D's, transportation, the right to participate fully in the community, etc., then it was like asking for a constitutional amendment just to get what others don't even have to beg for.

I also encounter persons with disabilities that actually believe they should just play the game, accept the 800 rules of abuse, and just let things go. They would rather not fight, as they fear losing what little they have. Unfortunately, this is they attitude that they want us to have. It is easier for those doing the discriminating to continue to do so without as much of a whimper from most of the people they are attacking. It only makes it easier to push for even more cuts, perhaps even a change in the definition of disability and cuts to other benefits, as those not fighting back are allowing this to happen.

How did the gays and lesbians do it? How did the blacks do it? How did the women do it when they wanted to have the right to vote? They organized and made it bloody hard for politicians and others to continue to do business as they always have, and they cannot not notice what people with disabilities are doing ... we have to move away from the charity model to the entitlement and rights-based model, where persons with disabilities have entitlements and rights, and are equal with respect to their right to citizenship ... hell, many of us don't even vote! I fail to see how that is helpful. It is time we wake up with a more definitive and radical strategy to build out rights to the point of not only recognition, but obligation on the part of others ... the same way others and the media will not print negative things about gays, Jews, blacks, and so forth ... we need to have this discussion. We need to move ahead.

Your thoughts?

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - LESSONS LEARNED

2010-03-15T22:40:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, I finally had the opportunity to pick up my own copy of Michael Moore's latest movie Capitalism: A Love Story. I watched it three times since, and others in my family enjoyed it too! My favourite part was when it showed Moore wrapping several buildings in New York's financial district with crime scene tape, and as people go by it, others crawl under it, others smile and wave at him, until finally, he takes his bullhorn and shouts out, "I'm making a citizen's arrest. Please come out of the building now. I hear federal prison is a nice place."

The movie is about how the stock market crashed in the U.S. and how the banking system collapsed, all as a result of deregulation and watchdogs becoming lapdogs. Many different items were covered ranging from the Dead Peasants insurance, which many people did not know about, probably until this was exposed. This is an insurance policy taken out by your employer and when you die, your employer gets paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars as its "beneficiary". Deregulation made it easy for banks to hike interest rates, then throw people out of their homes. Employers would close up shop, leaving their employees with nothing. It is an interesting watch - something people need to be aware of when we leave too much up to politicians who are beholden to large corporations. In the case of the executive branch under George Bush, several of the top people were from finance companies like Goldman Sachs; naturally, certain companies were favoured when the banks were bailed out over there.

What was good about this is that it also showed American citizens fighting back. When a couple dozen top staffers of AIG got million dollars bonuses after they were bailed out by taxpayers, thousands of people hit the streets and protested. When companies were going to close their doors and kick their workers out with nothing, workers instead occupied the plant and refused to leave until the company finally gave in and paid what was owed. When families were being evicted, hundreds of their neighbours would gather around as the evicted family literally refused to leave, and squatted in their own home. People camped out until the bankers and sheriff gave up trying to move the family. This was in the spirit of community, the spirit of "we the people" as found in the American constitution.

The American economy is starting to turn around some, but at a glacial pace. Our Canadian economy is very inter-twined with the American economy. However, we are still infected by politicians that remain smug about this recession thinking that as Canadians, we "are better off" than the Americans. They smugly tell people in the city of Welland, shortly after John Deere issued all of its workers pink slips, that the economy in that community is doing very well. As PM Harper traveled through that community, he commented that one of his election goals was to eliminate chocolate flavoured cigarettes because they were too tempting for young people. The city of Welland is even sadder than it was at that time, whereby two of my favourite restaurants I used to go to after court are now closed. There are many more boarded up businesses, and on the Main Street is the office of a psychiatrist that among his services, provides medical evaluations for people seeking to go on disability.

Friends of mine in Welland that are landlords are having trouble renting their properties at even the very low rates they were charging because nobody can afford to rent there. Another gentleman was afraid that he would not be able to find a tenant because he literally could not afford to rent his upstairs unit for less than he did, or he would not be paying the mortgage. He was on EI himself, and was very cognizant that the clock was ticking. Others live in Welland and have found low cost housing, but can't travel anywhere because of poor transit service - often relying on friends and family, which anybody that doesn't own a car knows, is not the most reliable way to get around. Another friend of mine has been trying to sell his building, but fears he will have to sell it at a loss. He is in business but cannot survive in Welland, so he is moving to Toronto where he believes he will have a greater chance of success. The last time I was in Welland attending court, I walked down the street and it was suddenly strange I could not even find a single place close by to purchase a newspaper. On my way to search for such a place, there were drug addled strangers making deals with other drug addled strangers, while others simply turned their heads and moved on.

My own community of St. Catharines, which is supposed to be the "capital" of Niagara Region, or in accordance to the Places to Grow Act, is the administrative center of the region. St. Catharines council is fighting with Niagara Falls City council over where to re-locate the police headquarters, while the Niagara Regional Police Service threatens a multi-million dollar trip to Ontario Civilian Commission on Policing Services (OCCOPS). Well, Niagara Falls got their conference center, their two casinos and other developments, and St. Catharines is promised the Performing Arts Center and the new parking garage ... both are fighting to see who is more "deserving" of the headquarters. My main concern with this is that those who do not drive will likely have to quit their job at the administrative office, if it moves to Niagara Falls. Transit service remains very poor or non-existent in most places of Niagara, unless you have all the time in the world or are on ODSP and only plan to see doctors as a way to spend your day.

While Niagara Region is not what I would call purist capitalist like the financial centers of New York that were accused by Michael Moore, there is a different kind of elitism that dominates its thinking. Parochialism is as much a sport in Niagara, as hockey is the national sport in Canada. Niagara Region will never get its act together on transit because many of its smaller communities don't want it; that is, they don't want to pay for it. Yet they don't mind doling out millions and millions of dollars on automobile infrastructure that essential subsidizes people who drive, while the only people who pay full freight are those that don't -- if they want to get around at all. Further, the municipalities of Niagara are suing one another and the region, and the province is apparently suing the region for disobeying its own official plan and over-estimating its own growth estimates. I always knew Niagara over-estimated its growth estimates, because I truly believe the population here will at best remain the same with an ever aging demographic, while younger people leave by the dozens and do their procreating in communities that offer more.

I met a man that walks from Niagara-on-the-Lake to try to find housing in this city, as there is no way for him to get to Niagara-on-the-Lake and back, as this town does not believe in public transit. This man has epilepsy so a driver's license is out of the question. I had another meeting a few weeks ago, where about thirty people of all ages were present, averaging at about forty to fifty years old. Among those present, six identified themselves as having a medical condition that restricted their right to drive. Why does it not surprise me that virtually none of these people are working? One has a master's degree, and another is a trained nurse. To me, employers couldn't be too serious about rectifying their so-called skills shortage if they continue to fail to tap into the talents of many people who are currently sidelined for various reasons from the labour force.

This reflects much of what goes on in Ontario as well. Our lovely Minister in charge of issues for persons with disabilities, or Madeleine Meilleur, is also the Minister of Community and Social Services. She, like many other politicians, particularly on the political right, actually try to delude themselves and delude the public that employers are eager to hire people with disabilities. One does have to credit Minister Meilleur for attempting to push for the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act; nevertheless, her staff is still reviewing the standards developed by the committees set up to deal with transportation, employment, information and communications, and built environment. Her challenge is to ensure that what comes out does not lower requirements for employers than what is required under the Human Rights Code. It would certainly look bad if employers can comply with the set standards, but still run afoul of the Code. This also applies to transportation and the other standards.

At the same time, there are too many instances where Madeleine Meilleur has sparked the rumour mill, or at least hasn't stopped it, by not denying that the government plans to make deep cuts to Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program benefits this coming budget. She has never been viewed as a fan of the special diet benefit, which is given to people who have medical conditions that require them to follow a more expensive eating regimen that cannot be met by simply following the Canada's Food Guide. This only assumes that anybody on OW or ODSP can afford a diet that even half way complies with the Canada Food Guide, but that's another story. After controversial changes were made in 2005, the provincial government was sued through the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and recently a decision was made in favour of enhancing the special diet for many persons, where it can be proven that a disability warrants it.

The Minister has refused to dispel that the government plans to scrap it. Even worse, there are intolerant rednecks putting a huge amount of pressure on the government to scrap the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario altogether. This type of thinking is being found in terms of the government's hesitancy in re-appointing Andre Marin, an excellent and reputable Ombudsman that has forced the government to make many positive changes in its administration, and Gord Miller, the Environmental Commissioner. Our fear is that our government does not want critics and watchdogs; it wants "yes men" and lapdogs. Does this sound familiar?

As both the federal and provincial government continue to throw money at our banks, insurance companies and auto manufacturers, hoping for what former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's ultimate theory of a "trickle down" effect (which nobody ever seen happen), perhaps I can also foresee a form of workfare in the future for people on ODSP -- throw them in the low paying jobs that able-bodied will not take. Disregard their skills, education and achievements and aim low, as usual. If anybody complains, there won't be any more watchdogs to go to, given the desires and apparent direction this government wants to go. All I am right now is fed up with paying for it, and watching the inevitable disasters that will follow.

I would love to see good natured taxpayers to suddenly withhold the amount of money that we have paid to the banks, auto manufacturers, insurance companies, automobile infrastructure and so forth ... and tell the government to make these entities self-supporting, the same way the poor, the sick and unemployed are supposed to be self-supporting with less and less help from anybody. This will only happen when we act. Just as Michael Moore said at the end of his movie, he can no longer do this alone. All Canadians, regardless of political stripe or station in life, need to stop and listen. Reality here is when it happens to you. It is not a question of "if", but a question of "when", and I would expect reciprocal treatment likewise.

I just hope people will understand why I say I don't care about how GM fares; unfortunately, it never had to stand on its two feet like we expect our most vulnerable of our community to do.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING ...

2010-02-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

The 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver is over with, after seventeen days of competition, commentary, excitement and knowing the whole world was watching ... I frankly never felt such unity with my fellow Canadians until we got into the Games ... and it is a powerful feeling indeed. As one of the commentators stated, "When we watch the athletes compete, it almost feels like we are there competing too ...", and when they win the Gold, we share their glory, and when they miss out, we share their disappointments.

With this Olympics, we had the advantage of Twitter, Face Book, MySpace and the Internet in general to keep up with up-to-the-minute coverage, and even replays of events you might have missed if you were away from the Games that day. With many of my friends, I shared day to day comments on Face Book about the Olympics, what I seen and what I felt, as did they ... and despite many of these people being half way around the world from me, I felt they were in the same room. The sense of unity gave me a sense of calm I never had in a long time, as I was able to focus on something else and boy, was it ever satisfying!

Canada came third in total medal standing, with 26 Medals in all: 14 Gold, 7 Silver and 5 Bronze. Canada had the most Gold Medals of all the countries competing, and apparently had broken the World Record for any Winter Olympics for the number of Gold Medals earned by any country. The Olympics gave me something to go home to, something to talk about, and something to look up periodically throughout the day. Today, I posted the Olympic theme song, "I Believe". This is Nikki Yanofsky, apparently a sixteen year old girl from Quebec. The particular link I gave in this treatise shows the Torch Rallies all over the country, all starting from the East Coast and traveling from hand to hand until it reached the Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver on February 12, 2010. The Torch rally came to my community the day after I moved my commercial office, and I have a couple of friends of mine who were torch bearers.

What I am particularly proud of, and almost sarcastic about, is the fact our hockey teams both won Gold. Today, it was a tense game with the Men's Hockey Finals between Canada and the U.S. Just as the end of the third period came to a close, the U.S. offense did a goal, tying the game at 2-2. In the Olympics, they will have one period of overtime, and the first one who scores gets the Gold. If there is no score still, there is a shoot-out. They had a brief intermission when I took off to the store to grab some supplies, and returned ... At the store, everybody was talking about the Game and were, like me, getting supplies and returning to watch. Just as I was about to step up my front porch, I heard loud cheers coming from several houses on my street, and as I came in, my son told me Sidney Crosby ended the game by getting the winning goal with the assistance of Scott Neidemeyer, both Canadian NHL stars. I can only guess what might have happened if Crosby (or anybody else on the Canadian Team) did NOT score ...

Instant Face Book groups, You Tube replays and other links to various sites, were set up so people can relive this story over and over again. In many ways, the Olympic Games brought some of us out of our collective depression. Two nights ago, the Women's Hockey Team made Gold as well against the U.S., and celebrated afterward ... both goals were made by an 18-year old woman from Quebec.

Even eight short years ago, when the Olympic Games were in Salt Lake City, Utah, I remember the Canadian Team doing fairly well then; however, not a whole lot of us were as hooked on Face Book, Twitter, and all these other instant replay sites that we are now. Literally, the whole world was watching! I saw Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the gallery watching the Olympics ... even many Canadian celebrities, such as William Shatner (who plays "Denny Crane" on Boston Legal), Michael J. Fox (the young Republican from "Family Ties", and later starring in such movies as "Back to the Future"), as well as a couple of actors from Rick Mercer's crazy show. This was followed of course by the stereotypical stuff Canadians are made of, such as beavers, canoes, RCMP, moose, etc. They missed the Eskimos and igloos, but perhaps, they did not want to anger the Inuit population of our far North. It was all in jest, and brought so many people together.

The closing ceremonies also brought a sense of sadness in me too, as people are now going back to their home communities, hopefully for more celebration and adoration, and federal Parliament will be opening up after its long self-imposed sleep induced by Prime Minister Harper. Normal life will begin again. It is the same way I felt when we all stopped talking about the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, and on the Pentagon. Sure, conspiracy theories about this incident do abound, but this post is not about that ... it is about how the whole world literally came together and lent their support to the families of those whose lives were lost in this atrocity. I first learned the seriousness of all of this over the Internet, as well when my husband called me downstairs to watch a replay of the two planes going through the two World Trade Tower buildings.

This is particularly difficult for me, as I live in a Region where there is not a lot of "togetherness" on anything. People are bitter, travel their own ways, oppose and chastise others who are different, and exclude people regularly from even the most basic activities each take for granted. Take sports, for example. As a young person, I enjoyed sports immensely. I loved to skate, roller blade, ride my bike, as well as swim and dive. I was on a baseball team, even as far as my first few jobs in the real world. I recalled happily an incident when I was in a grade seven, when I was on a girl's ball hockey team and I served as goalie. I remember one time, I blocked the ball from getting in, and not only that, I plowed it to the other side and managed to get it into the other team's net. These things give me fond memories, and I remember the stunned look on my team mates' faces when this happened ... I think there is a lot that society and communities miss when they stop being in things together. Sports cost so much now, that I could not afford to enroll my children in it anyways, and schools don't promote these activities as much either unless you have the money to pay to get into them.

Being a part of something is so human, it is almost occupying a step on Maslow's Hierarchy in itself. I feel I lack the sense of belonging at times, despite the fact I belong to a particularly strong profession, a couple of activist coalitions, as well as many online activity groups. Belonging has taken on a brand new meaning with the advent of technology. I have friends that love to use gadgets, and go around with their mobiles, take pictures and tell the world what they are doing ... I find that fascinating, even though the person doing this may be feeling as lonely and excluded as I am. Technology has put a distance between people that we never had before, nor can we actually fix this.

I resolved some of my feelings of isolation by moving into a new office in a secure building that has other members of my profession in it, as well as other professional offices of a different type. There is a popular cafe downstairs, where I can literally sit and listen, and enjoy the buzz of activity around me. This sometimes helps me too. I also go in twice a day, or more if it is particularly busy, to assist with a couple of online groups that deal with some of the issues that I work with both professionally and as a volunteer.

To me, the part about watching the Olympics I enjoyed the most is when individual athletes were interviewed and asked about why they joined the Olympics. For many, this was always a goal of theirs. They persevered, had families and communities rally for them, and they just kept improving their personal best.

In many ways, I am like this too, except in my own professional endeavours. I am not happy with anonymity and living a dull life, where people don't know or care who I am. I've never had an "ordinary life" either, but I am not here today to speak of how un-ordinary my life was, or how the great potential I've personally witnessed in others and who I personally know and interact with, has made me who I am ... I just want to say that if you have followed a lot of the other posts that I have put in here, particularly about social issues, it is all about one thing -- the right to fulfill one's total human potential.

I worry about a lot of these things. Is Stephen Harper going to go back to Parliament, after his high from the Olympic Games and proceed to cut funding to Canadian athletes? Is he going to set it up so that the Games only become further corporately controlled than they already are? I hope not. I just hope Mr. Harper and his Cabinet colleagues think about what they saw, understand what people like myself saw in these Olympics, and then try to apply them to his governance of all Canadians. As individuals, as well as collectively, we can be pretty powerful and strong people, but we need the support or the foundation in order to achieve.

I hope to meet Stephen Harper, only one of two Prime Ministers I have not met yet, and to speak with him about this - and how I apply the right to empowerment to persons with disabilities as well. The fact that Harper and his Cabinet made many cuts to programs for persons with disabilities has led to a reversal in many of our access to opportunities, as well as access to our rights to challenge systems and issues under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I live in a region where very few people understand the Human Rights Code, and the fact this quasi-constitutional legislation is set up to protect people who think, move, speak or work differently than others, and to help ensure they have equal opportunities to fulfill their human potential.

Unfortunately, even many people in my own community do not understand the politics of disability management. I do not fault them for it, as the mass media and other interests make it difficult for people to understand these things, the same way that food banks make it difficult for the public to understand the politics underlying the causes of poverty. Just keep giving to the food banks and everything will be alright, they say, or at least that message is given. To me, I look at things from a strictly rights-based approach, and with rights, comes dignity and how people are dealt with when trying to learn about or enforce their own rights.

Oh, how I desperately want to believe there are people like me in this region, instead of peppered all over Canada and half way around the world, as it can get pretty awful when I am not at the computer and then dealing with real life issues that I know exist, and that I know are coming from way too many elephants in the room that nobody in this region, and sometimes, even the province, does not want to acknowledge or listen to. This is a lonely fight, but in many ways, I truly want to believe. Your thoughts?

DEFICIT TIME: IT'S TIME TO SQUEEZE THE POOR!

2010-02-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

The Toronto Star reports the province anticipates having to deal with a $24.5 billion dollar deficit. Politicians go to the press to tell people not to worry because all lines in health and education will be protected, but government will be seeking "efficiencies" elsewhere. In the meantime, prior to Christmas a mean-spirited Auditor General's Report came out slamming the provincial government for neglecting over $600 million in over-payments, interspersing this discussion with value statements about alleged fraud, and more directly pointing out how the special diet program was vulnerable to fraud. A later article by Catherine Porter of the Toronto Star interviewed the mysterious doctor identified in the audit as signing off hundreds of diet forms to get the maximum for his patients.

In light of both announcements, the clinic community, as well as anti-poverty activists have become concerned about just what this government is planning to do with social assistance rates, which have been miserly and punitive for a very long time, and have not yet quite caught up to the standard since former Premier Harris took a hacksaw to them in 1995. The unfortunate issue is when the story first broke out in the media, many of the newspaper sites allow comments from readers and as a progressive moderate, I resented many of their attitudes. Groups like the Income Security Advocacy Centre and the broader coalition, 25in5 have attempted to stand up against the backlash deliberately invoked by these articles.

In the original article, which most of the comments are based upon, Madeleine Meilleur, Minister of Community & Social Services, has stated to the media that she has indeed referred over 2,500 cases to the police. Whether or not this was done, or what the actual results of this referral will produce, the picture of social assistance that was just generated by the Minister's words has blackballed all of those that are on it, particularly those that have applied for and received extra benefits, including the special diet. At the same time, the Minister announces her appointment of a group of people to review social assistance. I know many of the people involved, as I am involved in the clinic groups (though I am not involved with legal clinics - I just have a private practice and a major concern about what this world is becoming), as well as have been involved in other movements where others on the committee have been also involved.

It is not the composition per se that brings me great concern. I have a great deal of respect for the clinic representatives, as well as the two career policy analysts that have a clue about how these policies work and what can happen if they are tweaked here and tweaked there. In fact, John Stapleton has written about the intersection of social assistance policy and housing policy, and how this literally traps people into poverty. Affordable housing advocates want to gloss over this, but if we want change, we need to review this element as well. The two foundation representatives are also connected to many of our coalition members, so I feel safe with a majority of them. I am sure like anybody else, they will all collectively work on proposals they feel that the government should be putting in. They appear committed to pushing for a broad-based review with a province-wide audience and input, as time goes on. I just have concerns when advisory groups like this are headed by a Food Bank representative. I am sure this person is a good person, active in the community and concerned, but in my experience, food banks have not pushed strongly enough for adequacy of benefits and appeared to accept the Ontario Child Benefit unconditionally, even when presented with the fact that social assistance families are cut back in order to get this benefit, often resulting in no net income increase, or just a few dollars per month.

But what is scary to me is that the Auditor's Report was published at or about the same time the announcement was made to set up the social assistance reform advisory council, as we learned they were referred to on a formal basis. While I can't see the new advisory group pushing to eliminate the special diet, the government may choose to do so anyways, as part of its "review" of all programs and to increase "efficiencies" in the programs it delivers. Further, I do see some flexibility in allowing ODSP and OW recipients to keep more of the monies they earn, but this will done in exchange for a compromise. I can see recipients losing the $100 work allowance. I am one to act as the conscience of a group, reminding others that governments are not there to give us anything, because low income people mean nothing to them. As somebody once stated on the odspfireside group I co-moderate with two other brilliant analysts/activists, low income people vote far less than those of middle and upper incomes. Why should politicians care what you think if they are not going to get a vote anyways?

Personally I would love to be part of the long-term group, as well as participate in inter-ministerial discussions. Poverty is not just the domain of the Ministry of Community and Social Services; it is the domain of many Ministries, including health, education, transportation, children and youth services, municipal affairs and housing, finance, etc. However, much of this is going on in isolation like these things usually do. Maybe the Ministry of Community and Social Services will come up with some great proposals, but subsidized housing rules don't change and continue to trap people there. Or municipalities aren't forced into considering the need for alternative forms of transportation to the car, and to set standards with employers to make sure they park their businesses on transit lines ... Niagara Region was coveted by a couple of large employers recently, including Canada Bread, which was seeking a location well served by transit as well as the highway, and when it discovered Niagara doesn't believe in transit (as its own religious discourse continues to worship the automobile), Canada Bread moved to Hamilton. This is a source of frustration for transit advocates in Niagara, whose voice is large, but largely ignored in Niagara due to the automobile dominance.

Niagara Region had its chance, after forty years of studying, debating and researching the idea of regional transit, to put it into place by September 2010, by putting an acceptable staged question to the municipalities on January 28, 2010, but have chosen not to. I suppose the 40% of the operating budget and capital budget spent on roads, parking and so forth alone, from the region's pot will pass without any debate, but those who don't drive will either continue to use taxis at exorbitant prices, or do without access to decent employment. What again particularly bothers me are the comments in these publications online, whereby persons, obviously drivers, that don't think we should be spending any money on transit, while it is perfectly okay for well-educated persons in Niagara to remain on welfare for months or years at a time because there are no jobs for non-drivers in Niagara. Penny-wise, but pound foolish.

After all, there is a huge $24.5 billion deficit and somebody has to get hit. No, we cannot touch the rich people's wallets, as then we are attacking investments and they will move their plants elsewhere. We can't hit the middle class because their earning power is affected. We have to side swipe the poor once again. Let's cut social services, cut welfare, eliminate the special diet, delay or cancel transit projects, etc. and let's see what will happen. The province has promised to protect health care and education after all, and let us see how much more money is going to be poured into these sectors, simply because a child cannot learn on an empty stomach, and because adults cannot stay healthy when they have no money to pay for healthy food. I spent all weekend with cold sores in my mouth because I don't always eat properly, and had to treat them.

These same governments, by appointing the province's largest food bank to head off the social assistance review is giving us a message: food banks will be part of our social infrastructure forever, and perhaps, at some point will get government funding. Why not take the food out of our kids' mouths and give it to the food banks that currently pay their directors a healthy salary? Didn't Graham Riches tell us that food banks, which started for the very first time in Edmonton in the early 1980's, that they are only there for a short time and want to terminate their own existence? However, the opposite has happened. We are now overwhelmed with charities, many of which were reporting that they failed to get enough to cover their increased needs over the holiday season. I always said we cannot rely upon the charity and goodwill of people, as this ebbs and flows, and is limited. Further, it creates a further divide between those that give, and those that receive, and with the somewhat long-term effects of the current recession, the chances that a receiver will return to being a giver are slim.

All of this is here because Ministers chose to hear the bleating of auto makers, banks, forestry industry representatives and some others, who were subsidized or simply bailed out entirely, while not paying attention to the social bottom line. After $16 billion to the automakers, $50 billion in tax cuts to the large corporations, $25 billion to the banks, etc., are we actually any better off? Newspaper reports say the number of people on employment insurance are falling, but is the number of unemployed going down with it? At the other end, there are double digit increases in the number of people applying for social assistance, many of whom are forced to give up their homes, their cars and anything else, whereby they will likely see poverty for a long time. Now, tell us, politicians and business leaders, how does this benefit our country?