MCGUINTY RABBITS, SKIPS ACCOUNTABILITY AND CUTS BENEFITS FOR THE POOR

The buzz on the street came as a big surprise to the people of Ontario.

Premier Dalton McGuinty not only announced his pending resignation (which takes effect after a Liberal leadership convention is called and a new leader appointed), but he rabbited from the scene by shuttering the doors to the Ontario legislature. Observers speculate this might have something to do with being caught with his pants down, as both Opposition Parties continued to peel the onion only to reveal more and more monies wasted on things like ORNGE, eHealth, OLG, and most recently, as we learned, the movement of two gas powered plants to different locations in order to appease voters and save a couple of Liberal seats during the last election. After being found in contempt of the legislature, by motion of the two Opposition parties, against his minority government, McGuinty rabbits.

For those among the curious, to prorogue a legislature (or Parliament, where McGuinty's perceived model Stephen Harper has himself done the same thing twice when the going got tough for his own prior successive minorities), it means all bills, committee referrals, public business, etc. is shut down. This is not the complete dissolution of the legislature, which means an election, but a shut down, which means a brand new Throne speech and a new session from scratch ... as all previous bills and business in progress is wiped from the slate. A motion passed by the majority of MPPs can technically adjourn the house business to allow bills and so forth to remain and such work to continue once the legislature re-opens, but this is not usually the case.

Voters should be furious at the latest trends by both federal and provincial governments that prorogue their legislature at the first sign of reasonable expectation of accountability. This prorogation, marked for now as indefinite, is supposed to theoretically end once the Liberals and likely the Opposition Tories return with yet another austerity budget and further spending cuts for the lower and middle income Ontarians, and under a shiny new leader with supposedly a "fresh" mandate. Almost nothing else has been discussed in my community circles in the past couple days, not even the weather, and I have yet to find a single soul among those I spoke to who actually WANT a shiny new Liberal leader. Most want an election, however, some are concerned that if the Progressive Conservatives under Tim Hudak get elected, even deeper cuts and further privatization will ensue.

I was a meeting of over one hundred and fifty warm bodies this afternoon that were notified only through social media and some community postering, where cuts to the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit, Home Repair Benefit and certain discretionary benefits for persons in receipt of Ontario Works and/or ODSP were being discussed. The majority of those in attendance were ODSP or Ontario Works recipients, many of whom benefited from either or both benefits in the recent past. At my table, where I volunteered to be a note taker, several horror stories emerged. A man who owns his own home has no functioning toilet and a broken sump pump. He has to use a broken toilet in his basement. He did not apply to ODSP Home Repair Benefit before the June 30 cut off, which by the way, was only announced approximately thirty (30) days prior to the cut off by inserting a notice of this in recipients' cheque stubs for May of this year. There is no parallel program in place at the Region yet, where theoretically, municipalities are supposed to be given all sorts of "flexibility" to meet their local housing needs.

Another woman used the start up benefit to escape an abusive situation, and moved into a room. Two years later, she applied for subsidized housing and eventually was moved into a unit. However, like most subsidized housing complexes, the building was poorly maintained, nothing ever got fixed, and the police were over there "at least three times a day" for anything ranging from drugs, to domestic abuse to violence, on the property. She had applied for a transfer twice in then same number of years, and has been denied. It seems that the region does not mind keeping poor people in slums, and exposed to the worst that society has to offer. It seems that fear, anxiety and exposure to whatever vermin in the home is acceptable for "those people", while those of us with middle class niceties deserve better.

Another man is living on Ontario Works. Until recently, he lived in a three bedroom apartment with two other roommates. The apartment rented at about $900 a month, plus utilities. Then one of his roommates finds a job in another community, and leaves the apartment. The other one left shortly thereafter to move in with his girlfriend, leaving this man holding the bag with nothing but a $590 OW cheque, and a worker that refused to give him anything more than the first month's rent if he even finds a place within his impossibly tight budget. Beside him were his backpacks, and a luggage bag, all containing his worldly possessions. Now homeless, it is difficult for him to secure the necessary benefits to be re-housed, unless he can tolerate AND find space in our local shelter system (which according to the region, funding is being cut for these services too).

Another fellow told us that he had bedbugs at his place last year. He lives in a rent geared to income unit. The Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit was secured to assist him in replacing his bed at the time. He expressed his disdain as he recently secured a part time job, only to see his rent get hiked at over 500%. Housing subsidy calculations haven't changed a bit since the eighties when I was forced to give it up for market rent in order for me to budget month to month. For this man, who also receives ODSP and is subject to at least a fifty percent clawback on his earnings by ODSP, his housing provider disregards this clawback and counts only his gross income, thus leaving him ultimately with less money on hand than he had before he started to work. Yeah, get a job, they say ... if working only paid.

Another woman was homeless, but recently was able to secure Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit when the shelter she was living in helped her find a low cost room downtown, at least a place to lie her head at night. As of January 1, 2013, even this benefit will be gone. Stated with enthusiasm by the Liberals, like they usually do when recycling and repackaging old money into new, municipalities will now receive the dollar amount of these benefits, after they have been chopped in half, and managed exclusively by them as determined by "local priorities". This means the dollar amount of the CSUMB and the HRB is now going to be cut in half, and redistributed to the cities and regions to do with as they choose, as long as it vaguely deals with housing security issues. Any municipality can conceivably decide NOT to offer a start up like benefit at all, or even home repairs, but instead use the money for other priorities, such as fixing social housing units, or building seniors housing. or funding more shelter beds. If they choose to offer these benefits at all, it will have to be spread not only between all people on OW or ODSP that might need them, but others as well, who are not on assistance, but might be living in poverty. The loaves and fishes again. The trouble is this is not going to work.

When these benefits existed before the cut, they were fully appealable for those that feel they were unfairly denied access. After the changes, any worker can decide at a whim whether or not an applicant "deserves" this benefit, and there will be no appeal avenue whatsoever for those that are denied. As for those who experienced any kind of application process through Ontario Works in many municipalities, there is a lack of consistency between clients, and often arbitrary criteria set for how these benefits get distributed. I hear from people that work for Niagara region all the time how they will pay half the cost of dentures for those that need them, yet I know far too many people wandering around without teeth. They allegedly got told all sorts of things when they tried to apply. Some got told the money for this had run out (yep, this was in the middle of May, less than two months after the start of the new fiscal year!). They tell others they only help out Ontario Works recipients who are seeking employment. All sorts of excuses abound. For those "lucky" enough to get help, only half the cost is covered, and somehow the OW recipient has to find the other half out of their $600 monthly budget, or in the case of ODSP, their $1062 monthly budget. Or, as I have also witnessed, people get told they can write to myriad charities to demean themselves and beg for help.

One would think that Charles Dickens has long since died, and the days of Oliver Twist should have been over with for good, once it has now been proven that large corporations in Canada (and Ontario) are literally sitting on billions of dollars, or have socked them away to offshore bank accounts. I say, get rid of Oliver Twist and make these companies pay our government back for the deficit they caused and obviously benefited from! They certainly aren't creating any jobs with it, nor is anybody holding these same executives accountable for billions of dollars in corporate welfare dished out to them without them even having to prove a need, nor are they being asked to show how many jobs they created as a result of massive tax cuts they received year over year. Yet when somebody applies for Ontario Works, their entire life is scoped inside and out, and they are judged as to their "worthiness" of help. Given the amazing wealth of our country, there should be no need for food banks, homeless shelters or anything of the like. In fact, there was once an anecdotal report from somebody that entertained guests from Scandinavia, who never even heard of these things and wondered why anybody would want to put food into a bank.

Political leaders live a relatively charmed life. They do not have to deal with the same pressures those they govern have to. They do not have to live with the results of the greed of those they represent and speak for, the corporate elite. Most political leaders are almost guaranteed sweetheart deals at the helm of large corporations once they leave politics. It is no small wonder how they got there, regardless of that individual's actual business and financial knowledge. The powers that be appoint the political drop outs or exiles these jobs as rewards for their loyalty while in political office. In recent months, one highly respected federal Cabinet Minister decided to resign his seat and move to the "private sector". He was given an executive position at one of the chartered banks. Must be nice, when the most the rest of us can expect to get when we apply to a bank is a low paying job as a teller. And Jim "no such thing as a bad job" Flaherty will not likely return to his yearned for youthful days when he worked as a taxi driver and hockey coach. It is easy to prescribe these things for others when you no longer have to do it yourself.

In the meantime, the Social Assistance Reform Commission, which originally promised to report their findings to the world in June 2012, and has since delayed the release of their report three times, recently announced they were going to go public with their final report this October 19, 2012. However, with the Premier rabbiting on us all, and leaving behind an empty legislative assembly for an "indefinite" period of time, the Commission's most recent notice reads: Led by Frances Lankin and Munir A. Sheikh, the Commission is charged with examining social assistance in Ontario through engagement, research and analysis to provide the government with a concrete action plan to improve the system for the people who need it.

Please note: we are rescheduling the release of our final report from October 19 to a new date in the near future. We will announce the new date soon.

It might be interesting to see if this report ever sees the light of day. Our lovely Premier that oozed with such enthusiasm, while all parties of the house embraced its Poverty Reduction Act and held out much hope for the Social Assistance Commissioners to figure out how to fix our social programs to make them work better and to reduce poverty. Those were the days when our lovely Liberals literally endorsed the target of reducing poverty by twenty five percent in five years, and how they were bound and determined to succeed. Unfortunately, Premier Dad has since abandoned the homestead as Ontario's poverty rate has actually increased, as opposed to decreased. Are you feeling like the orphaned child yet?

Henceforth, many of our social advocates were concerned about what kind of recommendations and policies might be proposed once this report ever did get released anyways, namely the proposal to combine Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program all under municipal "welfare" administration. The Toronto Star or the provincial Liberal Party mouthpiece still tried to pretend this was all well and good, as late as last week. However, disconcerting is one paragraph in this piece:

For too long, politicians have pigeonholed welfare recipients into two types: the “good poor” who were helpless (children and the disabled), versus the “bad poor” who were hapless (able-bodied men and women). After all these years, the lesson to be learned on welfare is that the origins of these cases matter less than the outcomes.

Why not merge these two unwieldy Harris-era programs (ODSP and Ontario Works) into a single, more coherent system that doesn’t discriminate between “good poor” and “bad?” This is the kind of bold idea that scares some people — advocates and bureaucrats alike — because $8-billion programs aren’t built or redesigned in a day.

With this proposal, instead of having "good poor" and "bad poor", all that will now be seen by the public is all "bad poor". This is happening in UK, as that particular Coalition government is forcing that country's poorest to pay down that country's deficit. Austerity is killing people, they say. Nightmare reminders of the Nazi Holocaust has perked this individual to write this column. Since these cuts in the UK, a few dozen suicides a month have taken place, as well as there being a spike in the number of hate crimes against persons with disabilities. If the government thinks that doing that here will be different, because we are supposedly more humane Canadians, think again. Even without this change, I am constantly hearing from people without a clue, the temporarily able-bodied as I might add, who proclaim that "over half of the people on ODSP should not even be on it". Is that so, I ask? It is interesting how their extrasensory perception and intimate medical knowledge of over 300,000 very poor people comes to mind, but this same perception is not shared about how many billions are poured into the pockets each year of wealthy executives and profitable corporations through our government's failed policies of corporate welfare and endless tax cuts, while money hoarding (as alleged by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, that recently reported that large companies are hoarding billions of dollars of cash and not investing any of it, aka. taking in corporate welfare and benefiting from tax cuts while creating zero jobs), doesn't even matter.

After the cuts take effect in January 2013, more people will have no place to go, other than to a shelter or to the streets, as a result of various reasons tied to their deep poverty and a punitive social assistance administration that on average, among the people I previously interviewed in my region, cuts off or suspends Ontario Works recipients' cheques four or five times a year, often resulting in eviction and/or frequent moves. And the government might actually consider adding people with disabilities to this mish mash of economic slavery as well? Many people reading this do not and will not understand the significance of this, but then again, they are too damned comfortable for now.

There, for the Grace of God, go I.

DROP THE INSANITY BID, MAGNOTTA ET AL (DON'T GIVE US YOUR STIGMA!)

By now, we have all heard of several incidents of gun violence setting its cloud over the city of Toronto, as well as the murder and dismembership of a Chinese national student in Montreal, and more recently, a shooter at a theatre in Aurora, Colorado, at the premier screening of the Dark Knight Rising. Reports coming from Colorado indicate a substantial spike in the number of people accessing guns. Reports in Toronto cite the growing anger of people in the vicinities where the shootings, cited as gangland style, have taken place.

How many readers are believing that the shooters ought to be "insane", particularly Luka Magnotta, originally born Eric Newman, as his deed was most dreadful, filming himself dismembering the body of Jun Lin, a Chinese national who had been attending Concordia in Montreal? I don't believe in "insanity". Perhaps, some may want to re-word the term as "mental illness". Nah, don't think so. First, there is no research that shows that people with Axis I Disorders, or conditions that we refer to as "schizophrenia", "bipolar affective disorder" or "schizoaffective disorder", are more prone to commit these kinds of dreaded acts of violence than anybody else. Secondly, we are doing people with mental health conditions no favours by analysing these people's actions as "sick", "crazy" or "psycho".

True, we do need to distance ourselves from the kinds of people who do these dreadful things. We like to believe that we ourselves would never be capable of doing something like Magnotta, or lately, James Holmes in Colorado, just did. But, does that mean these people are "psychotic" or "mentally ill"? It certainly does help things when Greyhound Bus beheader, Vincent Li, suddenly reveals to the police he was "hearing voices" while on the bus, telling him to kill the passenger next to him. I am not sure if I believe this, but that is what the media reports, and what was put forward in the courts. To me, it was just defence counsel doing his job in protecting a client from having to serve a likely indeterminate life sentence for his heinous act on the bus, and unlikely due to any "real evidence" of mental disorder. I am not sure how to explain the behaviours of these people, but to me, citing them as having "mental illness" and being "not responsible" for doing this deed, is akin to saying "the devil made them do it".

We will likely never know what was going on with Vincent Li that day on the bus, but in my opinion, as well as the opinion of many people who watched this scenario cycle its way through the news, his lack of conviction for this offence, and the very likelihood he will be out in a few years is less than what he should have received. By even allowing this kind of "defence" of "not criminally responsible due to mental disorder" diminishes virtually every other person with the same diagnosis, or potentially the same diagnosis, in terms of who they are, and what kind of future they should have. While this business with Vincent Li was flowing through the airwaves and was the talk of the town, I was in the midst of fighting disability claims on behalf of three persons, all with distinctive histories and issues. Due to privilege, I cannot cite the specifics of these cases, but nevertheless, where one could have benefited from an evaluation from one of the consulting psychiatrists that I have worked with, all three declined to get involved with anything even nearly "mental health" related due to the stigma.

I have had others who experienced severe stress and anxiety as a result of their involvement with litigation and/or appeals, who could very well benefit from even one to one counselling with a professional. I was in a position of arranging a third party to take up the expenses of this support service, but still they refused, not necessarily denying they were likely suffering from a form of mental distress, but again, because of the stigma. Virtually all of these people self identified as being very much a part of the community, the workforce, their families and other social spheres, either prior to the matter that led them to my front door, or even still, while they were involved with my office. Many feared they would lose their job if "anybody found out" about this, or would never again be respected by their families, or friends they continued to cling onto.

This issue is coming up at a time where our society is not exactly empathetic towards persons with disabilities - any disability, including mental health disabilities. To add the burden of people like Vincent Li, Luka Magnotta, and James Holmes, on top of the growing antipathy towards people with mental health issues, is not the way to invite people to seek help, even when their problem is severe enough for a short-term hospitalization. They become even more treatment resistant, and they are more likely to hide their personal experiences, even from somebody like myself. I have had middle aged men, though not exclusively, come into my office to appeal a case for Canada Pension Plan disability, or ODSP, who omit any references to any "mental health history" when they explain to me why they believe they should be getting either or both benefits. It is often the case of the "bad back", the "inflamed knees" or "tremours" (and they would emphasize them as they hold their hands up for me to see), but not the lengthy hospitalizations and years of treatment for various mental health issues they want to focus on.

For those who have already been treated for mental health disorders, many are afraid to return to treatment due to the negative effects of many of the medications still used for the treatment of various types of conditions. If you looked up many of these drugs on the websites, you will find many of these drugs are the subject of legal actions, and people are seeking damages for various "effects" from taking these drugs for a period of time. I also know people who have developed severe forms of diabetes, heart disease and movement disorders as a result of overuse of these drugs as well. A dear friend is now reliant on the use of a power chair to access her surroundings. I later learned that she had spent many dreadful years being treated as a guinea pig for "mental health" issues it turned out she did not have. She has paid the price big time, while still trying to educate those around her as to what she could have been, had she not been subjected to these things.

In my youth, I became an avid follower of Phoenix Rising magazine, as well as the early psychiatric survivors' movement. This artefact is still available through the Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto, currently maintained by "veterans" of the early movement, such as Don Weitz, Geoffrey Rheaume, David Reville, and likely Carla MacKague. These same people did not follow through and join the movement of "consumer-survivors" in the 1990's due to the co-opted nature of the funding for these initiatives. In those days, I as well as a small group of people here in Niagara took over the co-opted initiative, and formed our own "mental health survivors' network" that was decidely pro-choice, although not 100% anti-psychiatry. The Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network became a regional, member-based advocacy organization that had several committees, representatives on external bodies, as well as working deeply within the political system to fight for change. As its Executive Director, my function was multi-varied, including counseling individuals and their families with respect to their rights, access to services, and other related issues, such as how to access income support benefits. We also published a quarterly newsletter Niagara Survivors Journal, which reported on various important issues affecting our members. We also gave input to various policy and legislative initiatives. We pushed for "normalization" of expectations among persons with mental health issues, as well as access to supports as needed, and controlled by the individual.

Membership in the Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network was not limited to those who self-identified as having a "mental health disability". Members could be family members of individuals with a "mental health disability", community workers that worked in the "mental health" field, legal professionals, as well as others that gave a damn! Our board still had a majority of its members being persons who self identified as having "mental health issues", as well as the majority of our committees. Over the four years I led this organization, I met hundreds, if not thousands of persons, who experienced various aspects of the mental health system, for the sake of calling it that, here in Niagara, or elsewhere. Some of our members were anti-psychiatry, meaning they promoted the views of writers like Dr. Thomas Szasz, Dr. Jeff Maisson, Dr. Peter Breggin, among others. Others were more traditional in their beliefs, where they saw the value of medication and the mental health system.

However, my work with the Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network, and various other policy levels I was involved with before that, and afterwards, I knew very few persons who suffered one of the more commonly known "mental illnesses" like "schizophrenia" and "bipolar disorder" who had a violent bone in their body. In fact, I knew many so called "forensic patients", some of whom were housed at forensic wards in the prison system, who would not likely be released due to a finding of being "not criminally responsible". The vast majority of those deemed to be "not criminally responsible" were not psychotic in the traditional sense, but were broken in other ways. Their likely final diagnosis was some type of personality disorder, as opposed to an Axis I disorder like "bipolar disorder" or "schizophrenia". These are people we truly do not understand very well. We may some day understand them, but through my interactions with people like this, as well as professionals that worked with them, they were certainly a different mindset than those with traditional "mental health" histories.

I don't support the use of "mental illness" as a reason to "mitigate" one's responsibility or accountability for one's actions. Instead, I support if someone is in need of help, that they be sentenced normally, but treated while incarcerated in a prison system that is geared more to rehabilitation than the semi death row boot camps that Prime Minister Harper wants to set up. We hear that prison does not offer treatment programs for mental health, addictions or really much of anything. I say, why not? I have known people who have been in prison who have been denied care for even physical ailments, such as diabetes and heart disease. This is totally against the Geneva Convention, as far as I am concerned. The overall effect this has is to terrify certain individuals who have done something horrible, who would seek any way out of a life sentence in the barbaric conditions of the modern prison system. This in effect pushes a few of them to try the so called "insanity defence" to see if they can avoid prison, while people outside who "hear voices" and have been in psychiatric hospital who have never hurt anyone, will now be viewed by employers, neighbours, family and others, as somebody who just "might" hurt someone, as the particular diagnosis "schizophrenia" becomes tied to the kiss of death. In fact, a large portion of people with this diagnosis end up dying from suicide.

Throughout my career in the mental health field before I joined the legal profession, I experienced the suicides of many people. The suicide of my older brother is what triggered my understanding of many of these things, and my push to make things better for everybody. Each one hurt just as much as the one before did. The sad thing is that many times, I only spoke to the person a few hours before they finally ended their lives. Before their suicide, their lives were always off balance. Absolutely all of them saw no way out of their situation, whatever that might be ... and quite often, poverty, shame and stigma led them down that path, leaving some crisis or other to break the camel's back and turn their minds to suicide as the only way out. I've experienced suicide among some of my legal clients as well, which continues to bring despair to me. I knew many of them, their issues and their lives well enough to know what likely tipped the balance, but specifics could not be shared with even family.

What I do support however is something that everybody in our community would support if they knew it would make a difference. Social inequality leads to a major cause of mental disorder in the community, and worsens the impact and social isolation of those with diagnosed conditions. Research from the so called Third World has demonstrated that persons with even the most severe of diagnoses, such as "schizophrenia" do well in places where they are accepted and included, as part of whatever community they live in. The rate of "social recovery" from mental health disorders in these types of societies is very high, up to ninety percent in some regions. In the Western world, "schizophrenia" was originally referred to as dementia praecox (which referred to a person who is young and is permanently deteriorating in their personality). Never mind the extensive work I have done in reviewing the history of "mental health issues" and disability, and how eugenics, social isolation and even genocide, was a major issue, given society's view that people with these conditions will never get better.

We need to be open and accepting of people, even if they are "different". We have to put an end to chronic poverty, which leads to homelessness in some, as well as poor health and continued descent into the "black dog" of depression and other forms of mental distress. All people, regardless of their abilities, culture, level of appreciation, and so forth, have to have cause for hope, and a sense of belonging. While I am not a fan of the modern "consumer/survivor movement", it does give an important message to people not in the know. The needs of people with mental health issues is really no different than those of others; they all need a "home, a job, and a friend", just like the rest of us. If we continue to gear our society's direction to isolating people with mental health problems, deeming them to be less responsible than other persons, unable to make choices, and so forth, they will become what we believe them to be. If we continue our attitude of "everybody for themselves", which appears to have been set into place more and deeper since the mid-1980's, we will continue to see a rise in the number of theatre shooters, school shooters, dismember murderers, and so forth.

As Michael Moore explained on Piers Morgan last night about recent mass shootings in the U.S., he cited there are so many more mass shootings on a per capita basis in the United States, even though the prevalence of so called "mental illness" is roughly the same everywhere. Norway had its own whack job last year, that shot and killed about sixty people who were convening on an island for a type of retreat. However, this is something that does not happen to the extent that it does in the United States, and to a growing extent, Canada and Great Britain. To me, people like Wilkinson and Pickett, Author of the Spirit Level, are on to something. It is well known that societies that are less equal than others are prone to these sorts of outbursts of violence, spates of "mental illness", obesity, teen pregnancy, high school drop outs, and so forth.

However, I am not optimistic that things will change soon under our current government structure, with people in power that do not understand how inequality is ruining our nation and vulnerable individuals within it. I listen to Bruce Cockburn's Santiago Dawn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTYTreb4qeU, and it is my dream that someday the society's most oppressed will find their way back home and find a way to belong and to participate in our community, and the jackboot law and order mentality will fade.

Your thoughts?

ORCHESTRATED CRISIS AND CHAOS

The global stage is going through a major recession, unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. Every day, we are hearing about how thousands upon thousands of jobs are being shed by company after company. We hear stories about people walking away from their houses in the States, tent cities being set up after people lose their jobs and the sudden need for billions of dollars in corporate bailouts to save what few jobs are left.

On the street, people are getting cranky. Public servants, frustrated by an increase in their respective workloads, are talking back to their customers in ways that provoke, instead of provide insight. People are butting into lines everywhere, worried that the last scrap of whatever folks are after will be gone by the time they get there. Pensions, investments and other trusts we once believed were safe are rapidly disappearing, leaving many pensioners the choice of living their "golden" years in poverty or returning to work.

We hear more about school shootings, rampages where gunmen go crazy shooting up everybody in their home and then move on to random people on the street, or work rage, where the same thing can happen at the place of a former employer. Last Christmas, we heard about a man who dressed up as Santa Claus, drove up to the home of his former in-laws and began to throw pipe bombs and tried to torch the home, as well as shoot anybody else who got in his way. In the end, he blew himself up, when one of his home-made weapons set itself off too soon. We learned the shooter in this case was laid off from a well-paying job as an engineer, then his wife sought and won a court order against him for more money ... He planned to come to Canada. God only knows what he had planned for us up here.

In Germany, a 15-year old suddenly takes a gun and goes to his former high school and begins shooting. His targets were mostly female students and teachers. Though reportedly treated for depression two years earlier, one would question how relevant that is to this mass explosion. Another man in Alabama came home, took the lives of most of his family, as well as took down a few random people on his street, before ending his life at a metal plant (possibly where he might have been recently laid off). Two parents in Quebec had a suicide pact, whereby they were to kill their children, then one another, after leaving a detailed note as to why the economy was hurting them. This goes on and on and on ...

People are more likely to sue or get sued in these rough times, or fall behind in their debt payments, subjecting more folks to the ire of collection agencies. Family law disputes are taking on a more bitter tone, leaving many to the courts in what are known as the "high conflict" family files. Government agencies undergoing cutbacks experience an increased rate of error and declining rate of empathy, as payers of support payments end up with less than 50% of their income and often, end up in dire straits themselves. One man called me from his car, which is where he is living these days after he lost his job and then his home.

Many times, the only thing we can do is make appropriate referrals, or provide encouragement and moral support. Many of these people do not have money for legal services, nor do they fall under the purview of Legal Aid Ontario. On paper, their income is too high, but after the garnishment, they cannot even meet basic needs. Their only choice these days is to approach Family Law Advice Counsel at the court house, or to phone Lawyer Referral Service, with respect to how to best represent themselves in what will likely become a battle of a lifetime. They need to vary the court orders, amend visitation or even seek custody of children, or reduce or eliminate spousal support payments. Unless they can pay a lawyer, most of them end up representing themselves.

This has always been part of the problem, even before the chaos of the present recession began. The present recession is just wearing people down more. People talk to me more about how much they hate, as opposed to how upset they are. I lost someone to suicide in January 2009, and then somebody else to so-called 'natural causes' in his forties in February 2009. If the second one had access to a family doctor, medications and transportation, I am sure he would have survived (which is all I can say publicly). Poor people die, while rich people thrive.

Policy makers know the poor are worst off. They know that poverty is costing us more than $30 billion annually. They know that poverty is a good part of the reason our health care costs are skyrocketing. The growth of poverty seems to coincide with the growth of methadone clinics in urban areas; unfortunately, they too are responding to demand. I hear stories about how a few have sold their weekend carries on the street, or prostitute themselves to get the "real" thing ... or turn to booze or another drug of choice. Tenants get evicted more now for illegal drug use or for dealing from their units.

My work is to evict them. There have been cases when I met the same tenant time and time again, through different buildings, after a repeat performance of the first time they were evicted. The public and private interest is to get these people housed and protected, but at the same time, one must ask where ... living on the street can only exacerbate whatever problems they created when they started with my buildings. The problem only leaves one building, only to land on the doorstep of another. One thing my mother was right about was that things started to go really bad when drugs were introduced in society. Trying to remain impersonal and objective throughout this chaos is difficult to do, but one of my responsibilities.

I know there is a huge increase in addictions and drug dealing in general, as I see it in the streets, hear about it through various people I speak to, and learn of it from the coffee shops. But it is not just the low income people on Ontario Works or even ODSP that are using; many of the people who are using get no formal income, as well - many are fully employed. There are also wealthy professionals who also find themselves entangled. They just go to better places and are able to hide their habit better. People cry for a war on drugs, they cry for prohibition, when we know this will never work ... esp. when the world is falling apart at its seams.

In my building where I work, I often have to chase people out, feeling bad at the same time as many of these people have nowhere to go, except the streets. Many of these people do not have any income, as they were kicked off Ontario Works a long time for some misunderstood transgression. Perhaps, they lost their identification and did not have the funds to renew it, or they happen to be living rough and their OW worker can't really communicate with them, nor can any employer for that matter.

As an advocate, I am a lightning rod for people that feel strongly about things, from both the right and the left. The right wants to believe in the existence of the welfare queens, that continue to procreate with impunity to increase their income. Of course, they have no evidence of this except from "a friend of a friend who knew somebody that had fourteen children so she can make a mint off the 'system'". I have worked with low-income people as well as middle and upper income folks for years, and I have yet to meet anybody that would even want to have more and more children, particularly when they could not even feed themselves. There were a few teen mothers who never heard of birth control, as some might add, but they were referred to programs where they learned how to become successful parents, as well as finish high school.

From the left, they want governments to spend, spend and then spend some more to get us out of this global crisis. Spending more in a recession is not a sin, but indiscriminate spending can make the problem worse than when it started. While building "affordable housing" will create some construction jobs in the immediate term, money is still going to be needed in the future to maintain these units. The City of Toronto has a half a billion dollar backlog in repairs to its own housing stock, let alone thinking of building new stock. At the same time, poverty groups are pressuring the City to fix their units, which are more than just a mere "leaky tap" ... many have ceilings falling down, bad foundation, vermin, mould, as well as other problems that make their unit uninhabitable. We have to decide if we want to spend billions and billions of dollar propping up these buildings, many of which should be razed and rebuilt anyways, or whether the money can go somewhere else that might increase the incomes of all of the poor to encourage greater local investment, and thus, more capital to invest in the private market.

Today, an interested observer noted that "half the region is on Ontario Works or ODSP" and now more people are trying to get Employment Insurance. He suspects a secret government conspiracy that the powers that be simply want to put everybody on welfare, where they can control them. Others say they are attempting to make people so desperate that they will take any job, even jobs that do not pay minimum wage or follow health and safety standards, just to keep oneself one step ahead of starvation. Other theories are more foreboding; one has shared with me the idea that there is a policy of "slow genocide", whereby the weakest of society will be forced to slow starve to death or die of many of the diseases the poor are more likely to get, just so we can save a few tax dollars. Well, we all know they cannot directly put us all in the gas chambers anymore, or put us all against a wall and shoot us. That is too humane.

But billions of dollars have been handed to large companies ... people are becoming wary of how the executives are getting paid, even union workers in such industries as the auto sector. People are rightfully concerned that the majority of taxpayers that earn much less than these people collectively should continue to fork over money to keep these relatively wealthy classes alive. In the Toronto Star today, there was a story over "pension envy" where people in the private sector get no defined benefit plan (as these are slowly moving to the status of the dodo bird) are continuing to be forced to pay into secure, relatively high pensions of those in the public sector or even GM workers. Pension reform certainly needs to be on the table. I wouldn't want to be old right now; I would not be able to retire, as what is given to those without a private pension plan is peanuts. Again, we will be forcing our seniors to choose between housing and eating.

People are wanting greater controls over CEO salaries and perks, as well as some control over certain sectors, whereby it seems that wage hikes beyond inflation, plus retention pay, seem to be the order of the day, even when times are tough for everybody else. President Barack Obama has taken a great interest in a story of AIG executives receiving bonuses all of a sudden, right after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts ... I say, fire them all and make them pay it all back. Never going to happen, of course. But if somebody on welfare got a little more than what they were entitled to, you could bet your life that this individual will be hauled before the courts, charged with fraud and then thrown to the wolves. To me, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe Barack Obama represents a change in direction. We can hope.

As for seeing our way out of this chaos, I am not sure. Some economists, such as Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, see this as being a short, sharp dip, whereby Canada will be less scathed than the many. Others are not so optimistic; Don Drummond from the TD Canada Trust, is saying about 500,000 jobs may still be lost ... it is going to get a LOT worse before it gets better.

In the meantime, some communities are getting together and holding rallies. I wish there'd be more of them in Niagara Region, but nevertheless there are more rallies ... politicians need to stop playing Chicken Little, as the sky is truly falling, but they can't simply run, scream and point their fingers at everybody else. They need to take action.

How positive action would certainly help me ... I would stop feeling so much in chaos. It is so bad that our building got its water cut off, then it was followed by a flood and now the plumbing on the second floor washroom (the only "public" washroom in our building) has no water and we can't even flush the toilets ... and we go downtown, walk down the street on my side and then we see construction job after construction job, whereby holes are dug up and filled up again ... I am pleased somebody gets to do the digging and the filling, but they are ensuring people's essentials are getting cut off, people are commuting in chaos and it has become rapidly known there really is no definite street I can walk through in my own neighbourhood ... too many holes, too many tractors, too many excavators, too many shovels ...

Now, if we would only get that shovel in the ground for that hospital we are supposed to build in west St. Catharines. To me, this chaos and crisis was orchestrated; it was certainly not something that would come out in the end to harm the elite ... just put us old runts through yet another rough patch. I just look forward to the day that this is finally over and I can actually talk to people about something else once again, instead of the havoc this world is wrecking on our little world.

Your thoughts?

AND MAY YOUR CHRISTMAS BE A CHARMED ONE ...

Christmas was always one of my favourite times of the year. It is not so much the giving and receiving of presents, but the presence of others that saves me from myself. After all, Christmas is one of the few times of the year I can truly take time off, as others are more involved in other aspects of their lives and are less concerned with legal hassles, except for the few odd emergencies I worked through in previous years.

While I love Christmas and always look forward in anticipation with the lights, the music and the whole idea of starting off fresh in a new year, it is also a time of year when my cynicism reaches fever pitch. The Salvation Army commercials come on about this time of the year, flashing their statistics on your TV screen, asking you to give, give, give. Food banks are forever predicting a "crisis" of sorts if some white knight or white knights do not come to the rescue with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the homeless shelters promise to feed the hungry a turkey dinner.

This is a "feel good" time of the year for people who are comfortable. Giving money to a food bank, or a financial donation to a shelter seems to be the thing to do to ease oneself of the guilt of never having to have been a recipient of such a service. For those among us that give very large donations, most do not mind the press coverage - especially a company, as it shows "good corporate citizenship" (even though the same company receiving the heaps of good press may actually be one that pays low wages and treats their workers badly -- but how do we know?). Despite the "good citizenship" deeds that tend to be performed at this time of the year, we hardly give a thought about how the people at the receiving end feel about being at the receiving end. Has anybody ever asked them?

The charitable sector has become ingrained into our political culture to the point whereby we do not really think of those that receive our help, as any more than people who are needy, dependent and in some way, damaged goods. While this is certainly not a conscious assumption, nor is it present in every case of giving ... as I do know personal friends who have formed more reciprocal relationships with the people they set out to help. Unfortunately, this is an exception, not the rule.

When I speak to people who have gone to food banks or other charitable services on a regular basis (as opposed to going only for that one year when times were tough), I learn most of these folks have a very low self-esteem. Some do not believe they are "deserving" of a better life, such as a life where they would have enough resources to reasonably make choices. While they are thankful for the help, they do not see themselves as empowered human beings that are viewed by others as individuals with capabilities, talents and resources of their own. A portion of this group try to steer themselves away from charitable services, thinking they would "rather starve" than accept this help from anyone.

When prospective donors hear about this subset of people who refuse help, they are viewed as "mentally ill" or simply possessing "pride". However, when donors to these services are asked about the people they are "helping", once again - this population is viewed as somewhat helpless, dispossessed and unwanted, although they do acknowledge that some people are getting help as a result of "falling on hard times through no fault of their own". The complicated pseudo-relationship and inherent schema that is developed between the donor and the recipient is rarely considered in how recipients come to view themselves, or their own futures - when in my view, it has EVERYTHING to do with this attitude.

This is not about the people that provide services in this field, the thousands of volunteers that toil daily to sort through donations, others that appeal to the media for more donations and other persons, usually paid personnel that provide direct service to the recipients. It is more about the schema produced and not challenged by these same thousand points of light and the media that backs them about the necessary dichotomy between the helpers and the recipients, roles that are not portrayed as interchanged or interdependent. This role is further entrenched by the screening processes used by such charities to ensure each recipient is "deserving" of help.

Similar to any targeted welfare scheme, prospective recipients are encouraged to disengage themselves as actors and potential participants in their futures, but to focus on everything that is wrong with their lives ... in fact, as with many welfare schemes, one has to prove they have depersonalized themselves and spoiled their identity to the point that the helper is satisfied they have done all they can to reduce themselves to nothing. At the same time, nothing is offered up to address the situation that brought the recipient through their doors in the first place. Many trained in the service delivery model identify with the "spoiled identity" or "damaged goods" version of their entrails, as opposed to questioning why there appears to be a greater number of people each year in similar given circumstances.

While even the social work model professes to work against systemic barriers in favour of progressive social change, this is not what happens when people check their identities at the door to get the so-called "help" they need. The helper is there to "correct" supposed personal deficits of the disadvantaged, as opposed to helping them break barriers to join the "advantaged" part of society. For many social workers and others in related helping professions, they cannot even imagine their clients qualifying to do their jobs, for example.

While most helpers do not necessarily "blame the victim", they do nevertheless, view the victim as somewhat defective. The homeless man is "mentally ill". The single parent with two children in tow is always in abusive relationships. The single man who lost his apartment needs to learn how to balance his budget. The chronically unemployed are there because they are illiterate, lack high school and likely, do not have any skills. When other statistics are presented that show that recipients as a group look more similar to the group of "helpers" than they are dissimilar, helpers resist this interpretation.

I have focused some of my time over the years to talk to people who do not visit food banks, go to homeless shelters or seek other types of counseling assistance - even though their life circumstances and their needs may be identical to those that do use such services. While my observations may be anecdotal in nature, the same themes have emerged over time through different voices. What I have learned from these folks is instrumental and should be not only acknowledged by those that deliver services, but incorporated in their overall philosophy and structure of how they approach anybody coming through their door.

1. People want to be viewed as capable and willing to do for
themselves. A hand out in any way, shape or form makes
the person feel they are viewed as dependent and incapable
of doing for themselves, that somebody with "capability"
must do these things for them.

2. People want a hand up, not a hand out. Traditional charities
are very bad at recognizing that people want out of the
"welfare trap" more than they may believe they need
immediate help. People refusing services know they will not
get a job, get out of poverty or get into decent (and
independent) housing through the charitable service. In
other words, their programs do not work.

3. Even if the service is successful in getting the recipient
"housing", for example, the roof over their head becomes
a social service and not just a necessary product for living
in the community. Homeless people are assumed to be
incapable of living on their own and keeping their housing.
People with mental health issues are assumed to have
issues, outside the fact they are poor and nobody will hire
them, which led to them becoming homeless. Everybody
is deemed to want and need "subsidized" housing, despite
the fact the rules for this program tend to cripple initiative
and force people to remain in poverty.

People that do not want these services may need help to
secure an apartment, but after that, they do not want to
be fodder and continue to be a "cause" for ongoing income
for the charity. (The fact of this matter is those that can
live independently are often falsely assumed to not need
ANY help at all).

4. People want help to reach their full potential, not to
cripple it. Most of those refusing help do not want to
work in low-wage, insecure and low-skilled employment.
They want assistance in developing their career potential,
even though doing this may require funds for retraining,
partial employer subsidies and innovative partnerships
in one's respective community. Charities get paid to
"place" people, not get them out of poverty.

5. People want to work with their helpers as partners in
making systemic change. They want their helpers to
challenge employers that appear to not want persons
with disabilities working for them, or only want them if
the person is happy at working for half-wages. They
want to work with the helpers at making changes so that
the services of charities become less and less necessary.

6. Many of those refusing help feel that their presence as
"clients" of these agencies only "proves" demand and
thus, continues to generate ongoing funding for these
charities, regardless if their personal situation improves.

7. With regards to being given food, clothing, housing, etc.
- people feel they are not allowed to make choices. Why
is nobody giving those in need the necessary RESOURCES
to make these choices on their own, as opposed to making
these choices for them?

The very presence of these charities and the encouragement through the media, community influences and other forces, encourages those that want to "do good" to continue to donate and to otherwise continue to "prove" the legitimacy of these charities, as well as to continue to ignore and disregard the need for true systemic changes that would negate the need for the same.

We go ahead and have our Christmas with our families, go to work the next day or day after, and give to some charitable donation because society expects us to pick up the slack from the government. We do not think about the fact that continuing to support the status quo is taking away choices from those that can otherwise handle them with the resources given directly to them, instead of through an expensive and controlling bureaucracy. We do not think that we may be contributing to the continuation of the problem, not necessarily because we want to, but by donating to the charities, there is still no way any donor can reasonably review the success of any such charity in actually changing things for the people they serve.

Except next year at this very same time, even more people will be knocking on the doors of these same charities, many more in even more desperate circumstances. By continuing this cycle, we have to ask ourselves why we are not asking the correct questions and demanding to know why the more people give, the greater number of people end up in need ...

Think about what you are going to do in 2009, whether what you do will actually make a difference (systemic change) or just continue the same old, same old. If you ask me what I want to do, it is the former -- hands down!

Your thoughts?

The STIGMA in Mental Health is STILL the Same

Did you ever wonder why a student at Virginia Tech would suddenly blow a gasket, take a gun and go around shooting up his school?

How about another fellow who deliberately drank a twelve pack of beer, then walked into a Florida bar with a gun and shot up the establishment?

Of course, you are thinking ... these people have got to be mentally ill. Nobody in their "right mind" would dare to do something like shoot up a school, a bar or a former employer. That is insane!

On the more subtle side, we hear from "experts" that a disproportionate number of people that live on the streets are mentally ill. The implication of course is that such persons cannot stay in housing because they can't manage their money, they say. How about the man that was found in a Toronto apartment building surrounded by pigeons and other wild species - to a point that it got so bad, that the police shuttled him off to a mental health facility and the animal rescue people were called in to get the animals out of there.

Were these people "mentally ill" or is somebody just giving them a label because of their attitudes, behaviour and ideas? Who determined these people were "mentally ill"? Are you "mentally ill" simply because you spent a night in a mental health facility? Nobody knows "Pigeon Man's" mental health history, but they shuttled him off to a mental health facility anyways, so therefore, because he was sent to a mental health facility - everybody now believes that "Pigeon Man" was mentally ill.

How about the rest of the 99.999999% of people who apparently suffer from some type of "mental illness", whether that be anxiety, depression, schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder or a whole whack of other "conditions" that continuously seem to be added year over year to the psychiatric Bible, known as the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the short term being the DSM-IV? Are all these people like the "Pigeon Man", living among the homeless, or are they like Cho, the infamous Virginia Tech school shooter?

Let me tell you one thing. In a recent report of the Canadian Senate, it was cited that approximately 90% of those who have been diagnosed with serious "mental illness" are unemployed. Whenever somebody with a known "mental illness" wants to move to any neighbourhood, the picket signs go up and the stigma goes full tilt. People scream about the Chos, the Pigeon Men, the bar shooters and all the other horrific characters that are simply part of the 21st Century ... to no avail. People who are open about having a "mental health" history are as good as dead even in 2007.

What is the truth? First, there is NO evidence that people who have been diagnosed with a "mental illness" are any more dangerous than you or me. Second, there is no evidence that people with "mental illness" are any more likely to do stupid, outrageous things than you or me. You point to the "Pigeon Man". I point to Criss Angel, the Mind Freak, who has his own show on A & E, where he has done a string of stupid things, ranging from from lying in the path of a mega-SUV, had himself buried alive in a coffin under a ton of dirt, as well as pretended to walk on water over a swimming pool - all on national TV! We are entertained by Criss Angel, yet nobody carts him off to a mental health facility!

You tell me that people with "mental illness" should be supervised with their money. I point out that I know many well-paid professionals that go to the casino all the time and owe hundreds of thousands of dollars, often resulting in the break-up of their marriages and the loss of their homes. I also know of many individuals who are like you and me who buy a new car every two years, put everything on credit cards, and live the life of envy of most and beyond their means, but yet never get labelled "mentally ill" or told that somebody has to manage their money for them.

What about the homeless, you say? Okay, let's make this one simple and straight forward. Can you manage to pay for a place to live, food to eat and other necessities with a sum total of $536 a month? In most places, this is even becoming difficult to do with an ODSP cheque of almost $1,000 a month. Yes, some of these people may be "mentally ill", but many of them are also physically disabled, blind, suffer from migraine headaches, or not suffer from any conditions at all. Let's be honest about this one. This is an income problem first. Once we resolve the income issue, then we can look at everything else -- too many people with a direct and financial interest in the outcomes of these issues want to put the cart before the horse and receive money for what they do, instead of allowing the people who need it the most to use it to pay for their own needs.

In my line of work, I handle appeals for various kinds of disability benefits among other things. In particular, the appeals I handle for people seeking ODSP benefits are difficult because roughly half of my appellants end up having at least one spell of homelessness while waiting for the government to get their act together. The people that end up homeless have all kinds of disabilities, e.g. very bad backs, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, Parkinson's disease, deaf or hard of hearing, spinal stenosis, cancer, etc. as well as a few that have a so-called "mental illness". In fact, most of my homeless appellants have not had a history of "mental illness". They just have a hard time convincing the peons of government bureaucracy they have a legitimate disability and they cannot compete adequately in today's labour market to sufficiently earn enough money to support themselves on a persistent basis. This has also happened to several of my worker's compensation appellants ... people who held legitimate jobs, but sustained injuries while working that disabled them. The proof is in the pudding. Welfare rates are grossly insufficient for people to live on, let alone maintain a home. Because we often have to fight uphill battles to obtain just about anything else on behalf of these folks, welfare becomes the income of first resort - not last resort - and because this income is grossly insufficient, many fall behind in rent payments and get evicted or lose their homes to forclosure. Some may be able to keep their homes, but end up in a serious debt crisis. I am working with a man who has put well over $75,000 on his credit card in order to prevent what is often inevitable if he were to turn to the welfare system.

Nevertheless, once I do get the appellants on disability and they receive their retroactive back pay, they *are* able to find and secure housing on their own. This includes those with "mental illness", if you must call it that. I don't know of any of my appellants subsequently losing their housing, except for one or two -- one I do recall had an addiction to crack and his behaviour when he was using it caused him to lose one apartment, but nevertheless, he got help (at my urging) and is now housed and has been for the past five years. Yes, these people can and do get housing - however, as I often write in these columns, eating is quite a different matter. This is why a *substantial* increase in social benefits are in immediate order. Third world style malnutrition is not difficult to find among many recipients of social benefits; it's either that or substantially increased health care costs. I know of people who have been forcibly incarcerated in nursing homes because they were unable to afford proper nutrition for themselves and their health suffered the consequences. As a society, we need to consider if we could afford to continue allowing this to happen.

One person once tried to convince me of the alleged inherent stupidity in these folks by telling me that many people on ODSP have to use the direct pay system for their landlords, so that is why they don't lose their housing. That system is actually in place *because* many landlords, upon learning that you are on social assistance, actually demand it. It has nothing to do with the recipient's own ability to manage their funds. I know this because I represented landlords before the Landlord and Tenant Board, which have made arrangements upon the recipient moving in, or as a condition of them staying, to receive direct pay. Some of my ODSP clients also offer this to prospective landlords to make themselves more desirable to rent to ... many landlords still do not like renting to people on any form of public assistance. To add a tidbit to this discussion, the vast majority of people who I helped landlords evict are tenants with jobs, some of whom were making good money. They just don't like to pay rent.

However, in spite of all this, we continue to hear the bells tolling by the so-called mental health sector that want people with "mental illness" to live in segregated housing or to work in jobs created just for them. Despite their goodwill gestures here, this actually adds stigma to the vast majority of people with mental health issues who can and will manage their lives well despite their problems. Many just can't get jobs because people believe the Hollywood images of psychos, or listen too much to the so-called "experts" who have pre-diagnosed people like Pigeon Man and thousands of others through the media before they can turn their lives around. Those people with serious mental health issues that DO get jobs LIE about their histories so they can be hired on the basis of their qualifications only, nor do they DARE ask for accommodations fearing their prospective or existing employers will treat them differently upon learning they have the red scarlet letter on their forehead of "mental illness".

There are other stigma producers, such as those who believe people with "mental illness" all want to live with others who also have"mental illness" or work with them. They create housing that is specifically made for "them", even though none of these people if asked likely will demand this kind of "support" and suffocating lifestyle these set-ups entail. Those in these types of housing are mandated to take their medications, attend counseling sessions and have "life skills" training in areas they likely already do well in. Some of these programs will actually evict someone if the resident chooses to stop taking their medications, for example. To me, this is not a "home". They may as well remain in the hospital with regards to the choices they are given under these circumstances. If one desires supports, they should NEVER be connected to the home they live in and only be delivered by whomever one chooses and in the manner and to whatever extent is desired by the person. This would be no different than somebody who - for example - requires assistance with bathing three times a week and help with light housekeeping, but can manage most other aspects of their lives. These other supports are provided to people because they request them, not because somebody else says they need them.

People with mental health conditions often get sent to work in settings that are disproportionately within the five "f's" - food, filth, filing, fetching and flowers, regardless of the person's own education, training and career aspirations. Some of these settings are non-profit groups ironically set up by other consumer/survivors, as they call themselves today, that will hire people for a few hours a week in these jobs that also smack of stigma. Only a handful of people who work in these places actually hold higher-paid, full-time management positions, while the vast majority remain on their disability pensions, which these organizations ultimately leave out of the picture when they make their calculations of costs for the purposes of marketing their programs, what their actual costs are versus what subsidies they actually get. To me, ODSP subsidizes these programs just as much as any other government funding it receives if people are not likely to get off their pensions or reduce their reliance substantially in a dignified manner. Further, if you or I have a disability and run our own businesses, why are WE not *also* entitled to the same government subsidies these people get?

The real clincher is if somebody worked for one of these places for a number of years and wants to move on, despite any valuable skills and experience they may have gained, they are forced by identifying the name of the employer to disclose to *all* prospective employers that they were diagnosed with a "mental illness". I continue to advise my clients NOT to disclose to employers their mental health history and ONLY disclose this fact AFTER they get hired and ONLY IF they feel they require certain accommodations under the Human Rights Code. In circumstances where job seekers are moving on from these "special programs", they are not given the dignity of this choice. Wearing the scarlet letter almost guarantees a lifetime of unemployment, particularly for those who were not in management or supervisory positions (who may otherwise try to hide behind that fact, because many employers don't think "mentally ill" people are capable of working in higher level jobs anyways).

The chance that a person with a known mental health condition getting hired in a supervisory or management position is slim because when people believe the stigma that people with "mental illness" are unable to manage their own money, how can they handle the money of somebody else or that of an employer? Even those who have been trained and established in a profession have difficulty finding work for employers that would hire somebody in that profession, because again - people cannot envision the possibility that somebody with a "mental illness" is capable of working in a profession, let alone holding a low level job. Remember, they are all homeless, cannot manage a budget, babble to themselves as they walk down the street and don't know any better, right? That is why I am so emphatic about HOW people - including many advocates - express themselves about the circumstances of persons with mental health issues.

As long as the media continues to publish stories about people like "Pigeon Man", the legions of homeless get diagnosed long distance via the media as being "mentally ill", and people like Cho who shoot up schools get labeled as crazy, people with "mental illness" will never be thought of in any other other way. Even those who put forth so called "positive stories", such as a non-profit cleaning company for example that hires only "mentally ill" consumer/survivors, can also plant ideas in people's minds that folks who have been through experiences that society deems to be "mental illness" can only do jobs that fall within the five f's - food, filth, filing, fetching and flowers, and forget ever hiring them to do anything in management or other positions that might actually get them OFF disability and securely housed, let alone actually *own* a home for Christ's sake. Scary.

As a result, society relies on its non-existent social safety net to support these individuals, as nobody seems to want to hire them. Those who are not lucky enough to get on ODSP must survive on a total of $536 a month ... try getting even a hole in the wall for that amount of money almost anywhere. If they get on disability, they usually spend at least 70% of their cheques on shelter, leaving very little left over for food, transportation and personal care. Then, if they have trouble keeping their housing because their income is so low, then we blame them for being poor money managers. If any "middle class" person had to survive on what they get, I am sure they'd have lots of trouble too. But instead, because we want to keep the possibility of homelessness and destitution as far away from our own lives as possible, we try to convince ourselves that the homeless are different people than what we are. So different, that we are willing to shame those who are different into believing their differences is what causes them to suffer their misfortunes - and while doing so, we are only further denying the problems that we and the governments we elect have created. Shame, shame.