MEDIA, LIES AND REALITY TV - On Telling our Politicians to Get Real

I have not written here in a period of time, mostly because I am trying to build my business and develop a broader client base.  At this time of the year, clients affected by economic crisis tend to strike out at everybody in their way and spread their hurt all over, including those that are trying to fix things for them.  One Christmas a few years ago, a gentleman phoned my office to tell me he had a gun and was prepared to use it on himself.  His sister ended up spending the holidays with him, though his words haunted me for a long time.  This is why I try to take a few weeks off at Christmas time to get out of everybody's way, not because I celebrate anything or care about the crass consumerism known as Christmas.

Anyhow with the advent of recent federal by-elections, we heard so much about the middle class.  I don't know about you, but I am frankly fed up with hearing about the so-called "middle class" when many of the people I deal with would be very happy just to belong in the "middle class".  The media has it all wrong about us. During the summer, we're all supposed to be going to cottages, taking road trips and participating in sports, such as swimming, hiking and fishing.  As voters, we are theoretically supposed to be too busy with our "families" in the summer and, as such, out of touch with politics.  In the fall, kids are supposed to go back to school and parents are supposed to be paying at least $600 - $900 on back to school supplies and clothing, while parents of older children drive their kids off to universities or colleges, the tuition for which is being paid by them.  I knew a lot of these kids.  They were just as self-entitled in the 1980s and 1990s as many of them are today, living off Daddy's trust funds and blowing all their money on beer and parties.  There are more serious students though, but we don't hear about them in the media, because these people are usually the mature students that go back to school, rely on OSAP and barely get enough to eat, let alone enough money for beer.

In a few days, there will be a day that is called Black Friday, which follows Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., and this sort of crass consumerism has crossed our borders to make us Canadians think we have to do it too.  Oh, how we all are now suppose to drive across the border and shop and make an official start to our Christmas shopping ... Yeah, right.  WHAT Christmas shopping, many of you are asking ... I don't even have to be there with you, but I know many of my readers barely have two pennies to scrape together to do any kind of Christmas shopping, let alone have families to go to during the holidays.  Reality on the ground is too different than what it appears to be on TV, in the media and on reality shows ... even politicians have it wrong.  During the last federal election, I couldn't shut off the TV fast enough when the clowns running for the federal Conservatives were going on about how they want to offer 'income splitting' for the average family, which they say earn a household average of $93,000 a year.

These clowns go on to offer -- if elected -- and if they bring the deficit down -- a big expensive tax cut that will allow families where it is possible for one high earner to transfer up to $50,000 of his income (or hers, too -- but we all know they are imagining high earning men and stay at home women to be their trophy wives).  The man who likely earns a six figure income can then "save" on taxes by artificially transferring up to $50,000 of his earnings to his stay at home wife (or much lower earning wife), so he will only be taxed on the remaining income.  This whole thing was concocted by the false dichotomy of pitting dual earner families against single earner families ... pretending again, the old Conservative way, that women really all want to stay home to care for their children and not go to work until after the fly the coop.  Na da.  Ain't happening, especially since tying the knot with anybody doesn't come with guarantees these days.  Most families are two earners, simply because one salary doesn't cut it anymore.

The average expenses of a family tell us much more about our so-called make belief earnings that the media would like us to believe we have or can strive for.  I live in a region that is packed full of low wage, low skilled, no future type jobs ... all this, for those who have turned fifty, worked in the plants all their lives and now were told their employer is moving to India or China or Indiana or Detroit, take your pick.  We are supposed to believe our families average $93,000 a year, because our politicians tell us so when they are on the election trail.  I would really like to invite these politicians into MY life and show them what is real and what is fantasy.  I live in a house that is falling apart and I have no money to fix it.  I live in a neighbourhood that has been losing amenities right, left and centre - all whilst the municipal politicians see fit to continue to increase my taxes.  If this is the case, what am I getting more of?  Certainly not services ... we are losing our schools, so kids can no longer walk to school.  We lost the only two financial institutions that were here when we first bought the house.  There are no more family style restaurants or recreational facilities.  The west end of town also has no community centres, no supermarkets, no community agencies, no swimming pools (e.g. the one that was there was shut down and rebuilt in the north end where three indoor pools are within walking distance of where they put the "new" one, and those of us that must take the bus can't get to at night or on weekends).  This tells you who the municipality serves - people that live in the neighbourhoods where all the amenities are all have money and usually drive.

Over the past few years, the only businesses that can thrive in my present neighbourhood are hair salons, low end bars, pawn shops, tattoo shops, convenience stores, fundamentalist churches, as well as other "businesses" which might be less than legal.  Over the past two years, I've seen more tags on buildings, representing the settlement of self-identified gangs.  I hear more about stabbings and shootings, let alone the fact I had personally handled cases that arose from this neighbourhood resulting from families being firebombed, a Muslim man getting beaten within an inch of his life and a family whose son recently killed himself.  With the loss of the high school, I can imagine a sharp increase in drop-outs, along with an increased cycle of poverty.  This is why I need to find a way to get rid of my house and get out of here before its value plummets and I end up owing more on it than I get for it.

My dream would be to leave this region, but until that is even possible, I need to get at least out of this 'hood. I've noticed a rash of home sales over the last year or so in this part of the city, or shall I call it town (because we still don't get city level amenities).   Others have sort of stuck it out here, but then they are retired and are not going anywhere.  The rest of the housing is going to student housing or rentals, with high turnover like many on my own street.  Over the years, people have come and gone from this block.  At one time, if one lived in the 'hood, they'd at least see other people's kids grow up and fulfil their dreams and have kids of their own, and so on.  Unfortunately, this is not the kind of 'hood for that sort of thing.  Many times, I long for community and the need to be part of something.  The unfortunate thing is even if there were some of us in the 'hood that wanted to get together to do something about it, we have no place to meet, not even a decent restaurant where we can all gather for a coffee.  Isolation breeds alienation.

We heard so much about a certain 'crack smoking' mayor of Toronto, which has hit not only all the Toronto media, but international media as well, including talk shows, late night comedies, comics, etc.  I feel if there is any of that 'crack' being smoked, an awful lot of it must be smoked by city planners that make decisions, such as where transit routes go, where to locate municipal services, where to build schools, etc., but then again, the federal government didn't help matters when it chose to scrap the long form census and turned it into a National Household Survey which nobody really had to fill out.  Whole neighbourhoods, age groups, social classes and so forth, were left out, because these being the "prototypes" who will be less likely to voluntarily complete such a thing, city planners even if they aren't on crack still won't have a clue as to what communities like my neighbourhood needs or what it is like to live here.

While the media continues to talk about the typical "middle class" who all have loving families to turn to, more than one vehicle to drive, a rich array of community services to go to, the media also tends to portray the "other Ontario" in a stereotypical way.  The food bank, which seems to be another money grabbing machine, hogs a lot of publicity at this time of the year pretending to be the saviour of all the fallen souls and broken spirits this chronic depression left behind.  Certainly, they are not necessarily stereotyping the poor, but they're doing nothing else for them either, such as what I'd want if I were to even visit an agency like that, and that is, to be pulled out of poverty and be given some hope for a future in my life.  If all I am to be given is expired food rich with preservatives and artificial ingredients for three days and told to come back again two months from now, while their 'researchers' take down way too much information about me, I would just want to run ... run far away.  It's time we shut these charities down and started pushing for policies that work.

While I never had much of a family while growing up, I certainly do have and value a strong sense of independence.  That should be upheld by our society.  That doesn't mean, society should just tell people in their darkest nights to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", but no ... society should come together once more and find ways to get people out of desperate straits once and for all and to actually provide and promote the kind of equal opportunity that our current media pretends that our society still offers.  That means we need to stop pretending that everything is fine for most of us, that most families are pulling down $80,000 to $90,000 in total household income, or that families can go back to the 1950s and rely in a single earner and get all their needs met.  We need to stop living in the past, turn off the TV, put away that newspaper and start looking around you and talk to the people you see.

Instead of assuming certain people are certain ways because ... (fill in whatever self-blaming principle you think fits), we need to ask ourselves what we as a community can do to make things different enough so that the people we see who are in trouble can find themselves out of trouble and be able to stand on their own two feet, given resources that should be universally available and not just "targeted" to those "in need", or in other words, the "damaged goods", "the poor" or "less fortunate".  We need to find ways so we rely less on charity and the goodwill of others, as fairweather as it might be, to fill our basic needs.  We need to have what we all need in our own communities, our own neighbourhoods and our own homes what we need to maintain ourselves and live our lives out in dignity.

Until then, we must all fight and place the responsibility at the feet of our policy makers that want to make it hard for those who were not born with Daddy's trust account or one of the few remaining good jobs left on this planet, to get by and have a reasonable quality of life.  An election is rumoured to be held in the spring of 2014, and the last thing I want to hear on the hustings is how a typical Ontario family lives, unless those making these statements have met and lived the lives of real people, such as the ones I am talking about.

ON REFLECTIONS, REGRETS AND GOOD GRACES OF 2012

I am ending this year's series of blogs on a regrettable note.  On a personal level, my mother in law, Anne Gretzinger, died on or about May 27, 2012, in hospital.  At the same time, I met no less than two others in my region suffering from the same kind of supposedly rare cancer that overtook her.  Others are dying in other ways, many before loved ones and many without a soul in the world.  Each one of us wants to make our mark in the world, and in many ways, I try to do that for those that were unable to speak for themselves.  I am afraid of our world moving to a slippery slope.

Prior to shutting down my practice for the holidays, however brief this idea turned out to be, an old friend phoned me to tell me that another had given her the power of attorney over his health and financial affairs.  This is the gentleman I once wrote about that, for the lack of political will, to finance an insulin pump, he is now in hospital dying.  Both of his legs have been surgically removed above the knee and he has been moved to Welland, where access to dialysis is readily available.  They now consider him what many in some quarters refer to as being a "bed blocker" or in more polite terms, a patient requiring "alternate level of care". Every day in hospital is costing him and his family $53.00 and change, as they await a spot in cheapest form of long term care.  This is where my cynicism sets in big time.  When I met him, he was a strapping man of 5 feet, 9 inches, and walking most places.  He still had his kidneys, his feet, his eyesight and most of his health, although he did require some foot care.  He was a late diagnosed Type 1 diabetic, and like many in his family, this turned out badly.  At the same time, a close colleague of mine, also Type 1 diabetic, has access to an insulin pump and he gets along fine, complaining only once in awhile of numbness in his feet.

There is a movement on paper at least about treating people in their own homes, allowing people to live in the least restrictive setting.  People do not want to die in institutional settings.  Most tell me that they want to die in their own homes, surrounded by family and friends, both two legged and of the four legged, furry variety.  People also tell me they want to live out their old age in their own homes that they bought and paid for, perhaps, passing down the title to this same property to their kin.   Our government is encouraging that, at least for those people with money.  The Healthy Home Renovations Tax Credit is one example that I played upon when I compared the math between what healthy seniors with money would be getting after the recent and well publicized cuts to OW and ODSP Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefits and Home Repairs.  It was cut in half and yes, the other "half" of this budget went to this new Tax Credit.

There is no way my friend could have stayed in his own home.  He would have had to hire a private nurse and have a live in caregiver to keep an eye on him during the day, as well as somebody to cart him around to his medical appointments.  Wealthy seniors rarely get to the point where they become this ill, but if they do, they have the resources to hide it and to live as close to a "normal" life as possible.  However, in recent weeks, my friend has passed out a couple of times.  I noted that he would not call me back when I notified him of an engagement that he was made aware of several weeks before.  When I finally found him, he had just exited the ICU unit of the hospital.  A few days later, I saw him strolling on his electric wheelchair telling me "they" were going to cut off his legs. I saw them. They needed to go, yesterday. He was also full of bumps and red sores, likely from his ongoing kidney failure. If he had money, he would not have gone as far.

Then as I prepare to pack my bags to go home and rest some during the holiday, my old friend called me in tears telling me that "they" wanted her to eventually consider pulling the plug on his dialysis.  She and I know that if this were done, within seventy two (72) hours, he will die.  She did not want to take responsibility for making a decision that would ultimately end his life.  I couldn't blame her.  Not that his quality of life is exceedingly great ... BUT I know if he had some money, my old friend would not be having that conversation with his doctors.  They would be referring him to one of the better retirement homes in the region, a private nursing service, as well as regular transport to the golf course and perhaps, a brief vacation. There is a lot to be said for the movement for the "good death" or euthanasia for the critically and terminally ill, but there is also a lot to be said when we even measure how social inequality even in its crudest terms is now dictating to us who lives and who dies.

This is certainly not the only story like this that I heard this month, although this one is going to involve some legal work for me and a close associate, as well as paperwork at the end of the day.  There were a few others as well, such as a woman who is in her mid-fifties who suffered from three subsequent heart attacks who had to quit her job and is now relying on social services, as the system wrangles its way to getting her onto CPP Disability and ODSP benefits.  In the meantime, her mortgage has gone begging, and she is likely to lose her only asset she owns: her home. On the contrary, I also happen to know an old curmudgeon who has been fortunate in his working days and is currently living at one of the most expensive retirement homes in the city.  He gets computer training and communications support through another friend of mine who is also a client.  He is approaching his nineties and there is nothing about this city, its community and its politics that he does not have an opinion about, no matter how crazy.  But at close to $5,000 a month, plus some handy extras and a supportive family, he is going to live well past 110.  His secret, he says, is a glass of red wine a day and a fighting attitude.  Never give up, he says.  Never give up.

There is quite a difference between my other friend who is dying and this old curmudgeon that might well wander the earth past the time of all of us.  He has money, but my dying friend does not.  There is very little that medical science will not do for somebody that has the money to pay for it.  There is very little that medical science will do for somebody that most desperately needs care and recovery, but has no money to his name.  My old curmudgeon friend includes among his friends a couple of former mayors, a former and a current MP, and several lawyers.  In his day too, he was involved in such causes as Rotary, Lion's Club and such.  He did a lot of good things in his time and knew a lot of good people, many that my readers likely heard of (but will not be named here).  My dying friend includes people like myself, but also others who nobody has ever heard of, or has reason to get to know, although they too are precious human beings.  Most of his friends apart from myself are also in the disability community, working minimum wage, or on the vulnerable border between life and health failures.  His very best friend is a four legged golden retriever, which he calls Ralph.

These issues and ideas around life and death not only revolve around us homo sapiens, but also around our beloved four legged creatures.  Nobody knows what will become of his four legged friend should the very worst outcome take place against him.  I am not sure if my old friend Renee, his attorney, has the energy and wherewithal to re-adopt this adorable pooch.  My friend adopted Ralph when he was well enough to care, well enough to love another living being with all of his heart.  Ralph came from an abusive home and came to him from a shelter, where thereafter he fed and cared for him like a grease monkey and a brand new car.  I can only imagine how when my friend first went to the hospital, Ralph wandered around the house waiting for him to come home.  This image in my mind reminded me poignantly of Angel, my in laws' dog, and how it likely reacted when she first learned that Anne Gretzinger was never coming home again.

I leave this year with this kind of sadness.  Today, my father in law still comes over with Angel, who becomes so excited and whines hysterically as she sees us approach.  I am sure my friend's sister is at a loss as to how to get Ralph used to the idea that my friend is never coming home again.  This is an issue I am going to have to deal with as soon as I get back to work, and part of why I have to cut my holiday short.  I have received plenty of hate letters and e-mail messages over the years over the strong political opinions I express, as well as "cautions" from even my friends who think that anything but positive messages is going to throw the world sideways.  I come from a place and time where we called a spade a spade and did not put lipstick on a pig and call it something other than a pig.  I always loathed the inventor of Pollyanna, as much as I loathe the inventor of social inequality and damnation.

If we do not talk about the trends that are occurring, the societal values that we have will be displaced by these seemingly medical directives, the increased scapegoating across the globe against the most vulnerable, we are giving "them" (whoever "they" might be) a license to continue.  My friends who I still love regardless but still err on the side of Pollyanna, may want to ask me what do we do.  The important thing is to allow this conversation to take place.  During the times of Nazi Germany, "everybody" knew what was going on with people with disabilities that were living in any of six designated killing centres under what then was referred to the Action T4, or Aktion T4.  In fact, people used to tease one another that if they continued to act as "crazy" as they were, they would be shipped to Hadamar, one of those notorious institutions.  Kathryn Quarmby is doing the right thing in her expose in her latest book, Scapegoat: Why We are Failing Disabled People.   This book and the issues it raises were becoming more eminent in the rise of the UK governing Coalition's welfare reforms that in effect merges persons with disabilities with all others who claim assistance from the state, such as Job Seeker's Allowance and other forms of social assistance available to the able-bodied.  People with disabilities now enjoy equal status to that of the alleged blood sucking welfare cheating scroungers of the UK (see this website and the many valuable links to it).

It is not that it "can't happen again" or it "won't happen in Canada", the fact is it is already happening.  It is happening with my friend with the amputated legs and dialysis, my friend with the three heart attacks, and many others I know about as I write, despite the tingling effect of Bailey's Irish Cream.  I know about people who have been pushed off wheelchairs and told they can walk, that they have somehow scammed the government into getting them a "free" wheelchair.  Another friend tells me that ODSP will not repair her wheelchair because her wheelchair is "somewhat akin to a car" and nobody pays her (her ODSP worker) when her car breaks down.  Well, let's see you take that car from your bedroom to your bathroom and see how well that works.  This kind of thinking has been going on for a long time, not just around the water cooler but in real policy terms as well.  I remember that portion of the course I taught to many students in the early 1990s, asking them to write an essay to argue whether or not something like the Aktion T4 can happen again and happen here in Canada.  It was and still remains to be an amazing thing that people tell me what a horrible time folks with disabilities had during the Third Reich, until I remind them that the World War II had not even begun before the war on people with disabilities began.

People are also disbelieving that even modern day social assistance laws are based on eugenics based thinking.  The whole concept of "man in the house" and "birth out of wedlock" was treated as something to be ashamed of, hidden and penalized by social program analysts.  Many readers will recall how early welfare workers would search the homes of single parents or deserted/widowed women to search for "signs" of a man being in the house.  These days, they may not be so oblique with their intentions, but financial penalties always ensure when people behave in ways that others that are not on social assistance behave; that is, they are penalized when they are married or living common law, have a child remain with them in the home after they pass the magic age of eighteen years, or require a child to pay room and board from their part time employment.  The "incentive" under social assistance is to remain vulnerable to poverty, whereas, any attempt to leave poverty is penalized severely.

Poverty rates for married people are much, much lower than people living alone, but if a person receiving disability/ODSP tries to engage in a relationship to improve their financial circumstances, the law now requires the working spouse to instantly support them, warts and all.  It is designed to repel even the most tolerant and loving persons from engaging in relationships with persons with disabilities.  This, coupled with the fact the eugenics board in Alberta continued to exist and act against certain persons with disabilities well into the 1970's is proof of this.  When this was successfully challenged under the Charter and damages were awarded to persons so affected and forcibly sterilized against their will under Canadian law, the Alberta government had the nerve to attempt to pass the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights to severely limit the damages and parties able to claim damages.  It was only after serious backlash from the disability and human rights community, that this pathetic attempt at upholding paternalistic and abusive values was eventually discarded.  I remember editing a national newsletter at the time.  One of the activists that fought this attempt to discard these rights under the Charter was an ex-Torontonian conservative that shared with me many of his insights over the years, leading me to believe that governments do not always govern with the best intentions.  In many ways, they have historically governed with the worse intentions, especially but not expanding this discussion to the fate of our aboriginals and our so called residential schools.  We are not innocent bystanders when we allow our governments to do this.  We are active participants.

We have to acknowledge what is happening, understand the roots of how these things begin, and to discuss it and then take collective action.  Many communities have rightfully taken collective action against the cuts to the Community Start Up and Maintenance Allowance and Home Repairs Benefit for people receiving OW and ODSP benefits, shortly after it was announced in the 2012 Budget.  This was a very large collective effort across Ontario.  A group of fourteen communities met on December 14, 2012, and delivered a common statement to the Premier afterwards.  Some are saying the government response is positive, in that they have injected $42 million of "transitional funding" to the municipalities to get them used to the fact they have to do more with less and less money.  This is a band aid and at best, a temporary reprieve.  The municipalities will still be in charge of the money, have little to zero accountability for how it is spent and no appeal rights for individuals turned down from assistance from this new program, and apparently $42 million isn't even close to what they cut from the original programs and it is only good for 2013.  Many advocates asked about what happens afterwards, but were cut short by the mainstream media.  Many referred to this as a drop in the bucket, and others like myself state this does not change the fundamental shift from entitlement rights to "discretionary" and "charitable" rights, which really are not rights but are decisions made by others based on their perceived value of you as a person, not your right as a citizen.

Like the doctors in my friend on dialysis' case, once again judgment calls will be made on the value of people's lives.  My friend dies.  My friend, the curmudgeon with money, lives forever. Some people's lives will inevitably be deemed to be more valued than others, and of course, regardless of individual value, at some point in the fiscal year such as May or June of each year, the money will run out and people will be told they have to wait until April the following year for their next installment.  Municipalities don't have to cough up after that.  These benefits are no longer mandatory.  There are no appeal rights.  Your case can be brought to a worker who is having a PMS day, or somebody that believes that people on ODSP are "better off" than people on OW and they will be allowed to make a FINAL decision on your case to deny you.  Or you can wait until next year to take care of the bedbugs, or leave your violent partner who is beating the living daylights out of you.  Sleep on the floor in the meantime.  Our wonderful Ombudsman Andre Marin does not even have the jurisdiction to review these ridiculous decisions.  A private members' bill to include the so called MUSH sector which includes municipalities died on the order paper when McGuinty rabbited from the Legislature this past October.

Rights are being eroded for the poor, as the charitable sector has no legal consequences for privacy breaches it may happen upon in the course of its work with vulnerable persons outside of health care.  With health care, Personal Health Information Protection Act, privacy must be safeguarded but not if you are a client of a food bank, a homeless charity or a drop in centre of ambient sorts.  Meanwhile, wealthy people are allowed to live in gated communities, have their personal privacy of all respects protected in all areas, as well they worked to decimate the long form census because they did not want people to know how well off they really were -- while the rights of the poor get further decimated as we speak.  In addition, has anybody tried to sue a food bank or soup kitchen for serving spoiled food that resulted in some form of illness or disability, in the extreme event?  Better bet that if a wealthy person got sick after eating sushi at a sushi bar, they'd be able to sue and more!  My discussions in these blogs are about accountability.  They are about equality.  They are about having equal rights in the pure and crudest sense.

I want poor people to have the same rights as millionaires when millionaires do not lose more than a small fraction of their income to taxes and clawbacks to government.  Why do the poor often lose more than one hundred percent of their income this way?  Why aren't we asking our leaders the right questions?  We need to stop glossing over these questions and start putting them to our leaders and refusing to give up or let up our protest until they agree to make it right and follow it through.  I don't believe they reversed the CSUMB cuts one bit.  We need to call a spade a spade and put it forward now and educate one another how to get involved, write letters, get involved in collective action, teach others the facts the media will deny and to partake in movements like Idolnomore and push and push and only until we have full rights of citizenship, and stop admitting or believing that our government have our best interests at heart, because they don't.  All one has to do is find out what corporate board or corporate job they get as soon as they leave politics, or what lobbying organization they join ... because that is what the truth is my friends.  That is the truth.

SECRECY IN NIAGARA REIGNS!!!

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?

HUMAN RIGHTS NEEDS REMAIN STRONG

There is a lot of realism that goes on with the lives of people around us. I think this is what I particularly enjoy about my profession, the very realism of people's lives and their stories. This realism makes me want to do more about these things that revolve the lives of the folks I work with.

Unfortunately, however, apathy is the way of life of people in the region I live in, particularly the higher up you go. Apathy kills cities, kills nations. Apathy creates leaders that we do not want, and leads to the creation of situations whereupon our populace suffers more than it needs to. I live in a region of people that not only not want to pay their taxes, but want to pay as little as they can get away with, and then they blame the victims of failing infrastructure that are not being supported to the extent they should be, for their very needs.

It has always been a subject of debate as to how much infrastructure and "people" based services we need, or can do without. A disturbing feature of many people I work around is that they believe that if we had no infrastructure or support, our vulnerable people will magically re-emerge on their own and somehow "pull up their bootstraps", as the saying goes. We know this is not fact. We know what happened to many people after welfare rates were chopped by 22% not a minute too soon after Mike Harris took office in Ontario in 1995. Mike Harris is long gone, a party of a different stripe got elected, and more than seven years have past since his government left Queen's Park, yet as a society we are still dealing with the indifference, apathy and cruelty of the apparently sheltered part of our population. I see the results of this everyday in my work.

I work in a profession that is relatively recession-proof, and many people around me think I am lucky. However, they see none of the stress, none of the desperation, and none of the tragedy that I am called upon to do something about. When I genuinely can't do anything about it, I feel powerless and sad. The law is a tool that can only perform certain tasks, and apart from these tasks, the law is useless in addressing many of the issues that abound. The law is technical, procedurally-driven and objective to the point that it does not address emotion, sentimentality or sadness. It only picks winners and losers, and many times - the wrong side wins while the other loses.

The world of politics and law intersect, sometimes to a detrimental extent, as the rule of law cannot be based on demagoguery and majoritarianism. Important moral decisions cannot be decided by taking a vote around the table, and drawing from the majority of voters present. The majority of Canadians want to see capital punishment reinstated, yet nothing stops this population from feeling the same way when wrongly accused people are put to death. The majority of Canadians seem to feel there is a need to put more religion in our laws, but see nothing wrong with marginalizing the religions of a minority, or of those without a religion.

At one time, people felt slavery of blacks was an acceptable choice for society. As time evolved, we stopped making them slaves, but did not let them share our drinking fountains. Later on, we felt okay about blacks sharing our communities, we just didn't hire them. There is no shortage of writers that would blame the unemployment and poverty of blacks on the blacks themselves. They were said to have lower intelligence scores, had more children than whites, were more prone to criminal activities, and so on. Cutting welfare to blacks was thought to be a great idea, then they will become more like whites. We all know that didn't work. Society had to evolve to develop a respect for and inclusion of this part of our population, in order to enable this part of our community to grow and develop with us.

At one point the majority felt that it should be illegal for whites to marry blacks. If the majority ruled then, there would be a law barring the same. In fact, some societies had such a law. Was this law effective? What benefits did society derive from having such a law? I can't even find among the most prejudiced people that I know somebody that can identify a rational benefit that society derived from having these types of mores and laws, yet their prejudice prevails.

As a society, we had no choice but to pass human rights laws that prohibited this type of segregation. Many restaurants were known to exclude persons of colour, or even persons of certain creeds and religions. This had to stop. People can feel whatever they wanted to, but they had to act in a way that was lawful and tolerant. The rule of law is higher than society's majority and popular vote. The effect of these laws not only made people aware, but in many created a kind of cultural dissonance that resulted in a more tolerant society where persons from minority situations felt more comfortable to belong.

As society evolved, new prejudices are uncovered and people affected come to the light. I recall one time in my university days watching a film about the suffragette movement in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. It began among women of propertied classes, and gradually moved to include all women, in solidarity for various goals. It was once accepted that women should not have the right to vote or run for public office. Women were not allowed to practice law, dentistry or medicine. However, over time, it was not the men in society that welcomed women in these roles, but women who asserted themselves into these roles, many times through marches and at times, violent demonstrations. In one of the films, it showed some of the women leaders getting arrested. They would go to jail to enforce their rights.

Today, too many women take these rights for granted and still do not understand the origins of the rule of law and how women became equal partners. I remember in one of my classes, there was a woman who often sat beside me that would ask a lot of questions of a female lecturer from a women's shelter that presented on the issue of family violence against women. She would keep asking about men's shelters. I know males are roughly equal in terms of their victimization, as the statistics are becoming more clear in this field; however, the point of this lecture was to inform the largely female student body how far we've come. If it were not for many of these women in the late 1800's and early 1900's putting up a major fight, getting arrested, jailed and sometimes even killed for their beliefs, none of us would be sitting in those chairs that day listening to this lecture.

Soon, the gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered community emerged from the closets of existence. People of Toronto remember the bath house raids of 1981, certain laws on the books prohibiting certain sexual behaviours, albeit between consenting adults. These individuals needed to form loosely knit organizations that would force the issue in many ways ... Society had one of two reactions to the "gay" community. One was to ignore them, and think if we did this long enough, homosexuality will go away. The second reaction was to show contempt and hatred for those claiming to belong to the "gay" community. If you listened to members of the LGBT community, as they call themselves today, many will speak of ostracism, being disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, to downright violence.

Eventually society had to learn that every member of the LGBT community was no different than the rest of us, apart from who they choose for their life partners. Unfortunately, there are still many people that feel members of this group are somehow less deserving, or are less moral, or less Christian, than the "rest of us". People that don't like human rights laws tend to point to a tribunal decision made sometime back involving a printer that refused to publish brochures for an organization representing the LGBT community, solely on the basis of his own "Christian beliefs", which likely included an opinion that members of this group were less Christian or moral than he was. Nevertheless, he was sued successfully and was made to compensate this organization for its embarrassment and infringement of their rights.

One of these people kept asking me why a business person has to be obligated to serve everybody. Why can't a business person do business with whomever he or she chooses? This argument may seem to be rational and simple. Of course, as a business, you have that freedom to work with who you want; however, this man's refusal to serve the LBGT organization was no different than the restaurants of the 1950's that refused to serve blacks. The person complaining to me about this thought all of these things should go to court. The decision against the printer was appealed by him, and the Divisional Court, as well as I believe, an appellate court, if I remember correctly, also upheld this decision. Human rights are integrated into the rule of law. You don't have to agree with the positions of the LGBT community on any of their issues, as that is also your right, but you don't have the right to treat them differently or deny them access to services normally afforded to the public.

There is also the question of persons with disabilities. Disability law, as well as human rights and constitutional law, have always been my tools to help me understand the world and how to integrate within it. These issues take up a large part of my practice. Persons with disabilities have unfortunately been slow to take up their rights, as many are too ill to fight. One's disability itself can be very disempowering, particularly if one tires easily or cannot communicate or express oneself the same way others do. Persons with disabilities are also disempowered by the charitable model of "receiving help", as opposed to learning to work the world around them and exercise their rights to equal treatment and access to goods and services. There is currently a multi-billion dollar business model out there that is designed to "help" people with disabilities, some of which is set up to search for a "cure" for some types of disabilities.

This is not an affront to the many men and women that work in organizations like Canadian Mental Health Association, Brain Injury Community Re-Entry, Multiple Sclerosis Society, etc. All of these organizations do have their benefits; however, the very structure that led to their creation is abysmal and anti-everything I stand for, especially when I attempt to fit persons with disabilities in my life within what I view as the rule of law, and how our Charter works. Some of these organizations themselves have begun to realize how much their "help" can actually hurt those they are attempting to support, so they strive to develop models of service delivery that are more responsive to the choice of those they work with.

For example, service providers within this structure must confront their own ideas about who the clients are that they work with. Do they understand the concept of consumer choice, the right to take risks and the right to fail? Do they believe any of their clients are capable of doing their jobs, or even the job of their bosses? The latter question tends to be difficult, as most people in helping professions have a hard time equalizing the people that come to them. Many are surprised when they learn a client has an advanced degree, and worked in positions much more senior to their own in the past. It is natural to feel threatened when this information is given. In my own experience, I learned that service providers confronted with this issue tend to not know what to do, how to address that person's needs or where to begin. This is not created by something bad, but there are always working biases people have when they attempt to learn about someone and the community they come from. My answer to this is to interact with the person, as though they were a neighbour or a friend and try to find out what THEY want.

In my work in the legal profession, I confront people of varying abilities, capacities for the English language, as well as political viewpoints, and so on. To me, what is important in serving anybody that comes to my door are: (a) the actual facts of the person's situation (what their legal problem actually is comprised of); (b) what that person wants to see happen with their legal issues; and (c) how we can best work together. For example, if somebody doesn't have strong English language comprehension, I try to arrange it so they have interpreters that they can trust. For legal proceedings, we find a professional certified to work with the courts. If somebody is using a wheelchair or scooter, I have ensured that my office can accommodate them. However it IS difficult with limited real estate options in my area to find 100% accessible space. If a person has a severe mental health issue, I still speak to them and have them make decisions with as much information as possible, as opposed to letting somebody else speak for them.

People have the right to instruct their OWN legal counsel, as far as I am concerned. They can also choose who they want with them, and who they don't want to work with ... I let them make this choice. My relationship with one client can be very different than it is with another client, specifically for these reasons, yet they are all getting service that recognizes their right to choose, their right to take risks, and their right to fail. I also treat them at my level, not at a level beneath me. I discuss things other than their legal case, show an interest in who they are, and listen. This does take about twice as much time for many of the people that come through my door, but this makes their experience a positive one, even if we are not successful.

This gets me to my final point, as I started to imply earlier about a pending backlash against human rights issues. Even some of my colleagues are reluctant to deal with human rights issues. Human rights issues are seen by many to be representative of a form of "political correctness", or in some extreme cases, some see it as an infringement of their freedom of speech and association. These people don't want to take these laws as part of life; many want to dismantle them. They forget the violence, the riots, the lawsuits and other conflicts that got us to this point. Many want us to return to an age when we could once again discriminate against whoever we want, hire whoever we want, rent to whomever we want, etc. without a fear of getting sued.

Their leaders want to dismantle the human rights system as we know it in Ontario. While they say they simply want to ensure it fulfills its "original purposes", we know they are saying they do not want to be told what to do. Unfortunately, "those days" that many of these folks are dreaming about are days when our society was more homogeneous than it is now, when interest articulation and balancing of competing perspectives are an issue. Majority rules might have worked at one time, but as history dictated, it only lasted awhile each time, until somebody outside of the majority made those in power uncomfortable.

PC Leader Tim Hudak has mused about dismantling the Tribunal altogether, not recognizing that a specialized Tribunal such as the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, probably can cut the wheat from the chaff much better than the civil courts, and as such, it IS more accessible to persons concerned about "access to justice" issues. In a regular court, you are confronted with even a bigger maze of rules and regulations, labyrinths of disclosure, deadlines, forms, etc. that mean nothing to you, and are hard to find online. If you can't do it in a court by yourself, you have to hire a lawyer, which is costly. In a Tribunal, the hearings are set not only to be evidence-based, but they do have the benefit of informal structures that are flexible enough to address self-represented litigants. Further, licensed paralegals can represent individuals at this Tribunal that cannot afford a lawyer, but do need representation. In my time with this Tribunal, respondents have been able to represent themselves, or use paralegals, and have been able to deal with the facts of an issue readily without going into unnecessary constitutional arguments, which if done by a lawyer, can run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Hudak and many others want to throw this all away. The Tribunal certainly has a lot of problems, but these are not problems that would be resolved by tossing the Tribunal itself out of the window. To me, this can only work in favour of those that do the discriminating. That is, it would be a boon for employers, landlords, businesses, and others, that do not want people that look different, think differently, or act or move or communicate differently in their lives. To me, this is a battle against people with disabilities, as well as members from other protected categories.

My office receives twenty to thirty phone calls a day. It can be exhausting taking these calls, and trying to sort through who has a case, and who does not. The stories people tell are horrific - so horrific, I cannot repeat them here. As a professional that works with people, I have to protect myself, as their stories can become my nightmares, my veil of depression, and my sorrow. By protecting myself, I am able to take what is the law from each of these cases, and place the circumstances into the right venue, and if I can't do it, I know somebody that can. At some point, I might write about what a typical day looks like for me, so people can become aware of why human rights and the rule of law still matter today, just as it did when the suffragettes and inspired leaders like Rosa Parks were around to make us understand that all of us are equal under the rule of law.

Comments?

A POVERTY-REDUCTION PLAN THAT ISN'T...

The federal budget was what I predicted it to be.

A mish mash of handouts to big corporations, tax cuts, as well as billions of dollars in spending on so-called infrastructure. There was some promise of reform to EI, which it seems fewer and fewer people get each year, but this came up short whereby people are essentially getting nearly what they got ten years ago from EI and the same stringent criteria continues on. In my view, this budget does not put one more meal on anybody's table or another penny in anybody's pocket, other than those who already do okay.

I learned one so-called bright light yesterday as I watched Prime Minister Stephen Harper with his full set of teeth, sans blue sweater and hair greyer than it was before Christmas ... side by side with Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty, appearing skinnier and geekier than he ever was, both announcing new funds for better GO Train service in the Metrolynx boundaries, which of course do not go as far as Niagara.

Henceforth, when I attempted last year to get some answers as to why the GO Train is not even being considered for Niagara, the answers were sort of what I expected. First, you need to have a strong transit infrastructure, as well as convenient parking spaces for GO users. If you lived in Welland, for instance, and didn't drive, a GO Train service leaving Niagara Falls or St. Catharines would be useless to you. How are you going to get to the GO station? Even if the powers that be insisted on putting GO service here, they would defeat its purpose and not take a single car off the road, as there will still be too many of them, zinging from all points of the region to get to the GO station. This still does not change the fact that Niagara is more expensive to live in because having a car and driver's license is still your sole ticket to citizenship.

Poverty activists want to focus on the "housing" announcements. As I stated before, I see no point in making housing a social service. Housing is a necessary commodity, much like food, clothing and clean air. Unfortunately, "housing" in the eyes of many of these people comes attached to social workers that want to control the lives of more people who end up living in this "housing". To me, the less control you put into somebody's life, the better quality of life they have, but then I never have the final say in these things.

Further, others cry for "subsidized" housing or rent-geared-to-income housing. I have tried, but have been unsuccessful, in getting these folks to tell me how this takes people out of poverty. As one fellow blogger under the name of co-opcracy writes, working is counterproductive if one is living in subsidized housing and receiving some type of benefit, such as social assistance or even ODSP. First, ODSP chops your net earnings in half from the very first dollar and then "housing" increases the rent to a point of an additional clawback of thirty five cents on every dollar. Once the earnings are grossed up at the end of a year, even more money is lost. The intelligent and prudent thing to do when in this situation is to stay at home and eat your bonbons.

Further, because subsidies are calculated at far below the maximum "shelter" allowance given for social assistance and ODSP incomes, one would receive far less benefits from social assistance or ODSP than they would if they were housed in the free market. This means one's income would continuously remain under the so-called "poverty line". While housing costs are lower, this does not stop other costs such as food, clothing, transportation, telephone and other costs from skyrocketing. How subsidized housing reduces poverty has always been a trouble spot for me, possibly because of my background as a policy analyst as well as lived experience.

Thinking from the centre is not mediocre for sure. I get attacked from both the left and the right for my views, instead of either/or. I ask questions, but don't get answers. I own my own home, but still I am flat broke. What help is there for me? Certainly, me, my family and thousands of other homeowners in the same boat are not going to sell and move to some unit where they will be under the thumb of some crazy bureaucracy. People need to be as independent as possible, as well as free to advance their circumstances, or else poverty will become a permanent fixture in our society -- bringing even potentially middle-class families down with it.

I would tell the government to save the billions of dollars they would otherwise spend to build units of this type, but instead use it to increase the money in the pockets of individuals and families, so that people actually have choices. Right now, the low-income contingent of our society has no choices. They are told to live as their social worker tells them to, which is to never make a mistake ... therefore, never learn from them. They are told to live within their means, but are never given the means to live. They are told to "get a job", but employers are not told to hire such persons or to pay the people they have decently. As usual, society wants the poor to play a single handed tango, while the other partner can watch and criticize. How can we as a society possibly value people who have been so disadvantaged that we have to instinctively reach out and control their lives, as opposed to giving them choices and opportunities ... yes, some of these folks will fail, but then again -- many of us who have never been in this situation have also failed, many of us miserably.

How many so-called "normal" people have bankruptcies on their record? How many so-called "normal" people can't seem to ever lose weight? What about all those successful professionals that turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with the stress of it all? What about so-called "normal" people who drive a car one day and forget to do the all-important shoulder check and get into a horrible motor vehicle accident? How many "normal" people are smokers? How about the typical friend of ours that always seems to "pick" abusive partners? The rest of us herein do not have strangers telling us what we should be spending our money on, whether or not we should be driving a car, or whether we can manage our own bank accounts. So why are we allowed to pass judgment on those less fortunate than we are? Are we trying to block the way for the poor from becoming less poor, and perhaps, grabbing a bit of dignity while they're at it?

To me, there is maximum dignity in having choices and opportunities. Those of us who have had these things take them for granted. We "assume" that everybody else also has these things, or had them at one time. Then, we bash them for making "bad choices" or "failing to take advantage of opportunities" (even though they were likely never given any). This is not a leftist rant here. I have a legal practice full of people from all walks of life, some of whom were very advantaged and cultured, others that cannot understand what life would be like for them if they could make their own basic choices. The latter have had the system make choices for them all their lives: they were told where to live, had their money spent for them, what to wear and who to be friends with ... never being allowed to choose is tantamount to imprisonment.

I grew up in a rough kind of way. As a young adult, just before securing my post-secondary education and so-called empowerment as a professional person, I knew two things. One, people must have the right to make choices, even bad choices. Two, people have the right to have access to opportunities to advance themselves and improve their quality of life. I got into a lot of trouble for my beliefs. Many social work types tried to downplay my ideas and tell me to be more "realistic" and insist a certain portion of the population continue to be spoon-fed (while the social worker types continued to get good pay cheques for doing so).

When somebody is living on ODSP and in subsidized housing, they do not have the opportunity to advance themselves and improve their financial situation. Their efforts become like a hamster on a spinning wheel, whereby they work harder and harder but end up in the same place. For every dollar they earn, they lose just as much. People in "housing programs" have even less choices, as many of these programs disallow overnight guests, alcohol use, earning money from a home-based business, etc. I've seen people evicted from so-called "mental health housing" for stopping their own medications. This leaves people with no choice. When you can only make the "right" choice, you cannot make ANY choices.

When you take away the choices of people, you take away their dignity. You also reduce the value that society will have of that person. When people feel we have to make decisions for others for whatever reason, we are not valuing that person's own opinion, own tastes or own desires, nor are we allowing that person to fully develop as a mature human being. When we don't value somebody in this way, these folks DO feel it. They feel it when they have to go to the food bank to get their groceries. They feel it when somebody tells them where they have to live and what they can do and can't do when they live there. They feel it when nobody appears concerned about their lack of opportunities and options.

I meet people who want to move out of subsidized housing all the time. This is very difficult to do. Several relatives of my husband were living in subsidized housing twenty-five years ago when I met him and despite marriage, children growing up, etc., they continue to live that way today, as do their children. Enforced poverty breeds enforced poverty. This provincial government promises to "break the cycle" in one breath and even names its poverty reduction plan the same thing, while at the same time, wants to entrap more people ... this makes no sense to me. Open the doors, I want to say ... and make employers open them too.

Today, the employment standards development draft went to public review. This is from one of the committees I sit on, except with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario ... where for the better part of a year, three dozen people worked hard to put together a set of standards we will be expecting of employers, spanning between one and five years from now, with respect to the hiring, retention, training and accommodations for persons with disabilities. To me, the standards don't go far enough, but we were working within a certain regulatory framework ... a framework that has to fit within the province's business model as well as reach the goal of bringing more qualified persons with disabilities into the paid labour force.

I am hoping that folks reading this will review the proposed standard on its website and send their input to the stated body on how our standard can be improved to meet the needs of persons with disabilities and get more of them into the workforce. The standard can be found by clicking here to the website. Your input must be given by April 15, 2009, in any of the given ways provided by the webmaster.

While access to employment and business opportunities will help improve the outcomes for people with disabilities, we also need to focus on bringing them out of poverty. Poverty is the killer of the soul. It is punishment for a crime one never committed. It kills any initiative one might have even had before they became poor. Both a focused effort on reducing and eventually eliminating poverty through the development of opportunity and increased access to meaningful choices in improving one's well being and quality of life, is what is needed. This would envelope both the needs of persons that can and want to work, as well as those that cannot.

We have to defeat the poverty industry, the set of organizations, leaders and spokespersons, that make a living or gain personal notoriety on the backs of the poor. These are the people that run the food banks, the homeless shelters, the "housing" programs, vouchers, consumer/survivor drop-in centres, etc. without considering that the people they are "helping" should learn how to fish some day and be given the tools and the right to do so. If this means some of the people in the poverty industry lose their jobs, so be it ... if one were an effective leader in a sense, this would not be a worry for them whatsoever.

I am very concerned that some of these organizations are now asking for government money. Should taxpayers be funding food banks, or should they be financing programs that allow people to choose and purchase their own food? Should taxpayers be funding homeless shelters and "housing programs" or should we be funding initiatives that help put money into people's pockets to the point they can reasonably choose where and how to live (within reason, of course ... not everybody's going to move to Forest Hill or Bridal Path).

What is really needed when the day is done are ideas on how to make this happen, not how to bolster the status quo, which we all know has failed us miserably. Your thoughts?