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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PROTESTING FOR A BETTER LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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