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.
Showing posts with label Home Repair Benefit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Repair Benefit. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
WE NEED TO ROCK ON TO ELECTRIC AVENUE ... and then we'll take it higher!
Eddie Grant, Electric Avenue (1983)
I don't care if the Social Assistance Commissioners say it is a bad time to be on welfare in Ontario.
I don't care if the Social Assistance Commissioners say that it is a bad time to be writing reports on how to reform the welfare system.
Carol Goar hit the nail on the head with her article today in the Toronto Star, which includes a reference to barriers to reform, such as people with disabilities not wanting anything to do with the report and its recommendations.
Yes, this is true. As a disability advocate, I look through these things with a human rights lens. Not a single reference to lifting the spousal penalty, increasing the earnings exemptions for people on ODSP to match what the lucky few can get in gifts; or allowing people with disabilities to retire in some form of dignity, especially if they are working, have worked or their spouse is working. What about encouraging those that choose to start and run their own businesses, so they can enjoy the same rights and deductions as others in business enjoy? Yes, people with disabilities want to work, but this report recommends continuing to cut them off at the knees and still expect them to walk.
Poverty Free Ontario got their analysis right. They explained why people with disabilities have good reason to fear what is in the report. Instead of some form of dressed up and shiny new workfare model being imposed only on those deemed capable of securing employment, the recommendations go as far as to suggest that persons with disabilities should be lumped into this same category. Many still fear if they do work, they will now be at risk of losing their benefits too.
The Conservatives learned from their mistake when they forced those labeled deemed "permanently unemployable" to stay out of the workforce, and for those who tried, they lost their benefits altogether, jeopardizing their ability to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table.
The Conservatives learned at the time not to mess with disability benefits because one such person walked out and tried to better herself, only to be cut off her benefits completely for the sake of a job she can do for ten hours a week at minimum wage. In response, she killed herself. The case made front page. The case made the legislature. The case made a forever bleating class of advocates even madder at the Conservatives. Let them be damned if they allow people with disabilities to die!
But, why do these Liberals seem to believe we can try something like this again, and not expect to see province wide implications of a monumental degree?
Have we lost our way with understanding why some people will simply not make it in today's unreliable, precarious and punishing labour force? For those that want to work, I see no problem with allowing them, even encouraging them so they can earn up to the same amount of money that people on ODSP can receive in gifts each month or year for each person in their "benefit unit", before the 50% claw back.. I see no point in punishing these people. As one person told me, most people had to go through "circles of Hell" to qualify for ODSP in the first place, so why are they trying to take that away now?
The Social Assistance Commissioners repeated the government's mantra that there are too many people on ODSP today. They wring their hands wondering why this is the case, even though advocates have told them that when people get cut off WSIB, long term disability, get denied EI and CPP, they have nowhere to turn to. Government and the Social Assistance Commissioners, who will be forthwith referred to as the "SAR Czars" are pretending these same people can just go get a job.
Of course, it is easy for middle class and upper middle class folks that are used to having a range of decent opportunities before them to choose from, who were raised by intact parents in intact households and had a head start, to tell those less fortunate than they are that they need an "incentive" to work.
This "incentive" unfortunately is becoming much the subject of debate. Self employed give up more than they earn by way of claw backs. Those living with or married to working spouses lose most or all of their income support under the guise that somebody else is supposed to pay their bills. Recommendations from the report even suggest dropping the Work Related Benefit AND the Special Diet Benefit in exchange for the "right" to keep a whopping $200 a month in earned income before it becomes clawed back. If the tax department told all of our millionaires that their tax deductions and corporate handouts will be provided under the same rules, I am not sure the reaction to this proposal will be much different than the reaction we are seeing from people with disabilities, who will not, by the way, find jobs overnight. It is cuts for people with disabilities that have the greatest challenges in the workplace, to help prop up those on Ontario Works by a very modest amount.
Even then, our illustrious Social Services Minister tells us that we as a province cannot "afford" to boost any of the benefits. Take this statement with a grain of salt (with a whole damn shaker thrown over my left shoulder to keep the Devil at bay), as this same government has no trouble paying for over $5 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations, over $1 billion for eHealth (remember those $3,000 a day consultants that even had their Timmy's treats paid for?), another billion or more for ORNGE with its head somehow earning over $1.4 million a year; and lately, up to a possible billion dollars spent to move two gas plants to satisfy a couple of dying Liberal constituencies. Dalton, where do we people with disabilities apply for these well paying jobs that seem to be unavailable to us?
It doesn't even matter that the Premier and the Finance Minister thought about tax cuts first for the wealthy when they came up with their 2012 budget. Well, they can take the money for this OUT of the pockets of the poor once again, with their cuts to the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit and Home Repairs Benefit. Instead of admitting they are cutting the monies spent on this benefit in half and sending it to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing for distribution to the municipalities to do with as they choose, they also introduced a seemingly unrelated tax cut for home renovations for rich elderly people that want to stay in their homes. I guess you seen that Premier Care Bath commercial, where a seemingly healthy senior gets into their jacuzzi like tub amidst their washroom that appears on screen to be much bigger than most of our living rooms ... seniors get this tax credit if they can front up to $10,000 themselves first. I have an idea about this one. If they can afford to front $10,000, they're going to spend that money anyways, so why do they need a tax credit for Pete's sake, when down the street their neighbours on ODSP cannot find the money to stop their house from being a mould infested nightmare? So be it. I digress.
We had a wonderful town hall here in St. Catharines at the Start Me Up Centre on October 16, 2012, with over 150 people in attendance to attest to how they were helped by the Community Start Up Benefit or Home Repair Benefit in the past. Without this benefit, many of those in the room would have become homeless, or worse yet in some cases, dead.
Yet, who exactly is the genius that figured out this new shell game that determines that people on Ontario Works and ODSP can somehow scrimp and save from their monthly pittances to cover the growing costs of moving, replacing furniture that gets ruined by bedbugs and other infestations, or escaping an abusive relationship? I suppose the government thinks that either they are all hiding money or can get "family and friends" to move them, which is just a big a crock as their allowances for "gifts" of up to $6,000 a year that only a handful of ODSP recipients benefit from. Middle class families haven't seen family break down to the same extent that poor folks have, unfortunately. Many of them don't have families - period.
How about those homeowners that do happen to get assistance that cannot afford to fix their roof, or their plumbing or their foundation that is riddled with mould and cracks to such a point, their whole house is unstable? I know people like this in Niagara. Their city tells them it is unsafe to live in there. Their insurance companies drop them a hot potato. Their mortgage company decides to foreclose on them because they don't have any insurance. No insurance, no mortgage, no home,. says the bank. But there simply isn't anybody around anymore that will help pay for this mess and allow people to stay in their own homes. Just keep watching the media, folks. I am coming back!
I don't care what Carol Goar, the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty, many municipalities, and so forth, say about this report. Most of it is a bad idea and by far. Their idea of an adequate allowance means depriving those sick enough to need a special diet from the additional funds they needed to buy the right foods to keep them healthy. Pay for it from your basic needs, they will say. But what if there is hardly any basic needs left after I pay the rent? That's your problem, they say.
Unfortunately, folks, we have to do much more than what have been doing. Sitting in a room talking nicely to government officials is no longer working. My region in all of its wisdom decided to replace the start up benefit, but for only those on Ontario Works. People with disabilities, I assume, can just take it out of their basic needs, which are already stretched beyond reason here.
To me, this government either has to hire every single person with a disability that can work and place them in their chosen fields at the going rate that others get paid to work in that same field or give them enough money to live on! People in prison eat better than persons with disabilities living in the community. Perhaps, some enterprising researcher can speak to medical people to determine the cause of the rising incidence of recalcitrant TB, scurvy, rickets and other organ killing malnutrition based diseases we previously believed only happen to those people in the so called "third world". It is now in our backyard. That's why our health care costs are going up.
A report recently stated that poverty is costing Niagara alone over $3.8 billion a year. Yet the region's fathers continue to choose to ignore this growing tsunami by trying to divide us up. We can't let them do that to us. We must stand together, or remain divided and lose all of our rights.
Out in the streets, all of us! Out to our MPPs front door, all of us! Find out how each regional councilor voted on the question of depriving people on ODSP any further help and let's pitch a few tents on their front lawns. We have nothing to lose but our chains they have trapped us in.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction.
Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
MCGUINTY RABBITS, SKIPS ACCOUNTABILITY AND CUTS BENEFITS FOR THE POOR
The buzz on the street came as a big surprise to the people of Ontario.
Premier Dalton McGuinty not only announced his pending resignation (which takes effect after a Liberal leadership convention is called and a new leader appointed), but he rabbited from the scene by shuttering the doors to the Ontario legislature. Observers speculate this might have something to do with being caught with his pants down, as both Opposition Parties continued to peel the onion only to reveal more and more monies wasted on things like ORNGE, eHealth, OLG, and most recently, as we learned, the movement of two gas powered plants to different locations in order to appease voters and save a couple of Liberal seats during the last election. After being found in contempt of the legislature, by motion of the two Opposition parties, against his minority government, McGuinty rabbits.
For those among the curious, to prorogue a legislature (or Parliament, where McGuinty's perceived model Stephen Harper has himself done the same thing twice when the going got tough for his own prior successive minorities), it means all bills, committee referrals, public business, etc. is shut down. This is not the complete dissolution of the legislature, which means an election, but a shut down, which means a brand new Throne speech and a new session from scratch ... as all previous bills and business in progress is wiped from the slate. A motion passed by the majority of MPPs can technically adjourn the house business to allow bills and so forth to remain and such work to continue once the legislature re-opens, but this is not usually the case.
Voters should be furious at the latest trends by both federal and provincial governments that prorogue their legislature at the first sign of reasonable expectation of accountability. This prorogation, marked for now as indefinite, is supposed to theoretically end once the Liberals and likely the Opposition Tories return with yet another austerity budget and further spending cuts for the lower and middle income Ontarians, and under a shiny new leader with supposedly a "fresh" mandate. Almost nothing else has been discussed in my community circles in the past couple days, not even the weather, and I have yet to find a single soul among those I spoke to who actually WANT a shiny new Liberal leader. Most want an election, however, some are concerned that if the Progressive Conservatives under Tim Hudak get elected, even deeper cuts and further privatization will ensue.
I was a meeting of over one hundred and fifty warm bodies this afternoon that were notified only through social media and some community postering, where cuts to the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit, Home Repair Benefit and certain discretionary benefits for persons in receipt of Ontario Works and/or ODSP were being discussed. The majority of those in attendance were ODSP or Ontario Works recipients, many of whom benefited from either or both benefits in the recent past. At my table, where I volunteered to be a note taker, several horror stories emerged. A man who owns his own home has no functioning toilet and a broken sump pump. He has to use a broken toilet in his basement. He did not apply to ODSP Home Repair Benefit before the June 30 cut off, which by the way, was only announced approximately thirty (30) days prior to the cut off by inserting a notice of this in recipients' cheque stubs for May of this year. There is no parallel program in place at the Region yet, where theoretically, municipalities are supposed to be given all sorts of "flexibility" to meet their local housing needs.
Another woman used the start up benefit to escape an abusive situation, and moved into a room. Two years later, she applied for subsidized housing and eventually was moved into a unit. However, like most subsidized housing complexes, the building was poorly maintained, nothing ever got fixed, and the police were over there "at least three times a day" for anything ranging from drugs, to domestic abuse to violence, on the property. She had applied for a transfer twice in then same number of years, and has been denied. It seems that the region does not mind keeping poor people in slums, and exposed to the worst that society has to offer. It seems that fear, anxiety and exposure to whatever vermin in the home is acceptable for "those people", while those of us with middle class niceties deserve better.
Another man is living on Ontario Works. Until recently, he lived in a three bedroom apartment with two other roommates. The apartment rented at about $900 a month, plus utilities. Then one of his roommates finds a job in another community, and leaves the apartment. The other one left shortly thereafter to move in with his girlfriend, leaving this man holding the bag with nothing but a $590 OW cheque, and a worker that refused to give him anything more than the first month's rent if he even finds a place within his impossibly tight budget. Beside him were his backpacks, and a luggage bag, all containing his worldly possessions. Now homeless, it is difficult for him to secure the necessary benefits to be re-housed, unless he can tolerate AND find space in our local shelter system (which according to the region, funding is being cut for these services too).
Another fellow told us that he had bedbugs at his place last year. He lives in a rent geared to income unit. The Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit was secured to assist him in replacing his bed at the time. He expressed his disdain as he recently secured a part time job, only to see his rent get hiked at over 500%. Housing subsidy calculations haven't changed a bit since the eighties when I was forced to give it up for market rent in order for me to budget month to month. For this man, who also receives ODSP and is subject to at least a fifty percent clawback on his earnings by ODSP, his housing provider disregards this clawback and counts only his gross income, thus leaving him ultimately with less money on hand than he had before he started to work. Yeah, get a job, they say ... if working only paid.
Another woman was homeless, but recently was able to secure Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit when the shelter she was living in helped her find a low cost room downtown, at least a place to lie her head at night. As of January 1, 2013, even this benefit will be gone. Stated with enthusiasm by the Liberals, like they usually do when recycling and repackaging old money into new, municipalities will now receive the dollar amount of these benefits, after they have been chopped in half, and managed exclusively by them as determined by "local priorities". This means the dollar amount of the CSUMB and the HRB is now going to be cut in half, and redistributed to the cities and regions to do with as they choose, as long as it vaguely deals with housing security issues. Any municipality can conceivably decide NOT to offer a start up like benefit at all, or even home repairs, but instead use the money for other priorities, such as fixing social housing units, or building seniors housing. or funding more shelter beds. If they choose to offer these benefits at all, it will have to be spread not only between all people on OW or ODSP that might need them, but others as well, who are not on assistance, but might be living in poverty. The loaves and fishes again. The trouble is this is not going to work.
When these benefits existed before the cut, they were fully appealable for those that feel they were unfairly denied access. After the changes, any worker can decide at a whim whether or not an applicant "deserves" this benefit, and there will be no appeal avenue whatsoever for those that are denied. As for those who experienced any kind of application process through Ontario Works in many municipalities, there is a lack of consistency between clients, and often arbitrary criteria set for how these benefits get distributed. I hear from people that work for Niagara region all the time how they will pay half the cost of dentures for those that need them, yet I know far too many people wandering around without teeth. They allegedly got told all sorts of things when they tried to apply. Some got told the money for this had run out (yep, this was in the middle of May, less than two months after the start of the new fiscal year!). They tell others they only help out Ontario Works recipients who are seeking employment. All sorts of excuses abound. For those "lucky" enough to get help, only half the cost is covered, and somehow the OW recipient has to find the other half out of their $600 monthly budget, or in the case of ODSP, their $1062 monthly budget. Or, as I have also witnessed, people get told they can write to myriad charities to demean themselves and beg for help.
One would think that Charles Dickens has long since died, and the days of Oliver Twist should have been over with for good, once it has now been proven that large corporations in Canada (and Ontario) are literally sitting on billions of dollars, or have socked them away to offshore bank accounts. I say, get rid of Oliver Twist and make these companies pay our government back for the deficit they caused and obviously benefited from! They certainly aren't creating any jobs with it, nor is anybody holding these same executives accountable for billions of dollars in corporate welfare dished out to them without them even having to prove a need, nor are they being asked to show how many jobs they created as a result of massive tax cuts they received year over year. Yet when somebody applies for Ontario Works, their entire life is scoped inside and out, and they are judged as to their "worthiness" of help. Given the amazing wealth of our country, there should be no need for food banks, homeless shelters or anything of the like. In fact, there was once an anecdotal report from somebody that entertained guests from Scandinavia, who never even heard of these things and wondered why anybody would want to put food into a bank.
Political leaders live a relatively charmed life. They do not have to deal with the same pressures those they govern have to. They do not have to live with the results of the greed of those they represent and speak for, the corporate elite. Most political leaders are almost guaranteed sweetheart deals at the helm of large corporations once they leave politics. It is no small wonder how they got there, regardless of that individual's actual business and financial knowledge. The powers that be appoint the political drop outs or exiles these jobs as rewards for their loyalty while in political office. In recent months, one highly respected federal Cabinet Minister decided to resign his seat and move to the "private sector". He was given an executive position at one of the chartered banks. Must be nice, when the most the rest of us can expect to get when we apply to a bank is a low paying job as a teller. And Jim "no such thing as a bad job" Flaherty will not likely return to his yearned for youthful days when he worked as a taxi driver and hockey coach. It is easy to prescribe these things for others when you no longer have to do it yourself.
In the meantime, the Social Assistance Reform Commission, which originally promised to report their findings to the world in June 2012, and has since delayed the release of their report three times, recently announced they were going to go public with their final report this October 19, 2012. However, with the Premier rabbiting on us all, and leaving behind an empty legislative assembly for an "indefinite" period of time, the Commission's most recent notice reads: Led by Frances Lankin and Munir A. Sheikh, the Commission is charged with examining social assistance in Ontario through engagement, research and analysis to provide the government with a concrete action plan to improve the system for the people who need it.
Please note: we are rescheduling the release of our final report from October 19 to a new date in the near future. We will announce the new date soon.
It might be interesting to see if this report ever sees the light of day. Our lovely Premier that oozed with such enthusiasm, while all parties of the house embraced its Poverty Reduction Act and held out much hope for the Social Assistance Commissioners to figure out how to fix our social programs to make them work better and to reduce poverty. Those were the days when our lovely Liberals literally endorsed the target of reducing poverty by twenty five percent in five years, and how they were bound and determined to succeed. Unfortunately, Premier Dad has since abandoned the homestead as Ontario's poverty rate has actually increased, as opposed to decreased. Are you feeling like the orphaned child yet?
Henceforth, many of our social advocates were concerned about what kind of recommendations and policies might be proposed once this report ever did get released anyways, namely the proposal to combine Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program all under municipal "welfare" administration. The Toronto Star or the provincial Liberal Party mouthpiece still tried to pretend this was all well and good, as late as last week. However, disconcerting is one paragraph in this piece:
For too long, politicians have pigeonholed welfare recipients into two types: the “good poor” who were helpless (children and the disabled), versus the “bad poor” who were hapless (able-bodied men and women). After all these years, the lesson to be learned on welfare is that the origins of these cases matter less than the outcomes.
Why not merge these two unwieldy Harris-era programs (ODSP and Ontario Works) into a single, more coherent system that doesn’t discriminate between “good poor” and “bad?” This is the kind of bold idea that scares some people — advocates and bureaucrats alike — because $8-billion programs aren’t built or redesigned in a day.
With this proposal, instead of having "good poor" and "bad poor", all that will now be seen by the public is all "bad poor". This is happening in UK, as that particular Coalition government is forcing that country's poorest to pay down that country's deficit. Austerity is killing people, they say. Nightmare reminders of the Nazi Holocaust has perked this individual to write this column. Since these cuts in the UK, a few dozen suicides a month have taken place, as well as there being a spike in the number of hate crimes against persons with disabilities. If the government thinks that doing that here will be different, because we are supposedly more humane Canadians, think again. Even without this change, I am constantly hearing from people without a clue, the temporarily able-bodied as I might add, who proclaim that "over half of the people on ODSP should not even be on it". Is that so, I ask? It is interesting how their extrasensory perception and intimate medical knowledge of over 300,000 very poor people comes to mind, but this same perception is not shared about how many billions are poured into the pockets each year of wealthy executives and profitable corporations through our government's failed policies of corporate welfare and endless tax cuts, while money hoarding (as alleged by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, that recently reported that large companies are hoarding billions of dollars of cash and not investing any of it, aka. taking in corporate welfare and benefiting from tax cuts while creating zero jobs), doesn't even matter.
After the cuts take effect in January 2013, more people will have no place to go, other than to a shelter or to the streets, as a result of various reasons tied to their deep poverty and a punitive social assistance administration that on average, among the people I previously interviewed in my region, cuts off or suspends Ontario Works recipients' cheques four or five times a year, often resulting in eviction and/or frequent moves. And the government might actually consider adding people with disabilities to this mish mash of economic slavery as well? Many people reading this do not and will not understand the significance of this, but then again, they are too damned comfortable for now.
There, for the Grace of God, go I.
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