At a recent meeting with a friend, she told me that in her immediate neighbourhood there were 240 agencies. If any of these agencies were effective at what they did, there wouldn't be a need for so many of them. She lives in Toronto and is self-employed in the arts. Her skills are such that she can make this into a self-sufficient enterprise, but the types of programs set up for entrepreneurs do not meet her needs -- so she continues to remain on ODSP. This was an interesting comment, because the next day on the bus I met another friend who referred to our COIN Niagara (now aptly named Niagara Employment Magazine), who commented that in it there were references to dozens and dozens of agencies set up to help people find work. She commented that the people who work in these agencies make good salaries - what are they actually doing to help people find jobs? This particular friend of mine is a typical over-skilled, over-educated person who works in a field beneath her to make ends meet ... and to even get THIS job, she has to commute to Toronto everyday. Not surprisingly, she still makes so little, that her husband who has medical problems, continues to qualify for some ODSP monies.
However, agencies continue to make money. They continue to rub elbows with the political and in some cases, the business elite, to make it look like something is being done about problems that lurk in our community. Their executive directors make between $50,000 a year for a small agency to over $150,000 a year for a larger one -- yet, despite all this money being poured into these organizations, there is little formal accountability. This does not mean that there are not some agencies that voluntarily subject themselves to a higher standard of accountability, but none of them are forced to. Politicians are unwilling to penalize agencies, even if they are not doing anything, because if they had to de-fund or penalize every agency that truly did nothing, it would be political suicide. Politicians rely on the very existence of these agencies to make it look like they are doing something to assist the less fortunate or disenfranchised. Because most members of the public do not have to rely on these agencies to get them out of serious life challenges, most people do not consider these accountability issues.
Accountability is only considered when it happens to you. If YOU are the one that was poorly served by an agency, or whose confidential information was improperly dealt with, or who did not get hired in favour of a candidate without any formal training, accountability tends to loom quite large. Unfortunately, there is none. You can complain, I suppose, to the executive director or to the board, but nine times out of ten, nothing changes. The agency prefers to operate its programs in a way that continues to maximize its funding, not its effectiveness. In fact, many agencies tend to "follow the funding" and apply for funds for programs that stretch or even exceed their mandate. You can complain to the funding agency or department, but nine times out of ten, this goes nowhere as well. Civil servants work for political masters who seek publicity and want to be seen as acting on important issues. The reality and the effectiveness of these actions are not left to question.
At the same time, these same governments, including the one here in Ontario, saw fit to regulate my profession (as well as a few others). The regulations on my profession were to "protect the public", as well as to provide some level of consumer confidence that when they come into my office, people can expect a certain level of service, a certain level of competence and a certain level of respect for the 'consumer'. I pay a lot of money to ensure that I remain in practice, let alone all my other costs I have to pay to keep the business running. People who get jobs at non-profits and charities are not asked about their level of education, their adherence to a mandatory code of ethics, the requirement they carry errors and omissions insurance, etc. While some are hired for the educational qualifications, others are not. No law says you have to have any education to run a non-profit. No law says you cannot have a criminal record or history in order to run a non-profit, although certain types of direct service workers may be required to submit to police checks (e.g. such as those workers and volunteers who work with children or older persons). However, nobody says a director cannot hire somebody who "fails" a police check. These things are still up the discretion of somebody within the organization. I've actually sat in meetings where a board actually decided it was okay to allow volunteers for a fundraising initiative whose police check included no violent or sexual offences, but may include offences related to fraud. Yet, if I had a rap for fraud, I may not be permitted to work in my own profession - despite the fact I net less money than the average worker in a non-profit setting.
I remember a conference I attended a couple of years back. As a part of this conference, several agencies were invited to give a fifteen minute presentation about themselves, as well as accept a couple of questions afterwards. Virtually none of these agencies really had an interest in ensuring people seeking work actually got it. Job placement, for some, was a priority, only because the funder made it that way ... unfortunately, their quest for job placement has made it extremely difficult for consumers with larger needs, bigger barriers or those with higher levels of skills and aspirations, to find assistance. They do not get paid to push for barrier removal. They do not get paid to seek higher paying employers and foster partnerships with them. They do not get paid to even provide pre-employment supports that some people need, especially if they were out of the workplace for so long. The agency can only see it as economically sound to make arrangements with large employers with many entry-level, high-turnover positions, to place their clients in. In other words, all the Wal-Marts, Starbucks, Loblaws, No Frills, hotels (e.g. cleaning staff), etc. can find placements this way. The service provider is not mandated to 'encourage' these employers to explore higher level positions for more skilled candidates or to even increase their pay for their entry candidates ... placement in ANY job = money.
For others, they are occupation-specific. That means, if you want to work in a call centre, answer phones at a customer service desk, or work in retail, this particular agency can work for you. This is the BUILT Network, although I am sure the BUILT Network is not alone in promoting and sending referrals to low-paid dead-end, often stressful jobs that rarely pay more than $8.75 to $10/hour. Some of the Goodwill programs are similar, except our local Goodwill is at least trying to get some people into the skilled trades. When one of their representatives appeared at the conference, I asked if they can confirm that the base pay rate for those they place was between $8-$10 an hour. She advised me it was. I then asked if SHE would do HER job for $8-$10 an hour ... probably not, she said. At least she was honest. For somebody who likely earns a good middle-class salary placing people into low-wage jobs, it is probably not much of an ethical consideration it is for her than it is for me, and probably for many others.
The unfortunate thing is these are the agencies that continue to relentlessly take millions of dollars from the taxpayers to achieve what is likely very little. All of these programs claim high placement rates. There is no way anybody can disprove these high placement rates, unless every single one of their clients signed a waiver and were willing to be interviewed on the spot as to whether or not they got a job from the program, as well as to verify each success with their respective employers. So, it is quite easy to lie or fudge statistics. To me, if an occupation-specific job program wants to continue, it should not be funded by the public. Instead, it should seek financial support from its employers. For example, if you are a call centre and want to accept ten people from that program to join your firm, you should be permitted to have a say as to who enters and the composition of the training initiative, and then pay a "tuition fee" for each participant they wish to train. That way, they will have invested in the program and be invested in hiring the said people. The way it is now, none of these employers have to accept anybody they churn out, as is likely the present case. If they can't sell this program to employers, then the public shouldn't be paying for it either.
The public and non-profit/ charitable sector has a major accountability problem. This is not because these organizations are inherently less competent or the people in charge don't know as much about their job as the people in private businesses, for example. It is because there are no 'market forces' in play for the public and not-for-profit sectors. At least if you don't like McDonald's, you can always go to a Burger King, a Wendy's, an Arby's or a Harvey's, or even Taco Bell. If you don't like the coffee at Tim Horton's, you can always go to Starbucks or Coffee Time, or even have a coffee at any of the myriad of mom and pop cafes in your community. Because of this competition, each of these businesses are under pressure to provide a good service to the customer, so the customer returns and/or refers other customers. In the non-profit sector, there isn't a lot of choice ... while there are some specialty agencies, such as those serving immigrants, there are really no competitive forces at play to ensure whatever agency you go to, is under any kind of pressure to keep you happy enough to prevent you from going elsewhere.
Further, there are some options for consumers who may have been injured or not served properly by a private business. For example, if you go to a Wal-Mart to get your oil changed and then as you drive your car out, your engine blows, there is some accountability there on the part of Wal-Mart if a connection can be made with the work done there. If you hire a contractor to fix your bathroom, but the company takes forever to acquire supplies, tears up the bathroom, ruins the plumbing and makes your home unliveable and still fails to complete the job in a reasonable time or with good workmanship, there are a number of options to take. If your contractor is a plumber, there is a technical safety inspection program. There is a Better Business Bureau. There is also small claims court. In certain cases, you can even make a claim on the company's insurance policy.
Not so for non-profits. If you are unhappy with their service, there really is nowhere to complain, let alone get actual redress. You can't really take the Job Action Centre to small claims court because they failed to provide the service. We don't have an ombudsman of any type that can review and oversee the resolution of complaints against publicly-funded services. As suggested earlier, you can go to the board or the executive director, but it is not likely anything will be achieved. Many of these programs do get audited, but the results of these audits are generally not available to the public (nor can you as a consumer give any input into such an audit). Many of these audits as well are not based on value for money or actual program effectiveness. They are usually just based on whether the non-profit spent its money in accordance to the way it promised when it signed the funding contract, which means basically nothing for the unserved consumer.
For "generic" or "demographic-based" programs, it is probably harder to subscribe to an employer buy-in, as these agencies seek a variety of types of jobs and likely work with many employers. However, it is fact that the increasing demand for accountability has actually brought in the wrong kind of incentives to these agencies. More and more agencies are only getting paid once the client is placed in a job and keeps that job for a certain length of time. On the surface, it looks good. If the agency sits on its butt, it gets nothing. However, this actually diminishes the quality of the jobs that people get. Such agencies will not work with clients with significant employment barriers (as barriers take too long to negotiate and remove) or persons with higher skill levels and aspirations than a low-paid entry level job (as this requires actual work and substantial education of employers to even consider opening up their higher paid positions to these people).
I've been to agencies as well that may not necessarily be paid on a per-placement basis, but the incentive I noted is to get me out of there as fast as possible. They'd give me references to jobs that I could find in any newspaper or job board, and then told to apply for them, even though I couldn't apply for most of them. They have no time to work with employers either to remove obvious barriers they put into place to keep the "uncleansed" out of their workplaces, e.g. no time to confirm why an employer is demanding a driver's license and a car for a job that likely doesn't require you to drive anybody anywhere. They expect the candidate to work out these details, which is likely to be unsuccessful, particularly when the employer can actually hire somebody else that can drive. It is obvious that the agency I was working with is unfamiliar with the Human Rights Code and the precedent for bona fide occupational requirements. To their misfortune, they probably believe most employers are in compliance, when in fact, the opposite is true.
While people like me, and countless others, are trying to get help at these various agencies, the staff that work there continue to earn decent middle-class salaries. Their performance is not reviewed on the basis of their successes, but on how well they meet the agencies' own agenda. Staff at some of these agencies are not even required to be trained or educated in any particular field, although some others are more careful regarding qualifications. Or, even when they do want qualifications, they may be asking for the wrong ones ... for example, social workers should not be administrators or executive directors, although in many of the direct service jobs, a social work background is useful. My background that made me qualified as an executive director includes business, financial planning and management, human resources, sociology (which includes quite a bit of background in evaluation and research design), public relations and communications. Most social workers are not trained in these areas. When I was an executive director, I hired staff that were not only trained in their specific jobs, but also had a track record in doing this work for others. If two or more appeared equally qualified, I picked the one with the best communications and people skills.
There are consumer organizations and even some individual consumers that detest my bias in this direction. They favour "life experience" over credentials. I always ask them without ever getting any appropriate answer as to exactly WHAT is "life experience" and how can one person's "life experience" be compared to another person's "life experience", particularly if the two are from the same demographic, e.g. disability, gender, culture. Further, they couldn't tell me how any kind of "life experience" teaches people how to plan for and manage multi-million dollar budgets, manage human resources, acquire a skilled workforce, develop and deliver an effective program, or even provide effective "spokepersonship" for the demographic. Because marginalized people often think very few of their peers are educated or qualified for anything, they think it's okay to hire somebody with no skills or education to "speak for" other marginalized people, including those among the marginalized that are. As somebody who is better educated, when I ever made representations on behalf of an organization I worked with, it was done in consultation with a substantial portion of its members, as well as an attempt at getting voices from people who were not members, but shared the same issues.
It is a difficult balance to strike. At the ODSP Action Coalition, we strive to speak for all people involved with ODSP recipients as well as the full range of ODSP recipients themselves. I have been forceful in my own advocacy efforts (without an organization at times) on pushing for reforms that benefited people without children (though I have kids myself), benefited people that are not well-educated (e.g. better user friendly materials, better access to programs that meet the needs of people with multiple issues, better access to education and training to secure better jobs), as well as programs for those that are well-educated, as well as people from different cultures and religious backgrounds (though I have no real cultural leanings given the absence of family of origin influence and I don't consider myself religious, although I recognize many people are).
It is a major fact that people with education and previous mid-level and senior job experience who are now unemployed and/or disabled, that they are ignored and marginalized ... even from within their own demographic communities. Some single disability communities, such as mainstream psychiatric survivor organizations, are actually anti-credential in nature, under the false impression that one cannot be well educated and qualified AND suffer from a major mental health disorder. Most of such persons that do get into senior positions in these organizations are eventually pushed out by somebody without any qualifications. I am aware of at least seven or eight major cases where this happened in Ontario, although if anybody asked a psychiatric survivor leader if this happens, they will deny it. Their victims become invisible and without a voice, which is the desired objective of these types of groups -- as those with the ambition to gain the title without the responsibility are certainly not going to care if they hurt anybody else on their way up. With cross-disability organizations and coalitions, their expectations vary ... because many such organizations also try to engage people who have become disabled later in life, as well as injured workers, many of whom may actually be quite skilled.
Anti-credentialism is anti-accountability and anti-transparency and anti-ethical. Because those who acquire positions without having proper training fail to understand the importance of many requirements, such as the right to confidentiality and the right to open and democratic processes within an organization, these organizations are even less likely to achieve their objectives. This is also ignored by politicians because politicians do not want to look like they are "attacking the consumers" or are "anti mental health" or whatever they might be seen as if they do decide to withdraw money from an organization, although in rare instances, it has happened (but I can count the number of times on my left hand when this happened for reasons other than political objectives ... such as ensuring a "politically friendly" or a "harmless" group of people get preference for funding as opposed to a group of people who might actually influence or force things to change).
To me, if non-profits want regular funding, they must be regulated -- period. Regulation simply means setting standards. Standards are different for each profession, some are tougher, some are less strict -- depending on the educational requirements and complexity of the job involved. A non-profit should be considered the same ... set minimum educational requirements for all positions. It may not necessarily be a specific type of education, unless the non-profit was involved specifically in something regulated, like child protection. For those involved in employment services, the candidate MUST have a university degree or education that leaves them with skills and knowledge in the following areas: human resources, labour law, human rights, marketing, communications, etc. Not all of this comes from a degree, of course ... but this is usually a foundation, then after that would be one's actual experience, both volunteer and paid or even as a self-employed business person.
For candidates without degrees, their skills and references need to be more closely scrutinized and proven. Sometimes, a position calls for business and marketing knowledge, for example, and a candidate without post-secondary education comes in strong because they worked for twenty years in a successful family business. In certain circumstances, the professions also consider these things as part of their admissions process. One year, the Law Society of Upper Canada came under scrutiny because it chose to admit about a dozen candidates who failed their bar admissions. These candidates were able to be admitted under other criteria that proved they were equally capable of performing the work required under a license. Some people just can't handle tests. In fact, the Law Society regularly admits people that do not always fit neatly in their licensed structure. There is an increasingly common provision for something called "peer review" in other professions, where an individual would perform under a few seasoned professionals and then later evaluated for the delivery of their services. Teaching is an example of where this provision might work well. However, despite their admission, all licensees are required to continue to upgrade and educate themselves in their fields.
In my own view, if the government wanted to discourage people from dropping out of high school, none of them should be able to access ANY publicly-funded job, even as a janitor at the school board, until they graduate or obtain an equivalency. The private sector can still hire them, as they have the market forces to contend with ... if they hire incompetent people, the business suffers. It is the investors choice as to how much risk they want to take. In the public and not-for-profit sector, because there is no market forces and little choice for those that need the services downloaded upon them by the government, standards must be in place. In addition to minimum educational requirements, a code of ethics must be drawn for all workers and tailored to the specific areas that they work in. There must also be a body to which to complain and get support. Because there is no such body to complain, many non-profits continue to practise nepotism, hire their own "friends" and not bother to perform at their top level (because after all, if people complain, nothing will happen anyways ...). They should also be insured personally in certain jobs, or bonded in others.
Under this new regulatory regime, personal information collected by an organization's worker will be protected and the worker that is careless in dealing with it CAN be penalized. The worker that fails to serve a certain person because it is not economical or it is too difficult to find a higher paid job for them, etc. (whatever their excuse is) may be FORCED to help or lose their own job and license to work in this field. This doesn't necessarily mean that the worker MUST be successful everytime, as lawyers who are licensed do lose cases too and this doesn't hurt them (unless the loss was caused directly by negligence). Doctors are also not expected to cure everybody either, but they are supposed to try. Accountability does not mean guaranteed results. It means guaranteed effort and professionalism in the delivery of services, while respecting the individual. Yes, many non-profits do hold themselves to voluntary high standards. I am asking for this to be a requirement.
Until then, I really don't choose to use a lot of services unless it can be shown to me that the agency is actually delivering on their promises (e.g. finding people housing, finding people jobs that match the person's skills and abilities, assisting people in accessing disability supports). I want a say in the agency's future without having to join their board or make friends with the senior staff. I want the power to control what is done with my information and how I am treated when I go to these types of places. I don't think I want anything more than anybody else does. I just think that politicians have to start demanding that agencies deliver ... until then, there will never be any accountability, transparency or in relevant cases, democratic processes within.
Showing posts with label Middle Class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle Class. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
BIG OIL AND PRIVILEGE
It is typically Canadian these days to complain about two things: (a) gas prices; and (b) the loss of our second national anthem, "The Hockey Song" which has been with us since 1968 for "Hockey Night in Canada". It seems that CBC lost, but CTV won the right with the second issue, thus "saving" Canada's anthem and its tradition of sorts. However, the first issue continues to remain a bee in almost everybody's bonnet.
Gasoline prices at the pump have steadily increased since the 1990's from about 40 cents a litre to what is now $1.40 per litre in many places. Prices are at least double this amount in European countries, but then again, people in Europe have more respect for alternatives to the automobile than they do here. People who do not drive in North America are viewed as aberrant and inferior for some reason. To me, it is a classist and ableist bias, but if our society wants to continue this -- it should cost those dearly that want to continue. On Face Book, there is a Canadian site with more than 300,000 people on it complaining about gas prices and another "global site" with over 1,000,000 people on it. Many of the sites record almost on a daily basis the price of gas per litre or per barrel ... as it almost seems like the price is shifting this way.
I have very mixed feelings about the price of gas. I do feel empathetic and concerned for those that transport goods and people as a principle part of their business, as this not only severely impacts their bottom lines, but also the bottom lines of many other businesses at the end of the line. If you run a store that relies on imported goods, such products had to get to you somehow; they certainly didn't walk there!!! As a business owner, you had to pay a surcharge to have these items delivered to you, or as a supplier, a surcharge to have your products shipped. Farmers are feeling it. Importers, exporters, small manufacturing companies, even convenience stores ... are all feeling the pinch. Those that do the transporting are feeling it even worse, as their margins are being further and further cut, forcing some shipping firms to cut staff, park vehicles and reduce loads. This is the part of the "price of gas" that bothers me.
To be blunt, I don't care if the price of gas surpasses $5 a litre for those that use their vehicles only to get to and from work, or to take road trips --vehicle owners never paid the full cost of their privilege. As they continue to whine about the price of gas, taxpayers of *all* descriptions (including those that do not or cannot drive for whatever reason) continue to pay for road building, maintenance, expansions, highways, "free parking" at malls, traffic control, traffic planning services, parking enforcement, etc. Yes, there is tax on gas to cover some of these expenses, but this tax does not cover all of it. According to the CAA, it costs an average of $8,000 to $10,000 a year to own and operate a personal vehicle. That means, in order to do this -- you are certainly privileged enough to have that much more disposable income after housing, food and other basic needs, to put aside for a vehicle. In my view, if this is the case, then those that can afford vehicles should not be alarmed by paying the full price of operating their cars and paying even more per litre of gas.
These same non-driving taxpayers also have to get around somehow as well; many, especially in regions like my own, are forced to pay many more times than the cost of a vehicle trip on a per kilometre basis, on taxi fares, bus fares (where there are buses), as well as forfeit a majority of job opportunities that pay more than minimum wage, especially since these days, when it is okay to discriminate against the poor and people with disabilities - employers simply invite only those who drive need apply. To many people, they might as well say, "No dogs or Jews need apply" or "Whites only". Replace the words "must have valid driver's license and reliable vehicle" with "must be of Caucasian or Oriental origin in order to understand our customers' needs" or "must be able to lift 100 pounds and run the four-minute mile" or "those in wheelchairs need not apply; office is not equipped for the handicapped". Blame the disabled person for having the disability; the employer need not accommodate.
These non-drivers are also paying three or four times as much on a per kilometre basis than those with vehicles and as most transportation studies confirm, they take 50 - 75% less personal trips and pay a larger portion of their incomes on transportation costs than for those who drive. How does this translate into higher costs for non-drivers if the price of gas is so high and the CAA cites the high cost of vehicle ownership? It is because drivers have a substantially greater chance of being hired into better paying jobs and according to many work-to-welfare studies from the U.S., people with cars tend to work longer hours and get paid up to $2 or more dollars per hour higher than those that do not drive. In my own view, driving a vehicle should ONLY be a qualification if the job requires driving a vehicle as a primary function of the job.
In Niagara, non-drivers are left in the dust as well. I am looking for a mechanism to give the Honourable Jim Bradley, Minister of Transportation, and MPP for St. Catharines, an award ... This award would be similar to the type of award some of the Teachers Associations tried to give to then Education Minister, John "create a crisis" Snobelen, in the days of Mike Harris, when it was revealed that he did not even graduate from high school. For Jim, the stakes would be similar, the circumstances different ... except, he would be awarded the first Minister of Transportation to come from a region that has the Worst Transit System for a population of its size and demographic. If Bradley is unable to do anything for his own backyard, as some of his critics may ask, how can he be expected to change the transportation dynamic in Ontario as a whole?
People in Toronto joke all the time about the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission. Sometimes, delays, no-shows, breakdowns and crowded buses irritate the TTC commuter. When buses and streetcars come by, on average, every five minutes, it is frustrating for a commuter to wait another five. In St. Catharines, service is every hour after six and in other municipalities, there is NO transit after six. Frustrated TTC commuters call the TTC "take the car". Niagara has its own TTC as well, except it IS "Take the Car". If you do not drive, you do not have citizenship in Niagara Region. Most jobs are given to only respectable "middle class" sorts that already have the spare change to spend on vehicle ownership; in other words, you will get a job in Niagara if you already have a good job. If you do not have a job, or your job pays too poorly, one of the first cuts many are forced to make is to park or even sell the car, as other cuts, such as living in a tent and eating one meal a day are less healthy for you, particularly in the winter-time. If you have a disability and cannot drive, employers don't want you anyways. After all, "governments and families" look after people with disabilities. Maybe that's why so many of them are having trouble keeping their housing and getting sick from such poor diets, etc.
Todd Littman, a transportation analyst has actually calculated the value of the "free ride" people who drive actually get from taxpayers and others. He valued it at about $5,800 per annum. In other words, people who drive are certainly not paying their full share of the costs. Maybe they should. The only "breaks" if anybody should get them should be businesses that are in the practice of transporting goods or people. If somebody who drives says they cannot afford to pay the "full cost", then park the car - period. I think if more of these people understood what kind of a privilege it is to drive and what advantages society confers onto them simply by having a driver's license and a vehicle, they just might understand how much more money they are costing the rest of us that do not drive. Public transportation users do have some subsidy as well, averaging about $1,300 a year in an urban centre -- but he argues in another paper that transit subsidies are more "just" as it equalizes to some extent the privileges of mobility for both classes - drivers and non-drivers.
Maybe the deal can work this way. We ALL pay full price for our choices. Except, the very large portion of my tax bill that currently goes to the privileges of private vehicle owners in terms of road and bridge repair, traffic lights, traffic control, planning, parking, urban sprawl, higher prices at malls, etc. should be wiped right OFF my tax bill and the tax bills of others that do not or cannot drive. I should also be getting a 15 - 20% discount at the supermarket, as those big box supermarkets do pay a LOT of money to give drivers "free parking", as well as pay for the transportation services of its business. Those that drive shall pay the balance, perhaps in the form of road tolls, paid parking regardless of where they go, levies for owning a car and keeping it within city limits, etc. When I see drivers paying the full load, which may exceed $20,000 a year or more per vehicle, then maybe I might be somewhat empathetic.
It should also be illegal for employers to discriminate against non-drivers unless the essential duties of the job are driving goods or people, or the job involves mandatory travel, such as travelling to various homes in a community to test their water pipes or inspect their furnaces (where it would be impossible, for example, for homeowners to come to an office to provide the parts). In most other jobs, having a transit service will enable non-drivers to do the essential duties of most jobs.
The use of a driver's license for identification has also been an issue for generations. Most video stores, public libraries, convenience stores/liquor stores (where you may need to be ID'd), border crossings, banks, etc. expect EVERYBODY to have a government-issued photo ID. The only one that the government issues that is not a driver's license is the health card, and most of these same places do not accept this as ID. So why do they accept a driver's license as an ID when less people have this type of identification than people who have say, a health card or a citizenship card? I successfully forced many of these types of places to accept non-driver's license identification by threatening a human rights action and if they refused to accept something else, I certainly would have followed through. This is MY citizenship rights.
The Ontario Government is apparently trying to set up a type of non-driver's licence photo ID for non-drivers to use, but in my view -- they shouldn't be using licenses either, as in my view - the use of a driver's license for ID purposes is no more useful than using a health card for ID purposes ... maybe a national identity and photo ID card should be issued, much like a social insurance number, to anybody who asks and can present other identification, such as a birth certificate, etc. If the person wants to add security information to their national ID card so they can do things like cross borders, then they can choose to undertake a simple security screening.
The trouble with using the driver's license is it normalizes the acquisition and use of a driver's license as a type of proof of citizenship. As the Minister of Transportation said himself, almost four million Ontarians do not have a driver's license. In addition to those that do not have a license, about a quarter to a third of licensed drivers do not have access to a personal vehicle. This is a LOT of people to deny citizenship right to and to relegate to lowest levels of the workforce. It also reinforces the power and economic interests that Big Oil have over all of us. Those that drive can earn good money. Those that want to continue to drive pay more per litre of gas than they did even last year or even last week! Those that choose not to drive are denied the right to earn a decent living, and are not viewed favourably by the "middle class".
If you are a man in your forties, for example, and you do not choose to have a license - perhaps, for environmental reasons or you never felt you wanted one or whatever reason -- it is automatically assumed by the absence of your license there is "something wrong" with you. I know a PHd who chose not to drive for many years; further, he had some cognitive difficulties that affected him in a way that learning to drive was not easy for him. Despite his PHd, his strong writing and research skills, he was denied almost every job he applied for. Once he got married, his new wife taught him patiently how to drive and now he is working full-time. We have to separate our dependence on Big Oil from our potential and livelihood. If we don't do it now, more and more people will be left out of the loop and if you think your taxes are bad now, just wait until we have to support thousands and thousands more people on welfare because of our "middle class" and "ableist" bias.
Thoughts?
Gasoline prices at the pump have steadily increased since the 1990's from about 40 cents a litre to what is now $1.40 per litre in many places. Prices are at least double this amount in European countries, but then again, people in Europe have more respect for alternatives to the automobile than they do here. People who do not drive in North America are viewed as aberrant and inferior for some reason. To me, it is a classist and ableist bias, but if our society wants to continue this -- it should cost those dearly that want to continue. On Face Book, there is a Canadian site with more than 300,000 people on it complaining about gas prices and another "global site" with over 1,000,000 people on it. Many of the sites record almost on a daily basis the price of gas per litre or per barrel ... as it almost seems like the price is shifting this way.
I have very mixed feelings about the price of gas. I do feel empathetic and concerned for those that transport goods and people as a principle part of their business, as this not only severely impacts their bottom lines, but also the bottom lines of many other businesses at the end of the line. If you run a store that relies on imported goods, such products had to get to you somehow; they certainly didn't walk there!!! As a business owner, you had to pay a surcharge to have these items delivered to you, or as a supplier, a surcharge to have your products shipped. Farmers are feeling it. Importers, exporters, small manufacturing companies, even convenience stores ... are all feeling the pinch. Those that do the transporting are feeling it even worse, as their margins are being further and further cut, forcing some shipping firms to cut staff, park vehicles and reduce loads. This is the part of the "price of gas" that bothers me.
To be blunt, I don't care if the price of gas surpasses $5 a litre for those that use their vehicles only to get to and from work, or to take road trips --vehicle owners never paid the full cost of their privilege. As they continue to whine about the price of gas, taxpayers of *all* descriptions (including those that do not or cannot drive for whatever reason) continue to pay for road building, maintenance, expansions, highways, "free parking" at malls, traffic control, traffic planning services, parking enforcement, etc. Yes, there is tax on gas to cover some of these expenses, but this tax does not cover all of it. According to the CAA, it costs an average of $8,000 to $10,000 a year to own and operate a personal vehicle. That means, in order to do this -- you are certainly privileged enough to have that much more disposable income after housing, food and other basic needs, to put aside for a vehicle. In my view, if this is the case, then those that can afford vehicles should not be alarmed by paying the full price of operating their cars and paying even more per litre of gas.
These same non-driving taxpayers also have to get around somehow as well; many, especially in regions like my own, are forced to pay many more times than the cost of a vehicle trip on a per kilometre basis, on taxi fares, bus fares (where there are buses), as well as forfeit a majority of job opportunities that pay more than minimum wage, especially since these days, when it is okay to discriminate against the poor and people with disabilities - employers simply invite only those who drive need apply. To many people, they might as well say, "No dogs or Jews need apply" or "Whites only". Replace the words "must have valid driver's license and reliable vehicle" with "must be of Caucasian or Oriental origin in order to understand our customers' needs" or "must be able to lift 100 pounds and run the four-minute mile" or "those in wheelchairs need not apply; office is not equipped for the handicapped". Blame the disabled person for having the disability; the employer need not accommodate.
These non-drivers are also paying three or four times as much on a per kilometre basis than those with vehicles and as most transportation studies confirm, they take 50 - 75% less personal trips and pay a larger portion of their incomes on transportation costs than for those who drive. How does this translate into higher costs for non-drivers if the price of gas is so high and the CAA cites the high cost of vehicle ownership? It is because drivers have a substantially greater chance of being hired into better paying jobs and according to many work-to-welfare studies from the U.S., people with cars tend to work longer hours and get paid up to $2 or more dollars per hour higher than those that do not drive. In my own view, driving a vehicle should ONLY be a qualification if the job requires driving a vehicle as a primary function of the job.
In Niagara, non-drivers are left in the dust as well. I am looking for a mechanism to give the Honourable Jim Bradley, Minister of Transportation, and MPP for St. Catharines, an award ... This award would be similar to the type of award some of the Teachers Associations tried to give to then Education Minister, John "create a crisis" Snobelen, in the days of Mike Harris, when it was revealed that he did not even graduate from high school. For Jim, the stakes would be similar, the circumstances different ... except, he would be awarded the first Minister of Transportation to come from a region that has the Worst Transit System for a population of its size and demographic. If Bradley is unable to do anything for his own backyard, as some of his critics may ask, how can he be expected to change the transportation dynamic in Ontario as a whole?
People in Toronto joke all the time about the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission. Sometimes, delays, no-shows, breakdowns and crowded buses irritate the TTC commuter. When buses and streetcars come by, on average, every five minutes, it is frustrating for a commuter to wait another five. In St. Catharines, service is every hour after six and in other municipalities, there is NO transit after six. Frustrated TTC commuters call the TTC "take the car". Niagara has its own TTC as well, except it IS "Take the Car". If you do not drive, you do not have citizenship in Niagara Region. Most jobs are given to only respectable "middle class" sorts that already have the spare change to spend on vehicle ownership; in other words, you will get a job in Niagara if you already have a good job. If you do not have a job, or your job pays too poorly, one of the first cuts many are forced to make is to park or even sell the car, as other cuts, such as living in a tent and eating one meal a day are less healthy for you, particularly in the winter-time. If you have a disability and cannot drive, employers don't want you anyways. After all, "governments and families" look after people with disabilities. Maybe that's why so many of them are having trouble keeping their housing and getting sick from such poor diets, etc.
Todd Littman, a transportation analyst has actually calculated the value of the "free ride" people who drive actually get from taxpayers and others. He valued it at about $5,800 per annum. In other words, people who drive are certainly not paying their full share of the costs. Maybe they should. The only "breaks" if anybody should get them should be businesses that are in the practice of transporting goods or people. If somebody who drives says they cannot afford to pay the "full cost", then park the car - period. I think if more of these people understood what kind of a privilege it is to drive and what advantages society confers onto them simply by having a driver's license and a vehicle, they just might understand how much more money they are costing the rest of us that do not drive. Public transportation users do have some subsidy as well, averaging about $1,300 a year in an urban centre -- but he argues in another paper that transit subsidies are more "just" as it equalizes to some extent the privileges of mobility for both classes - drivers and non-drivers.
Maybe the deal can work this way. We ALL pay full price for our choices. Except, the very large portion of my tax bill that currently goes to the privileges of private vehicle owners in terms of road and bridge repair, traffic lights, traffic control, planning, parking, urban sprawl, higher prices at malls, etc. should be wiped right OFF my tax bill and the tax bills of others that do not or cannot drive. I should also be getting a 15 - 20% discount at the supermarket, as those big box supermarkets do pay a LOT of money to give drivers "free parking", as well as pay for the transportation services of its business. Those that drive shall pay the balance, perhaps in the form of road tolls, paid parking regardless of where they go, levies for owning a car and keeping it within city limits, etc. When I see drivers paying the full load, which may exceed $20,000 a year or more per vehicle, then maybe I might be somewhat empathetic.
It should also be illegal for employers to discriminate against non-drivers unless the essential duties of the job are driving goods or people, or the job involves mandatory travel, such as travelling to various homes in a community to test their water pipes or inspect their furnaces (where it would be impossible, for example, for homeowners to come to an office to provide the parts). In most other jobs, having a transit service will enable non-drivers to do the essential duties of most jobs.
The use of a driver's license for identification has also been an issue for generations. Most video stores, public libraries, convenience stores/liquor stores (where you may need to be ID'd), border crossings, banks, etc. expect EVERYBODY to have a government-issued photo ID. The only one that the government issues that is not a driver's license is the health card, and most of these same places do not accept this as ID. So why do they accept a driver's license as an ID when less people have this type of identification than people who have say, a health card or a citizenship card? I successfully forced many of these types of places to accept non-driver's license identification by threatening a human rights action and if they refused to accept something else, I certainly would have followed through. This is MY citizenship rights.
The Ontario Government is apparently trying to set up a type of non-driver's licence photo ID for non-drivers to use, but in my view -- they shouldn't be using licenses either, as in my view - the use of a driver's license for ID purposes is no more useful than using a health card for ID purposes ... maybe a national identity and photo ID card should be issued, much like a social insurance number, to anybody who asks and can present other identification, such as a birth certificate, etc. If the person wants to add security information to their national ID card so they can do things like cross borders, then they can choose to undertake a simple security screening.
The trouble with using the driver's license is it normalizes the acquisition and use of a driver's license as a type of proof of citizenship. As the Minister of Transportation said himself, almost four million Ontarians do not have a driver's license. In addition to those that do not have a license, about a quarter to a third of licensed drivers do not have access to a personal vehicle. This is a LOT of people to deny citizenship right to and to relegate to lowest levels of the workforce. It also reinforces the power and economic interests that Big Oil have over all of us. Those that drive can earn good money. Those that want to continue to drive pay more per litre of gas than they did even last year or even last week! Those that choose not to drive are denied the right to earn a decent living, and are not viewed favourably by the "middle class".
If you are a man in your forties, for example, and you do not choose to have a license - perhaps, for environmental reasons or you never felt you wanted one or whatever reason -- it is automatically assumed by the absence of your license there is "something wrong" with you. I know a PHd who chose not to drive for many years; further, he had some cognitive difficulties that affected him in a way that learning to drive was not easy for him. Despite his PHd, his strong writing and research skills, he was denied almost every job he applied for. Once he got married, his new wife taught him patiently how to drive and now he is working full-time. We have to separate our dependence on Big Oil from our potential and livelihood. If we don't do it now, more and more people will be left out of the loop and if you think your taxes are bad now, just wait until we have to support thousands and thousands more people on welfare because of our "middle class" and "ableist" bias.
Thoughts?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Two Incomes, Two Cars and the Joneses
Many times, I am tired of living in the community I live in.
In the Niagara Region, the legions of the poor are quite large: one in five, I heard. However, Niagara is different than other regions, such as Toronto and Hamilton, in its approach to dealing with it. We have major food banks, leadership of which is only glorified and revelled. We have agencies that pursue "middle class" solutions to 'help' the poor. They recognize the problems, but want to get poor people to mingle more with rich people with the hopes that some of the wealth just might be contagious. Niagara is known like many other places for its addiction to charity ... every week, somebody is chopping off their hair to donate to Wigs for Kids or some related cause. It is getting old. People organize walks for MS, Heart and Stroke, Cancer Research and even recently, a walk was held to raise awareness about schizophrenia. One thing Niagara never has walks for is anything to raise the awareness of the plight of its poor.
Niagara Region is a study in contrasts. There are very wealthy people living among us. Niagara-on-the-Lake is known to be a haven for the wealthy, particularly the retired wealthy. Social class is very structured in Niagara as well, meaning people who are in each class know which class they "belong" to and what opportunities are availed to them. Niagara's tourist economy reminds me about the feudal system as I learned about it when I first studied law and the history of real estate and property rights. There are the Owners, those who own those lovely hotels, tourist attractions and cinemas and so forth ... There are the Managers (or the Landlords), Petite Bourgeoisie, those that own the largest farms and wineries, as well as a few smatterings of those among the Merchant class. Finally, there are the workers ... most of those who work for the Owners, Petite Bourgeoisie or the Merchant class are almost always low-waged and seasonal labourers.
Another industry that is designated along class lines is the Auto Industry, which is a weakening, though still present concern in this Region. There are the Owners/ General Managers, the Union Workers and those who are unable to even set a foot in the door because all the jobs have been long since hogged by the Union Workers and members of their families. The latter group are often shunted off to work for places like call centres, large retailers (such as Wal-Mart) or Tim Horton's. Niagara's fathers want to keep the Auto Sector moving, even though its presence appears to be declining. However, the force among the Auto Industry is not missed by even the least observant person. Whole lots are being ripped apart and flattened out throughout the Region to do one of two things: (a) Create parking lots; or (b) Create more automobile sales firms. After all, we need to create an outlet for the Union Workers, Petite Bourgeoisie, Merchants and the Owners to purchase new cars year over year, don't we? It is this class of people that are probably the only people that can afford to purchase them anyways.
If you are somebody in Niagara that is not an Owner, General Manager, Union Worker, Petite Bourgeoisie or a Merchant, or married to one, you are likely not likely going to become one of them. Why? Because Niagara Region, as well as many regions of similar size and scope, accepts a very rigid class structure that is based upon membership to the above groups, or association with the same (such as through marriage) - but if you are NOT - if you are one of the one in five people in the Region who are considered poor, your chances of EVER climbing that supposed ladder to the next level are nil and none. It's the Family Compact or nothing in Niagara.
The fact of the matter is that job hogsmanship is very much of a reality here in Niagara. If somebody is a Teacher, for example, they are most likely married to an Owner, General Manager, Union Worker, Petite Bourgeoisie or a Merchant. They are less likely to come from single income families. These are the people that will have the vast majority of pension funds available to them upon retirement. These are the people who think nothing of taking a drive and going to a cottage somewhere north of Toronto most weekends in the summer. They usually have a backyard pool and their children are the first to get the best "summer jobs" the system has to offer them because these families have the contacts.
Unfortunately, these are also the very same people who are part of the new movement to "simplify things", "become green" and "give to the poor" (usually meaning African poor and not local poverty). They try to imagine or make the rest of us imagine that life can only be simpler if we all had our own little gardens and grew our own vegetables, cooked everything from scratch and cut coupons. These are all good ideas, but the one in five people I spoke of earlier are not: (a) likely to have a yard, let alone room to put in a garden; (b) have the time to play in the dirt to develop one even if they had a yard (e.g. most are working two or three minimum wage jobs just to pay the rent and feed the kids); (c) have the time or energy to cook from scratch; and (d) most do not have a vehicle in which to travel from one end of town to the other to "catch" various specials and use different coupons to save a dollar or two on the price of milk. Poverty is indeed expensive.
Poor people do not have the money to start and maintain a garden. They do not have the transportation to pick up the essentials for a garden, nor do they have the capacity to even retrieve free or low-cost items others may have for sale or give-away on the Internet or through the newspaper. Poor families in Niagara that do not have a car stay poor, regardless of how well educated and skilled they are. Employers do not want anybody who does not share the values and lifestyles of the Owners, General Managers, Union Workers, Petite Bourgeoisie or Merchants. Employers cannot relate to people who do not have an easy pick-up-and-go type of the lifestyle that they enjoy. People want to hire other people who are just like they are.
The expression "keeping up with the Joneses" has been around for a long time. People who have money have the means to compete with other people with money. People who are poor watch this happen and only feel left out of the game. The Joneses do not know that poor folks exist in Niagara, even though the Joneses may once in a blue moon drop off a non-perishable food item to the Food Bank or hand over a quarter to the occasional panhandler, but nobody in the Jones family or those who try to keep up with them have ever bothered to ask why there is so much poverty in Niagara Region, or if they do, why it is okay for the poor to accept their crumbs and not share the same opportunities for upward mobility that they have. People who are dual income earners tend to believe other adults come from the same background. I've met teachers that assume all parents can afford to send their kids to various field trips and pizza days. When they don't, the fault of course rests with parents or with the child who may not be "responsible enough" to bring in the required money for these things. Unfortunately, while our Board of Education pretends to respect all students equally, they in fact, do not. They expect low-income parents to beg for financial assistance from the schools in order for their children to be treated equally ... thus requiring these parents to give a type of personal disclosure that is not expected of other parents. They do not think for a minute that such disclosure only labels them as "damaged goods" and serves as a barrier for people to succeed in the community on their own merits. Receipt of "charity" is not as confidential as you think. People who accept "charity" are not the same people who get hired for the good jobs.
There are probably more cars per capita here in Niagara Region than anywhere else. There is absolutely nothing policy-wise or environmentally that is being done to curb the use of private vehicles. Niagara Region has a substantial amount of gridlock on most of its roadways, as well as highways. The Niagara Region is the only incorporated Region that does not support ANY inter-municipal transit. Why, do you ask? Because the leaders of this Region actually believe that EVERYBODY drives. If you don't, they assume there is something wrong with you. If you complain about discrimination in jobs, they say jobs are plentiful in call centres, cleaning hotels, picking fruit and doing other menial tasks, regardless of your education or career aspirations. Yet in the same breath, these same people complain about the lack of population growth and the fact that young college and university graduates LEAVE while they can. People do not use transit in Niagara unless they are: (a) one of the one in five people who are poor and marked for life; (b) mentally challenged (because we don't expect developmentally delayed adults to drive cars, do we?); (c) frail seniors (usually in their 70's and 80's); and (d) students, who are usually landlocked by student loans and cannot afford to keep up with the Joneses right now (though many of them come from these same types of middle income families from elsewhere that will eventually get them set for life). Unfortunately, this is a stigma that is carried over to employers and others in the Region, which has only further castrated our population into solid social classes and cultural division.
The reality that society has to face is clear. Not everybody has family support. I can count the number of my hundreds of clients I worked with over the years who are on social assistance or some other financial support who have families assisting them on my left hand. While this is true, governments continue to focus only on those people on my left hand who have families who are (a) available; (b) able; and (c) willing to provide financial support to their disabled relatives. There are whole workshops dedicated to issues like the Henson Trust, Registered Education Savings Plans, Registered Disability Support Plans, Segregated Funds, etc. To the vast majority of my people, these things mean absolutely nothing. It does not apply to their reality - because their loved ones may be dead, fragile themselves or they simply turned their backs on them years ago when the going got tough. Many of these people never settled into their first jobs and they are now in their 30's and 40's. Some have never driven a car. This is not going to happen for them without concerted and ongoing efforts on the part of government and community support organizations to get their heads out of the sand, to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses (as in my view, the Joneses do not need any more government help than they already get - which they do in fact get) and walk a mile in the shoes of my clients. We need to return the learning curve to normalization and integration, as opposed to marginalization and segregation, which is what we are doing so wrong today.
My clients want exactly the same thing everybody else wants:
1. They want to live in a home that is clean, safe and secure (e.g. poor people do not *need* staff to babysit them or tell them how to spend their money);
2. They want enough money to allow them to make a reasonable number of choices with respect to their lives (e.g. housing, food, transportation, telephone, entertainment, and support services that they choose). If they make mistakes, they want the right to accept the consequences and move on;
3. They want the right to continue their education, receive additional training and skills and have them count for something (instead of being blithely turned away from every job opportunity because they don't already have their own vehicles, know somebody who already works for the employer or belongs to the union already);
4. They want the right to access employment opportunities that reflect their actual skills, education, training and work experience, as opposed to low-wage ghettos they usually get referred to;
5. If they cannot work at all or are limited in their capabilities in working, they want to ensure that they have an income that can be counted on to cover ALL of their costs of living a reasonable lifestyle; and
6. They want the right to retire at some point in their lives without having to accept a McJob to subsidize the pithy government pensions they will be expected to live on.
These are things that folks with two incomes, two cars and an obsession with keeping up with the Joneses do not understand. They do not understand there are people who will not get to retire at all due to the declining value of public pensions (which do not keep up with the actual cost of living) or get to choose where they live, who their friends are or where they work. These are people who are quite often bullied at work, but say nothing about it because they know the only alternative is living on the streets, which is something apparently enshrined somewhere in Ontario Works legislation - that people in receipt of it should be pleased to even have a home, even if it is a garbage dumpster or a homeless shelter.
But most of all, this group does NOT understand that the reason that they are able to do so well is because so many others are not. Many middle, upper-middle and upper class families have the poor to thank for their positions, because if they had to pay their employees decent wages, pay the kind of taxes they really should be paying, or to cover the full cost of their consumption habits (like the poor seem to be expected to do) - they would not be able to keep up with the Joneses, or perhaps there may not even be any Joneses to keep up with. Other middle class folks, by virtue of their jobs, rely upon the existence of poor people to keep them in business. They certainly don't want to see poverty eradicated. As one of my readers, this should be easy for you to understand by now how one is ethically tied to fighting for one's own elimination if you happen to be one of those people who work to "serve" the poor.
In the Niagara Region, the legions of the poor are quite large: one in five, I heard. However, Niagara is different than other regions, such as Toronto and Hamilton, in its approach to dealing with it. We have major food banks, leadership of which is only glorified and revelled. We have agencies that pursue "middle class" solutions to 'help' the poor. They recognize the problems, but want to get poor people to mingle more with rich people with the hopes that some of the wealth just might be contagious. Niagara is known like many other places for its addiction to charity ... every week, somebody is chopping off their hair to donate to Wigs for Kids or some related cause. It is getting old. People organize walks for MS, Heart and Stroke, Cancer Research and even recently, a walk was held to raise awareness about schizophrenia. One thing Niagara never has walks for is anything to raise the awareness of the plight of its poor.
Niagara Region is a study in contrasts. There are very wealthy people living among us. Niagara-on-the-Lake is known to be a haven for the wealthy, particularly the retired wealthy. Social class is very structured in Niagara as well, meaning people who are in each class know which class they "belong" to and what opportunities are availed to them. Niagara's tourist economy reminds me about the feudal system as I learned about it when I first studied law and the history of real estate and property rights. There are the Owners, those who own those lovely hotels, tourist attractions and cinemas and so forth ... There are the Managers (or the Landlords), Petite Bourgeoisie, those that own the largest farms and wineries, as well as a few smatterings of those among the Merchant class. Finally, there are the workers ... most of those who work for the Owners, Petite Bourgeoisie or the Merchant class are almost always low-waged and seasonal labourers.
Another industry that is designated along class lines is the Auto Industry, which is a weakening, though still present concern in this Region. There are the Owners/ General Managers, the Union Workers and those who are unable to even set a foot in the door because all the jobs have been long since hogged by the Union Workers and members of their families. The latter group are often shunted off to work for places like call centres, large retailers (such as Wal-Mart) or Tim Horton's. Niagara's fathers want to keep the Auto Sector moving, even though its presence appears to be declining. However, the force among the Auto Industry is not missed by even the least observant person. Whole lots are being ripped apart and flattened out throughout the Region to do one of two things: (a) Create parking lots; or (b) Create more automobile sales firms. After all, we need to create an outlet for the Union Workers, Petite Bourgeoisie, Merchants and the Owners to purchase new cars year over year, don't we? It is this class of people that are probably the only people that can afford to purchase them anyways.
If you are somebody in Niagara that is not an Owner, General Manager, Union Worker, Petite Bourgeoisie or a Merchant, or married to one, you are likely not likely going to become one of them. Why? Because Niagara Region, as well as many regions of similar size and scope, accepts a very rigid class structure that is based upon membership to the above groups, or association with the same (such as through marriage) - but if you are NOT - if you are one of the one in five people in the Region who are considered poor, your chances of EVER climbing that supposed ladder to the next level are nil and none. It's the Family Compact or nothing in Niagara.
The fact of the matter is that job hogsmanship is very much of a reality here in Niagara. If somebody is a Teacher, for example, they are most likely married to an Owner, General Manager, Union Worker, Petite Bourgeoisie or a Merchant. They are less likely to come from single income families. These are the people that will have the vast majority of pension funds available to them upon retirement. These are the people who think nothing of taking a drive and going to a cottage somewhere north of Toronto most weekends in the summer. They usually have a backyard pool and their children are the first to get the best "summer jobs" the system has to offer them because these families have the contacts.
Unfortunately, these are also the very same people who are part of the new movement to "simplify things", "become green" and "give to the poor" (usually meaning African poor and not local poverty). They try to imagine or make the rest of us imagine that life can only be simpler if we all had our own little gardens and grew our own vegetables, cooked everything from scratch and cut coupons. These are all good ideas, but the one in five people I spoke of earlier are not: (a) likely to have a yard, let alone room to put in a garden; (b) have the time to play in the dirt to develop one even if they had a yard (e.g. most are working two or three minimum wage jobs just to pay the rent and feed the kids); (c) have the time or energy to cook from scratch; and (d) most do not have a vehicle in which to travel from one end of town to the other to "catch" various specials and use different coupons to save a dollar or two on the price of milk. Poverty is indeed expensive.
Poor people do not have the money to start and maintain a garden. They do not have the transportation to pick up the essentials for a garden, nor do they have the capacity to even retrieve free or low-cost items others may have for sale or give-away on the Internet or through the newspaper. Poor families in Niagara that do not have a car stay poor, regardless of how well educated and skilled they are. Employers do not want anybody who does not share the values and lifestyles of the Owners, General Managers, Union Workers, Petite Bourgeoisie or Merchants. Employers cannot relate to people who do not have an easy pick-up-and-go type of the lifestyle that they enjoy. People want to hire other people who are just like they are.
The expression "keeping up with the Joneses" has been around for a long time. People who have money have the means to compete with other people with money. People who are poor watch this happen and only feel left out of the game. The Joneses do not know that poor folks exist in Niagara, even though the Joneses may once in a blue moon drop off a non-perishable food item to the Food Bank or hand over a quarter to the occasional panhandler, but nobody in the Jones family or those who try to keep up with them have ever bothered to ask why there is so much poverty in Niagara Region, or if they do, why it is okay for the poor to accept their crumbs and not share the same opportunities for upward mobility that they have. People who are dual income earners tend to believe other adults come from the same background. I've met teachers that assume all parents can afford to send their kids to various field trips and pizza days. When they don't, the fault of course rests with parents or with the child who may not be "responsible enough" to bring in the required money for these things. Unfortunately, while our Board of Education pretends to respect all students equally, they in fact, do not. They expect low-income parents to beg for financial assistance from the schools in order for their children to be treated equally ... thus requiring these parents to give a type of personal disclosure that is not expected of other parents. They do not think for a minute that such disclosure only labels them as "damaged goods" and serves as a barrier for people to succeed in the community on their own merits. Receipt of "charity" is not as confidential as you think. People who accept "charity" are not the same people who get hired for the good jobs.
There are probably more cars per capita here in Niagara Region than anywhere else. There is absolutely nothing policy-wise or environmentally that is being done to curb the use of private vehicles. Niagara Region has a substantial amount of gridlock on most of its roadways, as well as highways. The Niagara Region is the only incorporated Region that does not support ANY inter-municipal transit. Why, do you ask? Because the leaders of this Region actually believe that EVERYBODY drives. If you don't, they assume there is something wrong with you. If you complain about discrimination in jobs, they say jobs are plentiful in call centres, cleaning hotels, picking fruit and doing other menial tasks, regardless of your education or career aspirations. Yet in the same breath, these same people complain about the lack of population growth and the fact that young college and university graduates LEAVE while they can. People do not use transit in Niagara unless they are: (a) one of the one in five people who are poor and marked for life; (b) mentally challenged (because we don't expect developmentally delayed adults to drive cars, do we?); (c) frail seniors (usually in their 70's and 80's); and (d) students, who are usually landlocked by student loans and cannot afford to keep up with the Joneses right now (though many of them come from these same types of middle income families from elsewhere that will eventually get them set for life). Unfortunately, this is a stigma that is carried over to employers and others in the Region, which has only further castrated our population into solid social classes and cultural division.
The reality that society has to face is clear. Not everybody has family support. I can count the number of my hundreds of clients I worked with over the years who are on social assistance or some other financial support who have families assisting them on my left hand. While this is true, governments continue to focus only on those people on my left hand who have families who are (a) available; (b) able; and (c) willing to provide financial support to their disabled relatives. There are whole workshops dedicated to issues like the Henson Trust, Registered Education Savings Plans, Registered Disability Support Plans, Segregated Funds, etc. To the vast majority of my people, these things mean absolutely nothing. It does not apply to their reality - because their loved ones may be dead, fragile themselves or they simply turned their backs on them years ago when the going got tough. Many of these people never settled into their first jobs and they are now in their 30's and 40's. Some have never driven a car. This is not going to happen for them without concerted and ongoing efforts on the part of government and community support organizations to get their heads out of the sand, to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses (as in my view, the Joneses do not need any more government help than they already get - which they do in fact get) and walk a mile in the shoes of my clients. We need to return the learning curve to normalization and integration, as opposed to marginalization and segregation, which is what we are doing so wrong today.
My clients want exactly the same thing everybody else wants:
1. They want to live in a home that is clean, safe and secure (e.g. poor people do not *need* staff to babysit them or tell them how to spend their money);
2. They want enough money to allow them to make a reasonable number of choices with respect to their lives (e.g. housing, food, transportation, telephone, entertainment, and support services that they choose). If they make mistakes, they want the right to accept the consequences and move on;
3. They want the right to continue their education, receive additional training and skills and have them count for something (instead of being blithely turned away from every job opportunity because they don't already have their own vehicles, know somebody who already works for the employer or belongs to the union already);
4. They want the right to access employment opportunities that reflect their actual skills, education, training and work experience, as opposed to low-wage ghettos they usually get referred to;
5. If they cannot work at all or are limited in their capabilities in working, they want to ensure that they have an income that can be counted on to cover ALL of their costs of living a reasonable lifestyle; and
6. They want the right to retire at some point in their lives without having to accept a McJob to subsidize the pithy government pensions they will be expected to live on.
These are things that folks with two incomes, two cars and an obsession with keeping up with the Joneses do not understand. They do not understand there are people who will not get to retire at all due to the declining value of public pensions (which do not keep up with the actual cost of living) or get to choose where they live, who their friends are or where they work. These are people who are quite often bullied at work, but say nothing about it because they know the only alternative is living on the streets, which is something apparently enshrined somewhere in Ontario Works legislation - that people in receipt of it should be pleased to even have a home, even if it is a garbage dumpster or a homeless shelter.
But most of all, this group does NOT understand that the reason that they are able to do so well is because so many others are not. Many middle, upper-middle and upper class families have the poor to thank for their positions, because if they had to pay their employees decent wages, pay the kind of taxes they really should be paying, or to cover the full cost of their consumption habits (like the poor seem to be expected to do) - they would not be able to keep up with the Joneses, or perhaps there may not even be any Joneses to keep up with. Other middle class folks, by virtue of their jobs, rely upon the existence of poor people to keep them in business. They certainly don't want to see poverty eradicated. As one of my readers, this should be easy for you to understand by now how one is ethically tied to fighting for one's own elimination if you happen to be one of those people who work to "serve" the poor.
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