Every once in awhile, the new Right through its various associations and accomplices chooses to attack government for the costs it generates. Their only solution it appears is to lower taxes, ease the burden on the upper classes to "encourage" investment. However, these same organizations are not present when it comes to how the government is going to cover the added costs of poverty that seems to almost always follow huge tax decreases for the well-heeled. The well-heeled just turn to a 'law and order' agenda and wonder why people are "going crazy" all of a sudden and how society is no longer safe. People even in small towns are interviewed and they tell the media how they used to keep their doors unlocked and can longer do so.
In my own community, while the rate of homicide and violent crimes seem to be decreasing, the rate for property-related and fraud-related crimes seems to be on the rise. We are constantly hearing about how debit machines are getting "rigged" to copy valuable information from people's magnetic strip on their cards and somehow high tech keypads pick up the P.I.N. numbers that are associated with the cards. The new fraudsters then go home to make copies of the unaware victims' debt cards and clean out their bank accounts. Home repair "contractors" go door to door to sign up unsuspecting customers who will give the "repair person" a down-payment who will then disappear with their money, never to return again to actually carry out the repairs. Telephone "fraudsters" will call and claim to represent a legitimate company or charity and ask for your credit card information to "upgrade" your existing cable, telephone or utility service that you currently subscribe to. Others with less cunning and less resources hang out on street corners to ask for spare change to take a bus or to buy a coffee. These incidents have risen geometrically over the past 20 years; however, our taxpayer federations continue to cry out how much we pay in taxes and how many people are "abusing" social services. They fail to see the connections I see with the rising rate of non-violent crimes involving property and fraud.
I talk to many of the business owners I know well in the downtown of my community. They feel bad about it, but they say if it were not for the drug dealers in the area, they'd probably be out of business. Legitimate consumers are decreasing in population, while those who are obtaining their profits through crime are increasing, it seems. We all complain that "somebody" needs to do something to "crack down" on fraud and so-called illegitimate claims for legitimate avenues, such as insurance cases, welfare benefits, worker's compensation, etc. At the same time, I am seeing a sharp increase in the number of legitimate claimants appearing at my office who have been unfairly robbed of their claims and are now losing their homes, businesses and families because of this. Where does this end? I know members of the general public have no clue what a legitimate claimant has to go through in order to claim what is legitimately theirs by law. Webpages, discussion groups and public forums are filled to the brim with people that think that "90% or more" of those claiming disability for example are perfectly able to work, but just don't want to. Others advocate that people with disabilities should be paid less because the writers are under the impression that disabled persons are less capable of contributing than a "regular person". Others complain of increased taxes going to "immigrants, welfare fraud and scammers", when in fact none of these people EVER personally experienced what they claim the "others" they speak of either experienced or claimed to be experiencing. The taxpayer's federations want more money to spend on foreign investments, foreign vacations and foreign products, because these particular individuals ALREADY have more than enough to spend on domestic products and services, so they just want to get greedy and get more.
A report called "Growing Gap" has been published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which shows that the top 10% of the income bracket (or those most likely to complain about so-called higher taxes) actually gained more than 16% in terms of real growth of net incomes over the past twenty years. Those in the so-called "middle classes", if there is such a thing anymore, have not gained much, except possibly a net gain of $53 per annum in real money (constant $2005 dollar) over the past twenty years. The lowest income brackets actually lost almost 20% of their real income over the past twenty years (and this is working low-income ... those forced to rely on government transfer programs are argued to have lost more than 30% over the past 20 years). This is not good enough apparently for those that want further taxes shaved off their annual tax bill ... they don't see any connection to how the suffering of the very poor can very well be connected to more taxes in the future for all of us (including the well-heeled that complain the loudest) and less property security.
All one has to do is sit in a bar or a doughnut shop or a drop-in centre to listen to what people are forced to do, the choices they are being forced to make -- one of course can always choose the honest path, but it turns out that if one does so, they will only fall further behind. If you want a clearer idea about how honesty destroys any chances of getting ahead, read "Why is it so tough to get ahead?" by John Stapleton and his associates at the Metcalf Foundation, which can be downloaded from here. People in subsidized housing are shot down the minute they declare earnings in excess of $100 a month; people on social assistance are shot down by 50% for any dollar they earn whatsoever; people whose annual income exceeds $20.000 a year even by a little bit, begin to lose access to subsidized housing and many other child-related benefits. Those that do not want to lose have to cheat to win, thus which is why we have laws to catch the so-called "scammers". Of course, Kimberly Rogers, of Sudbury, Ontario, who "cheated" welfare in order to get an education and get off the system eventually, was convicted of scamming welfare, because she was not permitted to collect welfare AND go to school. A whole inquest and dozens of recommendations later, nothing changed. Our taxpayers' coalitions and uneducated right continue to clamour on for more and deeper cuts, so they can afford two or even three SUVs and Florida vacations, while "other people" starve.
The reality of the matter is that we are ALL paying for poverty and allowing it to continue. The upper classes may not feel it as much, as most of their investments and concerns are not domestic. However, for everybody else, ranging from the barber, the baker and the candlestick-maker, they have all noticed the impact of increased and tolerated poverty in the past twenty years. Why?
The facts:
1. Poor people do not go to movies, rent videos, buy new clothing, buy jewellery, or eat out.
The more poor people there are, the less people there are in a community that is doing all of those things. This affects small business. Wealthy people who are now allowed to pay less taxes are not going to buy MORE domestic products, because they already have what they need. Why would a wealthy family, for example, go out and buy MORE groceries than they need just because they have more 'disposable' income? Those who are earning less, or getting less on their welfare incomes, are not spending as much, because the cost of their housing is crowding out any other income that would normally be used on groceries, clothing, transportation, eating out, etc.
2. Poor people have poorer health outcomes and are subject to higher health care costs.
One statistic that is particularly shocking is that poor people have four times as much chance of becoming diabetic than those of middle and upper income brackets, even when weight is factored in. Complications from diabetes, such as amputations, heart disease, blindness and high blood pressure are at least twice as likely in low-income diabetics than in diabetics from other social classes. This is even after access to medical plans and universal health care in Canada is accounted for. The poor are twice as likely to develop irreversible heart conditions as others. They are more than three times as likely to suffer from nosocomial (or hospital-based) infections than other people and are more likely to be put into nursing homes, where care is less than optimal. Some people have argued this is almost a deliberate strategy to save money, but most of these people do not die right away, but end up costing hundreds of thousands of more dollars to the system -- even the U.S.-based health care system -- than middle and upper class persons do.
3. Poor families are more likely to be a target of child protection services.
How many of you heard of a wealthy family having their children apprehended from them for reasons of supposed neglect? If this happens at all, it is rare. The wealthy have good lawyers and are also able to hide any neglect they might impose if they were prone to this. The statistics also show that 87% of families that have children's aid involved with them on an ongoing basis are low-income or working class families. The poor are more likely to have a child apprehended from them, usually on the basis of 'environmental conditions'. Perhaps, their teachers reported seeing them without a proper winter coat or regularly coming to school without lunches. Explored further, there are always skeletons that can be exposed in ANY family, but wealthy families do not attract this kind of attention. At a cost of $2,300 per month per child, we as taxpayers need to ask good questions about the accountability of the child protection system and whether or not it is being operated on the basis of social class and culture, as opposed to actual signs of abuse and neglect.
4. Poverty breeds crime.
Middle and upper income people believe that welfare is "prone" to abuse and that because of this, tighter controls need to be placed on recipients. Some even advocate food stamps and direct-pay for rental housing (which if studies of these policies were examined would learn that social class becomes caste-like and stratification between classes becomes impossible for most). What happens to people who have little in a society that seems to have plenty is that some of the poor will attempt to acquire what they feel they deserve through illegal or illicit means ,,, people turn to prostitution, drug dealing, small time theft rings, fraud, etc. to supplement their meagre incomes. Who are these people defrauding? You and me. You and I are the people that answer our phones to "charities" asking for our credit card numbers. You and I use "debit machines" where fraudsters are learning more and more sophisticated skills in skimming. You are I are working in the retail business that is becoming more and more subject to shoplifters and outright robberies. You and I are having to lock our doors, install security systems and take taxis home in order to protect ourselves from the 'seedy' side of our population.
While criminals may have a later motive for drug purchases and addiction, they almost always started with a motive of poverty. They have to pay their rent. They have to eat. They have to earn an income. They have to pay child support. Around them are commercials for fancy home renovations, brand new computerized cars, fancy cell phones, computers and other gadgets that "the rest" of society can afford without having to turn to crime. We think nothing of replacing our car every two or three years, replacing a computer every four years and buying new clothes to attend the latest gala function or wedding of a family or friend. People living in poverty cannot do these things. Some of them suffer because they do not want to risk committing a crime; others become less shy about knocking off the nearest variety store to get what they want ... or get engaged in the drug trade. In seedy neighbourhoods, the drug trade is open and available and for young kids that get nothing at home, the opportunity to drive a nice car, wear expensive jewellery and dress in fashionable clothing is too great. What are we doing as a society other than worsening the situation by sending out non-verbal signals that people of low-incomes are somehow less deserving of a modern life?
Mental health is a major loser as well in all this throw for show societal expectations among us. People who live in subsidized housing and CANNOT get ahead because of housing rules are bound to break them. People who cannot get ahead due to stringent treatment of earnings on welfare are bound to break them. Think about it. If you were forced to pay 80% of your income on taxes today, only to pay a bit more as your income goes up ... will you be less likely to claim your extra income? The rate of tax evasion and "cheating" on income taxes outnumbers the number of people who cheat on welfare by 10 to 1, not because welfare recipients are more honest, but because the dogs are on them all the time! Unfortunately, for many -- NOT claiming their income while on welfare or in subsidized housing is probably the only way they will break the cycle of poverty. This certainly needs to be looked at by the government folks assigned to look into poverty, but even doing this is not going to get poor people to spend more or make them healthier.
This is a very complex situation that needs more of an examination than the cursory one that is given today. Unfortunately, it is the food banks, the charities and the homeless shelters, as well as certain public services that benefit from the presence of the poor ... and these organizations need to be dealt with, not put in charge of any anti-poverty strategy. There are staffers of food banks and homeless shelters making $80,000 and above - why would they want to truly see poverty ended? Wouldn't there be a better incentive by government for example to fund people on the basis of poverty-reduction, as opposed to continuation of the same old - same old? I am not saying many of these people do not have a conscience or are not concerned, but their very livelihoods and thus, their financial interests are geared toward the rapid increase of poverty today!
Poverty is bad for business because poor people do not spend. Poverty is bad for business because poor people cost more in terms of health care, corrections, social services and related expenses. Businesses do not benefit from having to pay more taxes to cover the costs of these things. Poverty is bad for business because there will soon be less and less places to safely locate one's business without having to put up with panhandlers and drug dealers outside your front door. Because we ALL know inherently this is true, I am calling on ALL OF YOU to push the government into developing a serious -- and not superficial or politically smooth sounding plan -- to not only reduce, but to eliminate poverty altogether! It should be considered the scourge of a modern society to even accept the presence of poverty amidst our so-called wealth!
Your thoughts?
Showing posts with label Ontario. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ontario. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
PRE-BUDGET SUBMISSION (ONTARIO)
2008 ONTARIO BUDGET
Input into Budget Priorities
TO the Minister of Finance; Standing Committee
on Finance and Economic Affairs; and Cabinet
Committee on Poverty Issues
BY YOUR FAVOURITE BLOGGER
at her legal office's physical address ;-)
SUMMARY
In the mandate of the present Government, incremental and piecemeal approaches to end poverty were favoured over approaches that actually served to reduce or eliminate poverty in vulnerable sectors. It is my position that incremental or piecemeal approaches that favour some groups above others do not in fact reduce or eliminate poverty or the costs associated with it. A refreshing proposal by the present Government to define poverty and identify ways to reduce it by 25% in five years is respected and favoured; however, my question is – who gets to get pulled out of poverty first?
INTRODUCTION
I am an Independent Paralegal with a substantial practice in areas of Labour, Disability and Human Rights issues, as well as providing traditional services in the courts and tribunals where Paralegals are permitted to appear. I work with approximately 50 – 100 clients on an annual basis, ranging from short-term retainers to full cases that end in a Hearing or Appeal. I am also involved in a number of Coalitions, steering groups and panels that are involved in poverty and employment-related issues. For seven years, I also provided on a contractual basis, Employment Supports to persons with disabilities in the Niagara Region. Further, I manage or co-manage a number of Internet sites related to disability, poverty, human rights and related issues, which have a collective audience of almost 10,000 persons, most of whom are from Ontario, or from other parts of Canada. I am also a published writer who has been published over the past twenty years in a number of publications, ranging from street newspapers to news magazines to peer-reviewed journals. Because of this, my experience and work puts me in touch with poverty and labour issues on a day-to-day basis – thus putting me in a position to understand how policies and priorities set out by any Government can succeed or fail in its stated objective of poverty reduction.
This presentation is a representation of my own views and experience and does not necessarily reflect the views of mentioned organizations and committees with which I have been involved.
SUBMISSION
Like most analysts, I note a number of efforts have already been undertaken by your Government towards the amelioration of poverty. These efforts are noted as follows:
1. Ontario Child Benefit
2. Shelter Allowance (ROOF)
3. A 3%, 2% and 2% increase to Ontario Works/ODSP rates
4. Regulatory changes to permit increased earnings, assets and related measures for OW/ODSP recipients; &
5. Some other changes to related programs and services, such as WSIB, OSAP, among others.
In the last provincial election, among your renewed promises was a commitment by your Government to set up a Cabinet Committee to define, track and reduce poverty by 25% or more over the next five (5) years. This promise was one that was applauded by virtually every anti-poverty organization across Ontario and by the Toronto Star. Please understand if these same organizations become less than pleased if they do not see any new initiatives or better targeted efforts in this budget towards this end. The ‘rumour mill’ has it that your Government has no plans to add anything new, other than what it had already started in last year’s budget (e.g. Ontario Child Benefit). That in my view will not lead to any further applause from anybody.
The majority of poor people I represent or have worked with are persons with disabilities. The substantial majority of persons with disabilities are single and in some other cases, married or common law couples, with no children under eighteen years of age living with them. Many have children, but they have grown up and since started their own lives, or in the case of many persons with disabilities, remained single because ODSP itself penalizes people for engaging in relationships (unless the person they are engaging a relationship with is also on ODSP). Approximately 12%-15% are single, married or common law with children under the age of eighteen living with them.
For the most part, other than example # 3 (above), these people have not benefited from any of your new budgetary initiatives announced in 2007, and for them – the 3%, 2% and 2% increases are barely a drop in the bucket when compared to the spending power lost since 1993, when the rates were last raised before November 2004, when your Government initiated its first raise. Even with the total of all of the raises implemented, this only brings people on ODSP up to the same spending power they had in perhaps 1995 or 1996, but not much further. Yet since then, inflation, rent hikes, electricity rates, gas rates, transit fares, grocery prices have increased by more than 25% since then.
As pointed out to your Government by many participants in this process, including the ODSP Action Coalition and others, neither OW or ODSP rates are based on any rational criteria and are certainly not set in relation to the actual costs of shelter and other basic necessities. While most people on assistance do rent, many also do own their own homes. Homeowners who are in receipt of OW/ODSP have been left off your radar. Many have had their homes prior to getting put on ODSP or were able to acquire them later through the assistance of an inheritance or similar windfall. These people have no interest in joining the lengthening wait lists for social housing … they just want to be able to continue to afford to live where they live now, as well as improve their properties to reduce energy use and/or modify their surroundings to fit their family’s needs. Even for those that do rent and choose to join the wait list for social housing, the wait is quite long and it is not unheard of to be put on the list when their children are in grade school, but not be accepted until their children are of age and ready to leave home. A recent article in the Toronto Star cited the wait list in Peel Region to be approximately 22 years. In most regions, it is 7 to 10 years.
Long wait lists for social housing are not present because of demand for their ‘high quality’ abodes. In fact, most families I know that are *not* on the wait list are not there because they choose better neighbourhoods for their children and wish to live in properties that have at least an acceptable standard of maintenance in them. While it is not your Government’s choice, but large municipalities across Ontario are stuck with bills of hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance for the housing that is already there … let alone, build any more. If my family were faced with the choice, we would rather stay where we are – despite the fact we pay over 50% of our income on housing.
Long wait lists are in fact based on artificial demand that would not be necessary at all if people had sufficient means to afford “market rents”. The wait lists are there because OW/ODSP and even minimum wage rates are set without any rational criteria of what it actually costs to meet basic needs. The answer to this is not to build more and more of this type of housing that will only meet the needs of a few, and eventually fade into disrepair and neglect, but to ensure that ALL people have the means to afford average housing costs in their region of residence and family size, using tables of average rents by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Neither housing or utility costs should be taken out of an individual or family’s ‘basic needs’ budget.
Further, many other commodities have increased in price over and above the rate of inflation over the years. For example, it was your Government’s decision to remove the cap on hydro rates and provide for hikes in the rates for natural gas. In my own family’s case, even with the purchase of CFC bulbs, washing in cold water among other methods within our control, our hydro bills have more than doubled over the past five years. We cannot afford energy-efficient appliances to reduce our output. In effect, our family, like many other families are held hostage to higher hydro rates, while families of better financial means can acquire energy-efficient appliances and home improvements to reduce their output. Despite specific lobbying efforts by organizations like the Low Income Energy Network, your Government has yet to announce a realistic program that would actually reduce output for families of low or modest means. This is the time to roll such a program out, especially if your Government wants to continue to push for the placement of smart meters and further increase utility rates.
Grocery costs go up along with the price of gas. There is a movement afoot in many communities to get more people to shop locally. However, if you are poor and have no means of transportation to get to these places, you are forced to pay higher prices for imported goods at supermarkets. Further, if you have medical problems, finding the kinds of food that you need to eat to keep healthy is more difficult and expensive. The Special Diet Allowance was significantly cut to many individuals and families with medical problems, making it even more costly and difficult for them to meet these costs. Many medical problems are not considered for the allocation of special diet, but still respond to dietary interventions. For those conditions that are listed, the amount of monies allocated is insufficient. Given that most ODSP recipients pay at least 70% or more of their income for housing alone, it becomes less rational to justify the low rates they are given to meet these costs.
As a taxpayer, I also know the cost of delivering health care is increasing to a point where health care allocations that once took 25% of our provincial spending now takes up almost half. Health care economists have stated in numerous forums that the increase in health care expenditure is not necessarily related to the ageing population, as this factor plays in less than 2% in the amount of increased spending. While part of the increase is also the cost of new pharmaceuticals, it is MY position that the largest part of the cause of increased health care costs rests with the increased burden of poverty. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences has already determined that diabetes, for example, is four times more likely to happen to somebody in a lower socioeconomic status than it is for somebody of more comfortable means. Low-income diabetics are also twice as likely as others to suffer from complications of the condition, such as blindness and heart disease.
Over the course of my career, I learned of many hypothetical situations that can be applied to these learnings. For example, it is not unheard of for somebody living on ODSP as a single person in my region to pay more than 75% of their income on housing, sometimes even more. In many cases, that leaves a person on ODSP with less than $100 a month to spend on food, transportation, clothing, health care, etc. If such a person is already diabetic, they are highly vulnerable to complications, such as heart disease. Older, more fragile patients may be referred to live in an assisted-care facility. Because such facilities don’t exist for younger people, they often end up in nursing homes, whereby the health care system now covers the cost of the nursing home (where monthly fees can exceed $3,500 even in a modest facility), the health care itself, plus continue to pay the person their ODSP allowance …
In another hypothetical, a working woman who does not earn enough to cover health care expenses is a fragile diabetic, where genetically, she has inherited a tendency to complications … she does all the right things, sees the right doctors and tries to follow a diet and quits smoking. However, she needs an insulin pump to defray substantial fluctuations in her blood glucose level. It is known that even for a short time if glucose levels are too high, permanent damage can ensue. She becomes too ill to work and because her workplace is not likely to have disability or sickness coverage, she is forced to turn to EI (if she is even eligible) and after that, welfare. Because she is not able to maintain a reasonable diet on OW/ ODSP rates, she becomes very ill and suffers blindness, kidney failure and/or an amputation of her leg. How much would an insulin pump cost the system if it meant this person can continue working and avoid complications? How much would it cost the system to increase the first example’s ODSP rates so that she would be able to eat properly and live independently, as opposed to spending thousands of dollars afterwards on a monthly basis to “maintain her” in a lower quality of existence? When priorities are set for the budget, not only should the costs of doing things be considered (e.g. increasing ODSP rates, broadening coverage for medical devices), but the cost of NOT doing things.
Poverty is expensive. Reducing and eliminating poverty may cost something at first, but over time – savings will be realized as we can then notice there will be reduced costs for urgent and emergency health care, assisted care facilities for younger people, policing (as the vast majority of people convicted of crime are living in poverty), band-aids (as caring for homeless persons does cost upwards of $40,000 a year in Toronto), etc. However, by not reducing poverty and allowing it to flourish, our costs for everything ranging from health care to education to policing and corrections will sharply increase. We only have the U.S. to look to for leadership in this area, where they are building more prisons than they are housing homeless people, while still imposing spiraling taxation on its people.
Many people argue that the best “cure” for poverty is a job.
However, there are many problems with this theory. More and more people have jobs, even more than one job, but they still cannot escape poverty. Other than minimum wages, labour laws do not provide for guarantees of job security, provision of benefits, number of hours and other “measures” of a job that determine the quality of the job. Nor do any laws in our country force any employer to hire any particular person …
Official unemployment statistics are not accurate so far as they do not measure involuntary part-time employment, contract or involuntary “self-employment” or people who have thus far given up looking for a job. I just learned from a friend that she had just lost a job she had for a couple of years and loved … she loved her job so much that her face literally lit up the room whenever she spoke about things she was involved with at her work. She spoke very highly about her employer, until … a new manager came in and decided he no longer liked her and let her go. She is now for the first time in her life on a job hunt in a very economically depressed region of this province. This is what it is like for somebody who is so-called “employable”.
What about those of us who are too old, too young, over-qualified, under-qualified, too disabled, too smart, too reserved, etc. for today’s seemingly competitive job market that rules out all but the most healthy, quickest and youngest of the roost? Does your Government plan to force employers to hire people from among these ‘less desirable’ categories? Because the answer is likely no, I would only demand the alternative – that those who cannot, for whatever reason, find work that pays them enough to meet their basic needs – that a social safety net be available that would provide them enough to support themselves and their families in relative dignity.
As made clear above, the existing social safety net does not do that. In fact, I am privy to a number of people who should not be working (due to a disability) who try to work anyways because our once strong social safety net has since been torn to tatters … and since returning to work, many of these people have been turfed out of their job, forced to quit, become re-injured, or ended up hospitalized as a result of an exacerbation of an illness or disability they have … but cannot get enough money on Ontario Works or ODSP to even cover basic costs, such as housing. How this work or starve mentality benefits employers is beyond me … or even the rest of us that must pay for their injuries, health care and unemployment through our taxes. At the same time, many injured workers try to return to work only to have employers illegally terminate them and WSIB deny benefits to such a point where such a worker ends up having to turn to OW /ODSP for basics. Technically, there are laws in place to protect people, but unfortunately, these same laws are broken again and again to no avail.
If your Government believes a job is the best social policy, then it must do something about jobs. That means:
1. Increase in minimum wage to $10/hour now;
2. Tying ANY government support or subsidy to a living wage policy (meaning that the minimum salary offered must be in itself able to meet all basic needs of a family in the region where the job is offered);
3. Toughening labour standards and enforcement to increase job security and reduce incidence of workplace harassment and bullying – including contracting with so-called staffing agencies;
4. Penalizing employers and company owners for labour law violations in a meaningful way;
5. Improved enforcements of the Human Rights Code (including proactive measures to prevent discrimination from starting in the first place); and
6. Targeted programs where necessary to improve the likelihood of qualified persons with disabilities, older persons, newcomers and others traditionally impacted by job discrimination, in not only obtaining work, but finding work that meets their skills/training/education.
IF all of the above is done in short order, we may expect greater job security for many people not otherwise given it. However, not everybody can work. People may be sick, disabled, or are caregivers to others (children, elderly or disabled persons) and unable to take a job. Others are looking for work and are in between jobs. These people must also have a decent income to resort to. The amount currently received on Ontario Works is shameful and an embarrassment to a wealthy province such as ours. Even ODSP rates are shameful, given that inflation has eroded its value over many years.
Social assistance rates of any kind (OW/ ODSP) must be adjusted to reflect realistic rates for shelter, utilities, telephone, transportation, clothing and a healthy diet, at minimum. Persons who are on ODSP and are either unable to work or have limited options (such as only able to work in a specific field, be self-employed or work only part-time) MUST have an income that not only includes the basics, but also includes enough to cover social costs. It is not pleasant to be a prisoner in your own home. Many people on ODSP in my region do not even have the money for bus fare to go anywhere in the community, let alone pay fees for programs once they get there. For these people, a television set that breaks down is a crisis for them. Most cannot even dream of purchasing new clothes, and often continue to wear old, damaged clothing. I have seen ODSP recipients go without winter clothing in the dead of a January freeze. Many of these people simply layer several sweaters over one another and limit the number of times they leave their homes. A true measurement of reduction of poverty is a substantial decrease in the number of people relying on food banks and emergency shelters, as well as a decrease in the number of food banks and shelters in service anywhere in the province. In my view, nobody in Ontario should be using a food bank or emergency shelter. We should be rescuing animals, not homeless people - because there should be NO homeless people.
Setting rates for OW/ ODSP should be done through an independent process that includes social policy experts, anti-poverty workers and poor people themselves. Politicians are not adequately knowledgeable about how much one needs as a bare minimum to survive … as most politicians come from comfortable backgrounds prior to being elected and after voting themselves a 27% increase last year, certainly know nothing about the availability of low-cost housing in their area or what a basic food basket actually costs an average family. Politicians however can have the political will to work with an independent process and allow significant input by people who actually know the costs of things, as well as the costs of not doing things.
Politicians through this process also need to set targets and make one another, as well as relevant departments accountable for meeting these targets. For example, anti-poverty measures are not only about getting more good-paying jobs and increasing social assistance rates. Anti-poverty measures also include: childcare policy, education policy, availability and cost of local/regional transit options, availability of home ownership, retirement options and access to community amenities.
For example, I live in a Region where politicians don’t feel there are many people that don’t drive. In their view, everybody drives or has “family and friends” to take them places. As a result, our Region’s social class structure is predicated upon whether or not you and your family have access to a personal vehicle. People that do not drive or cannot afford to do so are stuck in low-paying job ghettos – retail, service, call centres – while those that do drive do have access to better paying jobs, where they do exist. This is regardless of your education and skills. I have witnessed situations where high school or college drop-outs were favoured in a job simply because they had a car, over a better educated candidate that didn’t drive. That has to stop – IMMEDIATELY. Unless the job involves driving a taxi, delivering parcels or acting as a door-to-door salesperson, the ownership of a vehicle or driver’s license should be a NON-ISSUE.
In these other areas, priorities for the Anti-Poverty Cabinet should also include (in addition to jobs and increased OW/ODSP assistance rates), the following:
1. Funding for an inter-municipal transit system in Niagara (and similar communities across Ontario) that is accessible, affordable, reliable and convenient – as well as money for improvements in local transit systems;
2. Funding for GO Transit service beyond Hamilton. Niagara is always the “one left out”. Because Niagara has very poor transit policy, we are among the worst communities when it comes to air quality and access. There are too many people living in this Region that have never left their own city because they can’t afford the cab fare to get from one city to the next, nor can they afford the $8,000 or more a year it takes to own and maintain a vehicle on an annual basis. Many of these people cannot find work or work only in marginal jobs, because most jobs require people to own a car.
3. Better access to childcare. This is not just pre-school care, but after-school and school holiday care. If a Government believes the best anti-poverty policy is a job, then they need to help people get to the jobs as well as help people remain in the jobs, esp. if they have children. There are too many school holidays, whereby low-income families cannot afford a nanny or daycare for these school holidays and after school. Otherwise, we see the rise of ‘latch key’ children who are more likely to get into trouble than the children of families that have comfortable incomes and external family support. Not everybody has family members and neighbours that can help them in this way.
4. A different approach to public education. If a child is in a public school, it should cost them ZERO for everything … ranging from textbooks, to lab materials, to art supplies, to school trips, to school dances, etc. This should apply whether the child is from a rich family or a poor family. Children know what social class they are in just by being in school … those that “get sick” on the days of school trips or are “allergic to pizza” on pizza days, are well known to their peers and subject to ostracism. When is this going to stop?
5. Respect for and access to higher education. There are many people on ODSP – some say as many as 1 in 6 ODSP household heads – who are university educated. Why is their employment supports program only geared to helping people into low-paid, dead-end employment? If somebody with a disability is university educated and possibly experienced in a particular field, THESE FOLKS are the ones that should be getting government jobs and other good-paying jobs in their community and be assisted this way. High school drop-outs should not be given access to these jobs, but instead be assisted in their educational and/or vocational training goals, which will eventually steer them into a meaningful career goal.
The Canadian Association of Professionals with Disabilities clearly identifies the marginalization of university educated professionals that have disabling health conditions … they should be seen as potential assets to the looming labour shortage and be steered in the direction of higher paid jobs as close as possible to their fields of education and/or work experience. For those seeking a higher education, OSAP needs to be reviewed to ensure it is accessible to people with low-incomes and/or in receipt of OW/ODSP – it cannot be assumed that people on OW/ ODSP have enough $$ to meet their living expenses while attending school (by disallowing OSAP contributions to the same). Also, work needs to be done to increase access to grants and forgivable loans to people living in poverty.
5. Make the Ontario Child Benefit equally beneficial to working families and families that receive OW/ ODSP. At the current time, the implementation for the OCB is too little, too late. The total amount of income must be increased and social assistance should not be clawed-back or "restructured” in any way to accommodate the Ontario Child Benefit. If working families will benefit by up to $95 per child, so should people on assistance. The clawback of the National Child Benefit cannot be addressed by using another clawback, which leads to people on OW/ ODSP getting yet another clawback to accommodate OCB, and be only marginally better off.
6. Housing/ shelter subsidies. This should be addressed by increasing OW/ ODSP rates and by topping up the income of working poor families to enable them to afford “market rate” shelter, owned or rented. The way of measuring this is to ensure that no individual or family has to dip into the “basic needs” part of the budget or their groceries to pay for housing/utilities.
In summary, if the Ontario Government wants to reduce poverty, it must act more quickly and address the issue more broadly in order for its impact to make a difference. It must address the needs of singles and couples, as well as families – and address the needs of all low-income people better, so the “need for” expensive subsidized housing projects can be reduced – if all people can afford to pay “market” rate – rented or owned.
If the Ontario Government chooses to continue on its existing path, it will not reduce poverty and in fact, with the threat of an oncoming recession, the “poverty problem” may even become worse. In short, I want the Government to define poverty as the national emergency it is and to act accordingly, such as putting immediate priority and resources into its eradication, and to involve anti-poverty groups, social policy experts and poor communities themselves to participate in setting the new agenda. As an independently set agenda, it is removed from the political process, although politicians will also be forced to engage consideration of low-income issues on seemingly unrelated matters, such as energy policy.
Submitted by browneassociates
January 30th, 2008
Input into Budget Priorities
TO the Minister of Finance; Standing Committee
on Finance and Economic Affairs; and Cabinet
Committee on Poverty Issues
BY YOUR FAVOURITE BLOGGER
at her legal office's physical address ;-)
SUMMARY
In the mandate of the present Government, incremental and piecemeal approaches to end poverty were favoured over approaches that actually served to reduce or eliminate poverty in vulnerable sectors. It is my position that incremental or piecemeal approaches that favour some groups above others do not in fact reduce or eliminate poverty or the costs associated with it. A refreshing proposal by the present Government to define poverty and identify ways to reduce it by 25% in five years is respected and favoured; however, my question is – who gets to get pulled out of poverty first?
INTRODUCTION
I am an Independent Paralegal with a substantial practice in areas of Labour, Disability and Human Rights issues, as well as providing traditional services in the courts and tribunals where Paralegals are permitted to appear. I work with approximately 50 – 100 clients on an annual basis, ranging from short-term retainers to full cases that end in a Hearing or Appeal. I am also involved in a number of Coalitions, steering groups and panels that are involved in poverty and employment-related issues. For seven years, I also provided on a contractual basis, Employment Supports to persons with disabilities in the Niagara Region. Further, I manage or co-manage a number of Internet sites related to disability, poverty, human rights and related issues, which have a collective audience of almost 10,000 persons, most of whom are from Ontario, or from other parts of Canada. I am also a published writer who has been published over the past twenty years in a number of publications, ranging from street newspapers to news magazines to peer-reviewed journals. Because of this, my experience and work puts me in touch with poverty and labour issues on a day-to-day basis – thus putting me in a position to understand how policies and priorities set out by any Government can succeed or fail in its stated objective of poverty reduction.
This presentation is a representation of my own views and experience and does not necessarily reflect the views of mentioned organizations and committees with which I have been involved.
SUBMISSION
Like most analysts, I note a number of efforts have already been undertaken by your Government towards the amelioration of poverty. These efforts are noted as follows:
1. Ontario Child Benefit
2. Shelter Allowance (ROOF)
3. A 3%, 2% and 2% increase to Ontario Works/ODSP rates
4. Regulatory changes to permit increased earnings, assets and related measures for OW/ODSP recipients; &
5. Some other changes to related programs and services, such as WSIB, OSAP, among others.
In the last provincial election, among your renewed promises was a commitment by your Government to set up a Cabinet Committee to define, track and reduce poverty by 25% or more over the next five (5) years. This promise was one that was applauded by virtually every anti-poverty organization across Ontario and by the Toronto Star. Please understand if these same organizations become less than pleased if they do not see any new initiatives or better targeted efforts in this budget towards this end. The ‘rumour mill’ has it that your Government has no plans to add anything new, other than what it had already started in last year’s budget (e.g. Ontario Child Benefit). That in my view will not lead to any further applause from anybody.
The majority of poor people I represent or have worked with are persons with disabilities. The substantial majority of persons with disabilities are single and in some other cases, married or common law couples, with no children under eighteen years of age living with them. Many have children, but they have grown up and since started their own lives, or in the case of many persons with disabilities, remained single because ODSP itself penalizes people for engaging in relationships (unless the person they are engaging a relationship with is also on ODSP). Approximately 12%-15% are single, married or common law with children under the age of eighteen living with them.
For the most part, other than example # 3 (above), these people have not benefited from any of your new budgetary initiatives announced in 2007, and for them – the 3%, 2% and 2% increases are barely a drop in the bucket when compared to the spending power lost since 1993, when the rates were last raised before November 2004, when your Government initiated its first raise. Even with the total of all of the raises implemented, this only brings people on ODSP up to the same spending power they had in perhaps 1995 or 1996, but not much further. Yet since then, inflation, rent hikes, electricity rates, gas rates, transit fares, grocery prices have increased by more than 25% since then.
As pointed out to your Government by many participants in this process, including the ODSP Action Coalition and others, neither OW or ODSP rates are based on any rational criteria and are certainly not set in relation to the actual costs of shelter and other basic necessities. While most people on assistance do rent, many also do own their own homes. Homeowners who are in receipt of OW/ODSP have been left off your radar. Many have had their homes prior to getting put on ODSP or were able to acquire them later through the assistance of an inheritance or similar windfall. These people have no interest in joining the lengthening wait lists for social housing … they just want to be able to continue to afford to live where they live now, as well as improve their properties to reduce energy use and/or modify their surroundings to fit their family’s needs. Even for those that do rent and choose to join the wait list for social housing, the wait is quite long and it is not unheard of to be put on the list when their children are in grade school, but not be accepted until their children are of age and ready to leave home. A recent article in the Toronto Star cited the wait list in Peel Region to be approximately 22 years. In most regions, it is 7 to 10 years.
Long wait lists for social housing are not present because of demand for their ‘high quality’ abodes. In fact, most families I know that are *not* on the wait list are not there because they choose better neighbourhoods for their children and wish to live in properties that have at least an acceptable standard of maintenance in them. While it is not your Government’s choice, but large municipalities across Ontario are stuck with bills of hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance for the housing that is already there … let alone, build any more. If my family were faced with the choice, we would rather stay where we are – despite the fact we pay over 50% of our income on housing.
Long wait lists are in fact based on artificial demand that would not be necessary at all if people had sufficient means to afford “market rents”. The wait lists are there because OW/ODSP and even minimum wage rates are set without any rational criteria of what it actually costs to meet basic needs. The answer to this is not to build more and more of this type of housing that will only meet the needs of a few, and eventually fade into disrepair and neglect, but to ensure that ALL people have the means to afford average housing costs in their region of residence and family size, using tables of average rents by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Neither housing or utility costs should be taken out of an individual or family’s ‘basic needs’ budget.
Further, many other commodities have increased in price over and above the rate of inflation over the years. For example, it was your Government’s decision to remove the cap on hydro rates and provide for hikes in the rates for natural gas. In my own family’s case, even with the purchase of CFC bulbs, washing in cold water among other methods within our control, our hydro bills have more than doubled over the past five years. We cannot afford energy-efficient appliances to reduce our output. In effect, our family, like many other families are held hostage to higher hydro rates, while families of better financial means can acquire energy-efficient appliances and home improvements to reduce their output. Despite specific lobbying efforts by organizations like the Low Income Energy Network, your Government has yet to announce a realistic program that would actually reduce output for families of low or modest means. This is the time to roll such a program out, especially if your Government wants to continue to push for the placement of smart meters and further increase utility rates.
Grocery costs go up along with the price of gas. There is a movement afoot in many communities to get more people to shop locally. However, if you are poor and have no means of transportation to get to these places, you are forced to pay higher prices for imported goods at supermarkets. Further, if you have medical problems, finding the kinds of food that you need to eat to keep healthy is more difficult and expensive. The Special Diet Allowance was significantly cut to many individuals and families with medical problems, making it even more costly and difficult for them to meet these costs. Many medical problems are not considered for the allocation of special diet, but still respond to dietary interventions. For those conditions that are listed, the amount of monies allocated is insufficient. Given that most ODSP recipients pay at least 70% or more of their income for housing alone, it becomes less rational to justify the low rates they are given to meet these costs.
As a taxpayer, I also know the cost of delivering health care is increasing to a point where health care allocations that once took 25% of our provincial spending now takes up almost half. Health care economists have stated in numerous forums that the increase in health care expenditure is not necessarily related to the ageing population, as this factor plays in less than 2% in the amount of increased spending. While part of the increase is also the cost of new pharmaceuticals, it is MY position that the largest part of the cause of increased health care costs rests with the increased burden of poverty. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences has already determined that diabetes, for example, is four times more likely to happen to somebody in a lower socioeconomic status than it is for somebody of more comfortable means. Low-income diabetics are also twice as likely as others to suffer from complications of the condition, such as blindness and heart disease.
Over the course of my career, I learned of many hypothetical situations that can be applied to these learnings. For example, it is not unheard of for somebody living on ODSP as a single person in my region to pay more than 75% of their income on housing, sometimes even more. In many cases, that leaves a person on ODSP with less than $100 a month to spend on food, transportation, clothing, health care, etc. If such a person is already diabetic, they are highly vulnerable to complications, such as heart disease. Older, more fragile patients may be referred to live in an assisted-care facility. Because such facilities don’t exist for younger people, they often end up in nursing homes, whereby the health care system now covers the cost of the nursing home (where monthly fees can exceed $3,500 even in a modest facility), the health care itself, plus continue to pay the person their ODSP allowance …
In another hypothetical, a working woman who does not earn enough to cover health care expenses is a fragile diabetic, where genetically, she has inherited a tendency to complications … she does all the right things, sees the right doctors and tries to follow a diet and quits smoking. However, she needs an insulin pump to defray substantial fluctuations in her blood glucose level. It is known that even for a short time if glucose levels are too high, permanent damage can ensue. She becomes too ill to work and because her workplace is not likely to have disability or sickness coverage, she is forced to turn to EI (if she is even eligible) and after that, welfare. Because she is not able to maintain a reasonable diet on OW/ ODSP rates, she becomes very ill and suffers blindness, kidney failure and/or an amputation of her leg. How much would an insulin pump cost the system if it meant this person can continue working and avoid complications? How much would it cost the system to increase the first example’s ODSP rates so that she would be able to eat properly and live independently, as opposed to spending thousands of dollars afterwards on a monthly basis to “maintain her” in a lower quality of existence? When priorities are set for the budget, not only should the costs of doing things be considered (e.g. increasing ODSP rates, broadening coverage for medical devices), but the cost of NOT doing things.
Poverty is expensive. Reducing and eliminating poverty may cost something at first, but over time – savings will be realized as we can then notice there will be reduced costs for urgent and emergency health care, assisted care facilities for younger people, policing (as the vast majority of people convicted of crime are living in poverty), band-aids (as caring for homeless persons does cost upwards of $40,000 a year in Toronto), etc. However, by not reducing poverty and allowing it to flourish, our costs for everything ranging from health care to education to policing and corrections will sharply increase. We only have the U.S. to look to for leadership in this area, where they are building more prisons than they are housing homeless people, while still imposing spiraling taxation on its people.
Many people argue that the best “cure” for poverty is a job.
However, there are many problems with this theory. More and more people have jobs, even more than one job, but they still cannot escape poverty. Other than minimum wages, labour laws do not provide for guarantees of job security, provision of benefits, number of hours and other “measures” of a job that determine the quality of the job. Nor do any laws in our country force any employer to hire any particular person …
Official unemployment statistics are not accurate so far as they do not measure involuntary part-time employment, contract or involuntary “self-employment” or people who have thus far given up looking for a job. I just learned from a friend that she had just lost a job she had for a couple of years and loved … she loved her job so much that her face literally lit up the room whenever she spoke about things she was involved with at her work. She spoke very highly about her employer, until … a new manager came in and decided he no longer liked her and let her go. She is now for the first time in her life on a job hunt in a very economically depressed region of this province. This is what it is like for somebody who is so-called “employable”.
What about those of us who are too old, too young, over-qualified, under-qualified, too disabled, too smart, too reserved, etc. for today’s seemingly competitive job market that rules out all but the most healthy, quickest and youngest of the roost? Does your Government plan to force employers to hire people from among these ‘less desirable’ categories? Because the answer is likely no, I would only demand the alternative – that those who cannot, for whatever reason, find work that pays them enough to meet their basic needs – that a social safety net be available that would provide them enough to support themselves and their families in relative dignity.
As made clear above, the existing social safety net does not do that. In fact, I am privy to a number of people who should not be working (due to a disability) who try to work anyways because our once strong social safety net has since been torn to tatters … and since returning to work, many of these people have been turfed out of their job, forced to quit, become re-injured, or ended up hospitalized as a result of an exacerbation of an illness or disability they have … but cannot get enough money on Ontario Works or ODSP to even cover basic costs, such as housing. How this work or starve mentality benefits employers is beyond me … or even the rest of us that must pay for their injuries, health care and unemployment through our taxes. At the same time, many injured workers try to return to work only to have employers illegally terminate them and WSIB deny benefits to such a point where such a worker ends up having to turn to OW /ODSP for basics. Technically, there are laws in place to protect people, but unfortunately, these same laws are broken again and again to no avail.
If your Government believes a job is the best social policy, then it must do something about jobs. That means:
1. Increase in minimum wage to $10/hour now;
2. Tying ANY government support or subsidy to a living wage policy (meaning that the minimum salary offered must be in itself able to meet all basic needs of a family in the region where the job is offered);
3. Toughening labour standards and enforcement to increase job security and reduce incidence of workplace harassment and bullying – including contracting with so-called staffing agencies;
4. Penalizing employers and company owners for labour law violations in a meaningful way;
5. Improved enforcements of the Human Rights Code (including proactive measures to prevent discrimination from starting in the first place); and
6. Targeted programs where necessary to improve the likelihood of qualified persons with disabilities, older persons, newcomers and others traditionally impacted by job discrimination, in not only obtaining work, but finding work that meets their skills/training/education.
IF all of the above is done in short order, we may expect greater job security for many people not otherwise given it. However, not everybody can work. People may be sick, disabled, or are caregivers to others (children, elderly or disabled persons) and unable to take a job. Others are looking for work and are in between jobs. These people must also have a decent income to resort to. The amount currently received on Ontario Works is shameful and an embarrassment to a wealthy province such as ours. Even ODSP rates are shameful, given that inflation has eroded its value over many years.
Social assistance rates of any kind (OW/ ODSP) must be adjusted to reflect realistic rates for shelter, utilities, telephone, transportation, clothing and a healthy diet, at minimum. Persons who are on ODSP and are either unable to work or have limited options (such as only able to work in a specific field, be self-employed or work only part-time) MUST have an income that not only includes the basics, but also includes enough to cover social costs. It is not pleasant to be a prisoner in your own home. Many people on ODSP in my region do not even have the money for bus fare to go anywhere in the community, let alone pay fees for programs once they get there. For these people, a television set that breaks down is a crisis for them. Most cannot even dream of purchasing new clothes, and often continue to wear old, damaged clothing. I have seen ODSP recipients go without winter clothing in the dead of a January freeze. Many of these people simply layer several sweaters over one another and limit the number of times they leave their homes. A true measurement of reduction of poverty is a substantial decrease in the number of people relying on food banks and emergency shelters, as well as a decrease in the number of food banks and shelters in service anywhere in the province. In my view, nobody in Ontario should be using a food bank or emergency shelter. We should be rescuing animals, not homeless people - because there should be NO homeless people.
Setting rates for OW/ ODSP should be done through an independent process that includes social policy experts, anti-poverty workers and poor people themselves. Politicians are not adequately knowledgeable about how much one needs as a bare minimum to survive … as most politicians come from comfortable backgrounds prior to being elected and after voting themselves a 27% increase last year, certainly know nothing about the availability of low-cost housing in their area or what a basic food basket actually costs an average family. Politicians however can have the political will to work with an independent process and allow significant input by people who actually know the costs of things, as well as the costs of not doing things.
Politicians through this process also need to set targets and make one another, as well as relevant departments accountable for meeting these targets. For example, anti-poverty measures are not only about getting more good-paying jobs and increasing social assistance rates. Anti-poverty measures also include: childcare policy, education policy, availability and cost of local/regional transit options, availability of home ownership, retirement options and access to community amenities.
For example, I live in a Region where politicians don’t feel there are many people that don’t drive. In their view, everybody drives or has “family and friends” to take them places. As a result, our Region’s social class structure is predicated upon whether or not you and your family have access to a personal vehicle. People that do not drive or cannot afford to do so are stuck in low-paying job ghettos – retail, service, call centres – while those that do drive do have access to better paying jobs, where they do exist. This is regardless of your education and skills. I have witnessed situations where high school or college drop-outs were favoured in a job simply because they had a car, over a better educated candidate that didn’t drive. That has to stop – IMMEDIATELY. Unless the job involves driving a taxi, delivering parcels or acting as a door-to-door salesperson, the ownership of a vehicle or driver’s license should be a NON-ISSUE.
In these other areas, priorities for the Anti-Poverty Cabinet should also include (in addition to jobs and increased OW/ODSP assistance rates), the following:
1. Funding for an inter-municipal transit system in Niagara (and similar communities across Ontario) that is accessible, affordable, reliable and convenient – as well as money for improvements in local transit systems;
2. Funding for GO Transit service beyond Hamilton. Niagara is always the “one left out”. Because Niagara has very poor transit policy, we are among the worst communities when it comes to air quality and access. There are too many people living in this Region that have never left their own city because they can’t afford the cab fare to get from one city to the next, nor can they afford the $8,000 or more a year it takes to own and maintain a vehicle on an annual basis. Many of these people cannot find work or work only in marginal jobs, because most jobs require people to own a car.
3. Better access to childcare. This is not just pre-school care, but after-school and school holiday care. If a Government believes the best anti-poverty policy is a job, then they need to help people get to the jobs as well as help people remain in the jobs, esp. if they have children. There are too many school holidays, whereby low-income families cannot afford a nanny or daycare for these school holidays and after school. Otherwise, we see the rise of ‘latch key’ children who are more likely to get into trouble than the children of families that have comfortable incomes and external family support. Not everybody has family members and neighbours that can help them in this way.
4. A different approach to public education. If a child is in a public school, it should cost them ZERO for everything … ranging from textbooks, to lab materials, to art supplies, to school trips, to school dances, etc. This should apply whether the child is from a rich family or a poor family. Children know what social class they are in just by being in school … those that “get sick” on the days of school trips or are “allergic to pizza” on pizza days, are well known to their peers and subject to ostracism. When is this going to stop?
5. Respect for and access to higher education. There are many people on ODSP – some say as many as 1 in 6 ODSP household heads – who are university educated. Why is their employment supports program only geared to helping people into low-paid, dead-end employment? If somebody with a disability is university educated and possibly experienced in a particular field, THESE FOLKS are the ones that should be getting government jobs and other good-paying jobs in their community and be assisted this way. High school drop-outs should not be given access to these jobs, but instead be assisted in their educational and/or vocational training goals, which will eventually steer them into a meaningful career goal.
The Canadian Association of Professionals with Disabilities clearly identifies the marginalization of university educated professionals that have disabling health conditions … they should be seen as potential assets to the looming labour shortage and be steered in the direction of higher paid jobs as close as possible to their fields of education and/or work experience. For those seeking a higher education, OSAP needs to be reviewed to ensure it is accessible to people with low-incomes and/or in receipt of OW/ODSP – it cannot be assumed that people on OW/ ODSP have enough $$ to meet their living expenses while attending school (by disallowing OSAP contributions to the same). Also, work needs to be done to increase access to grants and forgivable loans to people living in poverty.
5. Make the Ontario Child Benefit equally beneficial to working families and families that receive OW/ ODSP. At the current time, the implementation for the OCB is too little, too late. The total amount of income must be increased and social assistance should not be clawed-back or "restructured” in any way to accommodate the Ontario Child Benefit. If working families will benefit by up to $95 per child, so should people on assistance. The clawback of the National Child Benefit cannot be addressed by using another clawback, which leads to people on OW/ ODSP getting yet another clawback to accommodate OCB, and be only marginally better off.
6. Housing/ shelter subsidies. This should be addressed by increasing OW/ ODSP rates and by topping up the income of working poor families to enable them to afford “market rate” shelter, owned or rented. The way of measuring this is to ensure that no individual or family has to dip into the “basic needs” part of the budget or their groceries to pay for housing/utilities.
In summary, if the Ontario Government wants to reduce poverty, it must act more quickly and address the issue more broadly in order for its impact to make a difference. It must address the needs of singles and couples, as well as families – and address the needs of all low-income people better, so the “need for” expensive subsidized housing projects can be reduced – if all people can afford to pay “market” rate – rented or owned.
If the Ontario Government chooses to continue on its existing path, it will not reduce poverty and in fact, with the threat of an oncoming recession, the “poverty problem” may even become worse. In short, I want the Government to define poverty as the national emergency it is and to act accordingly, such as putting immediate priority and resources into its eradication, and to involve anti-poverty groups, social policy experts and poor communities themselves to participate in setting the new agenda. As an independently set agenda, it is removed from the political process, although politicians will also be forced to engage consideration of low-income issues on seemingly unrelated matters, such as energy policy.
Submitted by browneassociates
January 30th, 2008
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
OPEN LETTER TO DALTON MCGUINTY
Dear Dalton McGuinty:
Last year about this time, your government extended its sitting in the House to ram through a substantial 27% pay increase for yourself and other MPPs. Your argument was that if this did not take place, the legislature would have difficulty attracting competent candidates. At the same time this raise was being debated, a Private Member's Bill was in the house, which if passed, would hike the minimum wage to $10 per hour. Certainly, it was no coincidence that no debate took place on that minimum wage Bill, while the rest of your Government took the raise. Personally, Dalton, I would do your job for the salary it was prior to your raise without a complaint. So would millions of other Ontarians, many of whom also are skilled, competent leaders and professionals.
You may respond to this by saying that in October 2007, Ontarians gave your Government a second mandate, somehow excusing the fact that your pay raise was "approved" by the public. I dispute that. Of the total number of eligible voters, only 52% of them bothered to cast a ballot, and among these people - only 42% voted for candidates in your Party. This is hardly a majority mandate, but then again - very few governments have been elected on a true majority basis. However, given this fact, please note that I read the polls differently, and I certainly hope that as the Leader of the Province, you do too and will govern in the interests of all, not just those doing financially well. I am referring to the Poor.
An interesting proposal came from your recent Throne Speech on your Government's plans to develop and set targets with respect to the reduction of poverty in Ontario. Some might have referred to this as the 25 in 5 Plan, which was promoted by groups like Campaign 2000. If your intent is to reduce poverty by 25% in the first five years, please tell me where I can get in line and be among your first. I am well-educated, highly literate, possess excellent organizational and communication skills, and have held senior level positions in various organizations in the past, holding titles including Executive Director, National Coordinator, Policy Analyst, Policy Facilitator, Organizational Development Consultant, Senior Moderator, President & CEO, as well as at present, Independent Paralegal.
I know the English language quite well, and can speak and read passably in French (though I am by no means bilingual). I read three newspapers a day, listen to two news broadcasts a day and read a novel or two every week. I have also been published numerous times in forums, ranging from street newspapers, newsmagazines, academic peer review journals and daily newspapers. I work with people ranging from those living on the streets to people who are presidents of their own companies. I treat everybody I work with well, as well as deal respectfully with parties my clients have concerns to address with. I also moderate several Internet forums on a range of topics; my reading audience from all of my moderated groups exceeds 10,000 readers.
I have no criminal record, nor have I ever had any civil judgment against me. The last time I checked, I had a good credit rating. I have managed budgets in the multi-million dollar range, as well as those budgets of only a few hundred thousand. The audits of these organizations have always indicated my management skills were excellent and accurate. I am also the type of person who could find a purse or a wallet, bearing hundreds or even thousands of dollars ... but my only interest would be to return it intact to its owner.
So, why Mr. Premier, am I seeing people who have poor qualifications, inadequate education and/or have some criminal record being hired in responsible positions, where they have some control over money, or worse, people's lives? Don't tell me this doesn't happen - while this is not the forum to name names or to "out" any organization, but legal actions have been filed against organizations repeatedly because of decisions the organization made that hurt somebody, or has had legal implications. In none of these actions were any of the people responsible ever fired or charged with anything; even when they have proven themselves to be serial workplace bullies, or just plain incompetent, they are still the ones that get to stay in the organization, not the person or persons they have hurt. The decisions to hire these people in the first place are purely political and have nothing to do with that specific person's actual ability to deliver. Yet, while this is going on, many people like me, as well as those people who were bullied, are sitting in the sidelines, receiving ODSP or other forms of assistance, wanting nothing more than to work in a decently paid job that we know we are capable of handling.
Most members of your caucus are university graduates, whether that be in law, medicine, education, business or social work. Pre-election jobs range from Lawyer to Nurse to Business Owner to Administrator; however, I have yet to see somebody get elected whose last job was working at McDonald's flipping burgers. At some point, when you folks either leave politics behind or get voted out, whatever happens first, I can bet my whole life that none of you - absolutely NONE of you, will be seeking work at Starbucks, McDonald's, Wal-Mart or one of the numerous call centres that are set up. Why should you? You are educated. You are experienced, and you have many other skills. I can't argue with that. But, what makes somebody like me, as well as many of my cohorts, who also have advanced skills, any different? We have the same skills, many with even a higher education than I have, but we are all shuffled off to work for Starbucks, McDonald's, Wal-Mart and many of the call centres. Why is it good enough for you folks to demand and be placed in a post-political career that suits your skills and salary needs, while it is not good enough for us to expect and want a similar career - and have help obtaining it?
If your answer is that somebody has to do the scut work, then why does it have to be us? There are many people who do not have skills, or who just need a temporary job while they upgrade their education to the point they can accept a higher paid job. There are others who have dropped out of high school, who do not have the motivation to learn or to finish their education, for whatever reason, who can probably do this type of work until they either climb the corporate ladder, learn a trade or decide to further their education. I am often accused of bias, but then again - I ask why am I being discriminated against in the workplace because I am overqualified, while the jobs that are out there that I can do and pay well tend to value somebody with a driver's license more than a university degree? It is my understanding that if driving a vehicle is not a bona fide occupational requirement, then they cannot require a candidate to have a driver's licence. This is done all the time to people with disabilities, and then study after study is done asking why people with disabilities have a lower workplace participation rate than people without disabilities. When is that going to change?
I certainly hope that it will in MY lifetime.
I note your Government is making efforts at recognizing the credentials of many newcomers who have earned various degrees and professional skills outside of Canada. However, it is time that your Government begins to recognize the credentials of people with disabilities who have earned them, usually here in this country, and will work with them to obtain work that resembles their chosen field, thus getting us truly out of poverty.
If your Government does not want to see newcomers with high level skills working at driving taxis, cleaning hotels, working at McDonalds, etc., which is a fine goal that I also agree with, why is it okay to push people with disabilities in this direction regardless of how much education, how many skills and what our career aspirations are? When are we going to be heard?
Once again, when your Government starts to reduce Ontario's poverty rate, I want to be first in line. Just tell me where to sign up.
Last year about this time, your government extended its sitting in the House to ram through a substantial 27% pay increase for yourself and other MPPs. Your argument was that if this did not take place, the legislature would have difficulty attracting competent candidates. At the same time this raise was being debated, a Private Member's Bill was in the house, which if passed, would hike the minimum wage to $10 per hour. Certainly, it was no coincidence that no debate took place on that minimum wage Bill, while the rest of your Government took the raise. Personally, Dalton, I would do your job for the salary it was prior to your raise without a complaint. So would millions of other Ontarians, many of whom also are skilled, competent leaders and professionals.
You may respond to this by saying that in October 2007, Ontarians gave your Government a second mandate, somehow excusing the fact that your pay raise was "approved" by the public. I dispute that. Of the total number of eligible voters, only 52% of them bothered to cast a ballot, and among these people - only 42% voted for candidates in your Party. This is hardly a majority mandate, but then again - very few governments have been elected on a true majority basis. However, given this fact, please note that I read the polls differently, and I certainly hope that as the Leader of the Province, you do too and will govern in the interests of all, not just those doing financially well. I am referring to the Poor.
An interesting proposal came from your recent Throne Speech on your Government's plans to develop and set targets with respect to the reduction of poverty in Ontario. Some might have referred to this as the 25 in 5 Plan, which was promoted by groups like Campaign 2000. If your intent is to reduce poverty by 25% in the first five years, please tell me where I can get in line and be among your first. I am well-educated, highly literate, possess excellent organizational and communication skills, and have held senior level positions in various organizations in the past, holding titles including Executive Director, National Coordinator, Policy Analyst, Policy Facilitator, Organizational Development Consultant, Senior Moderator, President & CEO, as well as at present, Independent Paralegal.
I know the English language quite well, and can speak and read passably in French (though I am by no means bilingual). I read three newspapers a day, listen to two news broadcasts a day and read a novel or two every week. I have also been published numerous times in forums, ranging from street newspapers, newsmagazines, academic peer review journals and daily newspapers. I work with people ranging from those living on the streets to people who are presidents of their own companies. I treat everybody I work with well, as well as deal respectfully with parties my clients have concerns to address with. I also moderate several Internet forums on a range of topics; my reading audience from all of my moderated groups exceeds 10,000 readers.
I have no criminal record, nor have I ever had any civil judgment against me. The last time I checked, I had a good credit rating. I have managed budgets in the multi-million dollar range, as well as those budgets of only a few hundred thousand. The audits of these organizations have always indicated my management skills were excellent and accurate. I am also the type of person who could find a purse or a wallet, bearing hundreds or even thousands of dollars ... but my only interest would be to return it intact to its owner.
So, why Mr. Premier, am I seeing people who have poor qualifications, inadequate education and/or have some criminal record being hired in responsible positions, where they have some control over money, or worse, people's lives? Don't tell me this doesn't happen - while this is not the forum to name names or to "out" any organization, but legal actions have been filed against organizations repeatedly because of decisions the organization made that hurt somebody, or has had legal implications. In none of these actions were any of the people responsible ever fired or charged with anything; even when they have proven themselves to be serial workplace bullies, or just plain incompetent, they are still the ones that get to stay in the organization, not the person or persons they have hurt. The decisions to hire these people in the first place are purely political and have nothing to do with that specific person's actual ability to deliver. Yet, while this is going on, many people like me, as well as those people who were bullied, are sitting in the sidelines, receiving ODSP or other forms of assistance, wanting nothing more than to work in a decently paid job that we know we are capable of handling.
Most members of your caucus are university graduates, whether that be in law, medicine, education, business or social work. Pre-election jobs range from Lawyer to Nurse to Business Owner to Administrator; however, I have yet to see somebody get elected whose last job was working at McDonald's flipping burgers. At some point, when you folks either leave politics behind or get voted out, whatever happens first, I can bet my whole life that none of you - absolutely NONE of you, will be seeking work at Starbucks, McDonald's, Wal-Mart or one of the numerous call centres that are set up. Why should you? You are educated. You are experienced, and you have many other skills. I can't argue with that. But, what makes somebody like me, as well as many of my cohorts, who also have advanced skills, any different? We have the same skills, many with even a higher education than I have, but we are all shuffled off to work for Starbucks, McDonald's, Wal-Mart and many of the call centres. Why is it good enough for you folks to demand and be placed in a post-political career that suits your skills and salary needs, while it is not good enough for us to expect and want a similar career - and have help obtaining it?
If your answer is that somebody has to do the scut work, then why does it have to be us? There are many people who do not have skills, or who just need a temporary job while they upgrade their education to the point they can accept a higher paid job. There are others who have dropped out of high school, who do not have the motivation to learn or to finish their education, for whatever reason, who can probably do this type of work until they either climb the corporate ladder, learn a trade or decide to further their education. I am often accused of bias, but then again - I ask why am I being discriminated against in the workplace because I am overqualified, while the jobs that are out there that I can do and pay well tend to value somebody with a driver's license more than a university degree? It is my understanding that if driving a vehicle is not a bona fide occupational requirement, then they cannot require a candidate to have a driver's licence. This is done all the time to people with disabilities, and then study after study is done asking why people with disabilities have a lower workplace participation rate than people without disabilities. When is that going to change?
I certainly hope that it will in MY lifetime.
I note your Government is making efforts at recognizing the credentials of many newcomers who have earned various degrees and professional skills outside of Canada. However, it is time that your Government begins to recognize the credentials of people with disabilities who have earned them, usually here in this country, and will work with them to obtain work that resembles their chosen field, thus getting us truly out of poverty.
If your Government does not want to see newcomers with high level skills working at driving taxis, cleaning hotels, working at McDonalds, etc., which is a fine goal that I also agree with, why is it okay to push people with disabilities in this direction regardless of how much education, how many skills and what our career aspirations are? When are we going to be heard?
Once again, when your Government starts to reduce Ontario's poverty rate, I want to be first in line. Just tell me where to sign up.
Friday, November 23, 2007
ON TRUSTING MCGUINTY ON POVERTY ISSUES ...
During the provincial election that sadly passed without a whimper from the public ... a story was published in the Toronto Star that stated Dalton McGuinty promised to deliver a time line and action plan on the reduction on poverty within a year of his re-election. After he was elected and his re-elected government was sworn in, he announced the appointment of Deb Matthews, a progressive Liberal from the London area to head up a Cabinet Committee of sorts to lead the government's anti-poverty strategy.
I like Deb Matthews. A few years ago, as Parliamentary Assistant to then Minister of Community and Social Services, Sandra Pupatello, she traveled the province to talk to different people about what needs to be done to address the inefficiencies and punitive regulations in the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program Act. A number of her recommendations were eventually implemented, which many anti-poverty activists saw as a good thing. These changes were positive; however, on the backdrop of all this, the elephant of needing to raise the rates substantially still remained in the room. At meetings with anti-poverty activists, she was empathetic but non-committal about the rates issue. However, Ms. Matthews is known to be one of McGuinty's more progressive thinkers in his coterie.
While it may appear that McGuinty is determined to develop and implement an anti-poverty strategy, the cynical part of our population wonders if all this hoopla really means anything at all. During McGuinty's last term, his government passed the implementation of the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB), a benefit through which they have already lied to the public about its overall benefit and impact on the pocketbooks of the poor. First, Dalton is telling everybody that once the OCB is fully implemented, the hideous and much disliked clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) will be ended. While the OCB does look good on paper and it will benefit the working poor more than those on social assistance, it is not really what it was marketed to be. As I stated in an earlier post, McGuinty and his gang has tried to woo us all with BIG numbers ... to make it look like they're digging in deep to provide a spanking new benefit for the poor. A full $2.1 billion worth! How can anybody fault them for that?
The problem is that the funding to cover this $2.1 billion promised over five years is going to be paid for in part by issuing yet another clawback against people on social assistance. The Liberals won't tell you this, of course, as they would rather disguise this new clawback under more attractive language, such as "restructuring of social assistance benefits" and "getting children off welfare". All this sounds absolutely attractive to an unknowing public, who has by now assumed the child poverty problem in Ontario just disappeared with the stroke of a pen in Ontario. After all, nobody is marketing those commercials showing young children with fat bellies and flies all over them, as they proceed to labour at a dollar a day anymore .... oops, this is not supposed to be about Ontario. But then again, Ontario's child poverty problem is solved, is it not? I noticed the Toronto Star which is sometimes viewed as progressive from an anti-poverty stance substantially reduced its coverage of child poverty as soon as the ink dried on the 2007 budget presentation.
In fact, I spoke to members of the so-called public about the budget shortly after it was made public. Almost all of them actually believed that people who are on social assistance that have children will be taken out of poverty ... end of story. That's what McGuinty wanted us all to believe. However, come July 1, 2008, a number of changes will be made to the social assistance benefit structure for those recipients that have children. Singles and childless couples will not be affected by these changes. One way to determine the difference is to look up the regulations over the web ... they are publicly posted on a site called e-laws under "source law". Under this section, each regulation that gets passed can be read under its respective Act. The first one shows what the budgetary table will be for families on ODSP (just to make it simple ... for OW, the changes are similar, but the numbers are different). The first one shows how much people will be getting for their "basic needs" portion of their budget as of November 1, 2007; the second one shows what people will be getting as of July 1, 2008. See the difference? Like, about a 30% drop!
But no, Dalton and his gang will argue. Nobody will be hurt by these new regulations. What this "restructuring" essentially does is take money out of the pockets of families on social assistance to help pay for the OCB for both the so-called working poor and to a lesser extent, themselves. Most of this $2.1 billion talked about is just an expensive shell game at best, moving money from social assistance cheques to be put back on later in the month for the OCB. At the same time, one's entitlement to the OCB will be determined by their income. Not taxable income, it seems, but income - period. So, if your family is on ODSP, pays full rent, and one or more member(s) of your family receive special diets, medical transportation, mandatory medical necessities or other disability-related income, it will count against you in spades. Those that will benefit the most from this newest contraption will be those families that have taxable earnings of $20,000 and under and have no social assistance, particularly if this same family also lives in social housing. Those with less expenses and less costs will get more money! Does this make any sense to you? The OCB and NCBS gets clawed back by a certain percentage for every dollar of "income" you have above $20,000 - regardless of what this income is for. Do I smell a disability discrimination case coming on? It would be a lot simpler to base this all on TAXABLE INCOME ... because the more taxable income one receives, their OW and/or ODSP cheques are clawed back substantially anyways.
The writers of this policy did not seem to relate to the issues of families on ODSP, particularly if they are getting their full shelter allotments. If this is happening, it is likely that most of their "basic needs portion" is also going to shelter as well. Remember? Dalton and his gang thought that rents and housing costs stopped going up since 1975! That's why we're stuck in the 1970's with the very low shelter rates that are provided for families on ODSP, or anybody really. So, what does that have to do with the price of eggs? Okay, the first cheque that is going to be "affected" by this dog and pony show of Dalton's is the July 31, 2008 cheque for people on ODSP and the July 1, 2008, cheque for people on OW. Immediately, there will be a 30% drop in the 'basic needs' part of the budget. That means for those who spend the average rate of 73% of their total income on housing will have to wait until July 20th (for OW recipients) or August 20th (for ODSP recipients) to eat! Each month after that will be on a constant spiral of catching up. For example, if you had to go into your overdraft to afford to purchase groceries for your family on the 1st, your cheque on the 20th will simply bring your account back to zero ... but then again, you still have to eat from the 20th until the end of the month, don't you?
Further, the 30% drop is right away. This applies to all families, regardless of whether they are only receiving a partial OCB/NCBS benefit or the full amount. This new hard maximum will also reduce the threshholds for families that have earnings before they are in danger of working themselves off benefits altogether. Moreover, the more earnings, the further the OCB/NCBS will also be clawed back ... It will certainly not encourage people to earn as much as possible, particularly if the family has an able-bodied worker that can work, but is not a high enough earner to be able to take on the family's finances on their own.
Okay, okay. Maybe it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe, as some anti-poverty activists say, people will be a bit better off. Calculations that I heard about at their most optimistic would give a social assistance family an additional $51 per child per month once the whole show is rolled out in 2011. This is in 2011! That means, between July 1, 2008 and July 1, 2011, rent increases will be approximately 6 - 8%, electricity will likely go up (as the Liberals want to squeeze every dime from ratepayers to help them pay for those golden parachutes of the fallen hydro executives), gas prices will likely go up (particularly if these wars in the Middle East persist and they will), inflation will go up approx 6 - 8%, as will the cost of food, clothing, etc. I actually believe people at that point will be losing money, not gaining any! So, where did the $2.1 billion promised for this benefit go? It was taken from the social assistance budget to divide it up unevenly between the so-called working poor (who will get almost twice the net benefit) and back to those on social assistance. I know a scam when I see one, but unfortunately, too many voters actually believed McGuinty wiped child poverty off the map.
But what about the rest of McGuinty's anti-poverty agenda? Did he not promise the anti-poverty groups a reduction of 25% of the numbers living in poverty over the first five years? To me, I believe this plan would be modest and it is certainly possible, but will the Liberals actually do it? Policy analysts say if a concerted effort is given towards the reduction of poverty, many areas must be covered ... not just hiking social assistance rates or playing shell games with child benefits. To me, poverty must be attacked at its roots, not at its symptoms ... in order to do this, we have to ask the hard questions that need to be asked, particularly of businesses - many of whom give generously to the coffers of the Liberal Party. For example, are businesses prepared to pay a living wage to its workers? Are employers prepared to hire people - regardless of disability status or ethnicity - based on their abilities and not other characteristics, such as where they got their work experience or whether or not the person has a driver's license. It seems to me that employers don't care if you're a PHd or a high school drop-out, but if you can drive, you're in ... even if you don't have to drive on a regular basis as a bona fide occupational requirement. Keeping up this charade maintains a "nice" certain middle class culture and keeps out the riff-raff, such as people with disabilities, people who are from another country or people living in poverty. The way employers think, plan and act has to be completely changed in order to move more people out of poverty ...
Further, the government needs to draw a line in the sand. If employers are bitching that they can't get local people to work for them, governments need to STOP catering to them and subsidizing them either directly or indirectly ... unless these employers are willing to pay a living wage. If employers are found to continue using policies that are discriminatory to certain groups, thus resulting in a disproportionate number of members in these groups to live in poverty - then these employers need to be fined heavily as a cost of doing business this way ... with all the proceeds from these fines to be applied directly to those persons who have to continue living on OW or ODSP for a longer period of time as a result of repeatedly being turned away from jobs for these reasons ... and get a top-up, like at least $500 more per single individual and $1,000-$1,500 more per family (on top of what they already get)! To me, employers will never learn until they have to dig into their own pockets as a consequence of their continued discriminatory practices. If an employer harbours workplace bullies or protects them, those that own the company as well as those doing the bullying should pay out of their own pockets - any compensation - that is awarded to their targets. Any organization that receives government funding or is licensed in any way by any regulatory body would lose its funding and/or license if it continues ... otherwise, we will continue to be raising "issues" about workplace bullying well into the year 2525 without any resolution in sight.
For those individuals and families headed by people who are unable or unavailable for work, their net income must never fall below the floor upon which one can pay for an average home (rent or buy), eat well, transport themselves and their families, as well as supply themselves with clothing, heat, electricity, reasonable recreation, health care and other "human needs". People living in poverty are tired of eating less per day than is given to prisoners, while they are forced to remain in their homes day after day after day with nothing to do. People who are too disabled to work for example are punished instead of supported in a dignified, independent lifestyle, while prisoners eat well, are given a trade and are guaranteed shelter during their time "inside". Politicians should not be the ones that determine what people need to live on. I sincerely believe that given their upper middle class backgrounds, they don't have a clue what low-income people need to make ends meet. If you are in your own home, you should be able to remain in it and not have to keep moving to cheaper and cheaper and less and less safe accommodations until you hit rock bottom and end up on the streets.
Yes, a true anti-poverty plan is going to cost money ... money that most politicians would rather give to their wealthy friends in the form of tax breaks and corporate welfare. To truly have a plan to eradicate poverty, politicians have to change the way they think and act ... they need to stop giving millions of dollars to cricket clubs and ethnic organizations allegedly linked with executive members of Liberal riding associations and former Lberal candidates/elected members (or their spouses). They need to directly involve people living in poverty to assist them in understanding some key issues, such as how much it really costs to live (e.g things have changed a lot since 1975), what people really need to escape poverty and what people's skills really are ... the politicians might surprise themselves! After all, one out of six household heads that are on ODSP have completed university. Many others have college or partial credits. ... the old Liberal solutions of teaching people how to read, giving them their grade twelve and helping them with their resumes is not entirely effective anymore. Getting people jobs at Wal-Mart and Starbucks and call centres is not going to cut it for many of these people ... that will only transform somebody from the welfare poor to the working poor and the poverty situation doesn't change a bit! Get real!
Some sacred cows may also need to be fried ... for example, building more rent-geared-to-income housing is NOT going to get rid of poverty. It just makes it more invisible and insidious. If you want to keep somebody trapped in a no-win situation, that is the way to do it .. claw them back every time they move an inch and don't let them progress! It is actually better to find ways to help people keep the homes they have or get better housing if they are presently in substandard housing. This can be done through a variety of fiscal measures, including refundable tax credits, shelter allowances for OW and ODSP reflecting real costs as opposed to the costs in the 1970's and various incentives to help people purchase their own homes.
Do I think Dalton McGuinty is going to meet his 25 in 5 target? Of course not. He may have appointed Deb Matthews to head this committee, but how much power will this committee really have? Will there even be a budget for this next shell game? Will there be real and meaningful consultation with those who live in poverty, as opposed to talking to all the food bank directors and Salvation Army platoons? Will all Ministries that directly or indirectly impact on the poor be held to certain targets and made accountable if they fail to achieve them? For example, the Ministry of Finance is a big player on this team and should be ... it is going to cost money, especially in the first few years. It is only after poverty is truly reduced or even eliminated that we will actually notice something unusual ... we will be saving lots of government dollars in just about every Ministry. There will be less need for health care dollars to go to treat preventable diseases, less money necessary to crack down on crime and pay for corrections, less money on long-term disability and worker's compensation (which is where the private sector will see a direct benefit) and more money will be available to provide for cultural activities, education, research and all the good things we want out of our communities ... and we can even help people in other countries ... yes, but that comes after we look after our own backyard first!
I would like to be still alive when the United Nations issues its report ranking Canada as Number One in terms of its poverty reduction strategy and economic/environmental sustainability. Your thoughts, people?
I like Deb Matthews. A few years ago, as Parliamentary Assistant to then Minister of Community and Social Services, Sandra Pupatello, she traveled the province to talk to different people about what needs to be done to address the inefficiencies and punitive regulations in the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program Act. A number of her recommendations were eventually implemented, which many anti-poverty activists saw as a good thing. These changes were positive; however, on the backdrop of all this, the elephant of needing to raise the rates substantially still remained in the room. At meetings with anti-poverty activists, she was empathetic but non-committal about the rates issue. However, Ms. Matthews is known to be one of McGuinty's more progressive thinkers in his coterie.
While it may appear that McGuinty is determined to develop and implement an anti-poverty strategy, the cynical part of our population wonders if all this hoopla really means anything at all. During McGuinty's last term, his government passed the implementation of the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB), a benefit through which they have already lied to the public about its overall benefit and impact on the pocketbooks of the poor. First, Dalton is telling everybody that once the OCB is fully implemented, the hideous and much disliked clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) will be ended. While the OCB does look good on paper and it will benefit the working poor more than those on social assistance, it is not really what it was marketed to be. As I stated in an earlier post, McGuinty and his gang has tried to woo us all with BIG numbers ... to make it look like they're digging in deep to provide a spanking new benefit for the poor. A full $2.1 billion worth! How can anybody fault them for that?
The problem is that the funding to cover this $2.1 billion promised over five years is going to be paid for in part by issuing yet another clawback against people on social assistance. The Liberals won't tell you this, of course, as they would rather disguise this new clawback under more attractive language, such as "restructuring of social assistance benefits" and "getting children off welfare". All this sounds absolutely attractive to an unknowing public, who has by now assumed the child poverty problem in Ontario just disappeared with the stroke of a pen in Ontario. After all, nobody is marketing those commercials showing young children with fat bellies and flies all over them, as they proceed to labour at a dollar a day anymore .... oops, this is not supposed to be about Ontario. But then again, Ontario's child poverty problem is solved, is it not? I noticed the Toronto Star which is sometimes viewed as progressive from an anti-poverty stance substantially reduced its coverage of child poverty as soon as the ink dried on the 2007 budget presentation.
In fact, I spoke to members of the so-called public about the budget shortly after it was made public. Almost all of them actually believed that people who are on social assistance that have children will be taken out of poverty ... end of story. That's what McGuinty wanted us all to believe. However, come July 1, 2008, a number of changes will be made to the social assistance benefit structure for those recipients that have children. Singles and childless couples will not be affected by these changes. One way to determine the difference is to look up the regulations over the web ... they are publicly posted on a site called e-laws under "source law". Under this section, each regulation that gets passed can be read under its respective Act. The first one shows what the budgetary table will be for families on ODSP (just to make it simple ... for OW, the changes are similar, but the numbers are different). The first one shows how much people will be getting for their "basic needs" portion of their budget as of November 1, 2007; the second one shows what people will be getting as of July 1, 2008. See the difference? Like, about a 30% drop!
But no, Dalton and his gang will argue. Nobody will be hurt by these new regulations. What this "restructuring" essentially does is take money out of the pockets of families on social assistance to help pay for the OCB for both the so-called working poor and to a lesser extent, themselves. Most of this $2.1 billion talked about is just an expensive shell game at best, moving money from social assistance cheques to be put back on later in the month for the OCB. At the same time, one's entitlement to the OCB will be determined by their income. Not taxable income, it seems, but income - period. So, if your family is on ODSP, pays full rent, and one or more member(s) of your family receive special diets, medical transportation, mandatory medical necessities or other disability-related income, it will count against you in spades. Those that will benefit the most from this newest contraption will be those families that have taxable earnings of $20,000 and under and have no social assistance, particularly if this same family also lives in social housing. Those with less expenses and less costs will get more money! Does this make any sense to you? The OCB and NCBS gets clawed back by a certain percentage for every dollar of "income" you have above $20,000 - regardless of what this income is for. Do I smell a disability discrimination case coming on? It would be a lot simpler to base this all on TAXABLE INCOME ... because the more taxable income one receives, their OW and/or ODSP cheques are clawed back substantially anyways.
The writers of this policy did not seem to relate to the issues of families on ODSP, particularly if they are getting their full shelter allotments. If this is happening, it is likely that most of their "basic needs portion" is also going to shelter as well. Remember? Dalton and his gang thought that rents and housing costs stopped going up since 1975! That's why we're stuck in the 1970's with the very low shelter rates that are provided for families on ODSP, or anybody really. So, what does that have to do with the price of eggs? Okay, the first cheque that is going to be "affected" by this dog and pony show of Dalton's is the July 31, 2008 cheque for people on ODSP and the July 1, 2008, cheque for people on OW. Immediately, there will be a 30% drop in the 'basic needs' part of the budget. That means for those who spend the average rate of 73% of their total income on housing will have to wait until July 20th (for OW recipients) or August 20th (for ODSP recipients) to eat! Each month after that will be on a constant spiral of catching up. For example, if you had to go into your overdraft to afford to purchase groceries for your family on the 1st, your cheque on the 20th will simply bring your account back to zero ... but then again, you still have to eat from the 20th until the end of the month, don't you?
Further, the 30% drop is right away. This applies to all families, regardless of whether they are only receiving a partial OCB/NCBS benefit or the full amount. This new hard maximum will also reduce the threshholds for families that have earnings before they are in danger of working themselves off benefits altogether. Moreover, the more earnings, the further the OCB/NCBS will also be clawed back ... It will certainly not encourage people to earn as much as possible, particularly if the family has an able-bodied worker that can work, but is not a high enough earner to be able to take on the family's finances on their own.
Okay, okay. Maybe it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe, as some anti-poverty activists say, people will be a bit better off. Calculations that I heard about at their most optimistic would give a social assistance family an additional $51 per child per month once the whole show is rolled out in 2011. This is in 2011! That means, between July 1, 2008 and July 1, 2011, rent increases will be approximately 6 - 8%, electricity will likely go up (as the Liberals want to squeeze every dime from ratepayers to help them pay for those golden parachutes of the fallen hydro executives), gas prices will likely go up (particularly if these wars in the Middle East persist and they will), inflation will go up approx 6 - 8%, as will the cost of food, clothing, etc. I actually believe people at that point will be losing money, not gaining any! So, where did the $2.1 billion promised for this benefit go? It was taken from the social assistance budget to divide it up unevenly between the so-called working poor (who will get almost twice the net benefit) and back to those on social assistance. I know a scam when I see one, but unfortunately, too many voters actually believed McGuinty wiped child poverty off the map.
But what about the rest of McGuinty's anti-poverty agenda? Did he not promise the anti-poverty groups a reduction of 25% of the numbers living in poverty over the first five years? To me, I believe this plan would be modest and it is certainly possible, but will the Liberals actually do it? Policy analysts say if a concerted effort is given towards the reduction of poverty, many areas must be covered ... not just hiking social assistance rates or playing shell games with child benefits. To me, poverty must be attacked at its roots, not at its symptoms ... in order to do this, we have to ask the hard questions that need to be asked, particularly of businesses - many of whom give generously to the coffers of the Liberal Party. For example, are businesses prepared to pay a living wage to its workers? Are employers prepared to hire people - regardless of disability status or ethnicity - based on their abilities and not other characteristics, such as where they got their work experience or whether or not the person has a driver's license. It seems to me that employers don't care if you're a PHd or a high school drop-out, but if you can drive, you're in ... even if you don't have to drive on a regular basis as a bona fide occupational requirement. Keeping up this charade maintains a "nice" certain middle class culture and keeps out the riff-raff, such as people with disabilities, people who are from another country or people living in poverty. The way employers think, plan and act has to be completely changed in order to move more people out of poverty ...
Further, the government needs to draw a line in the sand. If employers are bitching that they can't get local people to work for them, governments need to STOP catering to them and subsidizing them either directly or indirectly ... unless these employers are willing to pay a living wage. If employers are found to continue using policies that are discriminatory to certain groups, thus resulting in a disproportionate number of members in these groups to live in poverty - then these employers need to be fined heavily as a cost of doing business this way ... with all the proceeds from these fines to be applied directly to those persons who have to continue living on OW or ODSP for a longer period of time as a result of repeatedly being turned away from jobs for these reasons ... and get a top-up, like at least $500 more per single individual and $1,000-$1,500 more per family (on top of what they already get)! To me, employers will never learn until they have to dig into their own pockets as a consequence of their continued discriminatory practices. If an employer harbours workplace bullies or protects them, those that own the company as well as those doing the bullying should pay out of their own pockets - any compensation - that is awarded to their targets. Any organization that receives government funding or is licensed in any way by any regulatory body would lose its funding and/or license if it continues ... otherwise, we will continue to be raising "issues" about workplace bullying well into the year 2525 without any resolution in sight.
For those individuals and families headed by people who are unable or unavailable for work, their net income must never fall below the floor upon which one can pay for an average home (rent or buy), eat well, transport themselves and their families, as well as supply themselves with clothing, heat, electricity, reasonable recreation, health care and other "human needs". People living in poverty are tired of eating less per day than is given to prisoners, while they are forced to remain in their homes day after day after day with nothing to do. People who are too disabled to work for example are punished instead of supported in a dignified, independent lifestyle, while prisoners eat well, are given a trade and are guaranteed shelter during their time "inside". Politicians should not be the ones that determine what people need to live on. I sincerely believe that given their upper middle class backgrounds, they don't have a clue what low-income people need to make ends meet. If you are in your own home, you should be able to remain in it and not have to keep moving to cheaper and cheaper and less and less safe accommodations until you hit rock bottom and end up on the streets.
Yes, a true anti-poverty plan is going to cost money ... money that most politicians would rather give to their wealthy friends in the form of tax breaks and corporate welfare. To truly have a plan to eradicate poverty, politicians have to change the way they think and act ... they need to stop giving millions of dollars to cricket clubs and ethnic organizations allegedly linked with executive members of Liberal riding associations and former Lberal candidates/elected members (or their spouses). They need to directly involve people living in poverty to assist them in understanding some key issues, such as how much it really costs to live (e.g things have changed a lot since 1975), what people really need to escape poverty and what people's skills really are ... the politicians might surprise themselves! After all, one out of six household heads that are on ODSP have completed university. Many others have college or partial credits. ... the old Liberal solutions of teaching people how to read, giving them their grade twelve and helping them with their resumes is not entirely effective anymore. Getting people jobs at Wal-Mart and Starbucks and call centres is not going to cut it for many of these people ... that will only transform somebody from the welfare poor to the working poor and the poverty situation doesn't change a bit! Get real!
Some sacred cows may also need to be fried ... for example, building more rent-geared-to-income housing is NOT going to get rid of poverty. It just makes it more invisible and insidious. If you want to keep somebody trapped in a no-win situation, that is the way to do it .. claw them back every time they move an inch and don't let them progress! It is actually better to find ways to help people keep the homes they have or get better housing if they are presently in substandard housing. This can be done through a variety of fiscal measures, including refundable tax credits, shelter allowances for OW and ODSP reflecting real costs as opposed to the costs in the 1970's and various incentives to help people purchase their own homes.
Do I think Dalton McGuinty is going to meet his 25 in 5 target? Of course not. He may have appointed Deb Matthews to head this committee, but how much power will this committee really have? Will there even be a budget for this next shell game? Will there be real and meaningful consultation with those who live in poverty, as opposed to talking to all the food bank directors and Salvation Army platoons? Will all Ministries that directly or indirectly impact on the poor be held to certain targets and made accountable if they fail to achieve them? For example, the Ministry of Finance is a big player on this team and should be ... it is going to cost money, especially in the first few years. It is only after poverty is truly reduced or even eliminated that we will actually notice something unusual ... we will be saving lots of government dollars in just about every Ministry. There will be less need for health care dollars to go to treat preventable diseases, less money necessary to crack down on crime and pay for corrections, less money on long-term disability and worker's compensation (which is where the private sector will see a direct benefit) and more money will be available to provide for cultural activities, education, research and all the good things we want out of our communities ... and we can even help people in other countries ... yes, but that comes after we look after our own backyard first!
I would like to be still alive when the United Nations issues its report ranking Canada as Number One in terms of its poverty reduction strategy and economic/environmental sustainability. Your thoughts, people?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
POST ELECTION ... BACK WITH THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD?
The Liberals are back with another majority, this time with more seats predicated on even less popular vote.
It doesn't matter how much somebody lies, breaks promises and continues to ignore real issues, the sheep keep going back again and again and voting for the same old, same old. Maybe the 42% who voted Liberal are among the ones who are doing well, or maybe some of them got spooked over John Tory's proposal to bring faith-based schools that meet certain standards under the public system. A non-issue to me, but it is amazing how many people get spooked over what actually amounts to 1 - 2% of the tax paying population.
Doesn't the arrogance of voting themselves a 25% increase within the space of eight days sway people? How about the billions wasted at "year end" surpluses given away to so-called Liberal friendly organizations? How about McGuinty's originally signed pledge not to raise taxes, only to be broken in the first breath of his newly-minted government with a huge health tax, which not only took from higher income folks (which can truly absorb more taxes), but also low income workers making as little as $20,000 a year? What about McGuinty's phony-baloney feel-good pledges to help those living in poverty? There is still as much poverty, if not more, than there was at the time McGuinty first sailed into power in 2003. How about McGuinty's attacks on numerous professions, including my own? With this next four year mandate, one should ask themselves if their OWN profession is next. They mentioned nothing about their attack on paralegals while campaigning in 2003, so don't be surprised if other professions will be held to the fire during this next four year term.
From the day McGuinty got into power until today, I am: (a) financially worse off; (b) in poorer health; and (c) for the first time in my life, facing serious money issues. I know I am not alone because many of my own clients, even in the regular fee-paying category, are facing lay-offs, bankruptcies, foreclosures and other situations where many of them are feeling their backs are to the wall. A typical client who was able to regain employment after lay-off would move from a $25/hour job to a $10/hour job, yet still be saddled with the same expenses they had while earning $25/hour. The key issue that has been ignored in this election is that prices are going UP, not down. These 'regular fee-paying clients' are not the clients our office gets for financial or disability cases. These people are usually those who are trying to start businesses (and need a business plan), are involved in a Highway Traffic matter, or need assistance in a regular legal action (e.g. somebody owes them money, somebody damaged their property, a business owner has difficulty with a commercial landlord). These people can typically pay our fees, but more and more of them are having to borrow in order to do so.
Yet throughout his election campaign, McGuinty told the Toronto Star and anybody else who would listen that over 340,000 new jobs have been created under his watch, 90% of which paid $19.50 per hour or more. If this is true, Mr. McGuinty, maybe you can tell me where these jobs are so I can direct my clients who are losing their jobs as to where to find a new one ... Give me the names, addresses and telephone numbers of these employers who are now hiring at this rate (over $19.50 an hour). Don't tell us you can't do that, because if you were telling us the truth during your whole election campaign, somebody on your team was able to contact these employers and gather these statistics in order for you to make this wildly, ludicrous statement. Unfortunately, Mr. McGuinty, I am going to hold you accountable for every word you uttered during this election ... I need the facts, the names, the addresses, please ... my clients are looking up to you.
How about people with disabilities, Mr. McGuinty? Not much was said about them on your election trail. No promises of increased income. No promises of new job opportunities. Just more of the same old, same old. I worked with thousands of people with disabilities throughout Ontario, many of them through the Internet and others in person. Only a small fraction of them voted for you in this election. Why? Because, when you had nothing to offer them in your first four year mandate, why would these people expect you to offer them more in the next four years? I know what your response to this allegation will be ... that your government had given them a 3% and a 2% raise in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and another 2% in November. That is not good enough, sir. Inflation has eaten away at their benefits to the tune of 30 - 35% since their last increase in 1993. This is especially not good enough when you saw fit to increase your own salary at the stroke of a pen by $40,000, despite the fact that at that same time - a report was published that stated people are falling further and further into deepening poverty and that food bank use was at an all time high since October 2003.
I know many of these people. Our health care system and its costs are skyrocketing not necessarily because of our aging population, but because of realities that exist OUTSIDE of our health care system. Health care economists believe our aging population may contribute only a percentage point or two in difference in health care spending, but as there are MORE people living in poverty - many of these people are getting sicker and requiring much more expensive interventions at a much younger age. In my own office, in the past six months alone, I have encountered the following:
1. A man, 42, diabetic, cut back on his special diet allowance to the point that after his housing costs, he did not have anything left for healthy food. He is now blind and completely unemployable.
2. A woman, now 54, suffered from a particularly brittle form of diabetes that she inherited from her father. When she began to experience complications in her late 40's, she was unable to afford an insulin pump. She has now had both legs amputated, suffered two heart attacks and is going blind in one eye. Her kidneys are failing to the point she may soon require dialysis as well. Good money going after bad, all for the want of an insulin pump.
3. Another woman, 59 or 60, I am not sure. She was diabetic and obese from many years of improper diet and poverty. After housing, she had $75 a month left for food, transportation and clothing. She just had a major heart attack which her physician attributed directly to her diet, and because he was afraid that if she was discharged back to living on her own, she will likely have another heart attack, so he placed her in a nursing home, likely costing taxpayers at least double the amount of her disability pension itself, plus the continued payments of her ODSP which also go towards the costs of the facility, let alone the expensive health care she now needs.
4. One family, with three children, had two of their children removed by Children's Aid (which is still before the courts but their chances of winning are slim). The reason the children are in care relates to the health of the kids, which was too expensive to manage by the family, as it turns out. As a result, this family's shelter and basic needs allowance under ODSP was cut back, leaving this family very short of money to feed the remaining three. At the present time, our taxes are paying at least another $2,300 a month to care for these children elsewhere - money these parents will never get to see. They had a recent visit from a Children's Aid worker who told the family that if they cannot find better and healthier accommodations, they will not get the two children back and they may even lose the third one. The last time I checked, landlords do not decrease the rent for families when there are less people living in the household, nor do utility costs go down by very much.
5. Other people are dying young and of illnesses that middle-class families have never seen or if they did encounter them, they would not likely die of the conditions. Two of my clients died in the last month or so, one of a perforated ulcer (at age 42) and another of a staph infection (at age 37). These people got to this point after living very difficult lives. It is not that these people were not fighters - one in fact had recently attempted to lay a suit against a facility he was in where he was recklessly beaten up. A recent column by Dr. Gifford-Jones bemoaned the return of scurvy, a deficiency of Vitamin C. This doesn't shock me in the least, as I had at least one client come through my door that had that diagnosis.
Poverty is a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, Mr. McGuinty! It is not something that can be dealt with through a network of homeless shelters and food banks. I know these same organizations supported you throughout your campaign because for sure, it is known you'd keep them in business. The director of a food bank or homeless shelter does make very good money, many earning over $80.000 a year! Why would I want to put myself out of business if I am making that kind of money? Of course, that's why they supported you.
You also spoke on national TV about a specific business plan you intend to have in place to reduce poverty in Ontario. You said you did not have the specifics, but promised to have them within a year. I will be watching you, and I will also be watching for your specifics as well ... as you know, creating more low-income housing does not eradicate poverty, so I would expect this would not be a cornerstone of a true business plan for poverty eradication/reduction. Because 87% of those on assistance live in market housing or even in owned housing, it would make sense from my standpoint to ensure they all have enough money to cover their shelter expenses (including utility and telephone costs) WITHOUT dipping into their basic needs budget. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, as many of them cannot work.
I would also expect a substantial investment in economic development, as well as some use of public service jobs to get filled by persons with disabilities at reasonable wages. If people work forty hours a week, year round and still cannot support themselves and their families, a job is not necessarily the key cornerstone in anti-poverty policy. There should be more high paying jobs, as well as procuring people from disadvantaged sectors to work in these higher paid jobs, where qualified. It is good to see your government is trying to assist skilled immigrants who have trouble getting their foreign credentials recognized to get work in their fields, but what about people with disabilities, many of whom have university and college education that they are still paying for ... how come their credentials still go unrecognized and they are supposed to be enthralled with the prospect of having a job stuffing envelopes, packing boxes, answering phones or working in a low-paid office position? If you want to eradicate poverty, you have to be serious about it ... your Ontario Child Benefit does not cut the mustard for families on ODSP, particularly for those that have more than one child and pay market rent ... as after your planned "restructuring", they will be getting less, not more. Do the math. It will be better for your government in the long run to skip the restructuring bullshit and just issue the OCB and base it on taxable income only - similar to how the "working poor" will be dealt with. Because if you insist on this "restructuring", you are simply replacing one clawback with another clawback and that will not even make a dent in the poverty rate for these families! If ODSP recipients work, their earnings are clawed back and taxed anyways ... so why do you want to penalize ODSP recipients for reasons of their disability due to being on the higher paid ODSP, and having added benefits such as special diet, disability needs, etc.? If this is done, it is illegal and it will be challenged.
Tell me, Mr. McGuinty, what do I have to look forward to in the next four years? What do my clients have to look forward to under your leadership? How is the next four years going to be different than the last four years for me and the people I represent? Will my people REALLY notice a difference at all, or will the suffering continue? If you believe you truly have a majority mandate, which indeed I find debatable at best, then you must represent the interests of ALL Ontarians, not just those who drive the SUVs, could afford to take their kids to hockey practice, live in the GTA suburbs, have $500,000 homes and earn over $100,000 a year. If you need to hike taxes, hike them on people who drive gas guzzling vehicles, earn more than $80,000 a year and lower and/or eliminate your health tax for the working poor. If I had a job and made over $80,000 a year ... and I did at one time, I would not worry so much about taxes, because being a high earner is a privilege in itself. Just give me a chance to be a high earner again and then you can see how much more I can do for Ontario, as would the rest of my clients ...
... because TRUE anti-poverty initiatives will pay back big time in economic and political rewards, higher taxes paid to your government, more jobs in the private sector and more money for the things we all find important like health care, the environment and education. You will also earn my respect and that, Mr. McGuinty, can go a long way ... because I write for many publications, speak at many conferences, and have many e-lists that I work with ... and my clients. I have the capability of reaching many people with my words. I would love these words to be supportive of your leadership, as opposed to feeling more of the same old, same old. Ensuring the needs of my clients - including those 2/3rds that do not come to me for economic or disability issues and pay full fees - would also go a long way towards your continued popularity and legacy for your government. All I want is to see an end to this suffering ... soon, well before I am too old to enjoy it.
It doesn't matter how much somebody lies, breaks promises and continues to ignore real issues, the sheep keep going back again and again and voting for the same old, same old. Maybe the 42% who voted Liberal are among the ones who are doing well, or maybe some of them got spooked over John Tory's proposal to bring faith-based schools that meet certain standards under the public system. A non-issue to me, but it is amazing how many people get spooked over what actually amounts to 1 - 2% of the tax paying population.
Doesn't the arrogance of voting themselves a 25% increase within the space of eight days sway people? How about the billions wasted at "year end" surpluses given away to so-called Liberal friendly organizations? How about McGuinty's originally signed pledge not to raise taxes, only to be broken in the first breath of his newly-minted government with a huge health tax, which not only took from higher income folks (which can truly absorb more taxes), but also low income workers making as little as $20,000 a year? What about McGuinty's phony-baloney feel-good pledges to help those living in poverty? There is still as much poverty, if not more, than there was at the time McGuinty first sailed into power in 2003. How about McGuinty's attacks on numerous professions, including my own? With this next four year mandate, one should ask themselves if their OWN profession is next. They mentioned nothing about their attack on paralegals while campaigning in 2003, so don't be surprised if other professions will be held to the fire during this next four year term.
From the day McGuinty got into power until today, I am: (a) financially worse off; (b) in poorer health; and (c) for the first time in my life, facing serious money issues. I know I am not alone because many of my own clients, even in the regular fee-paying category, are facing lay-offs, bankruptcies, foreclosures and other situations where many of them are feeling their backs are to the wall. A typical client who was able to regain employment after lay-off would move from a $25/hour job to a $10/hour job, yet still be saddled with the same expenses they had while earning $25/hour. The key issue that has been ignored in this election is that prices are going UP, not down. These 'regular fee-paying clients' are not the clients our office gets for financial or disability cases. These people are usually those who are trying to start businesses (and need a business plan), are involved in a Highway Traffic matter, or need assistance in a regular legal action (e.g. somebody owes them money, somebody damaged their property, a business owner has difficulty with a commercial landlord). These people can typically pay our fees, but more and more of them are having to borrow in order to do so.
Yet throughout his election campaign, McGuinty told the Toronto Star and anybody else who would listen that over 340,000 new jobs have been created under his watch, 90% of which paid $19.50 per hour or more. If this is true, Mr. McGuinty, maybe you can tell me where these jobs are so I can direct my clients who are losing their jobs as to where to find a new one ... Give me the names, addresses and telephone numbers of these employers who are now hiring at this rate (over $19.50 an hour). Don't tell us you can't do that, because if you were telling us the truth during your whole election campaign, somebody on your team was able to contact these employers and gather these statistics in order for you to make this wildly, ludicrous statement. Unfortunately, Mr. McGuinty, I am going to hold you accountable for every word you uttered during this election ... I need the facts, the names, the addresses, please ... my clients are looking up to you.
How about people with disabilities, Mr. McGuinty? Not much was said about them on your election trail. No promises of increased income. No promises of new job opportunities. Just more of the same old, same old. I worked with thousands of people with disabilities throughout Ontario, many of them through the Internet and others in person. Only a small fraction of them voted for you in this election. Why? Because, when you had nothing to offer them in your first four year mandate, why would these people expect you to offer them more in the next four years? I know what your response to this allegation will be ... that your government had given them a 3% and a 2% raise in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and another 2% in November. That is not good enough, sir. Inflation has eaten away at their benefits to the tune of 30 - 35% since their last increase in 1993. This is especially not good enough when you saw fit to increase your own salary at the stroke of a pen by $40,000, despite the fact that at that same time - a report was published that stated people are falling further and further into deepening poverty and that food bank use was at an all time high since October 2003.
I know many of these people. Our health care system and its costs are skyrocketing not necessarily because of our aging population, but because of realities that exist OUTSIDE of our health care system. Health care economists believe our aging population may contribute only a percentage point or two in difference in health care spending, but as there are MORE people living in poverty - many of these people are getting sicker and requiring much more expensive interventions at a much younger age. In my own office, in the past six months alone, I have encountered the following:
1. A man, 42, diabetic, cut back on his special diet allowance to the point that after his housing costs, he did not have anything left for healthy food. He is now blind and completely unemployable.
2. A woman, now 54, suffered from a particularly brittle form of diabetes that she inherited from her father. When she began to experience complications in her late 40's, she was unable to afford an insulin pump. She has now had both legs amputated, suffered two heart attacks and is going blind in one eye. Her kidneys are failing to the point she may soon require dialysis as well. Good money going after bad, all for the want of an insulin pump.
3. Another woman, 59 or 60, I am not sure. She was diabetic and obese from many years of improper diet and poverty. After housing, she had $75 a month left for food, transportation and clothing. She just had a major heart attack which her physician attributed directly to her diet, and because he was afraid that if she was discharged back to living on her own, she will likely have another heart attack, so he placed her in a nursing home, likely costing taxpayers at least double the amount of her disability pension itself, plus the continued payments of her ODSP which also go towards the costs of the facility, let alone the expensive health care she now needs.
4. One family, with three children, had two of their children removed by Children's Aid (which is still before the courts but their chances of winning are slim). The reason the children are in care relates to the health of the kids, which was too expensive to manage by the family, as it turns out. As a result, this family's shelter and basic needs allowance under ODSP was cut back, leaving this family very short of money to feed the remaining three. At the present time, our taxes are paying at least another $2,300 a month to care for these children elsewhere - money these parents will never get to see. They had a recent visit from a Children's Aid worker who told the family that if they cannot find better and healthier accommodations, they will not get the two children back and they may even lose the third one. The last time I checked, landlords do not decrease the rent for families when there are less people living in the household, nor do utility costs go down by very much.
5. Other people are dying young and of illnesses that middle-class families have never seen or if they did encounter them, they would not likely die of the conditions. Two of my clients died in the last month or so, one of a perforated ulcer (at age 42) and another of a staph infection (at age 37). These people got to this point after living very difficult lives. It is not that these people were not fighters - one in fact had recently attempted to lay a suit against a facility he was in where he was recklessly beaten up. A recent column by Dr. Gifford-Jones bemoaned the return of scurvy, a deficiency of Vitamin C. This doesn't shock me in the least, as I had at least one client come through my door that had that diagnosis.
Poverty is a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, Mr. McGuinty! It is not something that can be dealt with through a network of homeless shelters and food banks. I know these same organizations supported you throughout your campaign because for sure, it is known you'd keep them in business. The director of a food bank or homeless shelter does make very good money, many earning over $80.000 a year! Why would I want to put myself out of business if I am making that kind of money? Of course, that's why they supported you.
You also spoke on national TV about a specific business plan you intend to have in place to reduce poverty in Ontario. You said you did not have the specifics, but promised to have them within a year. I will be watching you, and I will also be watching for your specifics as well ... as you know, creating more low-income housing does not eradicate poverty, so I would expect this would not be a cornerstone of a true business plan for poverty eradication/reduction. Because 87% of those on assistance live in market housing or even in owned housing, it would make sense from my standpoint to ensure they all have enough money to cover their shelter expenses (including utility and telephone costs) WITHOUT dipping into their basic needs budget. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, as many of them cannot work.
I would also expect a substantial investment in economic development, as well as some use of public service jobs to get filled by persons with disabilities at reasonable wages. If people work forty hours a week, year round and still cannot support themselves and their families, a job is not necessarily the key cornerstone in anti-poverty policy. There should be more high paying jobs, as well as procuring people from disadvantaged sectors to work in these higher paid jobs, where qualified. It is good to see your government is trying to assist skilled immigrants who have trouble getting their foreign credentials recognized to get work in their fields, but what about people with disabilities, many of whom have university and college education that they are still paying for ... how come their credentials still go unrecognized and they are supposed to be enthralled with the prospect of having a job stuffing envelopes, packing boxes, answering phones or working in a low-paid office position? If you want to eradicate poverty, you have to be serious about it ... your Ontario Child Benefit does not cut the mustard for families on ODSP, particularly for those that have more than one child and pay market rent ... as after your planned "restructuring", they will be getting less, not more. Do the math. It will be better for your government in the long run to skip the restructuring bullshit and just issue the OCB and base it on taxable income only - similar to how the "working poor" will be dealt with. Because if you insist on this "restructuring", you are simply replacing one clawback with another clawback and that will not even make a dent in the poverty rate for these families! If ODSP recipients work, their earnings are clawed back and taxed anyways ... so why do you want to penalize ODSP recipients for reasons of their disability due to being on the higher paid ODSP, and having added benefits such as special diet, disability needs, etc.? If this is done, it is illegal and it will be challenged.
Tell me, Mr. McGuinty, what do I have to look forward to in the next four years? What do my clients have to look forward to under your leadership? How is the next four years going to be different than the last four years for me and the people I represent? Will my people REALLY notice a difference at all, or will the suffering continue? If you believe you truly have a majority mandate, which indeed I find debatable at best, then you must represent the interests of ALL Ontarians, not just those who drive the SUVs, could afford to take their kids to hockey practice, live in the GTA suburbs, have $500,000 homes and earn over $100,000 a year. If you need to hike taxes, hike them on people who drive gas guzzling vehicles, earn more than $80,000 a year and lower and/or eliminate your health tax for the working poor. If I had a job and made over $80,000 a year ... and I did at one time, I would not worry so much about taxes, because being a high earner is a privilege in itself. Just give me a chance to be a high earner again and then you can see how much more I can do for Ontario, as would the rest of my clients ...
... because TRUE anti-poverty initiatives will pay back big time in economic and political rewards, higher taxes paid to your government, more jobs in the private sector and more money for the things we all find important like health care, the environment and education. You will also earn my respect and that, Mr. McGuinty, can go a long way ... because I write for many publications, speak at many conferences, and have many e-lists that I work with ... and my clients. I have the capability of reaching many people with my words. I would love these words to be supportive of your leadership, as opposed to feeling more of the same old, same old. Ensuring the needs of my clients - including those 2/3rds that do not come to me for economic or disability issues and pay full fees - would also go a long way towards your continued popularity and legacy for your government. All I want is to see an end to this suffering ... soon, well before I am too old to enjoy it.
Friday, September 21, 2007
ELECTIONS, POLITICS AND THE INSIDE WORLD OF A VOTER
Want to know what really ticks me off? People who don't vote in elections.
I recall people going to wars and risking their lives and sometimes even paying with their lives to give us this freedom. There was a time when women and blacks did not have the vote. When this was the issue, many women engaged in violence and civil disobedience to prove their point. Later on, another woman took her fight to the Supreme Court to argue that women were "persons" for the purposes of accepting an appointment to the Senate. Other women had to dress like and pretend they were men in order to engage in a profession of their choice ... this was during a time when women were not traditionally admitted to the higher paid professions, such as medicine, dentistry and law. It was sometimes found out only after the person had died and the mortician came to take the body, when it was learned that the "he" everybody believed the person was, was actually a "she".
One thing having a higher education did for me was to make me understand the history and the struggle behind things that too many people take for granted today. In one particular course I took, we were shown films that documented the lives of people who gave so much of themselves, including their lives, to a particular cause. As I continued my education, I did some studies in the historical and social psychological relevance of key events, such as the suffragette movement, the Holocaust and the French Revolution. While historical in their nature, understanding these issues helps us learn about the importance of similar struggles today. To me, these issues are all of the same fabric, but the technology is more advanced as we age as a human species.
There are a lot of people today that are trying to protest the war in Afghanistan. They say we should withdraw and bring our troops back home. Because of my learnings about the early struggles of modern humankind, I am not entirely against war. It was war that put the Nazis to their knees and freed the many European nations that Hitler attempted to take over. It was the Civil War in the United States that started the path to freedom for African Americans who were held there as slaves. I live in a part of the world where many slaves came to after the "underground railroad" was built as a means for many of them to escape before and during that war. Today, I still think the work we are doing in Afghanistan is worth something ... I think the people who should be answering whether the war is accomplishing anything are those that are involved, the thousands of soldiers and civilians who are on the grounds protecting the citizens of that country against the ravages of the Taliban and their remainders. I am one of those people who believe that Remembrance Day should mean something and that the veterans who return from these wars should be respected and their lives celebrated.
To argue that voting is a waste of your time, or that your vote doesn't make any difference doesn't persuade me. I can only envision the veterans of the first and second world wars, the leaders of the suffragette movement and those who built the underground railroad turn over in their graves as you casually disregard your duty. If you are truly disenchanted by the array of candidates presented on your ballot, the thing to do is take your ballot, fold it and return it to the Deputy Returning Officer at your polling station without marking it. This is called "rejecting your ballot", which still means you voted and your presence is recorded - even though you did not visibly support anybody on that ballot. At one time, I served many Elections as a poll clerk or deputy returning officer and we would always encounter one or two people throughout the day that did just that - rejected their ballot. We were required to strike out the voter's name and count that ballot as "rejected".
In addition to voting, I always believed in keeping active and keeping our leaders accountable. In modern days, elections are run quite differently than they were when I was directly involved in the the elections ... during this part of my life, I did everything from canvassing for a political candidate, raising funds for a political campaign, traveling throughout the riding to deliver literature and knock on doors. During one election, I was on crutches for a broken ankle, but I still hobbled my way door to door to speak to voters about the issues and to encourage them to vote for "my" candidate. I've also been involved with enumerations, which helped create the voter's list before every federal or provincial election. We would go door to door in pairs to ascertain the names of each resident who was eligible to vote in each household. We would often have to return a second or third time if a voter was not home to provide this information. I would then go home and actually type up voter's lists and submit them to my local Returning Office for posting. At the Advanced Polls, or on the Election Day itself, I also served a number of functions, whether that be scrutineering for a political candidate or remaining "neutral" and sticking to clerking at the polls.
In other functions, I actually met personally with political candidates or sent them surveys for various community groups I was involved with during the time. I would record the candidates' replies exactly as they delivered them and publish this information for people that wanted to know the positions that different parties took on issues. I would be involved with political parties - I was a member of two different parties at two very distinct and separate periods of my life. For one of the parties, I served on its executive and attended most party functions, such as policy and leadership conventions. For this party, I also served for a time as its riding association president. Much later in my life, I worked with and became part of regular political fundraising and social events for the second political party. Today, I am non-partisan, although I will attempt to serve and provide information to whoever gets into power. I've voted at least once in my life for all the major political parties, including one time when I voted for the Green Party.
Outside of electoral politics, I have served in a lobbying capacity on behalf of community organizations or my profession(s), a protester especially when I was young at heart and idealist in my culture, as well as a consultant to whatever Ministry or government department needed the type of services and advice I can offer. In my later years, after becoming non-partisan (from the radical centre, as I always like to call it), I provide consultation and assistance for community groups with respect to their communications with government or at times, as a direct consultant on specific projects. The one thing I know that doesn't change much in government is the function and role of the permanent bureaucracy. These are the people that are charged with carrying out decisions made by the government in power and in many cases, designing programs and services in response to Cabinet directives. In my working life, I enjoyed working in jobs that have occasionally brought me in contact with Cabinet Ministers and even the Leaders of political parties or Government. Through these functions, I have learned quite a bit about how democracy works.
I can't say I ever met a Cabinet Minister of any stripe that I intensely disliked. Individuals that achieve these positions of power are usually well trained to deal with a diversity of people and organizations. Most of them have also achieved a level of respect from the people who elected them in their own ridings. In fact, there were a number of them I actually liked and enjoyed meeting with. One thing to note, however, is that meeting any of these political leaders in real life is far different than reading about them through the media or hearing about them through the perspectives of others. You do develop a type of knowledge one can never obtain from any of the courses I took in school or from dealing with issues from the "outside". Despite the political affilitations and positions of many of these people, I do know that serving in their positions regardless of whether or not I like their policies is actually very difficult work. I remember attending a function that included the full Cabinet and Premier of one of our past provincial governments and meeting several of them. To me, these are all just people ... many of which are carrying a very high level of burden and responsibility.
Not only are these people responsible and accountable for everything that comes out of their respective offices, serving in the highly public capacity that they are in often creates friction with people on the "outside". If anybody thinks these conflicts do not impact on any of these people personally, they are dreaming in technicolour. Politics is a very public, as well as a personal responsibility. One mistep can cost a person their job. A major mistep that may not affect you or me either way can cost a politician their reputation and career. Think about Brian Mulroney. Many people remember this man as the "most hated Prime Minister in the history of Canada". I even remember one time when my husband and I went to visit with one of his relatives and a young girl (his niece?) was there watching television when a news story involving then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney came on. This girl turned to the TV and told us loudly that she "hated that man".
Can you IMAGINE what it is actually like to be a man in Mulroney's position which held a great deal of responsibility and certainly a need for caution, when a lot of people - including eight-year old little girls - are all pointing their fingers at you to say how much they hate you? My husband and I met Mulroney before. In real life, he is actually shorter than I envisioned him to be when I watched him on television. What I have learned at that time and in subsequent years is that these leaders are all just people ... much like you and me. I also had the occasion to enjoy a dinner function where I sat at the same table as Bob and Arlene Perly Rae while the NDP held power in Ontario. Again, these people are far different than they have ever been portrayed by the media. One thing all of our leaders have, regardless of political stripe, is the belief that they are truly doing some good. They don't want to believe they may sometimes create harm by some of their policies ... some of them are deeply sensitive to this type of attack, even though they have been trained not to show it. When something clicks in the minds of voters and these folks are literally tossed out of office, they all feel personally attacked. In fact, both Parliament and the Legislature provides a service to politicians who are tossed out of office to aid them in their career and personal transitions as a result of being voted out.
This brings me on to my next topic, which is the best way to "do" politics. Ontario had 42 years of what was referred to as a Progressive Conservative dynasty, which ended abruptly in 1985, upon the promise of extended funding for Roman Catholic schools in Ontario. I was around at the time when folks had to pay tuition at Roman Catholic schools after the eighth grade. The promise of extended funding was controversial, for sure ... as many people, as they are thinking right now on the subject of faith-based schools ... believe that support for Catholic education to the exception of all others, is discriminatory against other faiths. This is becoming even more of a key issue today, particularly with the growing diversity of our province and the richness of our multi-faith society. What may have worked in 1985 may not necessarily work today. This is the issue that threw the Progressive Conservatives out of power after 42 years of moderate (and often "bland") leadership. Since 1985, Ontario had become a more volatile political landscape, including a single term for the NDP in 1990 - 1995.
I sense voters do want to see "change", but radical changes scare people and as proven in the past, is very risky to the political careers of those that implement change too far, too soon. In many ways, our current Premier - Dalton McGuinty - has tried to represent to the voters that his leadership was the antidote to what voters got tired of with the former administration of Mike Harris/ Ernie Eves. In some ways, McGuinty did put some brakes on the ideological push and pull involved with the so-called "MUSH sector" (municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals). When Harris was in power, many of his ideas were good - but like most politicians, he wanted to do all of this in one term of office. This is what eventually did his administration in and possibly could continue to turn some voters off the Progressive Conservative party. However, there were many hot spots where McGuinty could have taken a more cautious and consensus-oriented position, but chose not to. Like Mike Harris, McGuinty had his own ideas of how things needed to be done and given the short-term view of politics, he too needed to get some of these things done in THIS term. Need I name these "changes"? Lifting the "cap" off hydro, terminating the "employment" of highly paid Hydro employees with golden parachutes, radically altering the payment structure and rate of pay for MPPs, adding a major health tax, smart meters, banning pit bulls, cutting the special diet allowances (as well as some other less known ODSP benefits), forcing paralegals under the Law Society, etc. were in his mind decisive moves, but in the minds of many voters - maybe not good ideas. I don't think the McGuinty administration actually wanted to hurt anybody with these moves; however, many of these decisions have cost jobs, businesses and hurt the working poor.
I think what most voters want is to be left alone, to be availed of work opportunities, increased income and a reasonable social safety net in the health care and social sector. They want somebody managing the good ship Ontario with a moderate, yet consensus building role at the top. People do not want to fear the loss of their livelihood or to pay more for essential services. When politicians start pulling manoevres that put some of these things at risk, they make voters nervous. People don't like strikes, major protests, long waiting lists for services that taxes should be paying for, and so forth. The machine should be well-oiled and running smoothly, while ensuring that regardless of who you are in Ontario - there is a sense of predictability and safety. This is something that unfortunately I feel I was not getting from the McGuinty government ...
While not everything that went wrong in Ontario is McGuinty's fault, voters needed to see that some effort is being made to reduce or ameliorate the negative impacts that changes might bring. With the hike in hydro, the loss of my own government contracts and the sense that paralegals are being regulated out of business, I have lost that sense of security and safety I should be receiving from my government. I have therefore lost confidence in the leadership and direction that McGuinty's government is going. I don't want another four years of suffering the way I am right now. I want access to opportunities, access to more work ... I am well over forty years of age and this is the time of my life that I begin to worry about if I will ever be able to retire. If things keep going the way they have under the present administration, I might as well forget it.
However - what if Mr. McGuinty still made the same decisions that he did, but somehow took other steps to ameliorate the negative effects of some of these policies (so people like me can stop feeling targeted)? For example, his government could have provided "seed money" to the Law Society of Upper Canada to pay them to regulate us and reduce some of our costs ... while allowing eventual economies of scale (with more paralegals eventually becoming licensed) to be the taper-off point of this funding, so that regulatory mechanisms are at least affordable to the first set of guinea pigs going through licensing (a.k.a. "grandparented" or "transitional" candidates) can actually afford to continue and the public can continue to afford to access our services. With respect to the other contracts, if changes were made to the Employment Support program, could there have been a way to negotiate some other type of related contract with my office to ensure that: (a) clients receiving my service can continue to receive services; and (b) my office can continue to serve some type of role with ODSP clients - maybe a different role, but still a role that will pay me to continue working? Would my attitude and my feeling of predictability and safety under McGuinty's watch be different? Absolutely! If things were different in this way, I may instead be campaigning for one of their people instead of wasting my time on this blog "educating" voters about my life and attitudes toward it.
In this post, I have come full circle in expressing my concerns about people that don't vote (but still complain nevertheless), to the directness of much of my life and work experience in the political and government sphere, to my knowledge of how government actually works, to my knowledge of how governments can at times unintentionally put "outside" people in precarious or difficult situations - which can and should cost them not only votes, but possibly a majority government. I often wish the powers that be could actually read my letters and my articles and get a sense of how they went wrong for me and let me have the opportunities that they speak of so frequently, but somehow seem so elusive to me. In 2003, many of us including my husband and I did vote to "choose change", but it appears this time around, we're going to have to do it again - except this time for real.
I recall people going to wars and risking their lives and sometimes even paying with their lives to give us this freedom. There was a time when women and blacks did not have the vote. When this was the issue, many women engaged in violence and civil disobedience to prove their point. Later on, another woman took her fight to the Supreme Court to argue that women were "persons" for the purposes of accepting an appointment to the Senate. Other women had to dress like and pretend they were men in order to engage in a profession of their choice ... this was during a time when women were not traditionally admitted to the higher paid professions, such as medicine, dentistry and law. It was sometimes found out only after the person had died and the mortician came to take the body, when it was learned that the "he" everybody believed the person was, was actually a "she".
One thing having a higher education did for me was to make me understand the history and the struggle behind things that too many people take for granted today. In one particular course I took, we were shown films that documented the lives of people who gave so much of themselves, including their lives, to a particular cause. As I continued my education, I did some studies in the historical and social psychological relevance of key events, such as the suffragette movement, the Holocaust and the French Revolution. While historical in their nature, understanding these issues helps us learn about the importance of similar struggles today. To me, these issues are all of the same fabric, but the technology is more advanced as we age as a human species.
There are a lot of people today that are trying to protest the war in Afghanistan. They say we should withdraw and bring our troops back home. Because of my learnings about the early struggles of modern humankind, I am not entirely against war. It was war that put the Nazis to their knees and freed the many European nations that Hitler attempted to take over. It was the Civil War in the United States that started the path to freedom for African Americans who were held there as slaves. I live in a part of the world where many slaves came to after the "underground railroad" was built as a means for many of them to escape before and during that war. Today, I still think the work we are doing in Afghanistan is worth something ... I think the people who should be answering whether the war is accomplishing anything are those that are involved, the thousands of soldiers and civilians who are on the grounds protecting the citizens of that country against the ravages of the Taliban and their remainders. I am one of those people who believe that Remembrance Day should mean something and that the veterans who return from these wars should be respected and their lives celebrated.
To argue that voting is a waste of your time, or that your vote doesn't make any difference doesn't persuade me. I can only envision the veterans of the first and second world wars, the leaders of the suffragette movement and those who built the underground railroad turn over in their graves as you casually disregard your duty. If you are truly disenchanted by the array of candidates presented on your ballot, the thing to do is take your ballot, fold it and return it to the Deputy Returning Officer at your polling station without marking it. This is called "rejecting your ballot", which still means you voted and your presence is recorded - even though you did not visibly support anybody on that ballot. At one time, I served many Elections as a poll clerk or deputy returning officer and we would always encounter one or two people throughout the day that did just that - rejected their ballot. We were required to strike out the voter's name and count that ballot as "rejected".
In addition to voting, I always believed in keeping active and keeping our leaders accountable. In modern days, elections are run quite differently than they were when I was directly involved in the the elections ... during this part of my life, I did everything from canvassing for a political candidate, raising funds for a political campaign, traveling throughout the riding to deliver literature and knock on doors. During one election, I was on crutches for a broken ankle, but I still hobbled my way door to door to speak to voters about the issues and to encourage them to vote for "my" candidate. I've also been involved with enumerations, which helped create the voter's list before every federal or provincial election. We would go door to door in pairs to ascertain the names of each resident who was eligible to vote in each household. We would often have to return a second or third time if a voter was not home to provide this information. I would then go home and actually type up voter's lists and submit them to my local Returning Office for posting. At the Advanced Polls, or on the Election Day itself, I also served a number of functions, whether that be scrutineering for a political candidate or remaining "neutral" and sticking to clerking at the polls.
In other functions, I actually met personally with political candidates or sent them surveys for various community groups I was involved with during the time. I would record the candidates' replies exactly as they delivered them and publish this information for people that wanted to know the positions that different parties took on issues. I would be involved with political parties - I was a member of two different parties at two very distinct and separate periods of my life. For one of the parties, I served on its executive and attended most party functions, such as policy and leadership conventions. For this party, I also served for a time as its riding association president. Much later in my life, I worked with and became part of regular political fundraising and social events for the second political party. Today, I am non-partisan, although I will attempt to serve and provide information to whoever gets into power. I've voted at least once in my life for all the major political parties, including one time when I voted for the Green Party.
Outside of electoral politics, I have served in a lobbying capacity on behalf of community organizations or my profession(s), a protester especially when I was young at heart and idealist in my culture, as well as a consultant to whatever Ministry or government department needed the type of services and advice I can offer. In my later years, after becoming non-partisan (from the radical centre, as I always like to call it), I provide consultation and assistance for community groups with respect to their communications with government or at times, as a direct consultant on specific projects. The one thing I know that doesn't change much in government is the function and role of the permanent bureaucracy. These are the people that are charged with carrying out decisions made by the government in power and in many cases, designing programs and services in response to Cabinet directives. In my working life, I enjoyed working in jobs that have occasionally brought me in contact with Cabinet Ministers and even the Leaders of political parties or Government. Through these functions, I have learned quite a bit about how democracy works.
I can't say I ever met a Cabinet Minister of any stripe that I intensely disliked. Individuals that achieve these positions of power are usually well trained to deal with a diversity of people and organizations. Most of them have also achieved a level of respect from the people who elected them in their own ridings. In fact, there were a number of them I actually liked and enjoyed meeting with. One thing to note, however, is that meeting any of these political leaders in real life is far different than reading about them through the media or hearing about them through the perspectives of others. You do develop a type of knowledge one can never obtain from any of the courses I took in school or from dealing with issues from the "outside". Despite the political affilitations and positions of many of these people, I do know that serving in their positions regardless of whether or not I like their policies is actually very difficult work. I remember attending a function that included the full Cabinet and Premier of one of our past provincial governments and meeting several of them. To me, these are all just people ... many of which are carrying a very high level of burden and responsibility.
Not only are these people responsible and accountable for everything that comes out of their respective offices, serving in the highly public capacity that they are in often creates friction with people on the "outside". If anybody thinks these conflicts do not impact on any of these people personally, they are dreaming in technicolour. Politics is a very public, as well as a personal responsibility. One mistep can cost a person their job. A major mistep that may not affect you or me either way can cost a politician their reputation and career. Think about Brian Mulroney. Many people remember this man as the "most hated Prime Minister in the history of Canada". I even remember one time when my husband and I went to visit with one of his relatives and a young girl (his niece?) was there watching television when a news story involving then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney came on. This girl turned to the TV and told us loudly that she "hated that man".
Can you IMAGINE what it is actually like to be a man in Mulroney's position which held a great deal of responsibility and certainly a need for caution, when a lot of people - including eight-year old little girls - are all pointing their fingers at you to say how much they hate you? My husband and I met Mulroney before. In real life, he is actually shorter than I envisioned him to be when I watched him on television. What I have learned at that time and in subsequent years is that these leaders are all just people ... much like you and me. I also had the occasion to enjoy a dinner function where I sat at the same table as Bob and Arlene Perly Rae while the NDP held power in Ontario. Again, these people are far different than they have ever been portrayed by the media. One thing all of our leaders have, regardless of political stripe, is the belief that they are truly doing some good. They don't want to believe they may sometimes create harm by some of their policies ... some of them are deeply sensitive to this type of attack, even though they have been trained not to show it. When something clicks in the minds of voters and these folks are literally tossed out of office, they all feel personally attacked. In fact, both Parliament and the Legislature provides a service to politicians who are tossed out of office to aid them in their career and personal transitions as a result of being voted out.
This brings me on to my next topic, which is the best way to "do" politics. Ontario had 42 years of what was referred to as a Progressive Conservative dynasty, which ended abruptly in 1985, upon the promise of extended funding for Roman Catholic schools in Ontario. I was around at the time when folks had to pay tuition at Roman Catholic schools after the eighth grade. The promise of extended funding was controversial, for sure ... as many people, as they are thinking right now on the subject of faith-based schools ... believe that support for Catholic education to the exception of all others, is discriminatory against other faiths. This is becoming even more of a key issue today, particularly with the growing diversity of our province and the richness of our multi-faith society. What may have worked in 1985 may not necessarily work today. This is the issue that threw the Progressive Conservatives out of power after 42 years of moderate (and often "bland") leadership. Since 1985, Ontario had become a more volatile political landscape, including a single term for the NDP in 1990 - 1995.
I sense voters do want to see "change", but radical changes scare people and as proven in the past, is very risky to the political careers of those that implement change too far, too soon. In many ways, our current Premier - Dalton McGuinty - has tried to represent to the voters that his leadership was the antidote to what voters got tired of with the former administration of Mike Harris/ Ernie Eves. In some ways, McGuinty did put some brakes on the ideological push and pull involved with the so-called "MUSH sector" (municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals). When Harris was in power, many of his ideas were good - but like most politicians, he wanted to do all of this in one term of office. This is what eventually did his administration in and possibly could continue to turn some voters off the Progressive Conservative party. However, there were many hot spots where McGuinty could have taken a more cautious and consensus-oriented position, but chose not to. Like Mike Harris, McGuinty had his own ideas of how things needed to be done and given the short-term view of politics, he too needed to get some of these things done in THIS term. Need I name these "changes"? Lifting the "cap" off hydro, terminating the "employment" of highly paid Hydro employees with golden parachutes, radically altering the payment structure and rate of pay for MPPs, adding a major health tax, smart meters, banning pit bulls, cutting the special diet allowances (as well as some other less known ODSP benefits), forcing paralegals under the Law Society, etc. were in his mind decisive moves, but in the minds of many voters - maybe not good ideas. I don't think the McGuinty administration actually wanted to hurt anybody with these moves; however, many of these decisions have cost jobs, businesses and hurt the working poor.
I think what most voters want is to be left alone, to be availed of work opportunities, increased income and a reasonable social safety net in the health care and social sector. They want somebody managing the good ship Ontario with a moderate, yet consensus building role at the top. People do not want to fear the loss of their livelihood or to pay more for essential services. When politicians start pulling manoevres that put some of these things at risk, they make voters nervous. People don't like strikes, major protests, long waiting lists for services that taxes should be paying for, and so forth. The machine should be well-oiled and running smoothly, while ensuring that regardless of who you are in Ontario - there is a sense of predictability and safety. This is something that unfortunately I feel I was not getting from the McGuinty government ...
While not everything that went wrong in Ontario is McGuinty's fault, voters needed to see that some effort is being made to reduce or ameliorate the negative impacts that changes might bring. With the hike in hydro, the loss of my own government contracts and the sense that paralegals are being regulated out of business, I have lost that sense of security and safety I should be receiving from my government. I have therefore lost confidence in the leadership and direction that McGuinty's government is going. I don't want another four years of suffering the way I am right now. I want access to opportunities, access to more work ... I am well over forty years of age and this is the time of my life that I begin to worry about if I will ever be able to retire. If things keep going the way they have under the present administration, I might as well forget it.
However - what if Mr. McGuinty still made the same decisions that he did, but somehow took other steps to ameliorate the negative effects of some of these policies (so people like me can stop feeling targeted)? For example, his government could have provided "seed money" to the Law Society of Upper Canada to pay them to regulate us and reduce some of our costs ... while allowing eventual economies of scale (with more paralegals eventually becoming licensed) to be the taper-off point of this funding, so that regulatory mechanisms are at least affordable to the first set of guinea pigs going through licensing (a.k.a. "grandparented" or "transitional" candidates) can actually afford to continue and the public can continue to afford to access our services. With respect to the other contracts, if changes were made to the Employment Support program, could there have been a way to negotiate some other type of related contract with my office to ensure that: (a) clients receiving my service can continue to receive services; and (b) my office can continue to serve some type of role with ODSP clients - maybe a different role, but still a role that will pay me to continue working? Would my attitude and my feeling of predictability and safety under McGuinty's watch be different? Absolutely! If things were different in this way, I may instead be campaigning for one of their people instead of wasting my time on this blog "educating" voters about my life and attitudes toward it.
In this post, I have come full circle in expressing my concerns about people that don't vote (but still complain nevertheless), to the directness of much of my life and work experience in the political and government sphere, to my knowledge of how government actually works, to my knowledge of how governments can at times unintentionally put "outside" people in precarious or difficult situations - which can and should cost them not only votes, but possibly a majority government. I often wish the powers that be could actually read my letters and my articles and get a sense of how they went wrong for me and let me have the opportunities that they speak of so frequently, but somehow seem so elusive to me. In 2003, many of us including my husband and I did vote to "choose change", but it appears this time around, we're going to have to do it again - except this time for real.
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