THERE IS NO DIGNITY IN CHARITY, BUT THERE IS WHEN WE ALL DEMAND EQUALITY

In the past few weeks, the news was filled with tragedy, ranging from a massive flood in parts of Alberta, the bombing of the Boston Marathon, a train wreck of a freight train carrying oil through a small Quebec village and the death of more than a dozen fire fighters fighting a fire in Arizona.  With the news coverage, the public is presented with both heroes and villains, while both government and members of the community come together to provide whatever support the "innocent" victims of these tragedies need and deserve.  Some of these tragedies are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, while others are sparked by human error like the derailment of an oil freight train in Lac Megantic, Quebec.  In any case, people are all around, while governments promise and deliver financial relief to individuals and families finding themselves in the thick of whatever happened.  Thousands of families returned to their homes in Calgary, Alberta, to find they had to demolish their homes or they lost everything they had, while there is community support to bring these families back to at least a stable position once again.  There is nothing wrong with lending a helping hand in these circumstances, or governments stepping in to provide aid when necessary, and for these circumstances, the public does not view this as a charitable act, but as a form of natural justice.

I wish Canadians and our respective governments would take the same approach to eliminating poverty in our country, which is otherwise blessed with wealth, resources and an abundance of talent.  In the above scenarios depicted, most members of the public view these tragedies as being nobody's fault, or perhaps, being someone's fault, but not necessarily to the point of finger pointing or placing blame.  Certainly, those who are directly suffering the effects of these tragedies are not being blamed for their circumstances and people all around want to ensure they are returned to a position of dignity.  At the same time, our citizens and government still don't get the dignity part of this equation when it comes to eliminating poverty.  We still want to blame the person who is poor for their circumstances, like they somehow brought it on themselves.  It is as if these people woke up one day deciding they were going to get sick and unable to work, or they were going to find themselves at the other end of a layoff when the company they worked at for thirty years slams its door shut on them, or they decide to marry somebody who is later found to be an abusive alcoholic and in order to get out of the situation, they must turn to welfare.

First, before we try to understand our hegemonic concepts of what creates poverty and what solves it, we need to discuss issues of dominant theory and privilege.  People have varying levels of privilege in our society, even though many people with privilege within the dominant culture are not always aware of how privileged they really are.  I wrote in this column in the past about how people who have both their driver's licenses and access to their own reliable transportation tend to take this for granted, especially in a region like our own.  They plan their days around their automobile, what routes they will take to their job or to their daily activities, and if they need to do anything else afterwards.  Drivers usually have a pretty good idea how long it is going to take them to get to different places and usually know to allow more time in bad weather, or if they are going somewhere at a time there are likely thousands of others like them using the same roads they will be on, such as taking a trip to Toronto starting out at 8:00 a.m. here and holding out false hope they will get there by 9:30 a.m.  That is why many commuters going there start their drive about 7:00 a.m., as they will more likely get there on time.  The thought of leaving one's job and picking up their son after hockey, and then purchasing a few groceries on the way home is a minor detail for most people.  However, take that car away, and the driver quickly finds out that their trip to work may or may not be accommodated by a bus, so a $30 taxi ride might be necessary each way.  They would not likely be able to pick up their son from hockey or make a stop over for groceries on the way back, unless they want to pay additional taxi fare. They plan the groceries for a day they do not have to go anywhere else.  As a consequence, the former driver realizes they have little time for their family, little time for themselves and much of their time is spent planning how to get places and when to go there.  That is just one example of how privilege is instilled in people; how people in a position of privilege don't often realize how advantaged they are until that advantage is somehow taken away from them.

In our community, most people seem to believe in charity and goodwill towards others.  People believe in these things because they naturally feel a need to "give back" to the community.  We are socialized to believe that we all come from some type of privilege and how important it is to "help the less fortunate".  There is nothing wrong with that.  I do not object to the motive; I object to the method.  The method of "giving back" to the so-called "less fortunate" is riddled with hegemonic ideas that are created by this same privilege and in many ways, serves to protect the privilege that people feel they have, as opposed to bringing the so-called "less fortunate" into a position of equal privilege themselves.  We give to food banks because we feel we need to feed the hungry, but rarely do we hear from the hungry about what they need.  We volunteer at nursing homes to keep an elder companionship, but rarely do we ask if there is a better environment this person could be in.  We support the development of "affordable" and "subsidized" housing because we believe that nobody should have to sacrifice their basic necessities for the high price of shelter, but we don't ask what residents of social housing really aspire to become.  We continue to donate to "charity" because we believe they are a "good cause" and in many cases, they are, but more and more, we are discovering that not all charities are equally effective at achieving their goals.  While there seems to be a growing awareness of members of the donating public about how monies are being spent in a charity, as well as how much is being used to advance the reason for that charity's existence, we have not yet come around to ask the real questions that need to be asked.  These questions surround the issue of what the charity is actually doing and if they are actually achieving anything for those they purport to serve.

I know these kinds of questions.  My husband lost his mother last year to a rare form of cancer.  For many months prior to her death and seemingly eternally after her death, he ranted on about how "billions" of dollars are being donated and/or granted to cancer research and cancer organizations, but there never seems to be a cure.  We continue to see people die from the disease.  One begins to become cynical, wondering if there really was a cure out there, how many of these people that currently work for these organizations or partake in this research and so forth would lose their jobs.  It creates an industry of its own.  "Cancer Can Be Beaten" is a mantra that was played over and over in my day, while today, we continue to have the same amount of cancer, but the Cancer Society appears to be replacing its mantra with other phrases, while millions more of us continue to die of the disease.  The same applies to diabetes, a disease I suffer from and relentlessly curse because of bad genetics, poor health and disadvantage in my day, but to no surprise, there is also a significant diabetes industry out there.  Many organizations "benefit" per se with the alleged tsunami of diabetes hitting our communities.  There are organizations to educate people with diabetes, dieticians to set up meal plans for people with diabetes, doctors to prescribe and treat people with diabetes, clinics to test and assess the progress of diabetic treatment in individuals (e.g. A1C tests), charities to raise funds to provide support and find a "cure" for diabetes, as well as bemoan the world over with apocalyptic thinking how ten percent of our population will soon be afflicted.  There is talk of a cure, improved medications, improved forms of insulin management, and greater knowledge, but no cure again for this disease!

This brings me back to the concept of both industry and privilege and how it deals with the concept of eliminating poverty.  People who are not poor are the ones that are currently setting up and benefiting from programs and services that are supposed to "help" the poor.  There are services of all kinds delivered to poor people, from food banks, soup kitchens, budgeting classes, housing agencies, counselling services, drop in centres, homeless shelters, street workers, etc., but no program in sight to help the poor become NOT poor anymore.  For most poor people, what is needed is more money.  Instead of spending "billions" of dollars, as my husband describes, on more "services" to make poverty more comfortable for the poor, perhaps these "billions" can instead be given to the poor people themselves and let THEM decide how to spend it.  This is not only a scary thought for those who work in and are in particular, paid to provide "services" to, the poor -- it is seen as politically untenable.  Yet when a city experiences a major flood, a small village in Quebec is struck with an exploding freight train, or the country of Haiti is struck with a god-awful earthquake, there is NO LIMIT to the amount of money and resources people think should be spent to get these people out of their straitened circumstances.  After all, they are there by no fault of their own.  I wish we would think the same way about the poor here in Canada.

As I said, nobody woke up one day to decide they were going to have a horrible accident at work that would leave them disabled and unemployed.  Nobody woke up to plan their spouse on leaving them, trading them in for a new model.  Nobody woke up to decide to become ill enough to make finding and keeping a job difficult, if not impossible. Nobody when asked what they want to be when they grow up, chooses "welfare" to be the career they want to have.  These things happen.  Programs like Worker's Compensation, Social Assistance, Old Age Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare, were created for a reason.  Unfortunately, too many people are buying into the idea that only if people relied more on their neighbours, their families, their communities, to support them through rough patches, and then there would be no need for welfare, worker's compensation, minimum wages, and so on.  Well, think again.  We were in this position before, and if it worked so well, why is this not still the case?  Perhaps, there was a time when capitalism began to show its cracks and we learned of its imperfections, which are leaving many people behind, either intentionally or unintentionally.  As our recessions become deeper and longer, the only solution big business has to offer is to cut back further on these "entitlement" programs, so that people will have less "incentive" to use them and just get a job.  Oh, if it was only that easy.  I always ask those that make these assumptions if they know where they are hiring the thousands of people that seem to have chosen day after day recently to be unemployed and dependent on the pittance they get from welfare or unemployment insurance.

Niagara Region was recently determined by the Adzuna Group to be the worst place in Canada to find a job if you are unemployed, whereby there are allegedly 100 job seekers for every job vacancy.  In the current way of thinking, the other 99 people simply chose to remain on social assistance because that lifestyle is so easy.  The answer they give us to cut these programs even further.  I have yet to see how this helps. Perhaps, if we withheld any aid to those people in Lac Megantic or to those flooded out in Calgary, perhaps these people will just learn to save their money for rainy days for now on and not live so close to the damn train tracks, right?  The pre-historic thinking that surrounds the elimination of poverty needs to be eliminated as well.  We need to fight poverty as hard as we fight to bring people involved in the above referred tragedies back to their normal lives to the best of our abilities.

We have to stop thinking about food banks and shelters and so forth as being the answer, but instead try to understand how continuing and perpetuating these sorts of programs keeps poverty intact and helps no one. Feeding somebody today is fine, but the same person will be hungry again tomorrow.  What are we going to do about this?  Are we going to continue to erode the dignity and prosperity of an increasing portion of our population by dividing our communities into donors/heroes and recipients of charity/helpless beings?  Or are we going to recognize that the dominant culture that we live in is as much at fault as the economy at keeping this segment of the population down.  Or is it that we fear that if we empower those we serve with the same privileges and rights to participate in the community that you and I have taken for granted will somehow take something away from you?  Food banks didn't grow out of nature; they were invented in 1981 in the city of Edmonton.  Since that time, this concept has grown and become institutionalized, whereby way too damn many of us have become smug and feel we are doing our part by donating to food banks, even partaking in food drives, thinking we are doing anything for those in need, when in fact, we still have not yet asked those in need what they really want to do with their lives, have we?

There is an important element of dignity at play here, which is something that we all need to keep in mind. We also like to believe that to continue to do what we do will continue to distance the poor and their problems from our own lives, to keep us in the privileged positions that we might someday be aware that we are in, but even this does nothing of the sort. We need to take steps to the elimination of poverty, put the responsibility for this situation at the feet of those that can do something about it and despite their pleadings to the contrary, can damn well afford it too.  That is, business needs to start creating jobs that pay well and investing in our communities.  Governments needs to stop paying businesses not to hire and not to invest, while tax breaks after unconditional tax breaks keep getting handed to them year over year, while it is so clear that there is a growing gap in wealth, the middle class is bleeding and that damned Emperor is walking down Bay Street buck naked!  Let's start asking the questions of ourselves and demand answers.  Let's stop assuming that hunger is "being dealt with" and that a massive restructuring of our society and our thinking is in order, in order for not only for us to maintain our position, but to keep the rest of us from falling further into despair and desperation at the hands of the one percent minority that none of us want to have control us.

Your thoughts?

BRIGHTER PROSPECTS FOR WHOM?

There is no comfort when a stubborn recession hangs through the clouds, as I walk about this region.  As I walk about this city, the familiar faces straggle about the street corners, the Tim Horton's and the bank machines.  On average, I am asked for change or for a couple of bucks three or four times each time I do walk this walk.  These walks are becoming more dreary lately.  While our city is admittedly trying to spruce up the downtown, one cannot help but notice the developing contrasts, potential for gentrification of housing developments, even in the downtown, which has already been identified as one of the many "priority" neighbourhoods in the Niagara Region.

My walk to my office as I start out each morning reflects more of the same old, same old ... and less of the hopeful prospects our politicians always want to get us to see.  It is not that the presence of the 1% in this region goes without being noticed.  I walk by places like Critelli's Furniture, which is located on the same strip of land and asphalt that includes many of our homeless and destitute and persons soliciting pocket change. Critelli's sells good quality furniture for thousands of dollars apiece. I note the quality is good, but who can pay $3,000 - $4,000 for one chair, $750 for a drink table to set beside a recliner or $2,000 for a mirror? Even many of my colleagues can't put out that much money at a shot for that kind of purchase!  For most, even one of these items cost more than they earn in a month!  In my mind, I ask who among the 1% would dare walk downtown to visit a place like this to buy this kind of furniture, while just outside their windows, the problems and miscreants of our society await. Across from Critelli's, there are two Japanese restaurants side by side, literally in direct competition with one another. I have friends that are laying bets wondering if they are both owned by the same company.  We also flip coins to see which one will outlast the other, which seems to be a major sport in the downtown area these days.  Betting any business will last beyond the year is risky.

The downtown corner where Tim Horton's is almost always occupied by people standing around smoking cigarettes and chattering, while across the street, a private college lets its students out at noon and at four thirty each day like clockwork.  I wonder mildly how many of those students going to that career college will find a job in their field after they graduate.  Maybe the concern these days is putting bums in seats, and not so much caring about how people will move on from there. How come I feel that we should care?  Life in the downtown is rather predictable.  I can almost tell what is going to happen before I even get there.  Once I am off the bus and start walking toward my office, I pass the building where the Landlord and Tenant Board holds its hearings, and dozens of people are evicted every time this takes place.  I have spent many mornings and afternoons in those hearing rooms, trying to bring reality to the minds of the adjudicators, trying to arrange deals for people that may be able to get a good start on paying their rent on time for now on, or enforcing orders for those that won't.

With all of my cognitive deficits imposed on me from various health issues, I sometimes have trouble reading faces, but I do know names.  Everybody represents a phase of my life, sometimes I yearn to return to, but cannot as everything I am involved with is just a phase.  I was once a big part of Occupy Niagara, which has sort of fizzled out.  I was involved in various environmental movements, meetings around transit issues, and various workshops on climate change, as well as recent gatherings about the social assistance reform.  In the past, I also participated in economic development activities and advocated for the small businesses in the area, as I don't see too many of them faring much better than those I witness begging for coins. I even had a hand in organizing a demonstration or two, which I might try to do once again if our provincial government insists on going the way of downloading administration of disability allowances to the region (which would be an unmitigated disaster in many ways).  People are silently suffering and crying out for change, though they can no longer mouth the words, as our voice has been squashed by the powers that be, imposing fear and anxiety as opposed to assurances and hope for a bright future ahead of us.

Brighter Prospects, the oxymoronic name for the recently released report on social assistance reform, tries to paint its recommendations as betterment for the masses, while I can't see this after reading the fine print.  I am trained to read the fine print and paid to do so by many of my clients - individuals and businesses alike, and being in the profession I am in, I don't see "brighter prospects" for anybody in this report.  I am asked almost daily and sometimes multiple times each day what is going to happen to "us", and by "us" the asker is referring to people who are on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). These are people who I successfully appealed their benefits claim, who I represented at the provincial offences court, or even on a charge of assault or trespassing in the Ontario Court of Justice.  They see me as part of "us" because I speak for those that cannot speak for themselves, or are afraid to.  I also speak for small and medium sized business and try to believe that hard work will get "us" somewhere as well, although I sometimes begin to doubt that as well.  I see us all as both sides of the same coin, all of us affected by the economy, the current endless recession and the increasing plight of bad attitudes all over.

Our government is almost positioning this report as the panacea for the misery all around us, when indeed it feeds it and ignores the travesty of legislated poverty, the globalization of labour and the balkanization of all of our voices alike.  The report was not written with poverty reduction in mind, but instead was written to appease those that want to see the deficit trimmed, as if the poor were recently treated to some big party of massive spending and now we need to retreat. The Commission that produced Brighter Prospects did not get the memo that the poor are not responsible for this deficit, nor do they care.  All they want is a home, a job and a friend, which Brighter Prospects offers none of this.  Of course, it is not a problem to make cuts, when you are not the one that is affected, or not the one that gets to see the consequences of them.  I don't think "Brighter Prospects" is going to make my daily trek to the office and around to the coffee shop any more pleasant; in fact, I will see exactly what I know is going to happen to "us" as the people around me are currently asking - I can only see things get worse.

Brighter Prospects is about putting people with disabilities back on welfare in some misguided attempt to erase the stigma against people on Ontario Works, which many of my detractors like to bash and punish simply for having bad luck and not accepting their just desserts while they fell. Adding a whole new group of people to this "undeserving" bunch is not going to make the whole bunch look to be less criminal to the ignorant populace, but is simply going to add people with disabilities to this very misunderstood category of people, who will only become further legislated into poverty.  There is not one recommendation in Brighter Prospects that frees people from this legislative trap. It is not going to put more people into jobs, because evidence shows that time and time again, when people are forced to look for and accept jobs that don't exist, they are not likely to leave Ontario Works or any other program.  When other media reports point out the growing number of young people, older people and others who have no disabilities or minimal barriers, or even have a great education, who are not getting hired, who in their right mind believes that employers will suddenly wake up and hire people off the social assistance rolls?

I recall discussions with many of the employers I have been retained by in my legal office, as well as those I have consulted with while I was part of the Employment Standards Development Committee, as part of the implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.  After they got over the fact that I do not have three heads and get around to finally asking what the AODA actually is, they tell me they simply will not hire anybody who has been on assistance, yet at the same time some have told me that they should just "get a job".  I often wondered if this employer in front of me is not going to hire anybody like this, who will?  I guess this is going to take a lot of time to change people's minds.  I am quite aware of the struggle of the small business owners in my region.  They need people who will help them fulfill their business goals and who are reliable. I concur. I take issue and frequently point out boarded up storefronts along the downtown streets, or large offices that have moved out of the downtown region, often to locales that are difficult to reach by transit.  It is clear that some employers know who they want working for them, and it is not "us" as my friends refer to themselves.  I then turn to the government to ask them how they are going to force employers to take on members of the OW and ODSP community and give them lasting jobs to help them get off the system.  I know forcing them is not the answer, but ...

... another call for consultations takes place and we are all back in Toronto to communicate with one another, sector to sector, to answer these kinds of questions.  I am at these meetings, where many large employers, business associations, employment service providers, municipal managers, as well as people like me, are set up in round tables to talk to one another about what the answers should be.  I speak for the small businesses that can't possibly be there who need support, who need to know what they have to do and not have it cost them a whole lot.  I am there for those with disabilities that have the skills and want to work, to explain how to close that disconnect which seems to be in the wind whenever we go to these roundtables. The whole issue of putting people to work seems to be the non sequiter, but government policy types want to know the HOW.  I always want to explore the reasons WHY first, then the IF, and then the HOW, for those for whom it can work, but we cannot assume that no matter how well meaning we all are (and I have no doubts that all of us around those tables is well meaning), that more than two percent of people will ever work themselves off ODSP, particularly with the rules they currently have and the government refuses to change.

Brighter Prospects has made a big deal about letting "social assistance recipients" keep an extra $200 a month before their working income gets clawed back at a rate that already far exceeds the average taxation level of even the wealthiest millionaires.  If our government suddenly announced that it will tax millionaires at the rate of eighty five percent of all income they receive, chances are they will balk and try to move to other locales that will not tax them so heavily for their "efforts".  So, why is it any different for poor people?  We are no more motivated to work when our income gets cut to the bone than anybody else, so using this strategy over and over again and expecting different results is insane.

I worry a lot about this region.  I don't see a lot of opportunities coming in for "us", as my friends refer to the group of people with traditional difficulties fitting in.  It will still be a recession for a long, long time for them, even if the economy turns around in Ontario and even Niagara is booming again.  While Niagara booming will be great for my small businesses, I still want the connect that is needed to make it work for those that haven't yet experienced the possibility of prosperity.  People with disabilities are promised things will be better when the economy turns around and when it does, nothing ever changes.  When the economy flounders, they are told they have to sacrifice even more to help pay off a debt they had no part of.  If the authors and promoters of Brighter Prospects really want to make things different, they should join me someday, as I get off the bus and walk my way to my office and join me as I meet with my people, and speak to others over the telephone.  They should walk with me as I meet with too many people who month over month seem to get their cheques put on hold by the region's OW office, the same office that wants to take over ODSP cases so the same abuse can be done to this group as well.

Once again I ask, Brighter Prospects for whom?

WE NEED TO ROCK ON TO ELECTRIC AVENUE ... and then we'll take it higher!

Down in the street there is violence 
And a lots of work to be done
No place to hang out our washing 
And I can't blame all on the sun, oh no 

CHORUS: 
We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue 
And then we'll take it higher 
Oh we gonna rock down to Electric Avenue 
And then we'll take it higher
Eddie Grant, Electric Avenue (1983)


I don't care if the Social Assistance Commissioners say it is a bad time to be on welfare in Ontario.

I don't care if the Social Assistance Commissioners say that it is a bad time to be writing reports on how to reform the welfare system.

Carol Goar hit the nail on the head with her article today in the Toronto Star, which includes a reference to barriers to reform, such as people with disabilities not wanting anything to do with the report and its recommendations.

Yes, this is true.  As a disability advocate, I look through these things with a human rights lens.  Not a single reference to lifting the spousal penalty, increasing the earnings exemptions for people on ODSP to match what the lucky few can get in gifts; or allowing people with disabilities to retire in some form of dignity, especially if they are working, have worked or their spouse is working.  What about encouraging those that choose to start and run their own businesses, so they can enjoy the same rights and deductions as others in business enjoy?  Yes, people with disabilities want to work, but this report recommends continuing to cut them off at the knees and still expect them to walk.

Poverty Free Ontario got their analysis right.  They explained why people with disabilities have good reason to fear what is in the report.  Instead of some form of dressed up and shiny new workfare model being imposed only on those deemed capable of securing employment, the recommendations go as far as to suggest that persons with disabilities should be lumped into this same category. Many still fear if they do work, they will now be at risk of losing their benefits too.

The Conservatives learned from their mistake when they forced those labeled deemed "permanently unemployable" to stay out of the workforce, and for those who tried, they lost their benefits altogether, jeopardizing their ability to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table.

The Conservatives learned at the time not to mess with disability benefits because one such person walked out and tried to better herself, only to be cut off her benefits completely for the sake of a job she can do for ten hours a week at minimum wage.  In response, she killed herself.  The case made front page.  The case made the legislature.  The case made a forever bleating class of advocates even madder at the Conservatives.  Let them be damned if they allow people with disabilities to die!

But, why do these Liberals seem to believe we can try something like this again, and not expect to see province wide implications of a monumental degree?

Have we lost our way with understanding why some people will simply not make it in today's unreliable, precarious and punishing labour force?  For those that want to work, I see no problem with allowing them, even encouraging them so they can earn up to the same amount of money that people on ODSP can receive in gifts each month or year for each person in their "benefit unit", before the 50% claw back.. I see no point in punishing these people.  As one person told me, most people had to go through "circles of Hell" to qualify for ODSP in the first place, so why are they trying to take that away now?

The Social Assistance Commissioners repeated the government's mantra that there are too many people on ODSP today.  They wring their hands wondering why this is the case, even though advocates have told them that when people get cut off WSIB, long term disability, get denied EI and CPP, they have nowhere to turn to.  Government and the Social Assistance Commissioners, who will be forthwith referred to as the "SAR Czars" are pretending these same people can just go get a job.

Of course, it is easy for middle class and upper middle class folks that are used to having a range of decent opportunities before them to choose from, who were raised by intact parents in intact households and had a head start, to tell those less fortunate than they are that they need an "incentive" to work.

This "incentive" unfortunately is becoming much the subject of debate.  Self employed give up more than they earn by way of claw backs.  Those living with or married to working spouses lose most or all of their income support under the guise that somebody else is supposed to pay their bills.  Recommendations from the report even suggest dropping the Work Related Benefit AND the Special Diet Benefit in exchange for the "right" to keep a whopping $200 a month in earned income before it becomes clawed back.  If the tax department told all of our millionaires that their tax deductions and corporate handouts will be provided under the same rules, I am not sure the reaction to this proposal will be much different than the reaction we are seeing from people with disabilities, who will not, by the way, find jobs overnight.  It is cuts for people with disabilities that have the greatest challenges in the workplace, to help prop up those on Ontario Works by a very modest amount.

Even then, our illustrious Social Services Minister tells us that we as a province cannot "afford" to boost any of the benefits.  Take this statement with a grain of salt (with a whole damn shaker thrown over my left shoulder to keep the Devil at bay), as this same government has no trouble paying for over $5 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations, over $1 billion for eHealth (remember those $3,000 a day consultants that even had their Timmy's treats paid for?), another billion or more for ORNGE with its head somehow earning over $1.4 million a year; and lately, up to a possible billion dollars spent to move two gas plants to satisfy a couple of dying Liberal constituencies.  Dalton, where do we people with disabilities apply for these well paying jobs that seem to be unavailable to us?

It doesn't even matter that the Premier and the Finance Minister thought about tax cuts first for the wealthy when they came up with their 2012 budget.  Well, they can take the money for this OUT of the pockets of the poor once again, with their cuts to the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit and Home Repairs Benefit.  Instead of admitting they are cutting the monies spent on this benefit in half and sending it to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing for distribution to the municipalities to do with as they choose, they also introduced a seemingly unrelated tax cut for home renovations for rich elderly people that want to stay in their homes.  I guess you seen that Premier Care Bath commercial, where a seemingly healthy senior gets into their jacuzzi like tub amidst their washroom that appears on screen to be much bigger than most of our living rooms ... seniors get this tax credit if they can front up to $10,000 themselves first.  I have an idea about this one.  If they can afford to front $10,000, they're going to spend that money anyways,  so why do they need a tax credit for Pete's sake, when down the street their neighbours on ODSP cannot find the money to stop their house from being a mould infested nightmare?  So be it.  I digress.

We had a wonderful town hall here in St. Catharines at the Start Me Up Centre on October 16, 2012, with over 150 people in attendance to attest to how they were helped by the Community Start Up Benefit or Home Repair Benefit in the past.  Without this benefit, many of those in the room would have become homeless, or worse yet in some cases, dead.

Yet, who exactly is the genius that figured out this new shell game that determines that people on Ontario Works and ODSP can somehow scrimp and save from their monthly pittances to cover the growing costs of moving, replacing furniture that gets ruined by bedbugs and other infestations, or escaping an abusive relationship?  I suppose the government thinks that either they are all hiding money or can get "family and friends" to move them, which is just a big a crock as their allowances for "gifts" of up to $6,000 a year that only a handful of ODSP recipients benefit from.  Middle class families haven't seen family break down to the same extent that poor folks have, unfortunately.  Many of them don't have families - period.

How about those homeowners that do happen to get assistance that cannot afford to fix their roof, or their plumbing or their foundation that is riddled with mould and cracks to such a point, their whole house is unstable?  I know people like this in Niagara.  Their city tells them it is unsafe to live in there.  Their insurance companies drop them a hot potato.  Their mortgage company decides to foreclose on them because they don't have any insurance.  No insurance, no mortgage, no home,. says the bank.  But there simply isn't anybody around anymore that will help pay for this mess and allow people to stay in their own homes.  Just keep watching the media, folks.  I am coming back!

I don't care what Carol Goar, the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty, many municipalities, and so forth, say about this report.  Most of it is a bad idea and by far.  Their idea of an adequate allowance means depriving those sick enough to need a special diet from the additional funds they needed to buy the right foods to keep them healthy.  Pay for it from your basic needs, they will say.  But what if there is hardly any basic needs left after I pay the rent?  That's your problem, they say.

Unfortunately, folks, we have to do much more than what have been doing.  Sitting in a room talking nicely to government officials is no longer working.  My region in all of its wisdom decided to replace the start up benefit, but for only those on Ontario Works.  People with disabilities, I assume, can just take it out of their basic needs, which are already stretched beyond reason here.

To me, this government either has to hire every single person with a disability that can work and place them in their chosen fields at the going rate that others get paid to work in that same field or give them enough money to live on!  People in prison eat better than persons with disabilities living in the community.  Perhaps, some enterprising researcher can speak to medical people to determine the cause of the rising incidence of recalcitrant TB, scurvy, rickets and other organ killing malnutrition based diseases we previously believed only happen to those people in the so called "third world".  It is now in our backyard.  That's why our health care costs are going up.

A report recently stated that poverty is costing Niagara alone over $3.8 billion a year.  Yet the region's fathers continue to choose to ignore this growing tsunami by trying to divide us up.  We can't let them do that to us.  We must stand together, or remain divided and lose all of our rights.

Out in the streets, all of us!  Out to our MPPs front door, all of us!  Find out how each regional councilor voted on the question of depriving people on ODSP any further help and let's pitch a few tents on their front lawns.  We have nothing to lose but our chains they have trapped us in.

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction.
Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction

NOW WHO OWNS THIS DEFICIT REALLY?

This was a nasty week, though not too full of surprises from either the federal or the provincial budgets. What bothers me most is how governments lie to their people about these things. They assume voters are stupid and will swallow whatever bit of ideology of the day that seems to make people believe they have to "do their part" in repaying the debts of others. Yes, that is what I said. This deficit is not our debt, at least for most of you reading this here. If your neighbour takes out a mortgage on their home and uses the money to enjoy a pool in their backyard and to create a fireplace in their basement, are you willing to give your neighbour some of your hard earned cash to help him pay off this mortgage? Of course not! So, why are we gladly acceding to paying for debts of the wealthy and the corporate sector, while our own incomes dwindle away year over year?

At the provincial level, the Premier stared at the camera and said in his usual gaze: “Others would make different choices,” Mr. McGuinty said, noting that the previous Progressive Conservative government cut welfare by 22 per cent.

“We are not prepared to balance this budget on the backs of families who may find themselves in difficult circumstances for the time being, or on the backs of our children.”

Yet, this is exactly what the provincial government is doing. As the wealthy and higher corporate elites sleep well this week, knowing the government is not going to be picking their pockets anymore, and in fact will continue to be getting even further "out of their way", the costs will all be borne by the poor and middle class. A single individual on welfare, or what is euphemistically called Ontario Works, gets a total of $599 per month to live on for all of their needs ... that means shelter, utilities, phone, clothing, transportation, and personal hygiene products. Most are lucky if they can even find housing at that price, let alone all the other necessities of life.

A single person on the Ontario Disability Support Pension gets $1,063 per month, also for all of their needs. While better than welfare, most people that get ODSP have major barriers in the paid labour force and often vilified by others, particularly those that think "at least half of those on disability aren't really disabled". I would love to have their internal knowledge of everybody's personal medical history like that. Would work nice in today's Parliament, particularly when vilifying another politician, but not in the streets where it is usually done. The people who say these things usually don't even know the people they are talking about, and use their "friend of a friend" story as statistical research. When you work at the ground level with these people, you know they pay rent and usually have very little for anything else, and they also face huge barriers to a healthy diet.

I argued one time here that the policies of the Ontario government are not unlike genocide in slow motion. Through the death by a thousand cuts, these programs are losing their purchasing power rapidly, leaving the poor in the dust, usually with very serious medical problems that could have been prevented if ... they had a healthy diet, they had safe housing and they had an adequate income. You know these are things our federal Conservatives don't want to hear about either? They just decided to cut the National Council of Welfare, a social policy advisory group that was established in 1969 to advise the government on poverty issues. Between that, and their elimination of the mandatory long form census, it is clear they don't want to know about poverty, and what to do about it, so they can lie to the public as well, about how there are no poor people in Canada. I suppose that might actually come true at some point when they all die of their medical conditions the state is imposing on them, but to me, they are no better than the architects of the Nazi Euthanasia program in the 1930s. It is just that those guys in the 1930s were just in a bloody hurry!

The provincial government is indeed making the poor pay for the tax cuts enjoyed by the wealthy for way too long. They say the budget for social programs is suddenly unsustainable, but their program for all day kindergarten isn't? Giving people on Ontario Works and ODSP a decent raise is unsustainable, but continuing the ongoing corporate welfare cheques is not? The Special Diet Allowance was unsustainable, but somehow a double digit jump in the number of low income people with diabetes, heart disease and other malnutrition-based diseases is not? They want to dump the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit and the Home Repair Benefit, which helped many people on assistance move from slum dwellings, get rid of bedbugs or replace their furniture after an infestation, or leave an abusive relationship, or fix the leaky roof that is causing mould to grow in the children's bedroom. They want to dump it to the municipalities, so they (the municipalities) can decide if and when they are going to do this, and what kind of benefits, if any, they will continue to offer.

Have you ever tried to secure a so-called discretionary benefit from your municipality? I have seen people repeatedly turned down for essential health services, such as physiotherapy, orthotics, mouth guards, dentures and other so called discretionary benefits, which get awarded on the basis of a worker's say so, not on actual medical need. By downloading these benefits, there are no appeal mechanisms available. Many municipalities use the money for other programs, and when one seeks help for these types of programs, they get handed a list of charities to go begging to. I don't know about you, but if somebody is seeking a job, the last thing they need is for a potential employer to know their personal and financial business. The reason I say this here is because the vast majority of these charities are run or led by local business people, aka employers. I met one woman who had been interviewed for a dream job, only to go to the food bank the next day to find the same man who interviewed her the day before stocking shelves at the food bank. The privacy of the rich was one of the reasons why the long form census was abandoned, while the privacy and confidentiality rights of the poor are so casually disregarded.

Hospitals will now get funding based on expertise and numbers, so if a low income person does not happen to live near a busy, urban hospital, their needs will likely not get met. The wealthy don't have to worry about this. They can just cross the border and use their VISA or American Express cards to pay for what they need right away, while the rest of us will be facing longer waits for poorer quality care. The health care sector is personal beef of Harper's. His strategy is to encourage provinces to "experiment" with private health care, and gradually give less and less to the provinces, so they will end up having to consider cuts. This has already been demonstrated with Harper's health care accord he just imposed on the provinces. There is no need for a meeting, he says. He will tell the Council of the Confederation where it's at.

So, wither the hope for the poor? This is no different how than the poor have always been treated. I don't recall massive spending programs to help lift people out of poverty, ever. Yet, it is these very programs that are now getting blamed for causing the deficit. Like, never mind ORNGE, eHealth, OLG and other programs gone mad under the present regime with truck loads of money being given to people that already have enough to do very little, and despite the controversy around any of these programs -- not a single benefactor, including those consultants billing over $3,000 a day for their "expertise" and their choco bites from Tim Hortons, ever had to pay a penny back! Yet when somebody on Ontario Works or ODSP even dares find a penny extra, it is clawed back before it is even noticed.

Dalton McGuinty has lied to us in the past. We know that. However, please know he is now lying to us once again when he says he will not balance the books on the backs of the vulnerable. He just did. It is too late for this friend of a friend of mine who heard "budget rumours" related to housing or something, that led her wrongly to believe she was going to lose her housing subsidy under the budget. She tried to kill herself, and is now in hospital under 24 hour suicide watch. This $800 a day could have went to give her better nutrition through additional funds to help her eat better, or they could have been spent on making necessary repairs in her building so that she can feel more safe ... but no, another $800 is a day is being spent to pay professionals to protect this woman from herself. I am sure there are more out there like this and I would encourage all of you to share your stories here.

The sad fact is austerity agendas do not save the government any money or lead to more job, but in the end, can actually result in the needless misery and death of many people. It is a form of population control. At one time a former Minister of Community and Social Services suddenly announced there were "too many" people on ODSP. I would hate to believe this is the way the government would go in order to reduce these costs, although it is not difficult to imagine. The same debate is going on in the UK, except it has gone beyond debate into three dimensional reality. There are suicides, hate crimes, continuing harassment of people with disabilities, riots, etc. The government of the day wants to cut more taxes, only of course to make matters even worse -- less revenues means less money to spend and less money to spend can aid a government in enforcing their own prejudices.

The federal Conservatives chose the chicken way to get elected by denying they will ever touch old age pensions, but now as far away as Davos, Switzerland, he publicly muses about how the Old Age Security is no longer sustainable. Perhaps, as he tells his banker and other elite friends, most of whom earn too much to even qualify for the Old Age Security anyways, that it is good enough that people are "living longer" and perhaps, they should be working longer - assuming of course, they even have a job to work in, or can work at all. I have no illusions about ever retiring. People my age were literally robbed of our entitlement to a retirement pension by people like Stephen Harper and other proponents of socialism for the rich and austerity for the poor. It is also another way for Harper to "stick it to the provinces" which will now have to carry more people for two years on welfare or ODSP monies.

Unfortunately, this ignorance is just going to spin its course because there are still too many people out there who are "all right Jack", that continue to believe the poor and disadvantaged are there on their own merit, and not due to systemic issues beyond their control. Personally, I am in a bloody hurry too. I am in a hurry to one day see those who today say, "I'm all right Jack" lose the one or two things that are keeping them from joining the breadlines today. That may be their spouse who earns a good income. Marriage isn't guaranteed in stone, girls. Forty to fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. It may be their health. Not everybody can continue to work if they fall ill, and less and less workplaces are offering benefits to those recovering from serious health issues. Welcome to the world of ODSP, folks... the place you turn to on your way down! It can be their job. Many say they are living one or two pay cheques from the streets, and we all know how fragile jobs can be. Caterpillar is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Maybe tomorrow it will be your boss that comes in to announce that you will have to take a fifty percent cut in pay, or lose your job. Can you survive on fifty percent of your salary? Maybe not. Even if you can, what stops your boss from coming in two years down the line and asking you to take a further fifty percent cut?

People like me have been watching the trends. Former middle class workers who used to be "all right, Jack" are now living out of their cars, losing their homes, and losing their health. Women who used to be self confident in the corporate world are now getting ill, having to rely on social assistance incomes. Because their doctors have nothing more to do for them, many of them have been shipped to nursing homes in their forties, just so they can have three meals a day! Another man I know, a former home builder, is going to lose both of his legs later this year to diabetes, because his disability allowance leaves him less than a hundred dollars a month for food. I wonder how much all of this is costing the public purse.

Perhaps, we need to take another look at that report on the cost of poverty, and how little it would actually cost at the federal level to bring everybody who is currently living in poverty out of poverty and destitution. Oh, I forgot. The National Council of Welfare that produced that federal report is no longer useful, because they do not march to drummer of austerity like the federal government thinks everybody must. I think all of you need to read the links, understand that the government is making policy choices to keep people in poverty, as opposed to it being an inevitable thing. There are countries where poverty is very rare, and such countries have the best economies of the world. Unfortunately, our governments don't want us to know that, because they want us to become more ignorant of the facts in our own country.

However, I refuse to be ignorant. I refuse to stop asking questions. I also refuse to stop demanding that our politicians start representing all Canadians, not just those that can live in comfort this week knowing their pockets will not be picked and that government will just "get out of the way" for them.

Your thoughts?

DRUMMING TO THE BEAT OF DRUMMOND AND SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

There is a lot of underground talking about the town.

I am finding it hard to educate the people in my city about what the government is up to because February was the month of policy speak and the Drummond beat. Some people think cutting civil service jobs and "letting the private sector" run things is a great thing. They view the private sector as somehow efficient, streamlined and less costly to the public purse. This is not necessarily the case, especially since many studies of private sector delivery of health care and other services have been done, and it is shown that the "efficiency" of the private sector does not return to the public purse in tax savings at all, but in higher profits for those in charge of the private firms delivering the service. There are also issues of end user costs, accountability, ownership of personal data, and the quality and skill of people replacing the public workers in the private firms.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any trouble with supporting private sector involvement in areas that are competitively delivered by the private sector in the region as it is. For example, there is no need for a public airline, a public railway, a public automaker, or similar services, where competitors exist in the private market and efficiency can be gained, or offset using other "client" or "customer bases" apart from the organization's public delivery function. For example, a train service like VIA or CP can be subsidized publicly to provide a certain range of services to keep costs to the general public affordable, while the organization can secure private contracts in freight and business class services.

Health care is delivered largely privately as well, but it would be an error to allow health care providers to find profits elsewhere, such as providing quicker service to those that can pay full costs. Health care is different than the trains, as members of the general public do not normally order freight cargo or transport -- but in health care, *some* members of the public can and are willing to pay full price out of pocket, bucking less fortunate people out of line to get served first. Freight trains can add cars as needed. Our health care system is limited by its design, whereas there are only a limited number of providers. Higher demand on the private side may sway many of those providers to serve higher paying customers, but this can and will only detract from the quality of service for individuals that cannot pay.

However, it does not mean efficiencies cannot be found within health care or government as a whole, but we need to make sure that these efficiencies are truly that, and not simply hacksawing services away or putting large numbers of people out of work, just to add to the numbers already competing for the limited number of jobs available. We also have to ensure that the nature of the service delivery does not change to the client group in receipt of the service. For example, one of the proposals by both Drummond and by the Social Assistance Reform Commission is to dump the ODSP program altogether and let each region run it as it so chooses.

There are already problems in regional delivery systems for the Ontario Works program. There are municipalities that do this job well, and have enjoyed successes in reducing their caseloads and keeping more people employed and providing supports through collaboration with local agencies for those with multiple barriers to returning to work. However, in my experience, this has been more the exception and not the norm. After learning of these recommendations, I took it to the streets to speak to people who are currently receiving Ontario Works, or who have received it in the past, and are currently receiving ODSP. In Niagara, there are some positives, such as certain workers that appear to be skilled at working with local agencies and building add on supports at the neighbourhood level. However, virtually all of those I spoke to, regardless of how "compliant" they are to Ontario Works measures, have experienced examples of abusive treatment: cheques suspended, cheques getting "lost", emergency assistance being denied, or cheques put "on hold" until the client that usually has no funds is expected to take two buses to come to the office to provide something they already provided at an earlier date, such as a birth certificate or an earnings report.

All clients on OW are expected to engage in a participation agreement. For many people, it is simple. The person is going to school to upgrade their skills, or they are already working part time and seeking to move to full time work. However, for others, they feel they have been directed to jobs, employers or other situations that, they are being knowingly referred to and set up for failure. Participation agreements often do not honour one's education, career goals, income needs, or health conditions that might restrict them from some types of jobs. I have known of well educated people, often at the Master's or post-graduate level being referred to greenhouse work or call centers. The Case Manager is only concerned with getting an agreement, a job and a file off their desk. This is not the best way to approach some "participants", as the program laughingly calls them. Even if a highly educated person with a strong previous resume accepts a low wage job; if they work at that job for any length of time without outside involvement in "their" field, their next employer will not look at them seriously. I have spoken to employers that become suspicious if a man with a business degree applies for a job at their firm, but their only recent work experience was in a greenhouse or a call center or doing janitorial work. The first question that would come to mind is, "What is this employee hiding from me?" They will be reluctant to hire this person for this reason.

If Ontario Works takes over ODSP, will all ODSP recipients now have to sign participation agreements, and if so, would the nature of these participation agreements be similar to what I described above? To the extent of my knowledge of the people on ODSP around here, these methods will certainly not result in a job for these persons. Many will not be able to handle it, and failure to comply may lead to cut off or suspension. Don't the administrators of these programs know that people have to pay rent or mortgage, and by even holding their cheque for a few days, their housing can be jeopardized? Is that person going to be more prepared to work if they end up having to fight an eviction, in addition to whatever myriad of other problems they already present?

Would ODSP recipients become subject to the rigorous month to month eligibility review status some OW recipients have been through? Income security is very important to persons with disability. Persons have been put onto ODSP for a reason. Many will not take the kind of pushing and prodding that an OW Case Manager might attempt in order to get them off the system. What will happen to them if they start to find their "workers" putting their cheques on hold, suspending payments, or even cutting them off entirely because they failed to complete something minor in their participation agreements? What about their income support? While there were no specifics given, it appears that the municipalities have been pushing for a 3-tiered approach to income support: (a) one amount for those who are most job ready and only need short term help; (b) another (higher) amount for those that face multiple barriers due to disability, addiction, housing or other issues; and (c) a pension like program for persons with "severe" disabilities.

Drummond bought this whole concept of "severe" disabilities hook, line and sinker. In fact, Drummond cited a questionable statistic that only about 22% of persons with disabilities receiving support would fall under the "severe" category. Where does he get this figure? If it is from the PALS survey, he is misusing and misinterpreting this information. Virtually all studies like this come from self report of one's severity of disability. "Severity" is very difficult to objectively define. There are no tests that can definitively place one's disability into a "mild", "moderate", "severe" or "very severe" category, without a substantial input of self reported limitations, symptoms and clinical (not always necessarily scientific) observation. For example, there are people with fibromyalgia that can work, while others with the very same condition and profile cannot work. The disability is very much attached to the person, as much as that person's preferences, attitudes, likes, dislikes, talents, skills, and characteristics. The interplay between these characteristics and self reported "severity" of disability are generally related to one's self-identified experience or success in the labour market.

Further, the labour market is not completely ready to accept people with disabilities. Most employers I speak to want to hire qualified persons with disabilities, but they themselves face a number of concerns: (a) how much is this going to cost?; (b) how will the accommodations we give this person affect the other members of my workforce?; (c) how can I determine the level of performance in a person with a disability for which I am giving accommodation to, as compared to the same evaluation for a non disabled colleague doing the same job?; and (d) what can I expect from this person if they join my workforce? Many of these employers can and want to be trained in learning how to overcome these barriers, but there are issues of access to these kinds of resources, as well as costs. Small businesses often turn to my office for human resource advice, as well as legal issues, as they are not human resource managers. An employer or owner of a company is very skilled at what they do, whether that be providing a service or manufacturing a product. They know their industry well, work hard to develop good relationships with suppliers, client or customer base, as well as delivering their product or service at a price that is affordable to their target market.

Most companies I deal with these days do not operate by a vertical level of authority as companies once did. In the former generation, a large company would try to keep as much of its services, suppliers and people in house, and as their people grow in the company, they get promotions and move up some kind of "company ladder". Today, the private sector delivers their goods and services in a more linear fashion, using internal teams and external suppliers. Cleaning, shredding, IT services, human resources, legal services, accounting, websites and even some technical aspects of the delivery are outsourced today to smaller companies or independent contractors. This saves the main company money, as they do not have to cover the benefits, EI, CPP and other costs for each employee, if they had taken them in house. Henceforth, many companies recognize the specialization offered by the outside firms, and by contracting out, they are buying these highly valued services in the bits and pieces that the company needs, as opposed to keeping somebody on staff to do this work regardless of need.

Because of this, people are often hired on contract, through temporary agencies, or by the specialized suppliers to the larger companies at a lower wage than they would have been had they been hired directly by the larger company itself. This is not much of a problem for people who are entrepreneurial and have a specific skill to deliver, and can support the work of several organizations that need "in time" help for their type of service. However, this represents bad news for people with lower skill sets, less employment experience, and perhaps, unrelated job barriers, such as a disability or other issues that might make the smaller firms nervous and ask the kinds of questions I referred to above. This pattern is also taking place in the public sector to some degree as well, where large facilities like hospitals and universities are seeking these same kinds of horizontal efficiencies as well.

This shift in the labour market is major. The old manufacturing jobs that our parents had are not coming back. If any manufacturing is going to survive in Ontario, it is that of the highly specialized kind. I have client companies that do just this -- highly specialized manufacturing that cannot so easily be exported to India and the finished products bought back by us in Ontario. There are also highly skilled knowledge-based positions as well, such as in "green technologies", IT sector and biosciences. The number of people required for these companies will be significantly smaller, but they will be highly skilled and narrowly purposed. Many people on Ontario Works that have a higher level of education should be steered towards these new options, as opposed to simply sending them off to call centers and greenhouses. If they do not have all the education, then there *must* be ways to develop these people so that they can be educated on the job, as well as through the academia available to train people in these sectors. Others with education and training in the social sciences or business development sectors should be employed BY Ontario Works to assist in the development of viable social enterprises that can be used to train and possibly hire people with marketable skills (e.g. in a region with a high percentage of seniors, agricultural, vinticultural and hospitality-based successes - a social enterprise base can be developed to service these industries).

But what about those people on ODSP? Should they be divided into who can and cannot work? Again, this is just as fictional as the "severe" disability category. Stephen Hawking, Christopher Reeves, Catherine Frazee, Judith Snow, among many other persons have so called "severe" disabilities, but they are productive citizens. On the other hand, somebody with chronic depression, low back pain, anxiety disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder might not be so productive for various reasons, even though their disabilities do not look "severe" on the surface. One of the few things that Mike Harris did right was to separate people with disabilities from those with short term need when his government developed ODSP. His government also set up ODSP to be flexible, supportive and to have an open door for employment. People on ODSP have a choice to work or not, and many do choose to work or try to. By defining some of them as not being able to work, does this mean they will not be allowed to try? What will happen then? I witnessed what would happen when this was the case here in Ontario. People get cut off benefits because they are no longer "permanently unemployable", and yes, this has led to tragedy.

What about those that are considered able to work? There appears to be an implication for the amount of income support they will receive. To me, there is no rationale for lowering somebody's income because they are "able to work". Wait until they find a job FIRST, before decreasing their income support. This is a particularly strong concern of mine. Will those currently on ODSP lose some of their income if they are deemed able to work? This is not going to produce jobs for people -- cutting their benefits down or off completely is not going to create the hundreds of thousands of jobs for these people who by this type of policy are "cured" overnight and thereby ready to compete side by side with healthy, younger individuals. The more likely consequence will be a spike in the number of evictions, increased homelessness, addictions and open panhandling. As it is without this new directive, I am already seeing young people involved in prostitution, hooked on drugs, sleeping in the ATM corridors or in lane ways at night. I also speak to these people. They are not babbling to themselves or crazy or stupid like the media wants us to believe, but they are individuals who at one time had hopes and dreams like everybody else, then something happened. Our government needs to be especially careful to make sure that whatever policy direction they choose, that these things that "happen" do not increase in number and to more people, especially the vulnerable.

It is unrealistic to continue with austerity measures until the economy turns around, as my first recommendation. Austerity must also impact those that can afford to pay more, while at the same time encouraging those that actually do create jobs and increase investment in our communities. Unfortunately, our public attitude is that we have somehow become allergic to taxes and will revolt at any suggestion of a tax hike, while theoretically cuts in services sound good until one tries to turn to them. People complain loudly when their roads are not plowed, potholes are not filled, or they can't speak to a "real human" at a Service Ontario kiosk. What else do they believe tax cuts will bring us? Our public has to wake up and accept that taxes are part of civilization, and while taxes should not be hiked too high to prevent people from making good choices -- they do need to be hiked to pre-1995 levels, including corporate income taxes. This can be done gradually over a period of seven years to allow people and companies to adjust.

Before you go on a tirade about how companies will bolt out of Ontario with higher taxes, this is exactly what they are doing right now with one of the lowest taxes of the provinces in Canada, and amongst the lowest taxes in all OECD countries. These companies have names: Caterpillar, John Deere, Henniges, Canada Food Classics, Lear, CanGro, Atlas Steel, and many, many more ... all left when corporate taxes were at their lowest levels. When a company hires somebody, they do not pay taxes on the income they have that was used to pay that person's salary. Even certain payroll taxes are waived for companies below a certain size. Taxes only affect a corporation when it is profitable. Most corporations -- even those that are well run -- are not profitable, but have good cash flow. Tax policy doesn't affect these companies, as they pay little or no corporate taxes. Individuals with higher incomes are limited to only three tax brackets - the highest being only 29%. Perhaps, this should increase to 35 - 40%. I paid 35% of my income in taxes during the 1990s when taxes were higher for wealthier persons. I was earning in the top 10% at the time, but the taxes I paid did not bother me. Taxes were a price to pay for economic security. Low income individuals may not pay a lot of income taxes (though they do pay a disproportionate share of other kinds of taxes), but they in turn feel insecure. I am constantly being told by many people they are worried about keeping up their rent payments, keeping their homes, feeding the kids, paying off debts, all while they cannot afford so called luxuries like a telephone, a personal vehicle, etc.

Don Drummond in his review of public services in Ontario, together with the implied direction of Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh, Social Assistance Reform Commissioners, have started this conversation. We, as a people, need to redirect this conversation, or austerity measures will take us all down to a path of societal destruction, anomie, bankruptcies, and personal tragedies like we are seeing in the UK, as a result of actually carrying out many of the reforms being considered by Drummond and the Social Assistance Reform Commission. It is way too easy to push through these kinds of changes in our policies, but a heck of a lot more difficult to reverse the damages once these decisions have been made.

Let's try to stop this running train before it derails all of us.

DOGMA AND PREJUDICE

These are very interesting times.

I just read an article in the online media that those with socially conservative views are disproportionately (though not always) less intelligent than others that do not hold these views. I would assume this group would also fall under the same types of people that believe everything candidates like Stephen Harper feed to them about how tax cuts create jobs, and how we have to keep bowing to the corporate gods, or we will be hit with financial disaster. I didn't buy it then, nor do I buy it now, but then again, I have a higher level of tested intelligence than average.

The actual article raised a level of consternation in the many communities I published it in today, likely for good reason. People who swallow the corporate line, or buy into Christian fundamentalism, don't like to be told they are stupid. They are not stupid, in my view, but the issue of integrative complexity was well known even when I was in university many years ago. At that time, many published studies found a higher level of integrative complexity among those who did not hold extreme views, both on the left or the right, as well as those that were able to acquire critical thinking.

It is unfortunate that most of the politicians elected these days do not appear to have a high level of either integrative complexity or critical thinking skills, especially if the believe the bile they spew out at the voters during elections. It is either that, or they know the largest common denominator of the general public is less educated and they can hire media spin artists to make people believe what they want them to believe. I have a business education, as well as other disciplines, and in one of my year one courses, the professor told us that corporate tax cuts do not lead to more jobs. This professor was an economist, specializing in behavioural economics and fiscal policy. He taught me both micro-economics and macro-economics, as well as a course in how economics impacts on public policy.

I also don't believe anything the fundamentalists try to shove down our throats either, where they want to mix their own personal religious and moral beliefs with the policies of those governing us. We seen what happened when the Women's Christian Temperance Union pushed for and successfully passed prohibition during the 20's and 30's. All this did was create a very large underground and mob-financed network of booze cans and other illicit gathering places for alcohol consumption. One can argue that the main reasons for its success was because they also supported the women's suffragette movement, also supported by other groups.

To me, these people are the same individuals who believe that somehow testing applicants for welfare for drug use is an effective tool to prevent fraud. While many places have implemented this policy, it was found to be an expensive, cumbersome program that yielded few positive results. These people are stingy when it comes to giving people enough to live on and remain healthy, but will spend unknown millions on tests that might result in the denial of benefits to less than 2% of those tested, while at the same time feeding into more misguided public hysteria that the amount of welfare fraud is actually much more than it really is. My suggestion is to test the politicians first, then test everybody else. In fact that was a proposed amendment to another state's provisions to do just that, and bingo, the bill was withdrawn.

Many of these politicians, many of them with limited critical thinking skills, and many born and raised with a silver spoon in their mouth, understand very little about how their laws will impact people on the ground. They talk so much about getting "government" out of the face of the population, yet this right seems to exclude a portion of it: the poor. I tend to be a follower of the categorical imperative, in place by theorists like John Rawls and Immanuel Kant. The categorical imperative, in short, means that if you are going to make a rule, it must have universal application upon both the ruled and those making the rules. Rawls would argue that one making the rules should, in preference, not be aware of their social position or level of power, once the rule was made and passed. The person would not know if they were a king, a peasant, a merchant or a working class person, and as such, would ensure that such a rule would be fair, as it could very well apply to them too. It was the universality of a rule that would place lawmakers at a vulnerable position they only wished to impose on "outsiders", that caused them to withdraw that legislation. The issue here is most social conservative rulers tend to believe these issues do not count for themselves, as they see themselves as being morally superior to others.

At the same time, persons such as myself, neither a ruler or a naive person, can get very irritated and despise getting lied to. During the election campaign, I pretty well let one of the representatives of one of the mainstream parties "have it" when they parroted a clause in their campaign book that if their party got elected to power, they would allow the higher earner of a family to write off up to $50,000 of their income to the lower earning partner, to reduce the total family tax bill. Not only is this an expensive proposition, but it also assumes those that will listen even HAVE $50,000 or more in annual income. I discussed this with people on a Tim Horton trek, which is defined as meeting people at coffee shops, cafes and other low budget eateries to ask them what they thought of this concept. Almost all of them said they did not even earn a total HOUSEHOLD income of $50,000 and they questioned who will actually benefit from a measure like this? According to economist, David McDonald, those individuals earning $100,000 a year or more would benefit the most. My questions upon reading reports on this particular proposal was, where are the $100,000 jobs? Most of the jobs around here pay next to nothing.

The same people proposing this income splitting exercise also push the idea of one parent, usually the women with this particular Christian sect, to stay home and raise the kids, while the man works and brings home the money. Even in situations where a husband actually earns that much, it still isn't right for the woman, as her marriage to him is not guaranteed, his health and his future employment may not be guaranteed and who is to say what will happen if he got hit by a Mack truck the next day? How will she continue to financially keep her family together? Not only is that type of set up scarce as hen's teeth, but it is certainly bad for the female half of the family, should disaster strike. One might argue against divorce, that it is against Biblical principals and so forth, but to me, so what? How does that decrease the divorce rate? How does that decrease spousal and domestic abuse? How does that decrease the chances that the sole earner becomes disabled or absent from the family due to reasons outside of his control?

The problem with Christian fundamentalism is that it is not practical, not realistic and if it were policy, it would be very expensive, if not difficult to enforce. Those espousing these philosophies do not see any difficulty enforcing it, or even want to consider the costs of the same, even as they might consider themselves "fiscal conservatives" as well. To me, this is just hypocrisy at its best, and its precepts only benefit the most powerful people of society.

This is the same about the question of abortion. Many people reading this are horrified by the idea of abortion. They listen to the "right to life" and evangelical types carry on about how women should not be permitted to have an abortion, yet their own precepts if you believe Thomas Aquinas that stated that a fetus was not a "person" until it was ensouled, which meant that life in Aquinas' vision started at some point well after conception. Certainly, the Catholics and other fundamentalist Christians felt abortion was always wrong and sinful, but they certainly disagreed fundamentally as to when life actually began. On a practical basis, the pro-lifers do not have an answer as to how they will physically prevent women from acquiring abortions they feel they need anyways. One wonders if these same people, who believe so highly in the right to life, and for the welfare of the women involved, would recommend we return to the days of back street abortionists that ply their trade with coat hangers and Coca cola douches.

I once had a discussion with my mother who is devoutly religious in the Jehovah's Witness faith. She complained about the increasing numbers of people in our country who came from abroad and have learned different customs, practices and ideas, and want to continue to practice them here. She is one of those people who think if you come to Canada, you do everything the rest of us do. Unfortunately, if this was taken literally, we would not allow Muslims to practice their faith, wear their head coverings, or take part in their Friday prayers. Doing this is "not Canadian". So, is it okay for somebody like my own family members to tell somebody else who feels and believes as much in their own religion and culture as she does hers, that they should not be able to practice it once they cross our borders? The shoe can easily be on the other foot, and she as a Jehovah's Witness is familiar with the history of persecution against her own religion. These acts took place in Canada, and in other countries, they were even more extreme, and sometimes people of this faith were put to death. In the Holocaust, they were also a group of people targeted for round up for the death camps. Of course, this is NOT okay ... so why is it okay to attack people of OTHER religious faiths? As we speak, there is a growing animus in North America and Great Britain against Muslims, both within and outside their faith. This is no more right than the prior attacks on persons of Jehovah's Witness faith.

As a non religious person, I sometimes feel under attack because some religious people, particularly those of more fundamental sects, believe it is wrong not to be a believer. I would not call myself an Atheist either, but I just don't have the strong "black and white" narrow integrative concepts of right and wrong. Atheists and other non believers are seen somehow as morally inept, approving of all sorts of sins and iniquities. This is certainly far from true, as most non believers are very highly moral and ethical. We just don't get fed our moral and ethical concepts at church, only to do the opposite at home.

There are other people who push for "freedom of speech" which is just a disguise for a push for their right to express, provoke and promote hateful and discriminatory behaviour towards others. They want to remove the right of human rights commissions to find certain persons guilty of promoting hateful speech, or printing it. While there are some issues with how hateful speech and expression is defined in the Canadian Human Rights Act, it needs to be revised, not repealed. Freedom of speech is a fine thing, but there are limits. One cannot print or say something damaging about another person the writer or speaker knows to be untrue. One cannot cry "fire" at the back of a crowded movie theatre. One cannot also willfully promote the hatred against any particular group. However, these people try to argue they are only saying things, not doing anything. The evidence shows that hate speech hurts.

There were a few nut bars in the 1980s, for example, that went around telling everybody, including teaching children at schools, that the Holocaust during the second world war did not happen. Along with these statements were very disparaging statements about the Jewish community itself. Does free speech include something like this, which would certainly spark very negative behaviour by some persons against members of the targeted group? Evidence of this is well known in Great Britain since persons with disabilities were removed from society's idea of being a protected class, and the number of hate crimes against persons with disabilities has been growing, along with policy makers more willing to deny benefits for them and force them into deeper poverty and deprivation. Writer Katharine Quarmby has tracked the history of hate crimes, how they evolved from words, attitudes and prejudices and then into actions against individuals with disabilities. Almost 300,000 persons with disabilities were exterminated in Nazi Germany as being "life unworthy of life", and well before Hitler's campaign against the Jews began. The public attitude towards doing this was softened through a massive propaganda campaign, not unlike what we hear about today, about how persons with disabilities aren't "contributing" to society, and how wasteful it was to allow them to have and raise children. In Great Britain, these spiteful attitudes have made it to policy makers and disability allowances have been largely discontinued for a significant portion of the population of persons with disabilities. Very few of them are moving into jobs, as policy makers had hoped, but instead are committing suicide, getting involved with other crimes and losing their housing. Many advocates in Ontario are fearing the same attitudes might be imported here.

Personally I do not like most of the conservative candidates of today, because most like to outdo one another as to how much they want to trash the poor, attack racial and religious minorities, and so forth with proposed policies. In the United States, a good watch of the Republican primaries and the debates between each of the candidates to lead the next election against the current President Barack Obama should be instructive for people who are concerned about our future. Many want creationism to be replace teaching about evolution in our schools. They want to run the country on "Christian principles" (or more accurately, THEIR own Christian principles). They want to continuously lower taxes on the wealthy and on profitable corporations, thinking somehow this will spur an economic recovery. (Newsflash - corporate and personal taxes have been declining for the past twenty years, and it doesn't look like the US is in any kind of recovery yet). Listen to their arguments with an open mind. While you may believe some of their moral principles, ask yourself whether forcing the same on a diverse population is really the best thing to do. If I were in the US, I would probably have to vote for Obama, not because I necessarily like his record, but because I want to keep something more horrible out of my life.

Unfortunately, much of the Republican type dogma has come to Canada and into Ontario, where corporate taxes have been cut without consideration of their impact on the increase of the size of our deficit over the years. Only recently we got a report that states that corporations are not using their gains to hire new people or increase investments. It's not that they ever did, as my economics professor taught me when I first started my business courses in the 80's. In fact, many of them, including Electro Motive Diesel Company, or EMD (now under Caterpillar) have locked out their workers and are taking the companies back to their headquarters. In the case of EMD, this is Indiana. EMD took a billion dollar tax cut before all of this happened, now it just wants to shed its 500 workers and move on.

There are lots of connections between prejudices, low education and a lack of forethought. I do believe if EVERYBODY sought to educate themselves about these issues, and questioned their political representatives about them, and make them answer these questions truthfully, we might just start to see more accountability and less lies being fed to us.

Your thoughts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?