ON PUNISHING THE POOR AND WHY POVERTY PROFITS SOME

The Agenda did a serious entitled "Why Poverty?".

Normally, The Agenda can present some interesting topics that people want to hear and they do bring in guests that can speak intelligently on these issues.  This show is a refreshing change to what is usually found online where people blame the poor for their own circumstances and propose even more rules on them to keep them apart from others.  It is somehow believed by the "average Joe" that poor people are more likely, for example, to have addictions, but the research on the issue does not bear this out.  Chances are greater that one's colleague at the next desk or their boss is likely to be addicted, when compared to welfare recipients.  Why isn't anybody proposing to test these people for drug use?

The Agenda first had Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh, the authors of the quintessential social assistance review report, to discuss their final report and what they felt it would mean.  As you are aware, I am no fan of this report and feel that even if it were fully implemented, not a single person on assistance affected by the report will ever get out of poverty.  Unfortunately, I feel that both Lankin and Sheikh swallowed too much of the same Kool Aid that is being distributed among people in coffee shops, people driving stop and go on the Gardiner Expressway and people that feel that "if I work, why should THEY be allowed to sit at home?"

This is so frustrating, as the crux of their report essentially pits the so called working poor against those receiving either Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) benefits.  Apparently, they think there are too many people on ODSP and want to stem the tide of people getting on.  They also want to get some people off it through their own version of workfare that will theoretically cover everyone, including those with severe disabilities and even terminal illnesses (similar to the way they do in the UK).  They further want to put more responsibilities and management on the municipalities, which over time will ensure major cuts to programs for the poor because municipalities do not have the same taxing power that the provincial and federal government have.  Because most municipalities are loathe to increase property taxes and user fees, they will look to cuts first and benefits for the poor are low hanging fruit.

The current situation with municipalities where people living in some communities can access a rich array of benefits, while others in other communities can only get the bare bones will only be further enhanced with the province's choices of its own priorities, such as: giving rich people tax cuts, giving rich seniors a "healthy home tax credit" to do repairs they will probably do anyways without the tax credit, and pouring more money in corporate welfare to various companies with the hope -- even the faintest hope -- that these companies will hire people off the welfare and disability rolls.  Even companies that want to "champion" people with disabilities don't know the first thing about the true potential of people with disabilities.  A government office will hire people with disabilities to water plants.  An insurance company will hire a few in their mail room.  A publisher/newspaper will hire some to deliver their publications.  Higher level jobs that involve higher skills and higher pay will still be remote for people with disabilities, even among those that have the required skills for these jobs.

Barriers to employment will persist even with the report's full implementation.  As one person told Steve Paikin's producer at The Agenda, "There are no other working people in Ontario that have fifty percent of their wages taken off, even though we pay the same taxes that everybody else does".  The report recommends scrapping the $100 work allowance and raising the "earnings exemption" to $200 per month for both OW and ODSP recipients.  I bet it cost YOU much more than $200 a month to keep your job, let alone even get one in the first place.  Thank about the price of gas, car insurance, work clothing, lunches, coffee breaks, dry cleaning, haircuts, and in some cases, cell phone and internet access if required.  The total bill for these basic items exceeds $500 - $600 per month for most people.  You might not think so, but for those of you that have retired, you will note that you don't have to drive as much, don't need to dress up, can eat at home and can throw away the cell phone.

If you went to work and paid the normal taxes and deductions you normally do, plus lost fifty percent of what is left over, how much more willing would you be to work more hours, take on a second job, especially  if your job does not provide much security and benefits?  For those who are self employed, it is worse.  Anybody in Ontario can start and run a business of their own.  Canada Revenue Agency has rules that allow for certain deductions and tax rates for base levels of income, and depending on how your business is set up, Canada Revenue Agency is fairly permissive around such issues as hiring staff, investing in equipment, work related clothing, mileage and even something called "business meals".  That is, if you have to work long hours and need to grab a bite to eat, or you are meeting with a potential client over lunch, the cost of this can be written off by fifty percent. The situation is totally different for self employed also in receipt of OW or ODSP.

Self employed people on OW or ODSP are not permitted to hire staff, so the business owner has to do absolutely everything in their business by themselves, which often means cutting into the time they could have to actually grow the business and make money.  The government appears to believe that people with disabilities are only capable of running low skill, low cost home based businesses, such as dog walking, baby sitting, or envelope stuffing.  After all, this is what employers would hire them to do anyways.  This same thread of ignorance that crosses over for prospective employees with disabilities also affects the kind of businesses one can have.  When somebody shows or demonstrates that they can operate a business that has more skill required, as well as a potential to get them completely off benefits altogether, OW and ODSP rules sabotage any attempt on the business owner to get ahead.

They are not allowed to hire staff.  If their company is incorporated, the income the corporation receives (as opposed to the individual) is counted as income, which leads to the corporation being unable to retain earnings and keeping a base from which to pay taxes and other bills that only come periodically.  The person is not allowed their CRA deductions, such as "business meals", work clothing or transportation beyond what is considered "reasonable".  They cannot go to conferences and conventions unless the person is earning an income from this attendance, even if their profession or business requires this attendance.  The OW or ODSP recipient has to choose to pay their business taxes or eat each month, or pay their commercial rent or to purchase clothes for their kids.  There is no distinction made between the person with the business and the business itself, which leads to loss.  Even the monies that are "left over" after approved expenses are ravaged and cannot be set aside to pay taxes later or to save for a large expense, or even contribute to a meaningful retirement plan.  Nope.  These people are not allowed to retire, unless they are satisfied with the dumpster diving level of income people without a private pension will likely get when they hit 67.

The social assistance review report ignored this issue entirely even though they claimed to be in favour of work incentives.  Yet at the same time, I speak to many business owners as well as people on OW and ODSP that have paying jobs that actually quit because it is more financially beneficial for them to sit at home and pick their nose.  When I raise the issue of treatment of business income, I get the same runaround that somehow OW and ODSP doesn't cover the business, just the person.  Hello?  Since when did OW or even ODSP cover all the basic needs of the person?  Does ODSP even cover the full cost of one's housing, including utilities?  Most people are paying between 70 - 80% of their entire month's income on shelter.  To say that a business run out of one's home cannot write off part of the housing costs is ridiculous, as ODSP does not cover all the housing costs.  This applies to food too.  I am not aware of anybody that works and receives benefits that actually get INCREASED benefits to cover the cost of working, etc.  True, they get a $100 "work allowance", but this is soon negated by the 50% claw back of everything else a person earns.

Further, the argument that this is taxpayers' money doesn't sit with me either, especially when governments hand out billions of dollars in corporate welfare and tax breaks to companies year over year that contribute little to the economy, and few have actually used these breaks to create new jobs.  If we want to cut welfare,  let's start cutting from the rich first.  At least, they won't feel it as much.  They may have to give up their fourth vacation and cruise to the Carribean or give up one of their Mercedes or rent out one of their five homes they own, but these people are still eating and living somewhere safe -- even without a penny in tax cuts or corporate welfare.

Another argument often given is that everybody is assessed on family income and it affects their tax credits.  Guess what?  Earned income affects the tax credits of OW and ODSP recipients too.  The more they earn from employment or self employment, the less that family receives in tax credits, while at the same time, their total household income actually drops that more that they do work.  If millionaires had to follow the same rules, they would have moved to Aruba a long time ago!

At the same time, poor people are told to accept charity.  I haven't met anybody that has used a charity that was helped to escape poverty through that charity.  The charities in question benefit from the poverty of its users.  If nobody lived in poverty, the directors of these charities wouldn't have a job, nor would anybody have a reason to go crying to the papers about stocking their shelves with old, sub-nutritious processed foods that to be honest, few would even feed their pets.  Charities are also uneven and do not follow any set of rules when determining eligibility for services.  Privacy is compromised against its users all the time, while the agency just writes it off as a "mistake" (despite the fact this 'mistake' in question could have cost somebody their job or custody of their children).  My advice to the poor -- stay away from charities, unless they allow for anonymity and do not use a means test.

What is needed for people living in poverty is to be included and be supported in this inclusion.  Inclusion means different things to different people.  For some, it means getting their food at the same places that others get their food.  For others, it means being able to get to community events and meetings without having to beg or to depend on others for a ride.  Niagara Region is bad for this sort of thing. It recently held a high profile conference on accessibility issues for people with disabilities at yet another location that one has to drive to in order to be included.  If you do not drive, or do not own a car, then you are not included, despite the fact this conference was theoretically set up to discuss issues related to accessibility.  The less people feel included, the less they feel they are valued as a member of the community.

This feeling of value of oneself, of one's own person, does not come from handouts of aged, rotting food from a food bank, a lice laden homeless shelter or some kind of afterthought given to people that don't drive in arranging rides to a meeting.  I've experienced it in Niagara, where even when a ride has been arranged to get to a meeting, one has to find their way back -- usually about another $100 in taxi fares, because most areas of Niagara are not accessible to people with disabilities that do not have their own means of transportation.  Niagara's only so called poverty group also meets in an inaccessible location, which again excludes many people that can provide input around that table.  As a result, the voices of the non poor and service providers are the only ones that get heard, once again somebody else that gets paid to "help" the poor determining what poor people need.

We have to protest against downloading to the municipalities.  Doing this will only encourage future cuts of greater depth with little or nothing that can be done to reverse them.  Already the so called program that is going to replace the provincial Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit in Niagara will only be available to people on OW.  I get told to protest this to the region. Many people already have, but our region has its own priorities, which usually involve goods and services that benefit the non poor and the police services (e.g. a $100 million new police palace in Niagara Falls, for one).  Our region talks about the GTA Expressway, as though this is going to encourage thousands of new jobs ... even if it does, not one of these jobs will be available to the poor, as most of the poor do not have vehicles.  These jobs will likely be located along this new highway, where one would need a car to get to anyways.  Why did I have to file a lawsuit against this region just so they can set up some type of starter regional transit between the three main cities (but nowhere else), in order to get them to move on it as opposed to continuing to talk for another forty years?  Now, some regional councilors are attempting to sabotage this pilot project by pushing for its discontinuation.  It is a safe bet that none of these dinosaurs would be willing to drive me between cities when I need to go outside of my own city to work on different files, etc. if they got their way.  It is also a safe bet that not a single one of these regional councilors are without a personal vehicle.  Chances are they each have three or four of them in their driveway.

Privilege breeds ignorance.  People who live in privilege have no idea what others that live with less privilege or without privilege altogether actually live like, or what they need.  Privileged people should not be in a position to make decisions about people without privilege, because of this willful blindness most of them tend to have.  I notice that our regional councilors and city councilors cry poor and whine about seniors that cannot pay more property taxes, as a reason for them to cut essential services further.  Yet these same seniors are the ones that miraculously can afford to upgrade and renovate their homes and will now, thanks to Dalton McGuinty, receive a tax credit for it too.  The so called "poor seniors" or the truly poor seniors are already unable to live in their own homes and have had already moved to subsidized housing, the home of a child or sibling, or even to a nursing home, and very little of this has to do with property taxes ... it has to do with their income in general.  With a net retirement income of approximately $1,300 a month for a single senior that no longer has coverage for dental, assistive devices, etc. cannot afford to live in their own home - period!  While this is not the fault of the municipalities, I wish our local politicians would stop lying to the people about this, because most of the retirees that are able to live in their own homes have private pensions, thanks the generation before me that actually had job opportunities that meant something.

The province needs to UPLOAD, not to DOWNLOAD.  Municipalities should not be in the business of delivering social services of any kind.  Municipalities should be only responsible for predictable programs, services and infrastructure that do not ebb and flow wildly with the economy like social services do.  Services like libraries, public transit, road maintenance, sewage and water treatment, bridges, community centers, certain recreational programs, police and fire departments, are examples of municipal services that should be run locally.  Social assistance of any kind, including OW, ODSP, social housing, employment support services, health and addiction services, senior's support services and so forth, should be run and paid for provincially, even though local offices can operate programs at the local level.  This way, expenses that fluctuate can be covered as required without having to raise property taxes, which by the way, impacts on the supply of affordable housing in any local area.

Most of the rules that govern OW and ODSP need to be eliminated if they actually expect people to work, or accept any kind of employment.  Stop clawing back half the income of people when they take a job.  Stop counting the income and assets of spouses and older children when they take a job or run a business.  For those interested in starting a business, they should have no more rules to follow than anybody else that runs a business and in fact, they should be able to hire, fire, incorporate, invest, retire, do whatever they need to do with the business to help them earn an income.  Because until the government is ready to do real social assistance reform, which is not going to cost a whole lot more than what it does now, the vast majority of OW and ODSP recipients are better off sitting at home.

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

TURNING THE TABLES ON SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

The much vaunted, long awaited and hoped for Social Assistance Reform Commission was appointed in the fall of 2010.  It provided an initial consultation paper last summer and as recently as March 2012, revealed its second discussion paper.  Over one hundred and seventy five respondents were posted to the Commission's website on each of these occasions, many of whom will read this blog entry and understand the concept of irony and oxymoron. Many of us have concerns about this review and what is going to happen once it reports back to the government and its recommendations are made public.  The latest report by the Commission is that it will complete its said recommendations by the end of this month or early next month, and have the final report released to the public in the fall, likely mid-September.

To give you a bit of history, this review was a key plank in the province of Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy, which included Bill 152, the Poverty Reduction Act.  This is no lie. All political parties passed this legislation with much fanfare at the time and substantial public support.  Part of the legislation was to appoint the Commission, so that it can review all social assistance programs and make recommendations that would reduce the complexity of social programs and reduce poverty in Ontario.  However, like the Drummond Report (which reported publicly on February 15th of this year), Social Assistance Reform Commissioners Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh were given marching orders from an austerity minded government.  To me, they were asking Lankin and Sheikh to decide the fate of Solomon, while deferring to the banks, the bondholders, the wealthy corporate elite and the pandering anti tax crowd.  In other words, they were asked to become the oxymoron that an austerity agenda would make of any efforts on the part of any government to reduce poverty.

Don Drummond, principal author of the Commission to Review Public Services of Ontario (or the "Drummond Report", for short), Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh, are all intelligent, well-respected individuals, with grounding both in government and in economics.  They know intimately that Ontario cannot cut its way to prosperity, or cut substantial numbers of public sector jobs without having a negative impact on private sector employment.  They also know that welfare rules that forbid people to grow assets, build a business or form families, militate against poverty reduction, and as such, given free reign, I do believe that all of these individuals would be making quite different recommendations if they based their analysis solely on best practices and the actual objective of poverty reduction.

However, beholden to an austerity agenda that was neither created by or leading to any benefits whatsoever to the target population of this initiative, Lankin and Sheikh are euphemistically expected to create a miracle by finding so called "efficiencies" in the two social assistance programs in Ontario, namely, the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program.  This story kind of reminds me of the Biblical parable of Jesus feeding the hungry, from a small amount of wheat and a fish, to multiply His Holy offerings over hundreds of people, each of whom had at least a full loaf and fish along with wine.  Except this time, there will not be an endless supply of loaves and fish.  There may only be one loaf and one fish to cut up in many thousands of parts, while the Ontario government continues to feed the wealthy of this province virtually all of its wine and fine caviar.

The agenda of this Social Assistance Reform was clear from its second discussion document, whereby it seems that the myth of employment being the sole route out of poverty further prevails, whilst neither Commissioner pretends to be instructed to find ways to fix the labour market in order to make this so.  A fix of the labour market is not on the Ontario Government's agenda.  We only need to look as far as the federal government with its recently planted reforms to the Employment Insurance program, temporary foreign worker program, and related initiatives, such as eliminating employment equity requirements from the Federal Contractor Program and reducing budgets for important enforcement bodies, such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission.  As federal Finance Czar James Flaherty stated, "There is no such thing as a bad job", as he relates to his distant past of coaching hockey and driving taxi (likely before his Princeton pedigree education and successful career as a lawyer and politician).  I am sure if his government completely had its way, it would eliminate the need for minimum wage and health and safety regulations; they are such an impediment to business anyways.

At the same time our Honourable Minister Flaherty reflects longingly on his early 'careers', both he and the rest of us know he will never have to do a "bad job" again.  Lest all the "bad jobs" that Canadians refuse to take because they pay too little, lack any benefits, offer inconsistent and irregular hours, and potentially destroy the soul of the bearer should they even last more than a mere few weeks, are now the new pathway for the poor and unwanted Canadians.  Flaherty reassures us that no middle or upper class crust will ever be forced to take these "bad jobs", but if you dare make a claim for Employment Insurance and by extension, social assistance, you may be asked to take one of these jobs, never mind that you are trained as an engineer, a teacher, a social worker, a manager, or even an artist.  The poor will get their hands dirty because the middle and upper crust of our society will not have to.  Simply put, we are following the ways of the UK, for example, that take the willingness to work and dreams of inclusion by persons with disabilities, and deliver them to the worst jobs that nobody else will take, perhaps for less than minimum wage.

In fact, in the second discussion paper produced by the Social Assistance Reform Commission, it is posited that a substantial raise in Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Program Supports would make it "unfair" to those that already work in these "bad jobs".  Poor people on social assistance deserve to be poor because low wage workers in "bad jobs" are also poor, so why should people on social assistance, including people with disabilities have it "better" than those in bad jobs, hence the assumption there are even enough "bad jobs" to go around for everybody in the first place.   The federal government refers to "labour shortages", which euphemistically refers to the fact that not enough Canadians are willing to take low wage jobs with no benefits, at a time when housing and other commodity costs have been driven skyward.  The answer to reforming social assistance is to get people out of welfare poverty into working poverty ... as if this will accomplish a damned thing!  So much for the Poverty Reduction Act, as the Ontario Government can just say it can't be done because we have to pay back this massive deficit their wealthy friends helped to create.  Never mind thinking outside the box and asking why we have so many "bad jobs" to begin with ...

Another theme that is repeated throughout the second discussion paper is to divide people with disabilities up between those who can and those who cannot work, as if it were that simple.  As an academic that had developed both employment and self employment initiatives at the provincial and federal level, I can tell you there is no "test" that will positively affirm somebody as being "able to work" or "unable to work".  Ability to work in fact is not related to the severity of one's disability, but more the social, economic and attitudinal barriers held towards persons with various kinds of disabilities.  I once wrote in this blog about how accessibility begins at my front door.  People believe that the installation of a ramp, widening doors in buildings and setting desks lower to suit persons in wheelchairs, will make this whole group of people, voila -- instantly employable.  This alone is not taken into consideration that somebody will have to get to the workplace each day, and reliably so, on their own power and be able to remain consistent.  There is no test for this, nor can this be determined based on the type of disability or diagnosis one has.  Two people with the exact same disability and limitations may have a very different set of opportunities and barriers.  Virtually none of these issues are properly reflected in the report, as this bears upon "fixing" the labour market.

Nevertheless, the above constraints are ill considered when such "tests" have been issued in other jurisdictions.  Persons dying of terminal illness, blind persons, quadriplegics and others, even if they can just move their thumbs, can be deemed employable, simply by showing up on time for the so called "test" - of course, disregarding the probable trouble, substantial efforts and barriers one likely had to go through just to get out the door as well as probable help received for the same that cannot be relied upon again and again, if one were to replicate this reliability in a real job.  In the UK, those deemed employable lost a substantial portion of their income benefits, even if they cannot find a paying job.  There is no rationale for lowering the incomes of people deemed employable, as I have yet to see housing prices, grocery prices, transportation costs, and so forth, lower accordingly.  All this does is spell an imminent crisis for many people, and in tune with this, hundreds of people subject to this re-evaluation have died, many by their own hand.  For example, if we drop the already inadequate allowances of $1,064 monthly income for persons with disabilities to the welfare level of $599 per month, what do you think is going to happen?

When I discussed this with some people who I randomly encounter or meet with who have never experienced this level of desperation, they told me they believe they will just "get a job".  If this was in any effect true, if they were looking for work while receiving $1,064 a month, their chances of finding a job would certainly not change once their income drops, and as a matter of fact, they might be less likely to find work, given that it costs so much to conduct a good job search.  Interview clothing, stable housing, a telephone contact, references, transportation, and so on, are not free the last time I checked.   Henceforth, when I asked further of these same individuals, many of whom are themselves employers, if they would hire any of these folks, and almost universally I am told, they would not hire social assistance recipients.  If they will not hire them, why do they think somebody else will?  It is my belief that unless government somehow forces employers to hire people from the Ontario Works or ODSP rolls, and to accommodate all disabilities, it will never happen on its own.  The marginalized will always be marginalized unless the labour market gets a true "fix" and employment opportunities are created for everyone that wants and needs a job.

Putting more people out into the labour force to look for jobs is not going to create more openings.  In fact, all that will happen is there will be more and more unemployed persons looking for the same number of vacancies.  Statistics Canada recently reported that there are between three to six and a half unemployed persons (meaning people who are already currently looking for work) for every single job vacancy.  That means if we filled every single job vacancy that exists, there will still be another two to five or six people without work for every filled vacancy once all the jobs are taken.  The Social Assistance Reform Commission is supposed to look at ways to make sure these remaining people do not lose their homes, their health or their families, but instead, it appears by the tone of its second discussion paper, the Commission intends to answer to wealthy corporations that are feeling a "shortage of labour" in its lowest paying, most unstable positions, as opposed to trying to find ways to make all jobs "good jobs".  Working poverty is becoming more and more of a problem without any apparent attempt at a resolution.  A good friend of mine had a heart attack after she attempted to juggle three minimum wage jobs to support herself and her three children; now, she cannot juggle any job and was forced off on ODSP.  With enough "bad jobs", it is inevitable that the human soul will be crushed and no longer able to function in such a capacity, leaving labour market reform an absolute must if the Social Assistance Reform Commission, any government of the day, or even the business community as whole, wants to see less people on "the dole".

Another set of recommendations appears to make ODSP operate more like Ontario Works; in fact, one of the proposals is to combine ODSP and Ontario Works into one program.   That means punitive rules as they exist for people on ODSP will never be changed, regardless of the negative impact these rules have with respect to maintaining people in legislated poverty and preventing their reasonable chances of escape.  One example many in the disability community want to see changed about ODSP is when a person receiving ODSP marries or lives common law with somebody, the income and assets of their partners should not be considered when evaluating one's continued eligibility for ODSP.  As somebody who has worked in the advocacy community, I see how this particular rule has forced many persons with disabilities to remain with abusive partners.  In some cases, they are cut off when their partner or spouse refuses to cooperate by not handing over pay stubs to ODSP officials.  Eliminating the necessity of this would allow more people to form relationships, as well as provide the person with a disability a way out if that relationship becomes toxic.

Henceforth, I have noted that relationships between ODSP recipients who are largely unable to work, with a partner or spouse who does work at a more than minimal basis, rarely last.  Their health worsens, as they are not permitted to stop working, or take breaks, or get sick themselves ... lest they risk losing a lot of money, leaving their bills, including their rent or mortgage unpaid for several months until adjustments are made, as earnings deductions are made for income earned currently in sometimes a few months' time when there is no longer any work income coming in.  I have represented landlords at the Landlord and Tenant Board, where these kinds of relationships have broken down in the way I describe above, and almost always, an eviction is inevitable.  With the current loss of Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit, it will only be that much harder for the person on ODSP, either on their own, or with their newly unemployed or ill spouse, to find a new place to live.  Sadly, I have seen it go the way where when the spouse splits, they become under employed or sick themselves, and thus a new benefit unit is created as a result - which only costs more money, two shelter allowances as opposed to one. The last I heard, homelessness is not cheaper than housing somebody, even at full cost.  I am sure any austerity minded politician does not intend for more good money to go after bad; in other words, would it not be more cost effective to prevent the heavy costs that homelessness, persistent poverty and long term unemployment are bound to create?

Merging ODSP with Ontario Works is certainly going to cement these very counter productive rules that do not serve people with disabilities or encourage them to fully develop to their potential.  I will accept spousal income being included to determine the income of the other spouse when ALL people who are paid by public funds have to deal with it.  Premier McGuinty's income should be split in half and taken from his wife, if she works, regardless of where or how much she makes.  Spouses that are eligible for CPP, WSIB, OAS, and any myriad of other programs of various types should also lose their benefits if their spouse works, even a little bit.  If you see what it does to a family with a disabled spouse, you can only imagine the chaos that would ensue if this rule were universally applied, including politicians, civil servants, as well as others that work in jobs paid for by tax dollars, such as the postal worker, the bus driver, the teacher, the police officer and so forth.  No more double income, no kids, folks ... everybody will have to live on a single cut down income, and continue to pay for rising costs.  If you think the divorce rate is bad now ...

Finally, there were a number of proposals concerning employment supports.  While I share the concern that employment and education supports are very important and that a goal should be to get as many people into good jobs as possible, or training for good jobs of the future, I fear the proposals will not result in this.  There are merits to consolidating all employment supports under either Employment Ontario or through a local service agency, but the devil is usually in the details.  One would want to know what this means.  Does it mean the monies that are currently spent on the most effective programs will now be further spread out, thus slicing the pie even thinner for more participants?  Or does it mean a continuation of the same flawed formula used for ODSP's employment supports programs that appear to encourage or reward service providers that can most quickly get candidates into a job ... any job, even one that is beneath the person's talents, aspirations and educational attainment?  In my discussions with people, it appears we have to move cautiously on this one: we want to make sure that everybody who is seeking employment or to advance their education and training, has access to the necessary programs that will help them do so.  We must see the full range of employment candidates served, ranging from the most needy, vulnerable and inexperienced, to the most well educated, but currently unemployed person seeking a career-based job.  Greater use must be made of head hunting agencies that are experienced in placing professionals into jobs; perhaps, contracting with them to assist qualified OW and ODSP recipients in accessing the higher paid jobs, while supports for disability and other related issues can be provided by other agencies.

This means service coordination, something we were once allowed to do as Employment Supports Service Providers, where we can work with other providers to achieve best outcomes for single clients, while sharing the fees for service for the direct services provided by each partner to the client.  Somehow, this has become lost under the new delivery model, whereas each Employment Service Provider takes on the full range of services and as such, may not be able to service some persons that tend to be lost or fall between the cracks in most of these situations.  People with good educations are told they can't be served and are often told they have "more qualifications" than the employment support worker has.  They get told to negotiate their own accommodations, to negotiate their own job descriptions.  This means the job seeker that cannot drive a vehicle for disability reasons has to confront an employer to try to address the job description that seems to ubiquitously require one to have a driver's license and personal vehicle.  In other words, you must already have a job and the financial means to own and maintain a reliable vehicle at commercial insurance rates; if you are disabled and cannot drive, but can otherwise fulfill the other parts of the job, you are toast.

To me, if one is working in this field and is delivering employment supports, it is up to the employment supports worker to negotiate job descriptions and so forth, even before a candidate is proposed to the employer, so that the employer becomes more aware of his or her obligations under the Human Rights Code.  It is not the job seeker's responsibility to do this, because when this is done, if ever, the employer will only select the next person on their list that isn't as difficult to place, e.g. somebody who drives.  There are Employment Supports Service Providers that have successfully placed professionals and executives in positions, although they are not as common as those that work in disability specific areas.

If the Social Assistance Reform Commission and Ontario Government truly want to reduce poverty, increase participation in the paid labour force by all persons, including persons with disabilities, it must be a voluntary and well supported initiative, not based on a threat to the person of loss of benefits or reduction in income supports.  Earnings disregards should be designed to ensure that the person is always much better off taking the job, or working in self employment.  Persons who are not likely to engage in paid work should still receive sufficient benefits to allow them to not have to live in poverty.  If there is concern that low wage workers will not perceive this to be "unfair", then serious labour market reform is a must, which should include increases to minimum wage, easier rules to develop and organize unions or other workplace structures that encourage mobility and advancement.  However, if we are to persevere on the so called "unfairness" of raising social assistance rates versus how low wage workers are treated, neither group is ever going to advance and any poverty reduction goals, as well as saving well earned health care dollars, and so forth, will all be for naught.

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?