MEDIA, LIES AND REALITY TV - On Telling our Politicians to Get Real

I have not written here in a period of time, mostly because I am trying to build my business and develop a broader client base.  At this time of the year, clients affected by economic crisis tend to strike out at everybody in their way and spread their hurt all over, including those that are trying to fix things for them.  One Christmas a few years ago, a gentleman phoned my office to tell me he had a gun and was prepared to use it on himself.  His sister ended up spending the holidays with him, though his words haunted me for a long time.  This is why I try to take a few weeks off at Christmas time to get out of everybody's way, not because I celebrate anything or care about the crass consumerism known as Christmas.

Anyhow with the advent of recent federal by-elections, we heard so much about the middle class.  I don't know about you, but I am frankly fed up with hearing about the so-called "middle class" when many of the people I deal with would be very happy just to belong in the "middle class".  The media has it all wrong about us. During the summer, we're all supposed to be going to cottages, taking road trips and participating in sports, such as swimming, hiking and fishing.  As voters, we are theoretically supposed to be too busy with our "families" in the summer and, as such, out of touch with politics.  In the fall, kids are supposed to go back to school and parents are supposed to be paying at least $600 - $900 on back to school supplies and clothing, while parents of older children drive their kids off to universities or colleges, the tuition for which is being paid by them.  I knew a lot of these kids.  They were just as self-entitled in the 1980s and 1990s as many of them are today, living off Daddy's trust funds and blowing all their money on beer and parties.  There are more serious students though, but we don't hear about them in the media, because these people are usually the mature students that go back to school, rely on OSAP and barely get enough to eat, let alone enough money for beer.

In a few days, there will be a day that is called Black Friday, which follows Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., and this sort of crass consumerism has crossed our borders to make us Canadians think we have to do it too.  Oh, how we all are now suppose to drive across the border and shop and make an official start to our Christmas shopping ... Yeah, right.  WHAT Christmas shopping, many of you are asking ... I don't even have to be there with you, but I know many of my readers barely have two pennies to scrape together to do any kind of Christmas shopping, let alone have families to go to during the holidays.  Reality on the ground is too different than what it appears to be on TV, in the media and on reality shows ... even politicians have it wrong.  During the last federal election, I couldn't shut off the TV fast enough when the clowns running for the federal Conservatives were going on about how they want to offer 'income splitting' for the average family, which they say earn a household average of $93,000 a year.

These clowns go on to offer -- if elected -- and if they bring the deficit down -- a big expensive tax cut that will allow families where it is possible for one high earner to transfer up to $50,000 of his income (or hers, too -- but we all know they are imagining high earning men and stay at home women to be their trophy wives).  The man who likely earns a six figure income can then "save" on taxes by artificially transferring up to $50,000 of his earnings to his stay at home wife (or much lower earning wife), so he will only be taxed on the remaining income.  This whole thing was concocted by the false dichotomy of pitting dual earner families against single earner families ... pretending again, the old Conservative way, that women really all want to stay home to care for their children and not go to work until after the fly the coop.  Na da.  Ain't happening, especially since tying the knot with anybody doesn't come with guarantees these days.  Most families are two earners, simply because one salary doesn't cut it anymore.

The average expenses of a family tell us much more about our so-called make belief earnings that the media would like us to believe we have or can strive for.  I live in a region that is packed full of low wage, low skilled, no future type jobs ... all this, for those who have turned fifty, worked in the plants all their lives and now were told their employer is moving to India or China or Indiana or Detroit, take your pick.  We are supposed to believe our families average $93,000 a year, because our politicians tell us so when they are on the election trail.  I would really like to invite these politicians into MY life and show them what is real and what is fantasy.  I live in a house that is falling apart and I have no money to fix it.  I live in a neighbourhood that has been losing amenities right, left and centre - all whilst the municipal politicians see fit to continue to increase my taxes.  If this is the case, what am I getting more of?  Certainly not services ... we are losing our schools, so kids can no longer walk to school.  We lost the only two financial institutions that were here when we first bought the house.  There are no more family style restaurants or recreational facilities.  The west end of town also has no community centres, no supermarkets, no community agencies, no swimming pools (e.g. the one that was there was shut down and rebuilt in the north end where three indoor pools are within walking distance of where they put the "new" one, and those of us that must take the bus can't get to at night or on weekends).  This tells you who the municipality serves - people that live in the neighbourhoods where all the amenities are all have money and usually drive.

Over the past few years, the only businesses that can thrive in my present neighbourhood are hair salons, low end bars, pawn shops, tattoo shops, convenience stores, fundamentalist churches, as well as other "businesses" which might be less than legal.  Over the past two years, I've seen more tags on buildings, representing the settlement of self-identified gangs.  I hear more about stabbings and shootings, let alone the fact I had personally handled cases that arose from this neighbourhood resulting from families being firebombed, a Muslim man getting beaten within an inch of his life and a family whose son recently killed himself.  With the loss of the high school, I can imagine a sharp increase in drop-outs, along with an increased cycle of poverty.  This is why I need to find a way to get rid of my house and get out of here before its value plummets and I end up owing more on it than I get for it.

My dream would be to leave this region, but until that is even possible, I need to get at least out of this 'hood. I've noticed a rash of home sales over the last year or so in this part of the city, or shall I call it town (because we still don't get city level amenities).   Others have sort of stuck it out here, but then they are retired and are not going anywhere.  The rest of the housing is going to student housing or rentals, with high turnover like many on my own street.  Over the years, people have come and gone from this block.  At one time, if one lived in the 'hood, they'd at least see other people's kids grow up and fulfil their dreams and have kids of their own, and so on.  Unfortunately, this is not the kind of 'hood for that sort of thing.  Many times, I long for community and the need to be part of something.  The unfortunate thing is even if there were some of us in the 'hood that wanted to get together to do something about it, we have no place to meet, not even a decent restaurant where we can all gather for a coffee.  Isolation breeds alienation.

We heard so much about a certain 'crack smoking' mayor of Toronto, which has hit not only all the Toronto media, but international media as well, including talk shows, late night comedies, comics, etc.  I feel if there is any of that 'crack' being smoked, an awful lot of it must be smoked by city planners that make decisions, such as where transit routes go, where to locate municipal services, where to build schools, etc., but then again, the federal government didn't help matters when it chose to scrap the long form census and turned it into a National Household Survey which nobody really had to fill out.  Whole neighbourhoods, age groups, social classes and so forth, were left out, because these being the "prototypes" who will be less likely to voluntarily complete such a thing, city planners even if they aren't on crack still won't have a clue as to what communities like my neighbourhood needs or what it is like to live here.

While the media continues to talk about the typical "middle class" who all have loving families to turn to, more than one vehicle to drive, a rich array of community services to go to, the media also tends to portray the "other Ontario" in a stereotypical way.  The food bank, which seems to be another money grabbing machine, hogs a lot of publicity at this time of the year pretending to be the saviour of all the fallen souls and broken spirits this chronic depression left behind.  Certainly, they are not necessarily stereotyping the poor, but they're doing nothing else for them either, such as what I'd want if I were to even visit an agency like that, and that is, to be pulled out of poverty and be given some hope for a future in my life.  If all I am to be given is expired food rich with preservatives and artificial ingredients for three days and told to come back again two months from now, while their 'researchers' take down way too much information about me, I would just want to run ... run far away.  It's time we shut these charities down and started pushing for policies that work.

While I never had much of a family while growing up, I certainly do have and value a strong sense of independence.  That should be upheld by our society.  That doesn't mean, society should just tell people in their darkest nights to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", but no ... society should come together once more and find ways to get people out of desperate straits once and for all and to actually provide and promote the kind of equal opportunity that our current media pretends that our society still offers.  That means we need to stop pretending that everything is fine for most of us, that most families are pulling down $80,000 to $90,000 in total household income, or that families can go back to the 1950s and rely in a single earner and get all their needs met.  We need to stop living in the past, turn off the TV, put away that newspaper and start looking around you and talk to the people you see.

Instead of assuming certain people are certain ways because ... (fill in whatever self-blaming principle you think fits), we need to ask ourselves what we as a community can do to make things different enough so that the people we see who are in trouble can find themselves out of trouble and be able to stand on their own two feet, given resources that should be universally available and not just "targeted" to those "in need", or in other words, the "damaged goods", "the poor" or "less fortunate".  We need to find ways so we rely less on charity and the goodwill of others, as fairweather as it might be, to fill our basic needs.  We need to have what we all need in our own communities, our own neighbourhoods and our own homes what we need to maintain ourselves and live our lives out in dignity.

Until then, we must all fight and place the responsibility at the feet of our policy makers that want to make it hard for those who were not born with Daddy's trust account or one of the few remaining good jobs left on this planet, to get by and have a reasonable quality of life.  An election is rumoured to be held in the spring of 2014, and the last thing I want to hear on the hustings is how a typical Ontario family lives, unless those making these statements have met and lived the lives of real people, such as the ones I am talking about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

SECRECY IN NIAGARA REIGNS!!!

Did you know that the Social Assistance Reform Commissioners had been in the Niagara Region earlier this month?

OK. You are probably asking: (1) What is a Social Assistance Reform Commissioner?; (2) Whatever they are, what were they doing in Niagara?; and (3) Why should I care? I spoke to people in the broader social services and legal community and they were aghast as usual, but then again, given our recent "consultations" on the HIP (or Hospital Improvement Plan, anaethema to anybody in Niagara who even sees these three little initials), this is sort of the expected thing that goes on around here.

First, late last year, as a part of the Poverty Reduction Act, which was passed provincially and agreed to by all three major political parties in the Legislature, the Provincial Government appointed Frances Lankin, of former NDP Cabinet and Toronto United Way fame, and Munir Sheikh, made famous by his departure from Statistics Canada when our wonder Prime Minister decided we can do away with a major part of our National Census, to go on the road to consult the community on how to make social security programs and systems work better in Ontario. It is not limited to Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and will encompass housing, training, employment supports and related programs, to see how people can improve their lives (mostly by returning to work, but not necessarily) and to streamline the systems.

Anyways, the Social Assistance Review, is arms length from the government, although it includes some civil servants who have been seconded from their jobs in other parts of the Ministry, as well as some external researchers. On visiting their website, we learn about who they are, why they were appointed and what kind of job they are going to do. There are numerous resource documents being posted to their website, one of which they have asked for from me, which will be made available to them as soon as some minor adjustments are made to it. They have made a commitment to visit twenty-two Ontario communities to meet with social service people, agency folks, advocates and people who have direct and "lived experience" with both programs.

While each region was asked to set up their own meeting, and how they set it up was up to the regional contacts, not the Commission itself, almost all of the meetings set up around Ontario were public to some degree. By the term "to some degree", I mean, some of them were organized by anti-poverty organizations that reached out to others and basically set it up conference format. Others like the one in Hamilton, opened up its convention centre, and opened it up to anybody that registered in advance. However, when Niagara set up theirs, they shut it up tighter than a drum the minute they agreed to a date with Commission organizers. I looked it up the minute the Ontario calendar was put up, and made a phone call and email to the persons identified as contacts for Niagara.

The first thing they said was that it was "full". Upon further probing, I learned it was not even open to anybody in the "public" to begin with. Nevertheless, I feel badly that the Commissioners did not have the best opportunity to hear about some of the unique challenges presented by persons in Niagara. I am not saying the people there or even organizing the event did not have good intentions; I am saying it was completely wrong to exclude legal advocates like myself, and probably about thirty or forty other persons (easily) that I can bring with me that have "lived experience" to speak for themselves as to their own personal dilemmas created by either program.

So, as usual, I created my own hornet's nest, not because I am trying to embarrass anybody, but trying to show people what consultation and community inclusion actually involves. I personally never felt included in this Region (for a number of reasons), even though I lived here since 1983, and the least these people could have done was to make an effort to seek my input, and allow me to bring a few individuals I feel would be representative of the Niagara community of "lived experience". It is not that I don't have other ways of making my views known and articulated, because I am involved at other levels where I have provided comprehensive input, and will continue to do so with selected groups. It is that segment of the community I work with that were very upset to know this happened, and they were forfeited an opportunity to present their stories in person. As one of them told me, "there is a difference if I were presenting on my issues face to face, than even if I put it in writing". This particular woman single handedly organized a poverty forum a couple years ago with almost a hundred people in attendance. Why wasn't she invited?

There is symbolism in my presentation, different than anything I can ever write. I was gently prodded by a friend that reminded me of a story I relayed to my local MPP while the Mike Harris government was in charge. This story created a greater interest among even those with financial conservative leanings, when they understood why the policy of making oneself "permanently unemployable" was not a good thing. It killed somebody here, and as executive director of a local community group at the time, I made this an issue, which in turn led to a lot of the push province wide around the ODSP eligibility criteria we have today. I read about myself in Hansard, on Google, in the special collections department at the library, and in other records, and I envy the perseverence and energy I seemed to portray in those days. My friend, who I shared many of the links with, said I can do this again.

I am concerned that somebody might be worried about too many people going on ODSP and not going off, and who might want to tinker with the definition of eligibility once again, therefore putting more vulnerable people at risk. There have been musings by the current Minister that there were too many people on ODSP and the definition of disability is "too broad". This Minister has also been in charge of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, almost leading one to believe that this hugely watered down Integrated Accessibility Standard is going to get employers province wide to suddenly open their doors to people with disabilities. As I tell people, because I was also involved in this process as well, that the standards are an important step, but it is not going to cure the labour market of most of its ills. To tell a person on ODSP who is trying to work, for example, that they will no longer qualify for the higher benefits this program offers, will discourage any of this effort from going further, or worse yet, lead to more people like Stella Mae Williams (the name of the person who chose suicide over likely and imminent eviction when she was cut off her then Family Benefits cheque for trying to keep a part-time job).

I mention this incident because it happened right here in Niagara, and our beloved Peter Kormos, took this to the legislature, as just another example of how mean social assistance rules can become. I wanted the Commissioners to hear about Stella Mae Williams, and others like her that did not become known through the legislature or through my usual publicity pushing efforts. I wanted the Commissioners to know some of the people by name that I have known, year over year, who have turned to suicide, as opposed to continuously living in abject poverty and alone in this world that is created by ODSP, as well as its predecessor, Family Benefits. The rate of break up in relationships between ODSP recipients and working spouses is very high, over ninety percent of those I have known have split, while the so-called divorce rate for the rest of us is about forty percent. Some ODSP recipients have died, while others continue to live desperately alone.

In my community, I am a paradox. I work professionally as a paralegal advocate, taking cases to courts, tribunals and appeals all over. Many times, I attempt to mediate solutions between parties to get something for both sides, at times in very difficult circumstances. While most of my cases are typical events involving companies, individuals, employers and others, and all of them are very important to me, as all have a legitimate issues that need to be dealt with. About twenty five percent of my caseload is poor, many of them trying to qualify for various disability benefits, or to deal with some other circumstance, such as trying to seek health care that is not available in Ontario. I see the world that nobody else sees, other than some of my peers, as well as folks that work directly in social services. I see for myself what has not worked over the years, and I hear from people all the time what would make things work better for them.

It is unfortunate in our society today, there appears to be an addiction to charity and other ineffective solutions, which only deflect the issues, and continue to fail the people they serve. The culture that is created within the charitable context solidifies the dichotomy of our community between us and "those people" (who would be the intended recipients of charity). Donors are told to feel good, be proud and some even seek their fifteen minutes of fame for running major campaigns to support these charities that in the end produce nothing. It is unfortunate in places like Niagara that people that run these kinds of charities have more say about what should be done than those that live the issues. I am not saying that those that run these charities are bad people or do their work with ill intentions; they fail to understand the effect of the dichotomy this creates, and how it impacts on the self-esteem of the people that are provided for.

In other words, I missed my opportunity to tell the Commissioners what my people tell me they need to become more financially self-sufficient or to bring their families out of the kinds of desperate circumstances that lead them to the door of these charities. I value the adage that if you feed a man a fish for a day, he will not be hungry today, but if you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime. We need to get more people that think like me on board to make sure that we stop covering our gaping wounds with band aids and congratulating those that provide the strips. We need more people that can heal the wounds, and make people whole, or at least to the point, where they can choose.

If anybody in charge here in Niagara is reading this, I certainly hope they make attempts to contact me, as I need to belong, and teach people how to stop the bleeding. Your thoughts?

THE TALE OF TWO NIAGARAS AND THE DSBN ACADEMY

There has been a recent announcement by the District School Board of Niagara about their plans to create a "DSBN Academy" aimed at educating students from low income families, and to encourage more of them to move on to college or university. This announcement came out of the air. It was not campaigned about in the recent municipal election, nor was there a period of public meetings or consultations on the topic. Again, this was yet another idea from some Sunshine Club member deciding what was "best" for low income families, especially with nary an organization that speaks for low income families in Niagara -- despite the region having the second highest rate of unemployment in Canada.

The response to this issues was predictable, according to the Board chair, but they are pushing ahead with it anyways. They have several "partners" on board, such as the YMCA, Community Care, Brock University and Niagara College. The post-secondary institutions may soon host this "school", but even that is not guaranteed. Community Care is on board, of course, so they have a permanent place for their "poor" clients, as opposed to making an effort to get people out of poverty to begin with so they wouldn't need segregated schools of this type in the first place. The YMCA also offers employment programs.

My first question was, "Did they ask a single low income family if they wanted a program like this?" Of course not. I did. Not a single one of those that I asked will enroll their children in this school. In the regular mainstream school system, there are thousands of low income children in attendance, and some schools are better than others at addressing the problem. The schools that do the worst job of it expect the parents or the students to identify themselves as "in need", and then be given "charity". Because only a small minority of such families in this position come forward this way, the number of low income families is grossly underestimated. Moreover, most of the low income families I know do not even go to food banks or other agencies for help, because of the shame and ridicule they feel they will get in response to their request for help.

Even on Face Book and on the public section of websites for the newspapers themselves that published the story about the new school, it is opposed at least 5:1 by the public, many of whom are also low income themselves. I know for the period of time in my youth when I was from a low income situation, I was not eager for others to know about my situation, so I kept a lot of my feelings and experiences to myself. I would not ever consider asking the school or anybody outside for help, nor did any of my friends that found themselves in similar situations. There is no evidence to suggest any of this has changed, where children are coming to school without boots, saying they "forgot", the same with their lunches ... easier to forget than to admit there are no boots or lunches to be found. I am also aware of at least two families with kids that say they are "allergic" to pizza on pizza days, or simply don't feel like going on that camping trip.

The school board tries to tell parents to come forward with their situation and ask for help, but in my experience through working with these families, this often came with other strings attached, such as Children's Aid getting called, teachers expecting less of the students in these circumstances, or unnecessary referrals to "diagnose" the child with some type of ADHD or other mental illness de jour. Parents know these risks. They hear it happening to others in their housing complex, or to their friends and neighbours, and then they do not want to dare. It is less costly to do without than to put onself in the spotlight of being amongst the "unwashed, unclean and generally less valued" of our society. I have heard many earfuls given to me, even when I suggest a trip to community care, emergency welfare assistance, etc. I can only imagine the horror that would be felt by their kids who would not only have to self-identify to their teachers, etc. of their situation, but to their neighbours, etc. when they see them bussed off to the "poor kids' school".

The other issue with this school is that students not eligible for enrollment if either parent is college or university educated. This continues to feed on the stereotype that people are poor because they are not educated and lack skills. I have come across many well-educated low income persons, many of whom do not even readily admit being low income because of this stereotype that also blames them for whatever it was that did not lead their status to rise with their education. Many live at home with their parents, attempting to stay off the welfare rolls. Others attempt to continue their schooling, at least on a part-time basis. Others are working in low wage, low skill jobs that don't even require any education to do, as they have been screened out of better paid work for various reasons.

The other requirement is that parents have to put in 15 hours a month in volunteer time for the new school. Again, there is a broad assumption that even though they are bussing the kids in from all over Niagara, that the parents in question have their own means of transportation to do this volunteer work. Niagara always had a belief that everybody living in the region can drive and has access to a personal vehicle, and if they don't for whatever reason, it is because the person is a drunk, a drug addict or did something criminal to "deserve" having lost their license. Most non-drivers in Niagara do not fit that description at all, yet they are ridiculed, blamed, attacked and belittled, and left out of most opportunities that Niagara's employers reserve only for drivers. The one study that I am aware of is that among adults that use employment assistance services in Niagara, 93% of them do not have both a driver's license and a car.

While their education would be streamed to college or university attendance, and these students would be guaranteed summer jobs, it would also seem to me that the resources, limited as they may be, will only be taken out of the maintstream schools where the vast majority of low income students will continue to attend. For those remaining students, or those that apply and do not get into the Academy for whatever reason, will only continue to remain close-mouthed about their circumstances and try to survive the mainstream school system that will only be more hostile to them, as there will even be less resources to go around.

To me, more work needs to be done to get the PARENTS out of poverty, as opposed to trying to stop what some call a "cycle of poverty". The cycle needs to stop at the children's parents, not at the children themselves. If a parent has financial resources, then there will be less of a need for a "poor kids' school" in Niagara. While politicians continue to pretend the recession is over for people in this region, as well as most of Canada, they ignore the fact that there has been little job recovery. I am still talking to adults that don't even care if they work minimum wage, etc., who are having major trouble even finding part-time minimum wage work at a Tim Horton's. If there was a job recovery, there would be nobody like this.

The problem that people do not see is that I understand people's lives from an ethnocultural approach. This is how people live out their lives on a day to day basis, what they talk about, what they look forward to, who they hang around, how they set up their homes, etc. If you speak to people who live in long term poverty in Niagara, they do not talk about being part of anything, like a community group or even a church group. They do not talk about working out a gym, nor do they talk about going for a recreational swim or a skate. They purchase most of their clothes at thrift stores, if they have extra money at all. Most have never been to other parts of the region, measured in lengths of time in years, not weeks or months. They have friendships, but they are usually unstable, or only with people who are in similar circumstances. Only a minority of them attend agencies for assistance; when I ask them why, they say that the agencies in question "won't do anything". They never talk about going to the movies, eating out, going on vacation, or anything.

When I speak to people of the middle or upper middle classes of Niagara Region, they speak of activities they have enrolled their children in, some involvement they may have had with their children's schools, a recent trip the family took up north to "relax", or a garden they are attempting to grow in their backyard. They talk about books they've read, meetings they've attended, or items they recently heard discussed on the news. Some like to talk about their "gadgets", as many people like to use electronics that seem to be falling in price over time ... they talk about their iPods, iPads, Black Berries, cell phone plans (and which ones are a rip off), as well, where their family went to eat last weekend. Occasionally, there may some discussion about investments, particularly in who is best to work with, and how badly or how well they fared in the recession.

Among the better educated middle and upper class, politics, economics, theories and medical advances become more of a topic of discussion, and these people appear to be more inquisitive and open about different ideas. Among the lower income people, I only hear questions, "Do you think McGuinty is going to give us a raise? What do you think is going to happen to my special diet allowance?". To these people, the "rich" are a monolithic group of people, who the lower income people perceive to be receiving a disproportionate amount of help for their issues. Whenever I try to explain that people are very different from one another even within their respective economic positions, the lower income people find it hard to believe. That there is as much unhappiness among the middle and upper classes is hard for them to believe as well, although the source of their issues tend to be very divergent.

However, among lower income people, the issues are less divergent, as lower income people are unable to experience the same range of experiences as people in the middle and upper middle classes. Low income people don't concern themselves as much about the stock market, or the economy, because they do not feel they are a part of it, even though many of these issues also have some impact on their successes as well. It is not that they do not want the same things as anybody else. They do. When I ask low income people what they want, their answers are very similar to what the answers are from middle and upper income families. They want their own homes, good schools for their kids to go to, good health, an interesting job, to take a trip somewhere, etc. The difference is that the lower income people often don't have the range of experience with many of these issues as others do, and tend to involve themselves less with their children's schools, with the community, etc. than others do.

However, because the lower income people want the same things as others, they do not want to be be distinguished by others as "poor", and they are very much aware of how most others think about them. If you were in a situation where others would typically think negatively about you, would you be public about belonging to this disadvantaged group? Mental illness is a good example. Many people suffer from this issue, or have family members that do, yet many people, regardless of wealth or lack thereof, refuse to seek help from the traditional "mental health system" because of its power to label one and deem you to be "different" and "not like other people". Poverty has a similar impact on one's experience - most try to hide it. A recent study on food insecurity found that 1 in 8 people are insecure with respect to being hungry at least part of each month. Yet less than 1 in 5 of those food insecure persons ever sought help from a food bank.

I do believe if there was a voice for low income people in Niagara, this "poor school" would be a non-starter. The lives of Niagara's poor have been and continue to be depicted and assumed by Niagara's non-poor, usually those that have some degree of power. To me, this is unacceptable. The poor should have their lives determined by others, no more than the lives of other people of at least some means should be. If the education bureaucrats really wanted to find a way to decrease the drop-out rate among poor students and get more of them to attend college and unversity, there are other ways to do this. One great example is called Pathways to Education, which was started in Toronto's lower income neighbourhoods, and has since spread to other communities. The success of this program is unprecedented - drop-out rates have been cut to less than 20% of the percentage they were prior to the introduction of Pathways, and the number of participants going on to college or university have substantially increased to a level that is closer to those from non-poor families.

The difference with Pathways is that it is conducted in the child's home school. They do not go anywhere else for this program, nor do they line up for a special class or some other tell-tale location for this program. Nobody has to know about the child's participation in this program if the child chooses to keep it this way. The why of Niagara's public board choosing the segregated option is obvious to me; they why not of choosing the integrated option is not so obvious. Hopefully, there will not be enough poor families registering for this school to make it worthwhile, so it would have to be cancelled and perhaps, Pathways be put on the table.

Your thoughts?

THEY'RE ENTITLED TO THEIR ENTITLEMENTS!

During an investigation into some alleged wrongdoings on the part of key Liberal party ministers and officials during "HRDC-Gate" and "Sponsorgate", one former Minister David Dingwall, who eventually moved on to head the Royal Canadian Mint, told a Parliamentary Committee that he was "entitled to his entitlements". In another investigation, Brian Mulroney was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by accepting up to $300,000 in cash from an alleged German arms dealer shortly after he stepped down from his job as Prime Minister. These cash deposits were allegedly not put into any bank accounts, but a safety deposit box, which raised a number of eyebrows. Mulroney made a voluntary self-disclosure to Canada Revenue Agency years later. There was an expensive public inquiry into this matter, leaving many questions still unanswered and probably Karlheinz Schreiber probably ended up more tarnished than Mulroney did. But what would happen if you are I did the same thing?

At the provincial level, we learn about private consultants working for $3000 a day, plus benefits of disbursements, such as tea and crumpets from Tim Hortons. These consultants allegedly worked for e-Health, although I suspect they did other work in "communications" with the provincial government, likely to communicate their intention to cut the special diet program to poor and disabled persons with medical conditions requiring them to eat specific foods at a higher cost. All that got into the media, unfortunately, was one consultant's tab for tea and crumpets and the fact that a large Liberal-friendly consulting firm got a sole-source contract to achieve this e-Health program. This billion dollar boondoggle, like the federal one on sponsorships in Quebec, was stopped short of a scandal and Ministers resigned. Yet at the same time, none of the consultants had to pay a single penny of their "hard earned monies" back. Earlier, another Minister handed over $200.000 to a cricket club in his riding. These stories are running ad nauseum; even Mike Harris pushed Ontario into a significant debt after awarding Anderson Consulting a $284 MILLION sole-source contract to develop the computer systems for Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program ... and when there were errors, this same government had the audacity to bring them back in and pay them millions of dollars more to correct the mistakes they shouldn't have made in the first place!

During our recent recession, both provincial and federal government handed out tax dollars to the banks to the tune of over $50 billion, as well as to General Motors to the tune of $16 billion, while many workers lost their jobs and could not get on to Employment Insurance. In the U.S., George Bush as a parting gift to Obama, put the U.S. treasury over $1 trillion dollars into debt bailing out their banks and mortgage companies, many of them of which got saddled with bad loans and foreclosures. They also apparently own General Motors now, as some now call Government Motors. AIG, one of the loan companies bailed out, immediately paid its executives million dollar bonuses. After all, all of these people were entitled to their entitlements.

In Ontario, a woman named Eleonore Clitheroe was terminated from her position at Hydro One, after she raked in over $2.2 million in her last year, and upon looking into her expenses, it was also alleged that she expensed hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses, such as limousine rides for her children as well as renovations for her upscale home. She naturally took the government to court and sued, it appears this likely got settled out of court. However, recently she got herself in the news again litigating over her "rights" to a $35,000 a month pension from the province, when she is apparently only receiving one in the paltry lower $25,000 level ... she argued with the court that she, too, was entitled to her entitlements.

Public sector workers, ranging from teachers, to fire fighters, to police officers and other workers "win" at least 3% raises each year for the next three years, until they start all over again. This, while many of us are losing jobs and cannot afford to pay anymore. Municipalities and school boards are helpless, as the province forces them to pay what arbitrators tell them to pay. It must be nice having a job in one of these sectors. They certainly aren't hiring anybody else, no matter how qualified you are, because if anybody at all is going to get the jobs, if there are any new openings, are those that already worked there ... so the rest of us either have to accept leftover jobs, like call centre, Wal-Mart and burger flipping, or invest in a time machine to bring us back to the 70's and 80's when new jobs were coming up in these fields and get hired then.

Workers in these public sector jobs have no right to complain about their salaries. Sure, they work hard, but so does the minimum wage doughnut shop worker. So does the teenager that fills your gas tank when you go to a full-service gas station. You say you went to school for a long time to get what you want ... not necessarily true. Teachers need a minimum of a four year degree, plus an educational degree which is one or two years. I know people who have been to school much longer and owe way more in student loans who are now stuck greeting shoppers at Wal-Mart, because virtually all the "good jobs" are in union shops and closed to the public. I know many teachers in my region, and they are the first to complain about the high cost of living here. I say, yes, try making it on less than half your salary.

Others work in the private sector in jobs like General Motors, TRW, US Steel, etc. and make over $30 an hour. They tell us they work hard. Sorry, people who make minimum wage also work hard, and yes - you can also be making minimum wage too if it weren't for the hard work and bargaining power given by others to make your job a good job. My bet is you had NOTHING to do with making your job a good job, other than being lucky enough to apply for the job at the right time and get in. To me, that is luck and not hard work. Others are single parents and get no pay at all, and they "work hard" too ... probably harder than many of the men that complain about their taxes. Some of you "hard workers" are self-employed, but the money you had to start your business probably came from your family, or perhaps the business you run belonged to your family and you got a place in it just because you were born there. So what, that means nothing to me. This doesn't make you more deserving than anybody else ... but time after time, it is YOUR TYPE OF PEOPLE who spend time on their computers at work instead of working, who bash the poor at websites, such as that for the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star and other places, where comment can be shared online. They always use fake names. I suppose they don't want their employers to read the sites and find their signatures there and esp. marked during working hours.

Personally, I have been involved as a teaching assistant and course coordinator at the university where I earned two of my degrees. I would say about half of the students attending my classes were not able to put a simple sentence together. My marking and teaching philosophy was often criticized by these students because I would mark them for grammar and sentence structure, as well as whether they were picking up anything from the course. I've had students bitterly complain to my department's chair that they had to get an 80% or more in the course, or they would not get to teachers' college. Yes, folks, many of these people just might be teaching your children today. After all, they are entitled to their entitlements.

I've known other students that never bothered showing up for lectures and would make an occasional appearance in seminars, usually looking half snapped up or on dope. In order to keep up, they paid other students for their notes and there have been occasions where plagiarism was caught red-handed. In these cases, I rightfully brought the papers to the department chair for her review and she agreed with my assessment and we gave them zeros. One of them came storming in about how his father works for such and such a law firm, and so forth, and how the school will get sued, and so forth ... I told them then to their face that I don't give a shit. Perhaps, he can go to his father to have him teach him how to write too, as that would be a great start before going to teacher's college. Very few of these students were on OSAP. A few made it quite clear they were from well to do families and did not have to take out a loan or work at all, and I believed them, because they certainly didn't work on their school work either.

Outside of school, I was also involved in consulting for a number of non-profit and publicly funded organizations. In many cases, people worked there for years taking very large salaries, and in one case, paying board members to attend meetings and help keep them in their jobs (despite not doing their job, of course). In another case, an individual would write reports for the board about the various meetings she went to or conducted, and when somebody checked this out - this person did actually nothing at all. There were no meetings and the people she spoke to did not exist. People often get into these jobs because they know somebody, whether that be a board member, the executive director, or somebody else closely tied to the organization. It is rarely about what they know. In fact, there is no law that prohibits publicly funded non-profits from hiring their relatives, high-school drop-outs or even those that have just come out of prison for fraud. This does not mean they all do this (as many organizations do care about their image -- but surprisingly not all of them), but without controls, many such organizations do fall to this. The only requirement I am aware of is vulnerable sector checks with the police, which is required only for organizations that work directly with vulnerable adults or children. However, I am not sure if the same is required for their executive director, or their accountant (although some such organizations do pass policies to cover everybody).

After many years of seeing this, I can honestly say there are not a lot of hard working people out there. Those folks that have a good job today think they did this on their own, when this is likely not the case. They likely knew somebody where they worked, had parents or friends connected to the business at some point or others who "encouraged" them to apply and gave a good word for them, or they had parents pay for their university education and possibly even their first car, so they are well out of the starting gate before their less fortunate peers even hear the starting gun. Personally, I don't care about these people and do not believe for a second, they work hard at all or they are even deserving of the good salary they make. People who read this can also relate to how on a day to day basis, they have to talk to you so-called "hard workers" in your positions, whether this be in government, insurance companies, health care organizations, car repair shops, or whatever ... and the rate of satisfaction with your customer service is pretty low. I been there. I know.

However, it is precisely this group of people and the well-paid public sector workers that do the most poor bashing. They try to convince people that they can just get "any job" and be making a middle class income within a year. First, somebody on welfare is not going to get a good paying job - ever. Studies have been done on this. Even when somebody on welfare is pushing themselves hard and takes any job for survival, they tend to cycle on and off welfare and low paying, short-term jobs. Very few are able to further their education, or get promoted in the jobs they do get. A teenager at 16 that starts working at McDonalds is not going to become its manager in the next ten years. Maybe even twenty or thirty years. We know that working at this low level does not improve their salary over time ... their wages stay the same and only increase if minimum wages go up. Ask people who work at Loblaws and Wal-Mart how often they get raises. Call centres are a bit better on the wage front, but most people do not last more than a year. I also know that very few people who are on welfare can ever move beyond a "paycheque to paycheque" situation to being a wealthy, even upper middle class person. It does not happen, not in the 21st century.

But at the same time, many of these well-paid workers get all summer off, full dental benefits that even cover cosmetic dentistry, a retirement income that many of us in the leftover sector can only dream of, as well as other things that they did not earn or work for. I know a few employers that pay people a couple of bucks more an hour just to show up! I asked them why they do this, and they tell me that many of their employees book off a lot. Office workers have been found to spend at least 30 - 40% of the time in the office on their employer's time on the computer doing personal transactions, whether e-mail, visiting personal websites, or chatting. Some employers have strict policies on this, but in larger companies it is difficult to track specific people. But I read the racist, ableist, classist and bullying comments on websites day after day, and the same pseudonyms pop up during all hours of the day, regardless ... I only wish their employers would check on these workers more often, and I suspect if they did, many of them would be on the unemployment lines right now as I speak.

I also see workers taking "personal days off" when they call in sick. This happens all the time. In a large employer you are allowed up to ten days during a twelve month period of "emergency leave days", but this doesn't mean you have to get paid. In the late spring, I've watched several people call in sick and they were at the beach, or they were heading into a bar. I heard them talk to their employers into their cell phones, saying they were sick as I watched them enter a bar on St. Paul Street ... or similar situations. Yes, they are entitled to their entitlements. I also know them when they come to my office at the other end and learn they have been fired, and ask me to represent them against their employers. Yes, there are many bad employers out there, but there are many, many bad employees. One employee apparently stole over a million dollars from her employer over seven years so she can gamble. A lot of fraud takes place by employees, we only hear about the big cases. A friend recently reported that a moving company took all day to complete what would have been a three hour move so they can bill for the whole day, as opposed to a few hours.

At a non-profit organization, there was a policy on "time in lieu" because the agency couldn't afford overtime, so as a result, they contracted with their employees to pay overtime in the form of time off equivalent, such as if they worked an hour overtime, they got an hour and a half worth of time off. Concerns were raised when I did some board training about the "abuse" of this policy. Staff seemed to spend a lot more time going to meetings and conferences than they did doing their jobs, and unfortunately, they got a lot of time off in lieu as a result! We had to re-work the policy limiting the number of hours per month they can claim for outside meetings or conferences, and anything over that was their own time - period. Even for the approved meetings and conferences, they had to be directly related to their job, and approved ahead of time by the program director.

I read in the paper that teachers are being pressured not to take marks off for late assignments, or for grammar/spelling, and to pass people more readily. Teachers are being pressured by students and more likely, their parents, to give their kids good grades. I am so pleased I had the backing of the university administration when I was in charge of my courses back then. I certainly hope things are the same now, and that these so-called hard working poor souls did not take advantage and push themselves through to "earn" undeserved credits.

Unfortunately, while nobody questions the billions of dollars that go out the window each year in tax breaks, corporate bailouts, questionable stimulus programs, and so forth, these same people bitch about the less than 2% of our gross domestic product that goes out to support low income, disabled and unemployed workers. They go on websites and claim to "know" that at least half the people who are getting disability are not in fact disabled. How do they know, I wonder ... I guess they must all be doctors and have all examined these people personally. They also seem to claim people on welfare get grossly inflated amounts of money, and query if they are really better off working. They say they are entitled to lower taxes because they "work hard", but people on assistance aren't entitled to anything more than say somebody who committed a crime is. As for whether YOU work hard, I say, PROVE it! The burden of proof is on YOU, if you are telling others how hard YOU work. I already know most of YOU do not work hard, and most of you lucked out in getting your better paying job, or got connected through somebody you know, and not because of what you know (if you know anything at all).

Nobody questions that 20 - 30% of tax returns that are filed fraudulently, at least in part, many by wealthy people who are abusing loopholes, or self-employed contractors accepting cash payments, etc., depriving the treasury of billions and billions of dollars a year, yet YOU focus on the less than 1% of people who are unfortunate enough to be on welfare that might be getting something extra they might not be entitled to. And YOU are entitled to your entitlements. I don't have the right to question you as to why you seem to be able to sit at your computer all day and evening writing racial and prejudicial epithets on websites, while you claim to work so hard. I don't have the right to ask who your employer is, so I can verify your information. For all I know, you could be on house arrest for drinking and driving or something, so don't give me any pity party stories about how hard you work, because I know you don't work hard at all. If you really did work hard, I would not be hearing from you on the web. You wouldn't have the time to go online! I have some time because I work online, and I am self-employed in an office, and it just takes a couple of minutes for me to check email, and various sites.

I hear whining and complaining from some of you saying you pay 50% of your income in taxes. In order to do that, you must be in the top 10% of income earners of Ontario, and I personally would rather make what you do and pay the taxes, than earn a lower income that doesn't attract as much taxes. So quit your bitching! You have nothing to complain about.

If the rules that applied to people that work who are on welfare applied to you, you WOULD be bitching! Not only would you have to pay taxes and regular deductions from whatever you earn, you lose an additional 50% of your pay. If you have a disability, and cannot work at all, and are forced to live on the Ontario Disability Support Program, and you are married and your spouse works, 50% of anything he or she earns AFTER TAXES is deducted from YOUR cheque! Most of you would be crying bloody murder by then, as most of you are in families where both of you work, and no matter how much either one of you earn, it does not lower the other spouse's income. I tell the government to change this rule, keep the spouses out of it, regardless of income, assets, savings, whatever ... keep them out of it and if the disabled spouse cannot work, give them their OWN income. They tell me they can't do that because then they will be making a middle class income as a family. Hey, if that disabled spouse WERE ABLE to work, he or she WOULD be making a middle class income ... so the government's position on this is that if you are disabled and unable to work, you deserve to be poor. You are also deserving of remaining single, unless you can find a spouse who is willing to take full financial responsibility for you and your disability requirements ... good luck to that today!

Some people with disabilities are self-employed. You think you can get off welfare or ODSP through developing a good business plan and "working hard"? Think again! You are NOT ALLOWED to hire paid help. That means if you are running a farm and it comes to harvest time, you have to do it ALL by yourself, and work around the clock. I wonder if the same could be said for those that own General Motors and other companies, that they should not be allowed to deduct the monies they pay to their staff to help run their plants ... there would uproar for sure, as there should be in this case too! They are also not allowed to pay off personal debts, so even though their ODSP and whatever they have left of their earnings is rarely enough to meet their own or their family's needs and they often have to put payments on credit card so they can eat or buy school supplies for their kids, they CANNOT pay back these debts.

Yet it is okay for them to declare personal bankruptcy every few years. I think if you have concerns about this, you should write to me and I will PROVE every one of my allegations about welfare and ODSP rules. If all businesses and employees had to live by these rules, our country would be bankrupt and nobody would be paying into the system ... their traps and tricks number up to 800 rules that keep people on the system and keep people poor, no matter how hard they work.

And ANYBODY can end up on welfare. Don't think it won't happen to you. If you bash the poor today, and I later learn you end up needing help, I certainly will be less than sympathetic when you start to complain about what it is really like when you come up to the other side of this very bad coin and complain when it happens to you.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING ...

The 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver is over with, after seventeen days of competition, commentary, excitement and knowing the whole world was watching ... I frankly never felt such unity with my fellow Canadians until we got into the Games ... and it is a powerful feeling indeed. As one of the commentators stated, "When we watch the athletes compete, it almost feels like we are there competing too ...", and when they win the Gold, we share their glory, and when they miss out, we share their disappointments.

With this Olympics, we had the advantage of Twitter, Face Book, MySpace and the Internet in general to keep up with up-to-the-minute coverage, and even replays of events you might have missed if you were away from the Games that day. With many of my friends, I shared day to day comments on Face Book about the Olympics, what I seen and what I felt, as did they ... and despite many of these people being half way around the world from me, I felt they were in the same room. The sense of unity gave me a sense of calm I never had in a long time, as I was able to focus on something else and boy, was it ever satisfying!

Canada came third in total medal standing, with 26 Medals in all: 14 Gold, 7 Silver and 5 Bronze. Canada had the most Gold Medals of all the countries competing, and apparently had broken the World Record for any Winter Olympics for the number of Gold Medals earned by any country. The Olympics gave me something to go home to, something to talk about, and something to look up periodically throughout the day. Today, I posted the Olympic theme song, "I Believe". This is Nikki Yanofsky, apparently a sixteen year old girl from Quebec. The particular link I gave in this treatise shows the Torch Rallies all over the country, all starting from the East Coast and traveling from hand to hand until it reached the Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver on February 12, 2010. The Torch rally came to my community the day after I moved my commercial office, and I have a couple of friends of mine who were torch bearers.

What I am particularly proud of, and almost sarcastic about, is the fact our hockey teams both won Gold. Today, it was a tense game with the Men's Hockey Finals between Canada and the U.S. Just as the end of the third period came to a close, the U.S. offense did a goal, tying the game at 2-2. In the Olympics, they will have one period of overtime, and the first one who scores gets the Gold. If there is no score still, there is a shoot-out. They had a brief intermission when I took off to the store to grab some supplies, and returned ... At the store, everybody was talking about the Game and were, like me, getting supplies and returning to watch. Just as I was about to step up my front porch, I heard loud cheers coming from several houses on my street, and as I came in, my son told me Sidney Crosby ended the game by getting the winning goal with the assistance of Scott Neidemeyer, both Canadian NHL stars. I can only guess what might have happened if Crosby (or anybody else on the Canadian Team) did NOT score ...

Instant Face Book groups, You Tube replays and other links to various sites, were set up so people can relive this story over and over again. In many ways, the Olympic Games brought some of us out of our collective depression. Two nights ago, the Women's Hockey Team made Gold as well against the U.S., and celebrated afterward ... both goals were made by an 18-year old woman from Quebec.

Even eight short years ago, when the Olympic Games were in Salt Lake City, Utah, I remember the Canadian Team doing fairly well then; however, not a whole lot of us were as hooked on Face Book, Twitter, and all these other instant replay sites that we are now. Literally, the whole world was watching! I saw Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the gallery watching the Olympics ... even many Canadian celebrities, such as William Shatner (who plays "Denny Crane" on Boston Legal), Michael J. Fox (the young Republican from "Family Ties", and later starring in such movies as "Back to the Future"), as well as a couple of actors from Rick Mercer's crazy show. This was followed of course by the stereotypical stuff Canadians are made of, such as beavers, canoes, RCMP, moose, etc. They missed the Eskimos and igloos, but perhaps, they did not want to anger the Inuit population of our far North. It was all in jest, and brought so many people together.

The closing ceremonies also brought a sense of sadness in me too, as people are now going back to their home communities, hopefully for more celebration and adoration, and federal Parliament will be opening up after its long self-imposed sleep induced by Prime Minister Harper. Normal life will begin again. It is the same way I felt when we all stopped talking about the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, and on the Pentagon. Sure, conspiracy theories about this incident do abound, but this post is not about that ... it is about how the whole world literally came together and lent their support to the families of those whose lives were lost in this atrocity. I first learned the seriousness of all of this over the Internet, as well when my husband called me downstairs to watch a replay of the two planes going through the two World Trade Tower buildings.

This is particularly difficult for me, as I live in a Region where there is not a lot of "togetherness" on anything. People are bitter, travel their own ways, oppose and chastise others who are different, and exclude people regularly from even the most basic activities each take for granted. Take sports, for example. As a young person, I enjoyed sports immensely. I loved to skate, roller blade, ride my bike, as well as swim and dive. I was on a baseball team, even as far as my first few jobs in the real world. I recalled happily an incident when I was in a grade seven, when I was on a girl's ball hockey team and I served as goalie. I remember one time, I blocked the ball from getting in, and not only that, I plowed it to the other side and managed to get it into the other team's net. These things give me fond memories, and I remember the stunned look on my team mates' faces when this happened ... I think there is a lot that society and communities miss when they stop being in things together. Sports cost so much now, that I could not afford to enroll my children in it anyways, and schools don't promote these activities as much either unless you have the money to pay to get into them.

Being a part of something is so human, it is almost occupying a step on Maslow's Hierarchy in itself. I feel I lack the sense of belonging at times, despite the fact I belong to a particularly strong profession, a couple of activist coalitions, as well as many online activity groups. Belonging has taken on a brand new meaning with the advent of technology. I have friends that love to use gadgets, and go around with their mobiles, take pictures and tell the world what they are doing ... I find that fascinating, even though the person doing this may be feeling as lonely and excluded as I am. Technology has put a distance between people that we never had before, nor can we actually fix this.

I resolved some of my feelings of isolation by moving into a new office in a secure building that has other members of my profession in it, as well as other professional offices of a different type. There is a popular cafe downstairs, where I can literally sit and listen, and enjoy the buzz of activity around me. This sometimes helps me too. I also go in twice a day, or more if it is particularly busy, to assist with a couple of online groups that deal with some of the issues that I work with both professionally and as a volunteer.

To me, the part about watching the Olympics I enjoyed the most is when individual athletes were interviewed and asked about why they joined the Olympics. For many, this was always a goal of theirs. They persevered, had families and communities rally for them, and they just kept improving their personal best.

In many ways, I am like this too, except in my own professional endeavours. I am not happy with anonymity and living a dull life, where people don't know or care who I am. I've never had an "ordinary life" either, but I am not here today to speak of how un-ordinary my life was, or how the great potential I've personally witnessed in others and who I personally know and interact with, has made me who I am ... I just want to say that if you have followed a lot of the other posts that I have put in here, particularly about social issues, it is all about one thing -- the right to fulfill one's total human potential.

I worry about a lot of these things. Is Stephen Harper going to go back to Parliament, after his high from the Olympic Games and proceed to cut funding to Canadian athletes? Is he going to set it up so that the Games only become further corporately controlled than they already are? I hope not. I just hope Mr. Harper and his Cabinet colleagues think about what they saw, understand what people like myself saw in these Olympics, and then try to apply them to his governance of all Canadians. As individuals, as well as collectively, we can be pretty powerful and strong people, but we need the support or the foundation in order to achieve.

I hope to meet Stephen Harper, only one of two Prime Ministers I have not met yet, and to speak with him about this - and how I apply the right to empowerment to persons with disabilities as well. The fact that Harper and his Cabinet made many cuts to programs for persons with disabilities has led to a reversal in many of our access to opportunities, as well as access to our rights to challenge systems and issues under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I live in a region where very few people understand the Human Rights Code, and the fact this quasi-constitutional legislation is set up to protect people who think, move, speak or work differently than others, and to help ensure they have equal opportunities to fulfill their human potential.

Unfortunately, even many people in my own community do not understand the politics of disability management. I do not fault them for it, as the mass media and other interests make it difficult for people to understand these things, the same way that food banks make it difficult for the public to understand the politics underlying the causes of poverty. Just keep giving to the food banks and everything will be alright, they say, or at least that message is given. To me, I look at things from a strictly rights-based approach, and with rights, comes dignity and how people are dealt with when trying to learn about or enforce their own rights.

Oh, how I desperately want to believe there are people like me in this region, instead of peppered all over Canada and half way around the world, as it can get pretty awful when I am not at the computer and then dealing with real life issues that I know exist, and that I know are coming from way too many elephants in the room that nobody in this region, and sometimes, even the province, does not want to acknowledge or listen to. This is a lonely fight, but in many ways, I truly want to believe. Your thoughts?