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?

STIGMA AS THE ENEMY -- MENTAL HEALTH CONSUMER/SURVIVORS BEWARE

There was a major series on Mental Health in the Globe & Mail recently.

There was a lot of discussion about how painful the stigma is. Many people do not seek treatment because of stigma. They may notice issues happening within themselves, and then the TV begins to repeat stories about people like Vincent Li that stabbed Tim McLean to death, or about some other killer that ended up happening to have a diagnosis ... smaller headlines accompanying the same story try to repeat that people with mental health problems are LESS likely to be violent than people with mental health problems. So, if this is the case, why mention the mental health diagnosis at all? We certainly don't refer to people's hemorrhoids or gastritis when it comes to reporting their crimes, so why do they beat the mental health dead horse?

There were a number of panelists and presenters that told their stories or spoke about potential solutions for the mental health crisis in Canada which resulted in a report from the Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology entitled Out of the Shadows at Last. I read the entire report. While it did highlight some important components to mental health, it did not really give a lot of answers as to what to do about the stigma, other than suggested the latter established Mental Health Commission to embark on some campaign to end it. There are some attempts out there to try to compare people with mental health problems with persons with diabetes, but unfortunately, that isn't working. If it worked, it would have worked a long time ago, and we not be faced with a continued stigma that even prevents many persons with mental health disabilities from entering the workforce, engaging in relationships or doing other "normal" things. The media images don't show mental health clients doing "normal" things -- they are always portrayed as violent or completely incapable of looking after themselves.

In Helen Henderson's regular Toronto Star column, she referred to a British study where it was shown that one in eight persons stated they did not want to knowingly live next door to a person with a mental health diagnosis. Further, this same study revealed that over one third indicated they did not believe people with mental health issues were entitled in the same way as others to a paid job. Similar studies have been done in Canada that have also revealed that many people would not knowingly engage a professional like a doctor or a lawyer if it was known that the person had a mental health diagnosis. So, what incentive is there to get help anyways?

There are a large number of working people I know, many in the professions, that have told me in confidence that they have suffered from depression, bipolar disorder or some other diagnosis for many years, and to maintain confidentiality, they seek help from a professional in another region, as opposed to getting it here. These people are not homeless. They are not on ODSP (although a couple of them I am aware have been receiving a partial supplement from ODSP, as they work -- but they keep that to themselves too). These people are living independently and do not need "special housing" of any kind. They, like everybody else, needs a home that is affordable, with a door that locks, a roof that doesn't leak and enough space for them to enjoy their day to day living activities.

One of them was in my office the other day and we were talking about the Registered Disability Savings Program and he wanted to know how to get it. I advised him that he would need to qualify for the Disability Tax Credit first, then I explained what happens once they become eligible for the program. It is actually not a bad program for people with serious physical disabilities, as they do not need to stigmatize themselves by applying. However, for somebody with a mental health problem, they need to show that 90% or more of the time, they have a marked restriction in thinking, perceiving and/or remembering, which would reflect more of a neurological condition, although the examiners for the purposes of qualifying people would accept arguments involving problem solving, capacity to live independently, etc. as part of their evaluation for eligibility for mental health disability.

The problem with this is that if one values their status as a professional, a student or perhaps, even an executive or manager of an organization, accepting this definition of themselves would render them unemployable, which is something most of my professional friends do not want. They do not want to face a Fitness to Practice committee of the Teacher's College or other professional regulator that would somehow question one's capacity to carry out their profession, if they allegedly have "marked restrictions" in these areas. Of course, as soon as my friend went through my literature on the topic, the whole question of the RDSP became moot. The one gentleman who receives a partial ODSP now knew this would not work well for him, thus forcing him to live within the restricted means of that benefit.

People with mental health problems CAN get the Disability Tax Credit. I have appealed many cases successfully in the past; however, in not one of these cases, was the subject able to work. In fact, even in these cases we had to prove severity. These folks had problems managing their money, handling their personal hygiene, using public transportation independently, as well as being unable to handle stress - thus, the problem-solving issue. Some of these people were relatively high functioning, such as the case with Buchanan v Attorney General of Canada, but in the end, his case was proven but he was not able to work, and had to be cared for by his wife. The new 'mental health consumer/survivor' as they call themselves today wants to be independent, competent and functioning as a human being to the extent possible, and in most cases - if analyzed at the surface, they certainly wouldn't be eligible unless they met the criteria of my successful appellants in the matter.

If somebody were injured in a car accident, for example, and ended up in a wheelchair, or if they had only 20% of their hearing and required sign language or other adaptations, then the stigma of applying for and receiving something like this isn't there. The examples given in the Canada Revenue Agency guide appear to favour physical disability over mental disability and this is post-review of the criteria, despite what some progressive mental health organizations might like to pretend they have accomplished on people's behalf. To me, this should be based exclusively on additional costs - direct or indirect - as a result of having the disability. This was in fact the original purpose of the credit. However, a high functioning consumer/survivor that is working, but needs to pay out of pocket for psychological counseling services isn't eligible. A high functioning professional with epilepsy that cannot drive due to seizures is not eligible. This can be a very long list indeed, as we can all cull out examples from our own experience.

One of the other issues faced by consumer/survivors is that they are too often chronically unemployed or under-employed regardless of their educational attainment. In a study cited by the Global Business Roundtable on Mental Health, employers tend to under-estimate the number of people they have working for them that could possibly be consumer/survivors. In this study, the figure estimated was almost always under 5% - when the general figure given is that one in five persons at one time or other experience a mental health problem, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association. When they do have problems, they are not usually accommodated, but instead sent on disability leave. If the employee is fortunate enough to have a long-term disability insurance plan, they will at least not be forced into poverty, like so many thousands of others. The loss of productivity is shameful and dispiriting.

Some consumer/survivors think it is a good idea to get consumer/survivors to work in a consumer/survivor-run business. To most of my friends I spoke of earlier, this is NOT a good idea, as one is permanently labeling themselves and later restricting their employment options, as research and experience has shown that society has not yet progress far enough to recognize the skills and talents of people without the label first. However, for those consumer/survivors who may never work again in a "normal" job, it may be an option for them. If they can be taken off or substantially off disability benefits, that is even a better thing over the long run.

So, it seems that people still do not want to accept people who directly experienced the services of the mental health system. How does one go about resolving that? This is an age-old question.
I, for one, do not like the term "mental illness", not only for its logical inconsistency, but it does contribute to the stereotype of incapacity. Moreover, there is no actual peer-reviewed research that definitively ties mental health diagnosis with a specific physiological cause. This is not to say there is no value in the use of medication, as many consumer/survivors are helped by the different medications prescribed for their condition. Because a medication may "work", it does not mean it corrects a physiological condition, but may provide symptom relief in other ways, such as a person suffering from a major headache taking an Advil. Again, as always, one needs to be informed about their medications and ensure they try different ones before they settle on a cocktail that may eventually be proven to be most effective over time.

But not all so-called "mentally ill" respond to medication or need it. Medication is just one part of an array of services, or weapons, against the problems of the condition. Alternative therapies help many consumer/survivors, as does some forms of psychotherapy. When given a wide range of choices, understanding the benefits and drawbacks to each, a consumer/survivor will eventually find their way. But, to label them "mentally ill" automatically generates a picture of somebody who is "mentally defective" or "mentally incapable", whereas the focus is on what the person cannot do, as opposed to what they can. Advocates attempting to "educate" on mental health issues and to eradicate stigma should take this issue into account.

Nor are persons with "mental illness" likely to be homeless as a direct consequence of their condition either. Unfortunately, the media and even many social workers tend to paint this picture of their clients, as people who are not capable of caring for themselves. Earlier, I referred to the Out of the Shadows at Last report from the Senate. Various deponents slated the percentage of persons with mental health disabilities as unemployed or underemployed as 75 - 90%, which also explains a lot. When you are unemployed, especially chronically so and without access to long-term disability under a private plan, you are forced to impoverish yourself in order to be eligible for the remaining programs, Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program. Neither program pays well and a single person, even on ODSP is several thousands of dollars below the poverty line.

I spoke to a homeless gentleman named John, here in the city. He supposedly had a mental health "history", but he chose homelessness over starvation, because he knew he could not afford both housing and other basic needs on ODSP. As such, most times when I seen him, he was enjoying a meal of sorts. To me, it's the consequent poverty that often arises out of discrimination and stress from the job market that leads to homelessness, not the other way around. Can you live on $572 a month and cover housing, groceries, clothing, transportation and other needs with that? My suspect is that most of the homeless are like John. The only ones where I actually feel their disability itself may have played a part are those that are addicted, as many would "blow their rent money on drugs". For those folks, we simply dry them out and get them treated and housed, but for somebody with only a mental health problem, get them enough money to live on or housing they could afford - period.

One of the consequences of linking so-called "mental illness" itself to homelessness is the danger of it translating into social policy, whereby one's liberties are once again at stake. Proponents of this "model" tend to favour forcing people into mental health treatment -wanted or not - effective or not - on such persons and keeping them under some kind of prison-like condition in the community. They would be under curfew, forced to share their accommodation with others, often with worse problems than their own, and forced to take medication at the risk of being evicted if they don't. While this policy may keep some people on their medication, it does not necessarily "cure" them, nor does it help them progress to citizenship status that we all take for granted. You need to ask yourself if YOU want that kind of quality of life FIRST, before you suggest imposing it on others. Nevertheless, liberalizing mental health incarcerations and follow-up supervision has NOT reduced the homeless numbers one bit.

Instead of attacking people for what they are labeled as, one needs to view all people for who they are. People sharing the same diagnosis are two very different people with different needs, interests and abilities. But nevertheless, they are people first. It is high time we start to demand treatment from mental health professionals and their advocates that assume they can eradicate the stigma by telling everybody how poor John is crazy, hopeless, incapable and delusional, so he becomes homeless ... How does this advocacy make John look like a person, other than distance his problems from those of yours and mine? Instead we need to stop the labeling and let John speak for himself. We might learn something.

Your thoughts?

POVERTY A CASTE OF ITS OWN

Some of us believe that Canadians treat their low income individuals and families well, compared to say, what other countries do. The middle class folks who have always lived this way, without ever knowing the feeling of living from paycheck to paycheck for the most part do believe this country actually helps its poor. Most of these same people feel that low-income people can become middle-class if they really pulled up their socks and tried.

The reality according to many sources - particularly the lived experience of people living in poverty - proves differently.

There are many types of poverty in Ontario and for almost all types, it is getting worse and much harder to escape. Stereotypes about who the low-income and poor folks are is just a beginning and unfortunately, public attitudes turn public policy. In Ontario for the past twenty years, this public policy has become public disaster.

The first kind of poverty includes the unemployed. There are less and less Canadians eligible to collect Employment Insurance today than there were twenty years ago. Before the unemployed officially were pushed off the marginalized category of our society with the rest of the low-income population, benefit levels more closely reflected working income and at least 85% of those that paid into the program were able to collect if they lost their jobs. Today, nationally less than four in ten workers are deemed eligible for Employment Insurance, regardless that they paid into the program for years before losing their job.

What happens to the sixty or more percent of those that do not qualify? These people get thrown in the trash heap sooner than those that do; however, with the present recession, even among those that do manage to collect EI, the likelihood that they will fall into destitution is real, given that the next step off the ladder is Ontario Works - if they can get it. But, let's continue with the EI poverty folks first. Benefits are presently capped at 55% of one's earnings or $423 a week, whatever is less. For a single person living in a medium sized metropolitan census tract region, this may be approaching poverty line. For a family, it not even nearly adequate. Assuming one gets the full length of payout (which most don't), benefits "run out" in 45 weeks.

While on claim, one is expected to search for and accept any work for which one is reasonably capable of doing. One must also be deemed always available to start work at any time during their claim. Those that attempt to leave the country for a brief vacation can get caught and lose a period of their benefits, if they are not excused for this ahead of time. If it can be proven that a job offer was given, but turned down, one can lose benefits altogether. The only saving grace one really has is the fact that administrators of the program during a recession like this one tend to be overworked and lack the time to oversee many of these things; however, people have been "reported" and subsequently accused of not being eligible, or even committing fraud.

Work programs for those who are eligible for EI (or who qualify for "reach back" for benefits that have recently been received) tend to be of a higher quality than programs serving other low-income workers, although many are reportedly difficult to access. One example is the Second Career Program, which many people found to be Kafkaesque in its application process and subsequent approval, after which it is allegedly determined that person applying must "prove" the new career they are attempting is actually going to result in a job. If anybody can adequately predict this, then we should be consulting the same people about lottery numbers so more of us can be winning the millions. Nevertheless, once one gets onto this program, it offers not only payment for the training, but also living expenses -- something unheard of for other low-income recipients that want to return to work.

This category of people unfortunately has since become stereotyped by the federal Conservatives as a group of people paid to sit at home essentially, thus their reasoning for not reforming the EI program so that more people are eligible for this "insurance" policy. However, if you are sitting at a lower step of the ladder in this caste system, those on EI are probably the best treated group of people living in poverty.

First, EI is yours and even if your spouse was a millionaire that owns hundreds of properties, your EI is not impacted. Even if YOU owned hundreds of properties, your EI is not affected. While there is a bit of a boot given to you to "get a job", you are not immediately at least forced into destitution and desperation like hundreds of thousands of other Ontarians are. But at some point, EI will "run out". Some will be lucky enough to find a job before that happens. Others have family and savings to rely on to stretch this idiocy a little longer. However, many others are forced onto the welfare rolls.

The majority of middle-class Ontarians actually believe it is easy to get "on welfare". The truth of the matter is that it is not. In fact, you have to burn almost all of your bridges, including family support, retirement savings plans and in some cases, your vehicle, before you can access this system. For those who have been on both EI and Ontario Works, they will almost unanimously tell you that Ontario Works is a lot worse.

First, the amounts one can receive is a LOT lower. There is no rational connection between the actual cost of living and what one is actually given on welfare to live on. A single person is supposed to find living accommodations for under approximately $360 per month. This does not even cover the cost of a room in most jurisdictions across the province. However, somebody on welfare is supposed to find housing of that price range. For many, this means losing their current accommodations, as for most people on welfare, their current accommodations cost much more than the total amount they get one their cheque, let alone just the shelter allotment.

To make matters worse, some welfare offices have harassed recipients who were paying more than this amount for housing, threatening to cut them off if they don't find "cheaper" accommodations. Others are given a form to complete to identify their total income and how they cover their monthly costs. Most, if not all of them, either don't eat most of the month or rely on a patch work of food banks, soup kitchens and occasionally, family. If it is learned that one is getting help from family or friends, their next cheque can be deducted by approximately the same value as that "help" received. So most that do get any of this help don't mention it. The fear and reality of starvation are too closely aligned.

On top of financial humiliation and abuse received by people getting Ontario Works, they are expected to take the fastest route to a job. A lot of research has gone into this philosophy and it was found that folks that did just this ended up back on welfare shortly thereafter, as the jobs they would get would often be low-paying, short term and have no benefits. Of course, welfare recipients are a boon for slimy employers that want to refuse minimum wages, or even any wages at all, or to employers that have a management style that includes bullying their employees -- using of course, the three month quit or fire rule in the event that a person is forced from the job. Welfare offices do have discretion on how they handle this, but many people still end up in its quagmire, which ends in homelessness and often losing what little they have.

Many people on welfare are disabled or have multiple workplace barriers. If they didn't start off this way, many of them end up this way. Therefore, such folks often aspire to apply for the Ontario Disability Support Program, or ODSP. ODSP pays roughly twice the amount a single person on welfare gets and some of its rules around assets and income are more liberal. However, with regards to assets, transfers from Ontario Works to ODSP aren't usually concerned about this, as they lost almost everything they have just by trying to become and remain eligible for Ontario Works.

Those that later go onto the ODSP program that have managed to keep their housing or some kind of housing are often quite far into debt by the time their file gets transferred. ODSP rules help in this case, as one is paid back to the time they first applied to the program and many recipients get months, if not years, in retroactive adjustment payments to help cover these bills. Some end up above the allowable asset limits for ODSP and are told to discharge the excess in about six months' time (and some are granted a longer period for various reasons). Most have no trouble doing so, as housing itself takes up an average of 73% of a market renter's ODSP cheque anyways.

The unique circumstances of ODSP recipients are such that they are made to live their lives in a similar way to people who are welfare recipients, only they get paid a little more to do so. While not required to take a job, many ODSP recipients feel forced to work in order to make up the gap in income required to pay their basic living expenses. For those that cannot work at all, living on ODSP for the long term is unhealthy and downright dangerous. For the person who once pointed out that 'poverty kills', this is in fact a reality. While many people on ODSP may have shortened lifespans due to their disability that brought them onto ODSP in the first place, there is hard evidence that poverty itself is even a bigger contributor to this quandary.

Life on ODSP becomes very difficult and isolating once its recipients discover that:

1. They will unlikely attract a spouse or life partner, as if they do - that spouse or life partner ends up being on ODSP too, even if they never signed up for it in the past. All the asset rules, earnings clawbacks, etc. that apply to the recipient also apply to the spouse, so there is very little incentive for somebody who is not already on ODSP themselves to get involved with a recipient.

2. If they are working, they will not be able to contribute to a retirement pension (unless they are also eligible for a disability tax credit which has a strict criteria and the program that is tied to - the Registered Disability Savings Plan - depends an awful lot on having wealthy and generous friends and family that can contribute to this account on your behalf ...). If they aren't on an RDSP, then they can't put into an RRSP, even if they can afford to contribute something - as one's assets are capped at $5,000 (for a single person).

3. If they do work, half of one's NET income is deducted right away off their next ODSP cheque. While some costs can be written off, most costs for working cannot be. Therefore, you probably would be netting just as much money sitting at home picking your nose than you will by working and maintaining your eligibility with ODSP.

4. Employment supports provided as part of the ODSP program are available to any recipient that wants to try to work, but again, this is complicated. They must sign on with a "service provider" whose job it is to help one get and keep a job. Service providers are paid on the basis of being successful in doing so, which all sounds well and good for accountability's sake, but what this in fact does is encourage recipients to once again to take the fastest route to employment. Again, slimy employers love this program, so more under-employed people can be hired to work for low wages, no benefits and no security. After all, as some of these slimy employers told me, isn't ODSP supposed to subsidize the minimum wage?

5. There are a lot of stupid rules involving loans being defined as unearned income, which ironically makes the recipient pay it back twice - first to the lender, then back to ODSP as an overpayment. A particularly large loan that is not approved in advance can cause a recipient to be cut off altogether in the month in which it is received.

6. Sometimes the recipient waits for the requisite Godot and manages to get into rent-geared-to-income housing in their respective region (average wait is five to seven years for a single), and later learns that if they decide to work and collect ODSP, their rent-geared-to-income unit costs them more as they earn more money, thus even COSTING them to work at all. ODSP will catch up to some extent, but again, you are expected to find shelter that costs $456 or less (including all utilities - good luck!). Once you hit that magic number with ODSP, you are paying out of pocket for the privilege of having a paid job!

7. At the same time, while ODSP recipients want to work as much as anybody else, many cannot work and others try, but encounter many of these stupid rules and quit trying ... the middle class public believe most, if not all, ODSP recipients don't "really need" to be on it. It is like members of the general public suddenly become doctors and are capable of assessing people they don't know from a distance as to what they can and cannot do. While the same folks that approve people to get on ODSP in the first place are sort of like that, they do have medical training and their decisions can always be appealed. But stigma from the public cannot.

So, while one is treated a little bit better on ODSP than they are on welfare, it is a double-edged sword that one cannot help but wonder if it is its own "kiss of death". ODSP is a legitimate program with legitimate need, but major reforms must be done to make this program almost unrecognizable and thus, more useful for the person with the disability.

The fourth category of poor is the elderly. Middle class Canadians believe the government wiped out elder poverty with the Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. The truth is unless you worked for a time as a public servant or were a well-adorned auto worker, it is not likely that you will be getting any pension other than that publicly offered by the government. CPP maxes out at just over $1,000 a month (and that is if you made over $40,000 most of your working career). OAS is just under $500. Guaranteed Income Supplement is for those seniors that do not get a pension and not enough CPP ... and I've had them in my office, folks. These people don't get much more than people get on ODSP (a difference of about $150 at most), plus these seniors lose the dental, special diet, medical travel and other benefits apart from drug coverage once they turn 65. Sounds like something to look forward to, eh?

This group of poor is not as stigmatized by the public as the other groups I identified above. It is just not recognized as being as large as it is by most Canadians. Something certainly has to be done with pensions to ensure NOBODY over the age of sixty-five lives in poverty.

The final group I want to raise is the working poor. These are folks that get no welfare, ODSP, EI, or pensions, but do get a wage - except the wage does not add up to enough money to pay the rent and feed the kids in the same month. It seems that more and more people are falling into this category and for many employers, it is perfectly all right as many of them do not want to pay what people need to live on or even what the skills of their workers are actually worth to the business. Many of these same employers are ironically great corporate citizens. They participate in the United Way drives, give major donations to the food banks and so forth, but lo and behold, they fail to realize that the majority of their employees are probably using these same stop-gap band-aid programs these employers praise in the media just to get by.

There is also a group of people that don't really fit in any of these categories, but may or may not be poor - at least at first, depending on the generosity of their accident employer. This is the injured workers under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, or the WSIB. At some point, I will write more about the politics of the injured workers' industry (and yes, this is a BIG industry) and what tends to happen to the person that actually got injured on the job through no fault of their own. In Ontario, since the early 1900's, employers bought into this 'no fault' formula that would pay workers financial compensation that does have some relevance to real wages (unlike most social programs like welfare and ODSP) until such point they recover or are able to return to work at a different job. The legal politics are there and the explanations complicated, but nevertheless, when the WSIB pie is divided up at the end of the day, it is always the injured worker that gets the smallest piece.

A colleague of mine called me up earlier in the year to ask me if I was noticing a widespread epidemic of injured workers being cut off of WSIB benefits at the drop of a hat, it seems. At that time, my caseload for WSIB cases alone had increased 400% - most of which include unpaid lost time claims and/or discontinued benefits. "Reasons" for being cut off are myriad, similar to those of people on Ontario Works and usually have something to do with "non-cooperation" and in the odd case, somehow a person turns up with a "pre-existing condition" they never had prior to the accident but this condition somehow has caused the injury and disablement blamed on the accident ... people working in this field learn how to speak a lot of double-speak and bureaucratise. If a worker has an honest claim, they will be paid, but it appears that the job of the WSIB is to either delay payment for as long as they can (hoping that a certain percentage will not bother to appeal) or try to deny it altogether by inventing some new rule or circumstance as to why the person is suddenly ineligible. The interesting thing is that the injured workers drawing the higher level of benefits tend to be the ones they want to kick off the system the fastest and the ones on the lower level of benefits tend to be steered into low-wage jobs ... sound familiar? I might sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe our own government is working hand in hand with these slimy employers to provide them with a cadre of desperate workers willing to work for next to nothing.

Your thoughts?
Further,

ORCHESTRATED CRISIS AND CHAOS

The global stage is going through a major recession, unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. Every day, we are hearing about how thousands upon thousands of jobs are being shed by company after company. We hear stories about people walking away from their houses in the States, tent cities being set up after people lose their jobs and the sudden need for billions of dollars in corporate bailouts to save what few jobs are left.

On the street, people are getting cranky. Public servants, frustrated by an increase in their respective workloads, are talking back to their customers in ways that provoke, instead of provide insight. People are butting into lines everywhere, worried that the last scrap of whatever folks are after will be gone by the time they get there. Pensions, investments and other trusts we once believed were safe are rapidly disappearing, leaving many pensioners the choice of living their "golden" years in poverty or returning to work.

We hear more about school shootings, rampages where gunmen go crazy shooting up everybody in their home and then move on to random people on the street, or work rage, where the same thing can happen at the place of a former employer. Last Christmas, we heard about a man who dressed up as Santa Claus, drove up to the home of his former in-laws and began to throw pipe bombs and tried to torch the home, as well as shoot anybody else who got in his way. In the end, he blew himself up, when one of his home-made weapons set itself off too soon. We learned the shooter in this case was laid off from a well-paying job as an engineer, then his wife sought and won a court order against him for more money ... He planned to come to Canada. God only knows what he had planned for us up here.

In Germany, a 15-year old suddenly takes a gun and goes to his former high school and begins shooting. His targets were mostly female students and teachers. Though reportedly treated for depression two years earlier, one would question how relevant that is to this mass explosion. Another man in Alabama came home, took the lives of most of his family, as well as took down a few random people on his street, before ending his life at a metal plant (possibly where he might have been recently laid off). Two parents in Quebec had a suicide pact, whereby they were to kill their children, then one another, after leaving a detailed note as to why the economy was hurting them. This goes on and on and on ...

People are more likely to sue or get sued in these rough times, or fall behind in their debt payments, subjecting more folks to the ire of collection agencies. Family law disputes are taking on a more bitter tone, leaving many to the courts in what are known as the "high conflict" family files. Government agencies undergoing cutbacks experience an increased rate of error and declining rate of empathy, as payers of support payments end up with less than 50% of their income and often, end up in dire straits themselves. One man called me from his car, which is where he is living these days after he lost his job and then his home.

Many times, the only thing we can do is make appropriate referrals, or provide encouragement and moral support. Many of these people do not have money for legal services, nor do they fall under the purview of Legal Aid Ontario. On paper, their income is too high, but after the garnishment, they cannot even meet basic needs. Their only choice these days is to approach Family Law Advice Counsel at the court house, or to phone Lawyer Referral Service, with respect to how to best represent themselves in what will likely become a battle of a lifetime. They need to vary the court orders, amend visitation or even seek custody of children, or reduce or eliminate spousal support payments. Unless they can pay a lawyer, most of them end up representing themselves.

This has always been part of the problem, even before the chaos of the present recession began. The present recession is just wearing people down more. People talk to me more about how much they hate, as opposed to how upset they are. I lost someone to suicide in January 2009, and then somebody else to so-called 'natural causes' in his forties in February 2009. If the second one had access to a family doctor, medications and transportation, I am sure he would have survived (which is all I can say publicly). Poor people die, while rich people thrive.

Policy makers know the poor are worst off. They know that poverty is costing us more than $30 billion annually. They know that poverty is a good part of the reason our health care costs are skyrocketing. The growth of poverty seems to coincide with the growth of methadone clinics in urban areas; unfortunately, they too are responding to demand. I hear stories about how a few have sold their weekend carries on the street, or prostitute themselves to get the "real" thing ... or turn to booze or another drug of choice. Tenants get evicted more now for illegal drug use or for dealing from their units.

My work is to evict them. There have been cases when I met the same tenant time and time again, through different buildings, after a repeat performance of the first time they were evicted. The public and private interest is to get these people housed and protected, but at the same time, one must ask where ... living on the street can only exacerbate whatever problems they created when they started with my buildings. The problem only leaves one building, only to land on the doorstep of another. One thing my mother was right about was that things started to go really bad when drugs were introduced in society. Trying to remain impersonal and objective throughout this chaos is difficult to do, but one of my responsibilities.

I know there is a huge increase in addictions and drug dealing in general, as I see it in the streets, hear about it through various people I speak to, and learn of it from the coffee shops. But it is not just the low income people on Ontario Works or even ODSP that are using; many of the people who are using get no formal income, as well - many are fully employed. There are also wealthy professionals who also find themselves entangled. They just go to better places and are able to hide their habit better. People cry for a war on drugs, they cry for prohibition, when we know this will never work ... esp. when the world is falling apart at its seams.

In my building where I work, I often have to chase people out, feeling bad at the same time as many of these people have nowhere to go, except the streets. Many of these people do not have any income, as they were kicked off Ontario Works a long time for some misunderstood transgression. Perhaps, they lost their identification and did not have the funds to renew it, or they happen to be living rough and their OW worker can't really communicate with them, nor can any employer for that matter.

As an advocate, I am a lightning rod for people that feel strongly about things, from both the right and the left. The right wants to believe in the existence of the welfare queens, that continue to procreate with impunity to increase their income. Of course, they have no evidence of this except from "a friend of a friend who knew somebody that had fourteen children so she can make a mint off the 'system'". I have worked with low-income people as well as middle and upper income folks for years, and I have yet to meet anybody that would even want to have more and more children, particularly when they could not even feed themselves. There were a few teen mothers who never heard of birth control, as some might add, but they were referred to programs where they learned how to become successful parents, as well as finish high school.

From the left, they want governments to spend, spend and then spend some more to get us out of this global crisis. Spending more in a recession is not a sin, but indiscriminate spending can make the problem worse than when it started. While building "affordable housing" will create some construction jobs in the immediate term, money is still going to be needed in the future to maintain these units. The City of Toronto has a half a billion dollar backlog in repairs to its own housing stock, let alone thinking of building new stock. At the same time, poverty groups are pressuring the City to fix their units, which are more than just a mere "leaky tap" ... many have ceilings falling down, bad foundation, vermin, mould, as well as other problems that make their unit uninhabitable. We have to decide if we want to spend billions and billions of dollar propping up these buildings, many of which should be razed and rebuilt anyways, or whether the money can go somewhere else that might increase the incomes of all of the poor to encourage greater local investment, and thus, more capital to invest in the private market.

Today, an interested observer noted that "half the region is on Ontario Works or ODSP" and now more people are trying to get Employment Insurance. He suspects a secret government conspiracy that the powers that be simply want to put everybody on welfare, where they can control them. Others say they are attempting to make people so desperate that they will take any job, even jobs that do not pay minimum wage or follow health and safety standards, just to keep oneself one step ahead of starvation. Other theories are more foreboding; one has shared with me the idea that there is a policy of "slow genocide", whereby the weakest of society will be forced to slow starve to death or die of many of the diseases the poor are more likely to get, just so we can save a few tax dollars. Well, we all know they cannot directly put us all in the gas chambers anymore, or put us all against a wall and shoot us. That is too humane.

But billions of dollars have been handed to large companies ... people are becoming wary of how the executives are getting paid, even union workers in such industries as the auto sector. People are rightfully concerned that the majority of taxpayers that earn much less than these people collectively should continue to fork over money to keep these relatively wealthy classes alive. In the Toronto Star today, there was a story over "pension envy" where people in the private sector get no defined benefit plan (as these are slowly moving to the status of the dodo bird) are continuing to be forced to pay into secure, relatively high pensions of those in the public sector or even GM workers. Pension reform certainly needs to be on the table. I wouldn't want to be old right now; I would not be able to retire, as what is given to those without a private pension plan is peanuts. Again, we will be forcing our seniors to choose between housing and eating.

People are wanting greater controls over CEO salaries and perks, as well as some control over certain sectors, whereby it seems that wage hikes beyond inflation, plus retention pay, seem to be the order of the day, even when times are tough for everybody else. President Barack Obama has taken a great interest in a story of AIG executives receiving bonuses all of a sudden, right after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts ... I say, fire them all and make them pay it all back. Never going to happen, of course. But if somebody on welfare got a little more than what they were entitled to, you could bet your life that this individual will be hauled before the courts, charged with fraud and then thrown to the wolves. To me, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe Barack Obama represents a change in direction. We can hope.

As for seeing our way out of this chaos, I am not sure. Some economists, such as Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, see this as being a short, sharp dip, whereby Canada will be less scathed than the many. Others are not so optimistic; Don Drummond from the TD Canada Trust, is saying about 500,000 jobs may still be lost ... it is going to get a LOT worse before it gets better.

In the meantime, some communities are getting together and holding rallies. I wish there'd be more of them in Niagara Region, but nevertheless there are more rallies ... politicians need to stop playing Chicken Little, as the sky is truly falling, but they can't simply run, scream and point their fingers at everybody else. They need to take action.

How positive action would certainly help me ... I would stop feeling so much in chaos. It is so bad that our building got its water cut off, then it was followed by a flood and now the plumbing on the second floor washroom (the only "public" washroom in our building) has no water and we can't even flush the toilets ... and we go downtown, walk down the street on my side and then we see construction job after construction job, whereby holes are dug up and filled up again ... I am pleased somebody gets to do the digging and the filling, but they are ensuring people's essentials are getting cut off, people are commuting in chaos and it has become rapidly known there really is no definite street I can walk through in my own neighbourhood ... too many holes, too many tractors, too many excavators, too many shovels ...

Now, if we would only get that shovel in the ground for that hospital we are supposed to build in west St. Catharines. To me, this chaos and crisis was orchestrated; it was certainly not something that would come out in the end to harm the elite ... just put us old runts through yet another rough patch. I just look forward to the day that this is finally over and I can actually talk to people about something else once again, instead of the havoc this world is wrecking on our little world.

Your thoughts?

A POVERTY-REDUCTION PLAN THAT ISN'T...

The federal budget was what I predicted it to be.

A mish mash of handouts to big corporations, tax cuts, as well as billions of dollars in spending on so-called infrastructure. There was some promise of reform to EI, which it seems fewer and fewer people get each year, but this came up short whereby people are essentially getting nearly what they got ten years ago from EI and the same stringent criteria continues on. In my view, this budget does not put one more meal on anybody's table or another penny in anybody's pocket, other than those who already do okay.

I learned one so-called bright light yesterday as I watched Prime Minister Stephen Harper with his full set of teeth, sans blue sweater and hair greyer than it was before Christmas ... side by side with Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty, appearing skinnier and geekier than he ever was, both announcing new funds for better GO Train service in the Metrolynx boundaries, which of course do not go as far as Niagara.

Henceforth, when I attempted last year to get some answers as to why the GO Train is not even being considered for Niagara, the answers were sort of what I expected. First, you need to have a strong transit infrastructure, as well as convenient parking spaces for GO users. If you lived in Welland, for instance, and didn't drive, a GO Train service leaving Niagara Falls or St. Catharines would be useless to you. How are you going to get to the GO station? Even if the powers that be insisted on putting GO service here, they would defeat its purpose and not take a single car off the road, as there will still be too many of them, zinging from all points of the region to get to the GO station. This still does not change the fact that Niagara is more expensive to live in because having a car and driver's license is still your sole ticket to citizenship.

Poverty activists want to focus on the "housing" announcements. As I stated before, I see no point in making housing a social service. Housing is a necessary commodity, much like food, clothing and clean air. Unfortunately, "housing" in the eyes of many of these people comes attached to social workers that want to control the lives of more people who end up living in this "housing". To me, the less control you put into somebody's life, the better quality of life they have, but then I never have the final say in these things.

Further, others cry for "subsidized" housing or rent-geared-to-income housing. I have tried, but have been unsuccessful, in getting these folks to tell me how this takes people out of poverty. As one fellow blogger under the name of co-opcracy writes, working is counterproductive if one is living in subsidized housing and receiving some type of benefit, such as social assistance or even ODSP. First, ODSP chops your net earnings in half from the very first dollar and then "housing" increases the rent to a point of an additional clawback of thirty five cents on every dollar. Once the earnings are grossed up at the end of a year, even more money is lost. The intelligent and prudent thing to do when in this situation is to stay at home and eat your bonbons.

Further, because subsidies are calculated at far below the maximum "shelter" allowance given for social assistance and ODSP incomes, one would receive far less benefits from social assistance or ODSP than they would if they were housed in the free market. This means one's income would continuously remain under the so-called "poverty line". While housing costs are lower, this does not stop other costs such as food, clothing, transportation, telephone and other costs from skyrocketing. How subsidized housing reduces poverty has always been a trouble spot for me, possibly because of my background as a policy analyst as well as lived experience.

Thinking from the centre is not mediocre for sure. I get attacked from both the left and the right for my views, instead of either/or. I ask questions, but don't get answers. I own my own home, but still I am flat broke. What help is there for me? Certainly, me, my family and thousands of other homeowners in the same boat are not going to sell and move to some unit where they will be under the thumb of some crazy bureaucracy. People need to be as independent as possible, as well as free to advance their circumstances, or else poverty will become a permanent fixture in our society -- bringing even potentially middle-class families down with it.

I would tell the government to save the billions of dollars they would otherwise spend to build units of this type, but instead use it to increase the money in the pockets of individuals and families, so that people actually have choices. Right now, the low-income contingent of our society has no choices. They are told to live as their social worker tells them to, which is to never make a mistake ... therefore, never learn from them. They are told to live within their means, but are never given the means to live. They are told to "get a job", but employers are not told to hire such persons or to pay the people they have decently. As usual, society wants the poor to play a single handed tango, while the other partner can watch and criticize. How can we as a society possibly value people who have been so disadvantaged that we have to instinctively reach out and control their lives, as opposed to giving them choices and opportunities ... yes, some of these folks will fail, but then again -- many of us who have never been in this situation have also failed, many of us miserably.

How many so-called "normal" people have bankruptcies on their record? How many so-called "normal" people can't seem to ever lose weight? What about all those successful professionals that turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with the stress of it all? What about so-called "normal" people who drive a car one day and forget to do the all-important shoulder check and get into a horrible motor vehicle accident? How many "normal" people are smokers? How about the typical friend of ours that always seems to "pick" abusive partners? The rest of us herein do not have strangers telling us what we should be spending our money on, whether or not we should be driving a car, or whether we can manage our own bank accounts. So why are we allowed to pass judgment on those less fortunate than we are? Are we trying to block the way for the poor from becoming less poor, and perhaps, grabbing a bit of dignity while they're at it?

To me, there is maximum dignity in having choices and opportunities. Those of us who have had these things take them for granted. We "assume" that everybody else also has these things, or had them at one time. Then, we bash them for making "bad choices" or "failing to take advantage of opportunities" (even though they were likely never given any). This is not a leftist rant here. I have a legal practice full of people from all walks of life, some of whom were very advantaged and cultured, others that cannot understand what life would be like for them if they could make their own basic choices. The latter have had the system make choices for them all their lives: they were told where to live, had their money spent for them, what to wear and who to be friends with ... never being allowed to choose is tantamount to imprisonment.

I grew up in a rough kind of way. As a young adult, just before securing my post-secondary education and so-called empowerment as a professional person, I knew two things. One, people must have the right to make choices, even bad choices. Two, people have the right to have access to opportunities to advance themselves and improve their quality of life. I got into a lot of trouble for my beliefs. Many social work types tried to downplay my ideas and tell me to be more "realistic" and insist a certain portion of the population continue to be spoon-fed (while the social worker types continued to get good pay cheques for doing so).

When somebody is living on ODSP and in subsidized housing, they do not have the opportunity to advance themselves and improve their financial situation. Their efforts become like a hamster on a spinning wheel, whereby they work harder and harder but end up in the same place. For every dollar they earn, they lose just as much. People in "housing programs" have even less choices, as many of these programs disallow overnight guests, alcohol use, earning money from a home-based business, etc. I've seen people evicted from so-called "mental health housing" for stopping their own medications. This leaves people with no choice. When you can only make the "right" choice, you cannot make ANY choices.

When you take away the choices of people, you take away their dignity. You also reduce the value that society will have of that person. When people feel we have to make decisions for others for whatever reason, we are not valuing that person's own opinion, own tastes or own desires, nor are we allowing that person to fully develop as a mature human being. When we don't value somebody in this way, these folks DO feel it. They feel it when they have to go to the food bank to get their groceries. They feel it when somebody tells them where they have to live and what they can do and can't do when they live there. They feel it when nobody appears concerned about their lack of opportunities and options.

I meet people who want to move out of subsidized housing all the time. This is very difficult to do. Several relatives of my husband were living in subsidized housing twenty-five years ago when I met him and despite marriage, children growing up, etc., they continue to live that way today, as do their children. Enforced poverty breeds enforced poverty. This provincial government promises to "break the cycle" in one breath and even names its poverty reduction plan the same thing, while at the same time, wants to entrap more people ... this makes no sense to me. Open the doors, I want to say ... and make employers open them too.

Today, the employment standards development draft went to public review. This is from one of the committees I sit on, except with the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario ... where for the better part of a year, three dozen people worked hard to put together a set of standards we will be expecting of employers, spanning between one and five years from now, with respect to the hiring, retention, training and accommodations for persons with disabilities. To me, the standards don't go far enough, but we were working within a certain regulatory framework ... a framework that has to fit within the province's business model as well as reach the goal of bringing more qualified persons with disabilities into the paid labour force.

I am hoping that folks reading this will review the proposed standard on its website and send their input to the stated body on how our standard can be improved to meet the needs of persons with disabilities and get more of them into the workforce. The standard can be found by clicking here to the website. Your input must be given by April 15, 2009, in any of the given ways provided by the webmaster.

While access to employment and business opportunities will help improve the outcomes for people with disabilities, we also need to focus on bringing them out of poverty. Poverty is the killer of the soul. It is punishment for a crime one never committed. It kills any initiative one might have even had before they became poor. Both a focused effort on reducing and eventually eliminating poverty through the development of opportunity and increased access to meaningful choices in improving one's well being and quality of life, is what is needed. This would envelope both the needs of persons that can and want to work, as well as those that cannot.

We have to defeat the poverty industry, the set of organizations, leaders and spokespersons, that make a living or gain personal notoriety on the backs of the poor. These are the people that run the food banks, the homeless shelters, the "housing" programs, vouchers, consumer/survivor drop-in centres, etc. without considering that the people they are "helping" should learn how to fish some day and be given the tools and the right to do so. If this means some of the people in the poverty industry lose their jobs, so be it ... if one were an effective leader in a sense, this would not be a worry for them whatsoever.

I am very concerned that some of these organizations are now asking for government money. Should taxpayers be funding food banks, or should they be financing programs that allow people to choose and purchase their own food? Should taxpayers be funding homeless shelters and "housing programs" or should we be funding initiatives that help put money into people's pockets to the point they can reasonably choose where and how to live (within reason, of course ... not everybody's going to move to Forest Hill or Bridal Path).

What is really needed when the day is done are ideas on how to make this happen, not how to bolster the status quo, which we all know has failed us miserably. Your thoughts?

AND MAY YOUR CHRISTMAS BE A CHARMED ONE ...

Christmas was always one of my favourite times of the year. It is not so much the giving and receiving of presents, but the presence of others that saves me from myself. After all, Christmas is one of the few times of the year I can truly take time off, as others are more involved in other aspects of their lives and are less concerned with legal hassles, except for the few odd emergencies I worked through in previous years.

While I love Christmas and always look forward in anticipation with the lights, the music and the whole idea of starting off fresh in a new year, it is also a time of year when my cynicism reaches fever pitch. The Salvation Army commercials come on about this time of the year, flashing their statistics on your TV screen, asking you to give, give, give. Food banks are forever predicting a "crisis" of sorts if some white knight or white knights do not come to the rescue with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the homeless shelters promise to feed the hungry a turkey dinner.

This is a "feel good" time of the year for people who are comfortable. Giving money to a food bank, or a financial donation to a shelter seems to be the thing to do to ease oneself of the guilt of never having to have been a recipient of such a service. For those among us that give very large donations, most do not mind the press coverage - especially a company, as it shows "good corporate citizenship" (even though the same company receiving the heaps of good press may actually be one that pays low wages and treats their workers badly -- but how do we know?). Despite the "good citizenship" deeds that tend to be performed at this time of the year, we hardly give a thought about how the people at the receiving end feel about being at the receiving end. Has anybody ever asked them?

The charitable sector has become ingrained into our political culture to the point whereby we do not really think of those that receive our help, as any more than people who are needy, dependent and in some way, damaged goods. While this is certainly not a conscious assumption, nor is it present in every case of giving ... as I do know personal friends who have formed more reciprocal relationships with the people they set out to help. Unfortunately, this is an exception, not the rule.

When I speak to people who have gone to food banks or other charitable services on a regular basis (as opposed to going only for that one year when times were tough), I learn most of these folks have a very low self-esteem. Some do not believe they are "deserving" of a better life, such as a life where they would have enough resources to reasonably make choices. While they are thankful for the help, they do not see themselves as empowered human beings that are viewed by others as individuals with capabilities, talents and resources of their own. A portion of this group try to steer themselves away from charitable services, thinking they would "rather starve" than accept this help from anyone.

When prospective donors hear about this subset of people who refuse help, they are viewed as "mentally ill" or simply possessing "pride". However, when donors to these services are asked about the people they are "helping", once again - this population is viewed as somewhat helpless, dispossessed and unwanted, although they do acknowledge that some people are getting help as a result of "falling on hard times through no fault of their own". The complicated pseudo-relationship and inherent schema that is developed between the donor and the recipient is rarely considered in how recipients come to view themselves, or their own futures - when in my view, it has EVERYTHING to do with this attitude.

This is not about the people that provide services in this field, the thousands of volunteers that toil daily to sort through donations, others that appeal to the media for more donations and other persons, usually paid personnel that provide direct service to the recipients. It is more about the schema produced and not challenged by these same thousand points of light and the media that backs them about the necessary dichotomy between the helpers and the recipients, roles that are not portrayed as interchanged or interdependent. This role is further entrenched by the screening processes used by such charities to ensure each recipient is "deserving" of help.

Similar to any targeted welfare scheme, prospective recipients are encouraged to disengage themselves as actors and potential participants in their futures, but to focus on everything that is wrong with their lives ... in fact, as with many welfare schemes, one has to prove they have depersonalized themselves and spoiled their identity to the point that the helper is satisfied they have done all they can to reduce themselves to nothing. At the same time, nothing is offered up to address the situation that brought the recipient through their doors in the first place. Many trained in the service delivery model identify with the "spoiled identity" or "damaged goods" version of their entrails, as opposed to questioning why there appears to be a greater number of people each year in similar given circumstances.

While even the social work model professes to work against systemic barriers in favour of progressive social change, this is not what happens when people check their identities at the door to get the so-called "help" they need. The helper is there to "correct" supposed personal deficits of the disadvantaged, as opposed to helping them break barriers to join the "advantaged" part of society. For many social workers and others in related helping professions, they cannot even imagine their clients qualifying to do their jobs, for example.

While most helpers do not necessarily "blame the victim", they do nevertheless, view the victim as somewhat defective. The homeless man is "mentally ill". The single parent with two children in tow is always in abusive relationships. The single man who lost his apartment needs to learn how to balance his budget. The chronically unemployed are there because they are illiterate, lack high school and likely, do not have any skills. When other statistics are presented that show that recipients as a group look more similar to the group of "helpers" than they are dissimilar, helpers resist this interpretation.

I have focused some of my time over the years to talk to people who do not visit food banks, go to homeless shelters or seek other types of counseling assistance - even though their life circumstances and their needs may be identical to those that do use such services. While my observations may be anecdotal in nature, the same themes have emerged over time through different voices. What I have learned from these folks is instrumental and should be not only acknowledged by those that deliver services, but incorporated in their overall philosophy and structure of how they approach anybody coming through their door.

1. People want to be viewed as capable and willing to do for
themselves. A hand out in any way, shape or form makes
the person feel they are viewed as dependent and incapable
of doing for themselves, that somebody with "capability"
must do these things for them.

2. People want a hand up, not a hand out. Traditional charities
are very bad at recognizing that people want out of the
"welfare trap" more than they may believe they need
immediate help. People refusing services know they will not
get a job, get out of poverty or get into decent (and
independent) housing through the charitable service. In
other words, their programs do not work.

3. Even if the service is successful in getting the recipient
"housing", for example, the roof over their head becomes
a social service and not just a necessary product for living
in the community. Homeless people are assumed to be
incapable of living on their own and keeping their housing.
People with mental health issues are assumed to have
issues, outside the fact they are poor and nobody will hire
them, which led to them becoming homeless. Everybody
is deemed to want and need "subsidized" housing, despite
the fact the rules for this program tend to cripple initiative
and force people to remain in poverty.

People that do not want these services may need help to
secure an apartment, but after that, they do not want to
be fodder and continue to be a "cause" for ongoing income
for the charity. (The fact of this matter is those that can
live independently are often falsely assumed to not need
ANY help at all).

4. People want help to reach their full potential, not to
cripple it. Most of those refusing help do not want to
work in low-wage, insecure and low-skilled employment.
They want assistance in developing their career potential,
even though doing this may require funds for retraining,
partial employer subsidies and innovative partnerships
in one's respective community. Charities get paid to
"place" people, not get them out of poverty.

5. People want to work with their helpers as partners in
making systemic change. They want their helpers to
challenge employers that appear to not want persons
with disabilities working for them, or only want them if
the person is happy at working for half-wages. They
want to work with the helpers at making changes so that
the services of charities become less and less necessary.

6. Many of those refusing help feel that their presence as
"clients" of these agencies only "proves" demand and
thus, continues to generate ongoing funding for these
charities, regardless if their personal situation improves.

7. With regards to being given food, clothing, housing, etc.
- people feel they are not allowed to make choices. Why
is nobody giving those in need the necessary RESOURCES
to make these choices on their own, as opposed to making
these choices for them?

The very presence of these charities and the encouragement through the media, community influences and other forces, encourages those that want to "do good" to continue to donate and to otherwise continue to "prove" the legitimacy of these charities, as well as to continue to ignore and disregard the need for true systemic changes that would negate the need for the same.

We go ahead and have our Christmas with our families, go to work the next day or day after, and give to some charitable donation because society expects us to pick up the slack from the government. We do not think about the fact that continuing to support the status quo is taking away choices from those that can otherwise handle them with the resources given directly to them, instead of through an expensive and controlling bureaucracy. We do not think that we may be contributing to the continuation of the problem, not necessarily because we want to, but by donating to the charities, there is still no way any donor can reasonably review the success of any such charity in actually changing things for the people they serve.

Except next year at this very same time, even more people will be knocking on the doors of these same charities, many more in even more desperate circumstances. By continuing this cycle, we have to ask ourselves why we are not asking the correct questions and demanding to know why the more people give, the greater number of people end up in need ...

Think about what you are going to do in 2009, whether what you do will actually make a difference (systemic change) or just continue the same old, same old. If you ask me what I want to do, it is the former -- hands down!

Your thoughts?

Watching the World

People who work in my field soon become jaded at the things they see. Every day, it is a heavy dose of adrenaline and sadness mixed to create a painful abyss. It makes me wonder if things are getting better or worse for humankind. I saw the news report on a study on global warming, that is an entirely man-made phenomenon. Commentators ask if people truly are willing to change their habits if they want to attempt to reverse this trend. I am not sure they want to or could. People still want to drive their SUVs to the corner store and work at smoldering factories that are killing the air that we breathe. At the same time, many of these same factories are being shut down as the price of energy skyrockets. The economy desperately needs to replace these jobs; sending people to call centres and retail work is not going to fix things, esp. if the cost of living continues to rise.

People are entering into more and more dangerous types of occupations in order to make a living. Workplace injury is common, esp. for people during the first few months on a job. Our social safety nets have become frayed to the core with people in need. People will not moderate their expectations in order to "downsize" to their new (lower) position in life; they will only become more angry at what they've lost. People come into my office everyday ... whether the cause is disability, family breakdown, long-term unemployment or some other type of loss (e.g. a workplace injury or motor vehicle accident), they come in expecting things to become the way they once were. Their lives for the most part have been forcibly taken from them. Many of them die before benefits are finally approved; others may lose their car, their homes and even, their families. As a professional disability advocate, I try to minimize these effects as much as possible, but I realize I cannot prevent all of it. Because of the increasing volume of need, primarily due to an ageing population, decreased size of bureaucracies and the general public's decreased willingness to pay more taxes - there is often no social safety net for many of these people, or if there is one - we must fight for it and fighting can take a very long time.

At the same time, businesses are becoming leaner and meaner. Even governments are charging "user fees" they never did before. With a growing portion of the population unable to withstand increasing financial strain and its impact on the lives of their families, family breakdown is becoming too common. People are finding themselves alone in a world that seems to be less caring. My practice includes people seeking various types of compensation from Insurance, Ontario Disability Support Program, Canada Pension Plan Benefits, Workplace Safety & Insurance Board, Criminal Compensation, among other things. We also deal with issues of wrongful termination, mediation of business and marital break-ups, as well as the occasional project management file (which might as well be the primary source of cheer in this otherwise negative industry). Don't get me wrong: I care immensely for the people I work with. In fact, I participate in a broader world of social change and fight on a number of human rights grounds.

As a practitioner in the justice system, I do not see where this is going sometimes. I yearn for broader change so I no longer see the pain in people's faces when these things begin to get too hard for them. It is not like these things never get better. They do, and I have a very long list of satisfied clients to prove it can. However, I sometimes wonder at what cost. Is getting hundreds of people on various disability programs really the long-term solution to what is befalling us? Is filing lawsuits against various employers that don't seem to understand anti-harassment and human rights principles going to change the shape of the labour force? When people go to court to acquire compensation for whatever breach they feel has been imposed upon them, does it really address the problems of humankind's inhumanity to others? Can we ever eradicate the serious problem of poverty among groups of marginalized citizens, including people with disabilities, new Canadians, single parents, working poor, etc.? To me, poverty itself is an abuse of human rights. Nobody has to raise a fist against you or force you to look down the barrel of a gun to make you feel scared, anxious and worried about your future, if they can make you poor or ignore the many factors that may contribute to it.

Some tell me that nobody has the power to eradicate poverty. I believe we do. As with resolving global warming even in part, we as a community have to drastically change our habits, expectations and how we do business in order to do so. In particular, this would apply to those that have leverage in the political, business and academic worlds. If I have power to give away, I also have power to give you more choices. In our society, we all have choices, you may say. However, the reality is that some people have more choices than others and the way our economy and labour market is shaped, those with the most choices are the least willing to share their opportunities with those that have less choices. As a society, we have to radically alter our visions of what is right and wrong, what is ours and what belongs to the community.

We have to stop believing that those who fall on hard times have done so because they made bad choices, or have something inherently wrong with them. We all hear the stories about "the homeless" being a group of hopeless addicts or people with mental health issues that are incapable of making decisions for themselves. We also speak ill of single mothers, wanting to believe that many of them choose to have more babies in order to increase their incomes. We also hear stories about people who are getting full disability allowances that do not appear to have anything wrong with them. As an advocate, I wish I dispell these myths outside of my own experience with dealing with anybody that walks through my door. I have yet to see these stereotypes among my clients, many of whom are referred to me by social agencies or walk in from the streets. I think the truth is as a society, we want to deny that we ourselves can be just as easily put into these situations.

People who are in receipt of welfare, or Ontario Works, they call it here, are believed to be primarily receiving it because they are illiterate, substance abusers, high school drop-outs, unskilled and other rather encompassing terms. It is true that many people on welfare do fit these descriptions; however, it is also true that many people who are working also fit these descriptions. I can tell you that more people who are illiterate, substance abusers, high-school drop-outs, unskilled, and so forth, are working and not on welfare, than those who are. I can also tell you that in many regions, almost half of those on welfare are well-educated, most of this group possessing at least one university degree. In my own professional life, I have worked with many people who are on welfare or O.D.S.P. who have been trained as doctors, lawyers, dentists, nurses, social workers, tradespeople, etc. These people did not just suddenly become lazy and want to take the easy way out. They - like everybody else - want to work and move out of poverty as much as anybody else would.

However, what the public doesn't realize about many of these people is that the process of going on welfare or O.D.S.P. has impoverished them to such an extent that they can no longer AFFORD to work. Many people have lost their homes, professional support networks, their health and most do not have motor vehicles. With a community such as the one I practice in requiring every job candidate for any meaningful, better paid jobs to have a driver's license and a vehicle, these people are not going to get ahead. One way of changing the way we do business is to look at this issue and turn it on its head and try to find ways to provide better paid jobs to qualified individuals that do not drive. Employers would have to be somewhat creative, as well as critical of their own processes, in order to make this change. I don't know if it would cost them money. It might, or it may even save some employers money, when they discover they don't have to pay for mileage and parking for their new employee - just occasional taxi trips or bus passes, when required to go somewhere on "business". That is just one example of how to change the way we do business to protect what I am seeing as the declining middle class and prospective skilled workers.

Transportation issues are still only believed to affect unskilled workers. In my Region, there are some employment agencies that offer unskilled jobs that provide workers rides to the job site, but there are no skilled jobs that have rides or transportation provided in the same way. A "job bus" was also provided to transport relatively low-paid hospitality workers from one city to another to find work at hotels, tourist attractions and restaurants. While this strategy works to help some unskilled persons get off welfare and join the ranks of the growing numbers of working poor, it does absolutely nothing for my unemployed or disabled professionals or persons whose skills and work experience are too complex to take on low-paid entry-level work. Nor does this strategy work for people with lower levels of skills to move them out of the low-paid job market. Most of these jobs do not pay a person enough to allow them to purchase their own transportation or to take courses that will enable them to move up the employment ladder.

Transportation is only believed to be a charity in my Region. Transportation is only for the elderly, people with severe physical disabilities and those with certain health conditions (e.g. requiring dialysis) to get to medical appointments only. Thought is not given that these same people, or perhaps others with disabilities that find themselves ineligible for this assistance, to go to work, take a course or to even visit family or friends. People with disabilities are not thought of as people. They are thought of as charitable cases, people to be pitied ... people to use as a foundation to raise money for, etc. They are not our co-workers, our neighbours, our friends, our relatives or even bosses. They are people to feel sorry for, people to relieve our guilt every time we contribute to one of many charities that "serve" this group, people who are invisible. In my Region's mind, everybody else drives, or after all - they can hop the "job bus" and take a low-paying job. This way of thinking has to be turned on its head and transportation must be considered as much of a public service as medicare is. If millions of dollars are spent on roads, maintaining parking spaces for vehicles at malls or city lots, extracting fossil fuels in order to run vehicles and later pollute the environment, etc. we can also pay more money to create and enhance public transit services. Research has shown that if transit services can be developed so that they are readily accessible, available, convenient and efficient, people will use it - even many people who normally drive.

In my view, I want people to consider their attitudes, beliefs and values, and how community attitudes, beliefs and values, contribute to our growing problem of poverty and indignation. Yes, poverty is a complex problem and will take many different strategies to reduce and resolve; however, as a society we have to take this path and prioritize it, alongside with the path that many of us are now finding crucial: global warming. Until later, I sign off.