Small Business is Part of the 99%

Occupiers, take heed!

Small businesses are are part of the 99%. As entities, we have not received corporate tax subsidies, large corporate tax breaks, or any kind of hand out. When we get under attack, generally nobody cares because we are just "small potatoes". Yet, virtually every person who works with small businesses, other than other small or even to some extent, medium sized business, has no clue as to how the small business sector is under attack from all corners of society.

Many occupiers associate small business as the petite bourgousie, or a miniaturized version of the capitalists they all hate. While most small business owners are capitalists, they have more in common with the 99% than many realize. After all, when was the last time YOU were given a hand out from the government to help your business grow?

I want to talk about the many things that get done to us as small business from various corners of society, and then you, the reader, you can judge whether it is even worth it anymore to set up shop and pretend to be some kind of merchant, entrepreneur, practitioner, or whatever, that avails its goods and services to the public. Is it really worth it? Why do people even bother? It is time people know the truth about how most small businesses experience life as a small business owner:

1. Through Their Customers:

While most customers are good and are a joy to have around, there is the small percentage that create 90% of the problems that small businesses often complain about. Enough of these customers at the wrong time can make life for a business owner, entrepreneur, solo practitioner, or whatever, miserable. These are people that come into the business, spell out their expectations and are eager to pay when asked, but shortly thereafter, complain about the amount of money the goods or services are costing (while, of course, ignoring the fact it costs money to produce or to provide goods and services). These are the types of customers that string people along, make changes to their order or instructions, and expect instant results. When things do not turn out the exact way they envision after the 149th day, they blame the proprietor. After all, the proprietor is the only one that was providing these goods or services, right? No thought is given that the customer may be at least partly to blame, as they failed to provide changes in writing, or listened to the provider to see if their new choice is even possible or financially feasible on the budget they seemed to assign to the project. Despite warnings that things may not turn out very well if we push this to whatever the person is asking, we get blamed anyways. These people typically underpay and know it too, and act shocked when they are asked for additional funds to put the changes necessary in their work.

2. Another type of customer is the rubber cheque writer. They can't seem to write cheques that stick, and then they seem to wonder why services stop or goods are not shipped, once the bounced cheque is discovered. People can't work for nothing. I am sorry. If you still want the product or the service ordered, go back and pay in cash or money order and add whatever administrative charge that might apply. After all, it is a pain in the neck to track bounced cheques, to contact the cheque writer and wait for re-issue. In the meantime, the entrepreneur, business owner, practitioner or whatever, is not earning any money from you, so why would they continue doing anything for you, until the money is made up? There is a small sub group of rubber cheque writers that are truly fraudulent. Most of them that I met are truly honest people who made a mistake, and will correct it, particularly if they are also small business people, or once were. However, a very small sub-group of these people will do this on purpose. They do this by marking their project as urgent. Perhaps, a defence has to be filed by tomorrow morning, or the clay model has to be delivered by the end of next week for the showing of their home. Many business owners, entrepreneurs and practitioners will accommodate urgent requests, sometimes by asking for a little more money so they can afford to set aside other paying work to accommodate this job which has to be done very quickly. So, the cheque gets written, and then deposited, only for the business owner, entrepreneur or practitioner to find out a few days later, it bounced. My question to these people is, "How fast would you complain about your employer to the Ministry of Labour if your weekly or biweekly pay cheque bounced?" Why should business owners be any more tolerant? I am myself moving to a 'no personal cheques' policy, which leaves some people out, but too bad. I have to eat too, and can't be bothered chasing cheque bouncers around town.

3. Another "ace" type customer is those that like to waste your time with frivolous and vexatious tasks, and then complain loudly when you won't comply. I know one fellow that owned a computer store that was put on a wild goose chase by a customer who swore up and down he had a certain part, and that this part was essential to make his machine run better, and when the business owner went back to the customer to explain there was no such part, or that it would have to be purchased from India, the customer immediately filed a Better Business Bureau complaint and threatened to sue the business. Nobody needs these "ace" customers, as they not only waste your time with their original requests, they continue to waste it when you try to explain why their request is either going to be very expensive or difficult to fill. I get people in my office seeking to sue on this kind of basis, which I tell them they have no case.

4. The next category of customer are the chintzers or the skinflints. These are people that also come in, often in an urgent situation, and waste your time, only to haggle with your fees. If you are offering a professional service, you are not a flea market or a used car dealership where haggling is expected. There are various ways in which these people act. In one example, the fellow went out of my office under the guise of obtaining the funds to pay his retainer, only to supposedly phone a few friends who allegedly told him the fees were too high and excessive. When I told him I do not bill by opinion poll, he became upset, and said that a "friend" of his who happened to be a lawyer said it was too high. The only solution for somebody like him is to tell him if his lawyer is going to charge him less, go there. I know they are not going to get a better deal over there, as many times chintzers and skinflints have returned to my office, only to pay the fee that I asked to begin with, likely after discovering they can't really get a "deal". I wouldn't recommend shopping for professional services on price alone anyways. I've seen the results of that as well, as many of these cases do turn up in my office with far too many corners cut, work done without permits, without proper license, etc.

5. The next kind of customer is the kind that knows more than you do about your product or service. These people are willing to pay you to do the work, but do not expect to accept any of your expert advice. They argue with you at every stage of the job. In my view, if they know so much, return the file to them and tell them to finish it on their own. They hate this. These are also the kinds of people who like to file complaints, but if they knew so much about the job, why did they bother with you anyways? I had one guy like that a few years back, who became angry with me because I refused to include the former vehicle owner in a suit against a dealer. The tort was obviously originating from the dealer, and they also have insurance to cover these kinds of issues, but he wanted me to go after some poor eighty year old lady, which was not going to happen. Fortunately, I managed to obtain a decent settlement from the dealer. Despite this, this guy was still fuming because the previous owner "got off scott free".

6. There are also the customers that want your product or service, but do not have the money to pay. In my profession, we are supposed to try to provide access to legal services when we can, but the difficulty is, many of these people will not pay, even a bit at a time. In my opinion, they should be seeking legal services, or other services from a publicly funded agency where people who are on salary are available to assist in these cases. I am not on salary. I cannot afford to work for free, or to wait for long stretches for my payments. Some people seem to forget that self employed people do not get salaries, or any other kind of "income security", for lack of a better term. They can't afford to give away a lot of their time or their products. People hear about "free consultations" provided by some boutique law firms, and then assume every last lawyer or paralegal is somehow obligated by law to give "free consultations". Sure, I can give free consultations, but somebody at the end of the day is going to have to pay my bills. Those at the boutique law firms that do this are usually on some form of salary, or are earning very good money already that they can afford to give away some of it for "free". This is the same as "free samples" in a department store. They allow you to take one or two to try, but if you go there and grab a whole handful, this would not be appreciated by the store. The real reason I no longer provide free consultations is because too many people came, picked my brain, and then went across the street to see somebody else for another "free consultation", and so on.

In addition to customers, there are abuses by government and regulators:

1. Just about every business has some type of regulation. The bigger you are, the more government regulations you need to worry about. However, professional practices of even one person are regulated to the same degree that large firms of the same type of professionals are, which needs to be reviewed. Regulations are good for the public, and to some extent, good for the business too, so they can adhere to known standards and become the best they can be. However, there is such a thing as over-regulation. I hear about it from bars that move two doors down and have to re-apply and wait for months for their liquor license to come through. I hear about various businesses trying to set up innovative projects and design taking months, only to have the city turn them down on some minor technicality. I have seen businesses having to rip entire fire alarm systems out and replace them, simply because they did not get a permit to install the first set. I have seen businesses being forced to take their signs down because they were too close to the road, or they were too big. These things are all part of starting a business. You have to know all the by-laws, affected regulations, and so forth, before you open your doors ... even before you go inside and start refinishing your property for the business you intend to run. Yes, I like to know that my food is safe, my water is tested, and that my house is not going to cave in on me, but do we really need all of those other regulations? I think it is time that small businesses actually have the opportunity to tell the government how much certain regulations, though not all, are hurting their bottom line.

2. Just as I like my water to be tested, my food to be safe, and the streets safe to walk at night, I also appreciate having employment standards. However, I have found ways these standards can be abused by employees, as well as by employers. I have witnessed situations where an employee quits their job, then claims the employer harassed them or threatened them, when no such thing happened. Bringing the regulators in creates an onerous environment where the employer can feel victimized. Too many times, certain people are taken at their word, when in fact an examination of the employer's overall practices would deny such harassment or discrimination. This sort of thing makes great business for people like me to help employers with such things as documentation, and follow through, but to a small employer this can become more of an annoyance. I know there are many employers out there that don't follow the law, but to me I am witnessing more aggravation from the other side as well.

3. Environmental Regulations:

Another common vigilante attack on small business is so called environmental regulations. Of course, I want the food that I buy to be safe, free of pesticides, etc. I want the water that I drink to be as pure as possible, instead of a complicated chemical formula that can fill a Bible. I want garbage and refuse dealt with in a way that can be diverted from landfill, where possible, and the places where I do business to be clean and healthy. However, there are vigilante activists who are trying very hard to protect that tree, that green space, that wetland, that trail, or even that brownfield, and they will try to fight any business that can take over this land, even if the business itself takes steps to protect these things. Facilities like waste management plants, gas fired plants, energy companies, nuclear plants and similar structures are often targets of protests. Many environmentalists are proponents of alternative forms of energy. So am I. However, time needs to pass to enable these alternatives to develop in a cost effective fashion. Because the average person does not want to pay higher hydro costs, most feel that small businesses can therefore shoulder more of these costs. Certain types of businesses have gone under in the past few years since environmental alternatives have been promoted, especially at the substantial cost that they have. A happier balance needs to be found.

There are also private regulators that can create additional costs to small businesses:

1. While I support regulation by the Law Society for practicing lawyers and paralegals, additional requirements for each member have been added during the years, which increases the costs of maintaining a practice. For example, we need to carry insurance, pay Law Society dues (which have gone up each year since I joined), carry on business in a particular manner (which involves added technology, added time in accounting tasks, added time in filing tasks), and continuing education. All of these things are good things, and most of it is in place to help maintain the excellence of service and professionalism of each member of the Law Society. However, regulation has brought with it substantial costs to my office, which means I have to charge my clients more for my services than I once was able to. The discussion has now turned away from how we protect the public, to how we can provide the public with accessible, affordable legal services. In addition, training and support to the smaller firms is badly needed, as some of the requirements can be time consuming for sole practitioners and small firms (under five persons), while larger firms have the resources to hire staff to wholly manage many of these requirements.

2. Consumer Protection Laws:

These are very broad and often industry specific regulations. We have laws against curbsiders, which are allegedly people selling vehicles without a dealer's license. Regulators scan Auto Trader, Kijiji and the like, to find people selling used cars, and they often phone to make inquiries. Often times, a curbsider gives it away by asking, "Which one?" The fines are heavy for this kind of thing. Jail terms can even be handed out. Yes, there are industry scum out there that need to be hung out to dry, but this law is catching some people that have no intentions of defrauding or hurting anyone. There are taxi regulations, which are usually set by one's municipality including the definition of a "taxi". Advertising a ride sharing service can readily capture some people not intended to be captured under the taxi regulations. How do municipalities tell the difference between a ride share service, which is primarily volunteer (although the person sharing the ride pays the driver for gas), and an illegal taxi service? Ride sharing once used to be an acceptable practice. You book your travel plans on a bulletin board, and somebody else who happens to be going that way contacts you and offers to share the ride. The business PickUpPal.Com got into some hot water recently because they were advertising ride sharing services from one city to another, until the bus companies found out and took them to the Highway Transportation Board for providing an "illegal service". Land use is also affected by regulation. Right now, a gentleman who owns property in the country had decided to use part of his land for an archery club, until the Conservation Authority decided they did not like the idea. To the best of my knowledge, this landowner is still fighting this in court. I wonder somehow what kind of harm this man was doing by offering the use of his own land to a popular sporting activity, which included charitable contributions for the brain injured to participate.

All of these things and more contribute to the hardship felt by many small businesses, and why so many of them end up shutting down, or restricting their practices. This is in addition to the attitudes of some people that small business owners are wealthy, and are believed to be able to take advantage of the same largesse big companies are able to. None of this true. The average small business owner earns 30% less in income than their salaried counterparts doing the same thing. Retail business owners put up with theft, robbery, fraud and breakage. This comes out of the owner's pockets. Service businesses put up with chintzes, skinflints, rubber cheques, chronic complainers, know-it-alls, etc. The price of dealing with these people comes from the regular paying customers' and the owners' pockets.

Nobody thinks about when they try to haggle a price down from a small business owner. Are you also going to offer to haggle the price of their insurance, their memberships, their staff salaries, etc.? These people pay the same expenses, regardless of how much money they take in. By haggling or thinking they can drop their prices, you are taking the food out of their families' mouths. Most small businesses are locally owned and staff are local residents. Yet, many of the above actions done by customers, government, regulators and the like, lead to higher costs for them and for the rest of us. It may also put many people out of business. There are many other issues that are going on that also reduce the chances of a small business surviving. In my world, I shop as much as I can at locally owned small businesses, and I pay my bill when due. I do not haggle or try to get the owner to cut the bill because I know they need the money. I also do not make frivolous complaints to, or about, the business. If I have a concern, I take it directly to the business and work it out with the owner, rather than waste their time or mine with a formal complaint (unless it was of a very serious nature that has remained unaddressed, but to tell you how rare this is, I only had to do that twice in my life). I follow the Golden Rule. I treat others as I would want to be treated, but unfortunately, as a small business owner/professional practitioner, I have felt the impact of others that do not follow the Golden Rule, do not appreciate the time or effort in putting out a product or a service, or the value of my work. I can only help but wonder if these people had ever themselves been self employed. I bet not.

Your thoughts?

NOW WHO OWNS THIS DEFICIT REALLY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

DRUMMING TO THE BEAT OF DRUMMOND AND SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

There is a lot of underground talking about the town.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your thoughts?

THIS ISN'T OUR DEBT AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO PAY FOR IT!

In 2008, we encountered a massive global recession. This recession was tipped off by the financial industry, as well as a few people that allowed certain scams like the subprime mortgages, financial collapse of major banks and related public companies. The recession moved worldwide, as thousands upon thousands of jobs were shifted to low cost countries (e.g. where labour can be bought for a dollar a day), or simply lost altogether. Manufacturing used to rule Ontario and upheld the so-called middle class. Supposedly in the "best interests" of the country, American and Canadian governments threw trillions of dollars at the failing banks, failing manufacturing firms and the subprime mortgage sector in some sort of twisted rescue mission. Most of us never received a penny from this spending episode and probably never will.

While governments and big companies pat each other on the back for helping one another "miss that bullet", little did anybody know that people were still losing their jobs, losing their homes and losing their position in society. Average incomes dropped dramatically, despite rising costs in food, housing and transportation. Our respective governments declared some kind of victory against the recession beast in late 2009 or early 2010, pretending that everybody was all doing well again. We hear news reports that as of June 2011, we now have more jobs than we did before this recession hit, so now that we are doing so "well", governments are telling US we better start tightening OUR belts because there's this huge deficit here and we lived high off the hog for too long. That's funny. I can't recall ever having so much.

These reports piss me off more than anything else, because I, like most readers, know things are not good again. Newspapers are celebrating the advent of 100 new call centre jobs in Fort Erie. Wow! One hundred more minimum wage workers to prop up the wealthy corporations that retain the centre as their client ... at the same time, I am watching us continue to bleed manufacturing jobs, so men and women in their fifties and early sixties are now thrown on the street with no options, other than a minimum wage call centre job. At the same time, every second person I talk to is receiving some kind of social assistance, whether this be EI, Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support, CPP or other long term benefit that doesn't pay all that much.

Yet we undergone both a federal and now a provincial election where our politicians and candidates for political office continue to lie to us by pretending everything is as good as it was before the 2008 crash. They promise us tax cuts, from ....? I almost drilled a new one into the rear end of one of the local candidates when they tried to sell me on this whole "tax cuts lead to jobs" mantra, which I explained in earlier posts why that is a lie. It irritates me to no end how politicians will go to the lowest common denominator to try to convince people of lies they heard over and over and over again, yet in reality, when these policies are put into place, NOBODY is better off other than the very rich! We have to stop voting for politicians that lie to us, and do not tell us the truth of where their policies will be taking us.

If you want health care cuts, or to pay more out of pocket for various services, including health care, community services, education, and so forth, then go ahead and vote for your tax cuts. Chances are you are not making $93,700 a year as a family, which these same politicians wildly claim as the "average" as they sweep the province this time around. The less taxes people pay, the less money there will be to pay for health care, education, social services, roads, bridges, and so forth. However, politicians were a bit reluctant to cut these services, so they went even further into a deficit. Deficits are caused when the government is not taking in as much as it spends, and when taxes are cut and cut and cut, there is less and less and less money in place for governments to use for health care, schools, social services, etc.

Tell me the truth: Did YOU feel any impact from any of these tax cuts? Maybe a bit extra, so you can buy one more double double each month? That is about all the average person will feel from these tax cuts. The very poor do not benefit at all, and with the onset of the HST, the very poor are likely paying as a proportion to their total income, MORE taxes than the top 10% of earners. The McGuinty government of course is being ratted out all over for promising not to hike taxes, but then later on, adding new taxes. So what, Hudak, I don't give a rabbit's behind over taxes. I read your platform. Which one of these taxes are YOU going to eliminate? None. However, you want to cut taxes for the wealthy and big business more and more as each year passes, just like McGuinty did. I know Hudak understands that tax cuts to corporations and wealthy persons does not create new employment. After all, he has studied economics, before he turned to politics. But unfortunately, we have a mediocre community that includes many high school drop outs and people that believe anything that is told to them, and all that matters is votes. They might as well try to convince us that moon is made of blue cheese!

Hudak did make a statement in his platform that his government would allow people receiving ODSP to earn more money and keep it, but there are no details as to how he will go about this. There is no promise to make real changes to this system so that people receiving ODSP can get married without getting their incomes cannibalized, especially if they are NOT able to work but their spouse can. What in the living Hell does a spouse's income and business affairs have to do with their other half's disability? Maybe if somebody told me where this comes from, I might believe them, but I have yet to hear any plausible excuse for a policy like this, which only entraps and subjects the disabled partner to abuse and diminishes their independence at best.

The second one is even more interesting. Hudak is painting himself as pro business, pro jobs, and pro entrepreneurship. Well, will Hudak get rid of the entangled rules that any ODSP recipient or their spouses have to deal with if they choose self-employment as their way of making money? Self-employment income is not counted in the same way Canada Revenue Agency counts for other businesses, yet we wonder if Hudak will allow ANY business to be treated the same. Either tell all businesses they are not allowed to hire staff, not allowed to deduct costs for conventions, not allowed to deduct costs for professional clothing and appearances (especially if this is part of the job), etc. and see where that gets you. So Hudak, either you are for small business and for increasing the number of jobs or you are not. Which is it? Dalton McGuinty has given these same people the same wimpy excuse year after year about how they do not want to "subsidize" businesses with ODSP, yet on the other hand, the McGuinty government will throw Samsung $7 billion, Silicon Knights $2.8 million, GM almost $3 billion dollars .... yeah, now I get it.

The poorest of the poor, the entrapped poor and their families and the "working poor" are supposed to continue to pay for these subsidies and benefits given to the rich and to large corporations they will never benefit from, even though these same entities have been busy sucking out of the government trough for years, leading our government into this huge deficit they are saying is there now, and because of that, WE but not THEY have to tighten our belts. I'm sorry. THIS IS NOT MY DEBT. I OWE NOTHING. The more of us that can say this and really mean it, the more impact it will have. If there is a debt that has to be repaid, take it from those that benefited in the first place from all the largess.

Take it from the multi millionaires that pay less tax as a percentage of their incomes than the people that clean their offices. Take it from the corporate executives that paid themselves bonuses after their companies went tits up and got government bucks to "stimulate" the economy. Take it from the $3,000 a day consultants that worked for e-Health under McGuinty's watch, who had the nerve to charge their Tim Horton's on top of it. Take it from your so-called "average" family that makes $93,700 a year and up.

One of my MPPs in my region asked me how I would respond when groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation show up at their door crying poor because they do not want to pay any more taxes. I told him to ask each and every one of them present to bring in their last year's tax return and show him line 150. I am willing to bet my first born that their incomes are all in the six figures and they can damn well afford the taxes they are supposedly paying, and probably have more loopholes than the average person anyways if they want more write-offs. Ask them to make a choice: earn the money they are earning or more likely receiving right now, while continuing to pay the taxes that they allegedly do, OR earn only $20,000 a year and pay NO taxes, and still have their current expenses. I am curious which one they would pick. Are you?

To me, it is people in the higher income brackets that benefited from the spending and tax cuts that led to this monstrous deficit and it is THEY and not US that should be tightening their belts and giving up more. This era of the selfish has to end, as it is driving all of us into the ground. These same people do not want to help the poor other than their "charitable donations" to food banks etc. - (no thanks). At the same times, poverty is costing every man, woman and child each year over $2,700 according to a study by the National Council of Welfare, but would cost less than half to eradicate it.

Some of you people reading this probably wonder what I have AGAINST the rich. Actually, I don't have anything against the wealthy. I have many friends among this upper middle echelon and so forth, and I once made good money in the past where I had few financial worries. However, when I made the good bucks, I did not care about the taxes, as I believed if I made more, I should pay a little more than those that earn less than I do. Taxes create a civilized society. This does not mean we do not have the right to criticize HOW our taxes are spent, as there are likely ten thousand different ways governments can save money without cutting services, and to use their resources more efficiently. What I am critical is the growing passive acceptance by the public of the growing gap between the very wealthy and the very poor, as well as the decimation of our middle classes.

Some might argue that companies will leave if they had to pay more taxes. This has never been proven. Companies do leave jurisdictions, usually for a variety of reasons and not necessarily because of taxes. Many times, it is labour costs. There are companies that move to Canada as well because employers are not stuck with a bill for health insurance for their employees. Others choose a location because of the pool of labour available, the number of people with particular skills and expertise. However, as I said before, there are probably a few companies that would be eager to hire chimpanzees in exchange for a clean cage and bananas, if they could do it. The very wealthy often do not seem to want to share their wealth, even though it is their best interests.

First, the work of the lower and middle echelons of their companies effectively keep them in business, and in turn, with a public with an acceptable level of income, there are more consumers for the corporation's product or service than if this inequality is allowed to continue as it has. People on the bottom end of the income scale do not eat at restaurants, do not buy their clothing at department or clothing stores, do not buy their books at bookstores, do not go to the movies, nor do they buy computers, iPads, cell phones or even cars. When companies that supply these things have less consumers, because more and more members of their communities are unable to afford anything beyond their housing, these companies eventually fail. Henry Ford, when he set up his factories, knew that he had to pay his staff enough money so they can afford to buy his product, or he would not sell enough cars to enough people to make any money at all.

I tried over the years to tell politicians how to achieve this aim, how to do true stimulus, and how to deal with objections by the selfish and senseless. I also tried to show politicians how to achieve change without killing people, or putting people into positions where they feel they must take their lives, or they develop health conditions where they slowly die. All of these things seem senseless or illogical, but when you think of it, when more of us are healthy, costs for our cherished health care system go down and become more manageable. When we have not only sufficient funds for bare physical survival, but also for meaningful participation in the community, everybody is richer, from the butcher at the corner, to the farmers at the market, to the chef that runs the downtown eatery, to the man that owns the movie theater.

This is all common sense to me. How come our leaders seem to be losing their way?

... A COMMUNITY THAT IS DYING TO THRIVE

As I might have stated before in this blog, I live in a very conservative, willfully ignorant and at times, divisive community. At the same time, there are elements within this same community that are trying to present themselves, and become a cultural force and eventually a political force.

The Region of Niagara lacks organized opposition to the current destructive path our governments are taking us down: the path of austerity for the poor, and socialism for the rich. When I personally speak to people, or discuss issues in informal groups that gather in coffee shops, at street corners, at Tim Horton's and other places, without triggering a reply, these individuals reflect the same kind of worries and concerns that I illustrate here on this blog.

At the same time, I met many ordinary individuals that, while they are generally kind, funny and productive with their lives, they do not understand the culture of the "other". One such man met with me and we had a chat about the economy. He told me that they should limit people's stay on welfare for a short period of time, and then force them to get off the system. As attractive an option that may be, I ask, where will these people go to when their time is up? He told me, "They'll get a job". This is the thinking of people who have likely not spoken to or met with somebody who is struggling to get off welfare. If they would "get a job" at the end of their time on the system, they surely would get a job earlier before the clock stops ticking, in my not so humble opinion. This is because that is what they want: a job. At another forum, a participant posted that there were almost 500 jobs listed on the Job Bank, a program offered by Service Canada. I then asked if they knew exactly how many unemployed workers there were, and whether all we needed was 500 jobs to create full employment. If Niagara has 9 - 10% "official" unemployment rate, chances are it is double that in the "real unemployment" figures, given many people have long since given up looking for work, or have accepted work that is not full-time or permanent. This would mean up to possibly 40,000 people in Niagara would be seeking employment, or deem themselves to be grossly underemployed.

As a professional service provider that works in the community, I see what happens at the grassroots. I ask questions all the time. To the man who told me that the welfare recipient at the end of their time would get a job, I asked if he would hire that person. After all, he runs a small construction company and he is growing his business. He told me he would not hire that person. I then ask him, if he would not hire this person, what gives him the idea that "somebody else" will? He did not know. I know why, although he might not quite understand why. These problems are always considered to be somebody else's problems, not our own. We talk a lot about what employers "should" be doing, but as employers, are we willing to actually take these issues on, and do our part in the public interest?

I spent time working on the AODA Standards Development Committee, and met many wonderful, smart, intelligent and outspoken individuals: some were spokespersons for organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the colleges, the universities, and the civil service, while others were individuals, including entrepreneurs and persons with disabilities themselves. I don't think a single human being in that room felt that persons with disabilities were unworthy of being hired and offered promotions, and so forth, equivalent to their peer groups. The debates were hearty, passionate and at the end, compromise was reached, sometimes while standing on tenterhooks. It reminded me of a process that one learned judge told me when I first started practising: "You know when a mediation worked when all parties to the mediation end the session with their lower lips to the floor". We all walked out at the end of our final submission happy in some ways, not so happy in others, but we can live with it.

I returned to my own community to find a lot of the knowledge and passion lacking in many otherwise intelligent, well-meaning and positive people that are considered our community leaders. Report after report here points out that there are openings in jobs, but no takers. This is not because people are lazy and do not want to work, but because there is a disconnect between the employers that want workers, and the workers that want jobs. Nobody is integrating this puzzle, to create the mosaic the Niagara workforce needs, which would become an inclusive and improved labour force, as opposed to leaving the low waged, insecure and "bad" jobs for the people on welfare and disability, while keeping the "good jobs" for people who are already part of their own networks.

The other day, my husband and I were walking down the main street of downtown and I pointed out to him where various businesses shut their doors, others opened theirs, and others are having difficulties. Niagara College moved its employment program downtown, and Business Education Council moved downstairs from where it was previously located in the Landmark Building. They are promoting "older workers", many of whom were thrown out of work and have the expenses of a mortgage, kids in post-secondary education, car payments, and so forth, but nowhere to go. I just hope this organization is not fooling the older workers by making them believe there are good jobs out there. This is particularly interesting given that I did take a scan of the Job Bank selections when that individual pointed out there being 500 jobs, and most of these jobs are low wage, temporary or otherwise, not appropriate for an adult that has financial responsibilities.

At the same time, candidates are sweeping the area for the next provincial election saying only if we threw more tax cuts at rich people and their companies, we can get more jobs and investment in the Niagara Region. I am angered at these politicians, both as a business graduate as well as somebody who has an IQ beyond her shoe size. These tax cuts were in the making over the past couple of decades. If this worked, Ontario and Canada would be booming with employment opportunities. It would be a worker's paradise, where a worker can walk into a company and pretty well name his or her price. However, the "full employment" definition kept creeping up from 2% to 4% to now, around 6%, meaning that somebody in the federal government knows that tax cuts are not doing the job that politicians are trying to tell us they do.

Canada and Ontario have to begin to deal with the social safety net that was designed for a time when we really had full employment and short term mean short term. and people with disabilities were not being squeezed out of having any quality of life like they are now. The simple fact is that business thrives only when people buy from them. If everybody around them is poor, and the business is not selling a good or providing a service that is as base as rent and perhaps, groceries, then that business will suffer with at least a couple of million people in Ontario that just are not buying anything. People who are poor do not go to the movies, do not eat out at restaurants, do not buy clothing from the clothing stores, do not buy big screen TVs, do not buy cars, and if they have an old car, do not get gas very often and from what I have seen, many have tried to drive without insurance. All of these companies that do not have these buyers are receiving less revenue, and as such, are not as able to hire as many people as they would otherwise be able to, had this whole group of people been able to participate in the economy.

Giving tax breaks to wealthy people does not grow jobs, at least in the way politicians are claiming. Even a millionaire family of four only need so many groceries, clothes, gas for their car, and will only eat out so often. There is an equilibrium in terms of how much a consumer will purchase to receive their maximum satisfaction. What the wealthy do with the rest of the money is what is important, and research has shown they do not spend the rest of it in the community. In general it is divided between savings, and non-labour intensive purchases, such as a family vacation to Disney World.

If they are business owners, the tax cuts come AFTER they hire their last staff person. A new employee is a complete write-off for taxes, and tax liabilities are transferred to that employee and not the company. The money that is left is profit, and that is what is taxed. A company that is charged less tax on the profit is not going to suddenly need and desire to hire more staff. Instead the company will divide the profits among shareholders or reinvest it into long term financial instruments. No company I know of will hire more staff just because they feel like it; companies are not charities. Staff are utilities in helping the company get its work done, and to get paid. If a company can hire chimpanzees and robots to achieve the same goals, they might just do that - but fortunately, this technology has not reached the state where this is possible.

In this election, the Progressive Conservatives, under Tim Hudak, is all about tax cuts. There is very little new spending other than a 6% boost to health care, to reflect what is status quo now at the federal level. McGuinty's agenda is similar. Both parties assume that the average family income in Ontario is still $93,700 - likely taken from the last Census. We know this has substantially changed since the recession of 2008, but we have no numbers since Harper scrapped the long form Census. The whole idea of allowing families to split up to %50,000 off the high earner to add to the low earner's income is insulting to the majority of people that don't even earn close to $50,000.

Further, Hudak's talk of providing relief to families means nothing to families where one of the spouses is on ODSP. ODSP conscripts the working spouse into its rules, thus creating a family income that is capped at best, and at worst, leads to family break-up with the disabled person losing all benefits and income of their own, leaving them susceptible to abuse and isolation. The working spouse can work all they want, even around the clock, but they will not be able to bring their family out of poverty. In situations where the working spouse is self-employed, ODSP's rules about self-employment put the family's financial health into even further jeopardy with rules against the self-employed spouse hiring employees. What? Isn't this government about helping business and creating jobs, yet it will not allow these businesses in particular to hire employees? The effect of this is that it caps the self-employed person's income, as it is impossible to earn on their own more money to get the other spouse off ODSP so they can live more normally.

I talk to people about this all the time. 95% of the people I speak to are shocked about this, as they never knew any government in Canada would do this to people, and punish spouses of persons with disabilities. I point to the relatively low number of people on ODSP that even bother to get married, and yes, they understand that. I also helped a gentleman get onto ODSP a few weeks ago, and when his case was transferred, he called me to seek advice on what he needs to do to leave his wife, as her income left him qualified for nothing. I warned him that if he does leave, ODSP will require him to file a lawsuit for support against her to get as much of her income as possible, so she will continue to have to subsidize ODSP anyways. This is ODSP's way of continuing to shift more of its costs onto persons with disabilities, a group that can least afford to pay this cost.

These people are in the market, on the street corners, in Tim Horton's, or who run their own businesses, and they ask why one person's business is not allowed to hire employees, but others are? Perhaps, if Hudak was that concerned about removing the "burden" from families, he can start right there. If he does, I can guarantee a groundswell of support from many people in the disability community. If they stopped counting spousal income against the very low rates of the person with a disability, the family income would double without the government adding a single penny to the program. I say this, because what I see happening are spouses that are stopping work and then living on the other's disability allowance, because they are finding working to support the WHOLE family too exhausting. On a similar note, a friend of mine was working three minimum wage jobs and ended up on ODSP now, because the human body was not built to work without breaks, for very long hours at a time, and to burn to the candle at both ends. If I hired you to work for me, and made you work sixteen hours in a day, without paying overtime or minimum wage, and in fact, asked you to pay me back half your wages, I would be convicted by the Ministry of Labour ... why is the government allowed to do this to those that are trying to get ahead through self-employment? This is why some of our small businesses downtown had to close down in a hurry, because the entrepreneur was not able to support his or her family on less than fifteen cents on the dollar. Think about it.

Those objecting to hiking corporate taxes whine about losing the incentive to invest. What do you think these rules and regulations do to potential entrepreneurs that are attempting to work themselves either off ODSP, or to increase their family income as a family with two incomes, instead of one limited "see saw" income that caps the worker at a level well below the poverty line? Does fifty percent of the income of politicians come off their spouses, if they are working or receiving any money from another source? I doubt it.

The walk to the market each day is fraught with people wanting a piece of my time. I am the one who took an international fit to get regional transit in this area. I am the one that asks the questions that need to be asked. I litigate whoever needs to be litigated. I am not afraid. But the whole world became much smaller for me over the past few weeks, trying to do computerization of all my files, while still trying to get some essential work done. The days are getting shorter and the night falls, making it lonely once again, when I don't want to be alone.

In the day time the buskers are out. At one time, right after Jack Layton's death, one of them was out by Coffee Culture singing from a script. She was singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and the words to this made me cry. Like when is this going to end? When are we going to see less people die? One of my clients told me about three who died from a drop-in centre in one month alone. I used to do this as the executive director of the Niagara Mental Health Survivors Network. I attended a lot of funerals, and organized a lot of memorials.

I am so afraid if the political people that get elected this October 6, 2011, do not want to learn about the "other", and re-focus away some of their priorities from constant tax and service cuts, and start listening to the people that matter, that we will be organizing a lot more funerals and memorials for people who die in their thirties, forties and fifties, after living a life of Hell.

Your thoughts?