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Welfare Worsens in Canada; Recipients Get Less Than 20 Years Ago
Contributed by blackandred on Sun, 2006-08-27 19:59.
In sections:
In rich Canada, welfare worsens
Recipients get less than 20 years ago
Public is turning a blind eye to issue
by THOMAS WALKOM; NATIONAL AFFAIRS COLUMNIST
Aug. 25, 2006. 01:10 AM
Here in Canada, in one of the richest countries of the world, the very poorest are getting poorer. This is not the result of some external or unforeseen crisis. It is happening in the midst of a long-running economic boom and reflects the deliberate decisions of elected governments - presumably supported by the Canadian public at large - to purge the roughly 1.7 million people consigned to welfare from our collective consciousness.
It is shameful. It is pretty much criminal. And, as the National Council on Welfare, an advisory body to the federal government, warned in a report released yesterday, it is remarkably short-sighted. In particular, it is short-sighted for those of us in the broader middle classes who assume - wrongly - that we could never end up on the dole.
It's a cruel world out there now. Successive governments have gutted or eliminated much of Canada's vaunted social safety net. For most workers, employment insurance (EI) doesn't exist. Increasingly, employers prefer part-time or contract workers who can be fired at will and who are owed neither benefits nor pensions.
If the economy falters and unemployment spikes - as it is almost sure to do again - there is not much between a comfortable middle-class life and welfare.
So just hope it doesn't happen to you. As the council points out, for the vast majority of those on welfare, things are bad and getting worse.
The figures are depressing and distressing. In Ontario, for example, the incomes of most welfare recipients, after adjustment for inflation, are lower now than they were 20 years ago.
And that's not just because of Mike Harris. True, the former Conservative Premier gleefully slashed welfare rates. But his successor, Liberal Dalton McGuinty, has been equally, if more quietly, stingy.
In 1997, well after Harris made his cuts, a single mother with one child in Ontario received $16,205. Last year, a single mother's benefit, after adjustment for inflation, was just $14,451 - or about 11 per cent less.
It's probably worth noting that Newfoundland has a more generous welfare system than Ontario. A single mother with one child in that province gets $16,181.
But Ontario is not the only piker. In Conservative Alberta, rates for a single person on welfare have dropped by $4,800 - or roughly 50 per cent in inflation-adjusted terms - over the past 20 years. In British Columbia, now run by a nominally Liberal government, welfare recipients with disabilities get less in real terms than they did in 1989.
Even Saskatchewan's New Democrats have been cheese parers when it comes to welfare. In that province, the inflation-adjusted welfare income for a couple with two kids is $4,125 less than it was in 1986.
On top of this, the federal government's much-heralded child benefit supplement, introduced by Jean Chrétien's Liberals in 1998, has done almost zilch for people on welfare.
That's partly because five provinces, including Ontario, claw all or part of the benefit back from families receiving social assistance.
And it's partly because the country's complicated welfare system is almost impossible to figure out for would-be beneficiaries - or anyone else. It has become, as the council says flatly, "incomprehensible to most people."
As for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives, the council says their reforms don't help the poor much at all.
No surprise here. Still it's worth noting, as the council does, that Harper's income-tax cuts benefit high-income earners most. His GST cut doesn't help the poor, who already had a sales-tax break. His new $100 a month child-care benefit, the council says, may help more well-to-do parents who already have access to daycare but does little for people on welfare who can neither find nor afford care.
The net result is bleak: In spite of the myriad of government programs, the inome of welfare recipients remains far below Statistics Canada's so-called low-income cutoff, a measure usually referred to as the poverty line.
In Ontario, a disabled person on welfare gets $12,057 - or about 58 per cent of what StatsCan figures the average single person needs to live. Other kinds of welfare recipients get even less.
It is a grim business.
Still, it's not fair to blame just elected leaders like Harper, Harris or McGuinty. True, politicians didn't keep their bold promises to eliminate child poverty.
True too, many politicians either ignore welfare recipients or subtly (not so subtly in the case of Harris) demonize them as undeserving.
But in the end, politicians can't help but respond to the issues voters care about. And that stark political fact says something very unpleasant about us.
"Most Canadians would find it impossible to cope with the substantial income losses that welfare households have experienced," the council writes. "Coping is even harder for those who are already at the bottom of the income scale, given their already meagre incomes. Yet there appears to be little concern ...
"Have both governments and the Canadian public turned their backs on the poorest of the poor?"
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Welfare and Disabled
I am 54 and disabled i get CPP and i am supplemented by the Province. The Proivnce of BC takes the CPP away by deducting it from the amount i get from the Province giving me the same amount as a person who never worked.Yet they say if i could work part time i could keep $500 per month and they take that as being part of my income then. BUT get this the disabled whom have rich parents and they give them trust funds are allowed to keep there entire trust funds up to $150,000 and they can also keep another $1000+ per month of it and still get the entire welfare amount of disability that i get but i cant keep my CPP that iworked for. ANd when i tried to fight it in court they actually sent the Vancouver Police after me they came to my house 4 times and threatened me actually threatened me a disabled person. If i get any money and can leave this country i am gone i will not live i have told my children and told them to tell there children if we do not have a revoltion in the next 5-8 years and take bakc the country to get out as it will be compleltey operated by the elite of North america that includes the USA too. as it will have the water and oil supply then that is what they are doing if you are not a slave to the rich you will be pushed out of here real soon or jailed. then they are going to put back into place the working in jails like they use to with chain gangs.This is all true i have seen the documents please do not give out my email or name as it could cost me my life
single parents
Im a single parent of 4 young children, I don't get anywhere close to what a single parent of 1 gets, they say about 14 - 16000. Right, now if they deduct the clawback from the actual income figures then they might be a little closer. With 4 children on OW and I can't work, though I have up til this april worked. I get about 10,00o maybe for 5 of us, last years income tax was about 9,000 when my spouse lived with us. I think their incomes are largely exagerated, and they should before publishing an article look at what someone gets or at least ask someone on the system what the actual amount we receive is.
that would just make more sense really and if i weren't in housing my max income would be about the 14000 with a max cheque for a family of 5 so I really don't see where a family with one adult and one child makes that much at all.
I can understand what you are saying
Hi,
It's true the ammounts are low, but they are survivable. I'm a recipient of ODSP funding in Ontario, as I have been diagnosed with a disability and the DAU agreed that I am eligible for funding. It with my special diet allowance ammounts to $1000/month about 2x what a person on welfare receives. My mother who works but is often sick only made about $19,000, or $7000 more than me gross, but I also have emergency dental, eye and prescription coverages she doesn't. Also you can earn $150 more per month from other sources, and if you do make money then you are potentially eligible for up to $100 bonus and other back to work programs. Although the programs are far from perfect, I am still alive.
The way the provinces and federal government work to insure that only the basic substance ammounts are given from the public purse can be seen as unfortunate because whether you have worked or not you are more or less going to get about the same amount, because they are suppose to be last ditch programs. I geuss they figure that people that arn't able to do anything don't need more money than enough to get a meager place to live and enough food to live off of. It is hard to imagine how someone only getting $500 a month is suppose to survive with rent itself usually that or higher, and subsidized housing having a backlog of years for regular subsidized housing. Even though only about 6% of the population is unemployed the bottom line s that they don't want you to live, they would like you to survive and get back into a job that at atleast $8 an hour is going to provide for your needs. It is hypocracy to allow largepayments from private sources, but the idea is that all government funding comes from the public.. private funds are allowable, but public funds are less money for the government whether federal or provincial. It is hypocracy, the advantage of CPP though is that you receive it anywhere in Canada.
All you need to leave Canada is a passport or the capacity to get into any country that you are trying to enter, although you may be entering an area seen as under a different authorities jurisdiction. contact me at http://intracircumcordei.info and we can discuss this more. We are not single people powerless in the world we are persons that together can create a united vision. I do think it is unrealistic to expect disabled individuals to recieve 20+ thousand a year in salaries in a time where the government is in debt. Stats can says that is how much is needed to live. I've been living on about $6000/ year for all my life, and I am 26 now, sometimes less. It costs about 25$/week for food. We can surivive with nothing until we die, we don't need money to survive we require our needs, you can't eat cash, well atleast it likely isn't overly nutritious. I've been in a worse situation than ODSP before. I invite people to communicate because it is through networking that we expand our economic and social capacities. Maybe I don't know what you know, but feel open to tell me. Obviously if the police are involved something is going on, but you are S.O.L. if you don't reach someone who cares or empower yourself, but that is your life.
intracircumcordei@yahoo.ca