Pandemic stress hitting seniors on fixed incomes

I suppose like many I'd never heard of the Low-income Energy Assistance Program (known as LEAP) until Enwin Utilities in Windsor was fined $67,648 as a penalty for improperly or prematurely disconnecting

263 local customers from electric and water service over two months in 2019.

Similarly, ELK Energy, which supplies hydro in several Essex County communities, was fined $18,000, plus $5,000 once more to the Low-income Energy Assistance Program. ELK was reprimanded for callous treatment of customers “at risk of disconnection.”

According to the Ontario Energy Board

(OEB), low-income customers can receive up to $500 in emergency assistance for their electricity bills, $600 if homes are heated electrically or $500 for natural gas bills.

Assistance is available only if a customer is behind on their bill — or in arrears — and with the prospect of having service disconnected.

Located as close as we are to Detroit, I have become accustomed over the years to accounts of impoverished residents in that city losing access to utilities. However, I cannot recall hearing often of persons in Windsor-essex County who have had utility services suspended or disconnected.

What is not clear is how many of those whose utility services were severed were elderly or living on fixed incomes. It is to that specific segment of our local population that I turn attention.

In this dreadful era of COVID-19, not only are seniors the most impacted by the pandemic in terms of deaths, but they are also the ones most adversely affected by stress or issues related to living on fixed incomes.

I do not have the data for Ontario, but recently released data for European countries shows a stunning rate of death related to the virus among older persons — a death rate at roughly more than 10 per cent for persons aged 80 or more versus a death rate of 0.015 per cent for persons under age 40.

Among those who have had electricity disconnected recently in Windsor and Essex County, what proportion were in the age bracket of 65 years and better?

They are the vulnerable.

Despite a one-time federal government handout of $300 to pensioners, the costs of simply living for many elderly people is becoming challenging. Amherstburg urgently needs to raise property taxes to cover significant infrastructure replacement costs.

Many seniors impacted by property tax increases may not even be around by the time the infrastructure is improved for their benefit.

If increases in hydro and other utility rates were not a sufficient burden, then certainly rising property taxes for infrastructure, employee wages and whatever else municipal governments require to support public service delivery are eroding fixed incomes.

Added pandemic-related educational costs also eat away at fixed incomes of seniors.

Those living on limited pension or fixed incomes are seeing their incomes steadily whittled away by rising taxes and prices.

Statistics Canada recently announced the Consumer Price Index was up 0.7 per cent in October compared to a year ago.

The increase in October was the sharpest since June amid the COVID-19 pandemic when most rates have been well below that.

What is the cause? It's food prices.

Rapidly increasing food prices have contributed to a rising price index.

Big chain food retailers claim transportation costs have increased and supplies have been limited by supply chain production issues.

Frankly, I do not afford much truth to claims by supermarket chains about how they are suffering.

If there is not a strain upon people of limited and fixed incomes, why are food banks being stretched to capacity?

There are elderly people disproportionately dying from the virus.

But how many others on fixed incomes are slowly withering under the stress of living on a limited income?

As a society we cannot in conscience be proud how those with limited incomes must increasingly seek assistance to survive from programs such as LEAP or the Downtown Mission or a food bank.