Overhaul of welfare wrong way to go

Re Welfare overhaul to focus on finding jobs, Nov.1 Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod says the current government of Ontario is focused on lifting people up and getting them back on track. Tory code words for making lazy sods get out and work. Sounds a lot like Mike Harris, doesn’t it? When I was in high school in the 1960s, we were told that increasing computerization and mechanization of labour-intensive jobs would result in a society that would require much less human energy and more automation. This would leave us free to pursue other activities, perhaps work a much shorter work week and so on. But what has actually happened, is that the process has eliminated jobs across the labour spectrum, made rich people richer and left the majority of the population behind. So where do they go? Some sort of social assistance, where people like Lisa MacLeod make them feel like they are a drain on society. But they ARE society. What has Ford’s government done for them? Cut the minimum wage, eliminate the first pilot project to find a new way forward and cut the welfare budget. The vast majority of the people on welfare and unemployment insurance would love to be working. Ford, like Stephen Harper, is trying to live in the 1950s. That world is no more. It is time to accept reality. Tom McElroy, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, York University The best social program is NOT a job. The concept of a food bank and the often second-class food that they are able to provide is only acceptable when it is not for you or your child or your best friend. The same can be said about the 100 days redrawing of social assistance without due inclusion of people with lived experience by our Ontario minister of social services Lisa MacLeod. MacLeod’s redrawing of my life will end on Nov. 8. On Tuesday, she claimed that she had consulted “stakeholders,” and precised during late session that consultations have happened “all over the province” with a range of people, including people with lived experience, agencies, crown commissions, the private sector, the public sector and not-for-profit organizations. Well, on this side of social assistance, “we” are 2,000 individuals, 120 agencies and 270 ODSP recipients and allies who have signed open letters, petitions and/or individual statements; we are 4,000 ODSP Action Coalition members, 42 authors of the “Roadmap for Change,” thousands of tweeting human beings, case workers individually or through their union; we are food bank and shelter users who were surveyed by the Daily Bread Food Bank, but none of us have seen any notice of consultation for the 100 day review, or received replies to our requests to be heard. Claude Wittmann, Toronto