A List of Our Demands: ODSP/OW Clients of Ontario.

 

Do it.

 

 

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

To that end.

We hereby demand a 2.5 % raise for ODSP/OW, to be committed to in writing by this government. This announcement will be made prior to Oct 1/21. The commitment will be for a term of five years. This raise will take effect Nov 1/21 and remain in effect for five subsequent years, that is to say until the last raise of Nov 1/26, at which time a new rate is to be determined in a timely manner as circumstances dictate. The new rate will be higher.

This government will commit, in writing, and on the front pages of community Canadian journalism, not to claw back any federal benefits including, but not exclusive to, child care programs, income adjustment benefits, including any form of federal basic income benefits, or any form of federal housing benefits for low income Canadians. This includes carbon tax rebates, HST and Trillium Benefits as well as any other federal/provincial subsidy that exists or should take effect.

This government will not exclude this demographic group from any such further social benefits.

We hereby demand this government to commit, in writing, to raising the allowable earnings, to $500.00 per month for ODSP/OW, with a rate of claw-back no more than one third, in other words 33 % on earnings over the allowable income threshold. This government understands that the present rate is fifty percent and shall not be raised by subterfuge or obfuscation.

This government will immediately raise the Work Related Benefit from $100.00/month to $250.00/month for a single adult employed person and proportionately for adults with dependent children. Each and every dependent child or incapacitated adult.

This government will immediately raise all benefits for dependent children, up to and including the age of 25, as presently applied for otherwise inapplicable adults currently living in household and otherwise not covered under existing and otherwise applicable dependents.

We hereby demand that this government commit in writing to continue rent controls as presently constituted, (Sept/21), for a period of 3-5 years; or until such time as the housing crisis has been deemed by parties competent to determine same, has been ended.

We hereby demand that this government shall from this time henceforth, collect, collate, study and determine the ODSP/OW suicide rate, and take all appropriate actions to lessen and mitigate these issues. We expect the government to be sincere in these initiatives. Let this government ‘flatten the curve’.

We hereby demand that this government end the practice of dividing benefits into ‘shelter’ and ‘personal needs’ portions, which do nothing other than place burdens on our most vulnerable citizens. This alone is a recipe for homelessness, as we have repeatedly stated; in our communications to this government. Which so far have been unacknowledged.

We hereby demand a raise in allowable assets as applied to ODSP/OW, this especially applies at the time of original application. We demand a ten percent raise in allowable assets, we also demand that all guidelines applicable be clear, easily understood and easily accessed and searched online and otherwise in an easily-accessible form for those of sight and hearing-impaired status. This should also be available in as many languages as are presently found in this polity, i.e., Ontario, Canada and its environs. This includes roughly three hundred and fifty languages.

We demand that this government recognize the right of the disabled, the mentally ill, or any other marginalized group, person or entity, whether collectively or in their own right, to negotiate on their own behalf, as well as on the behalf of others, for any beneficial or charitable reason, for any reasonable reason whatsoever, and that it shall not prejudice their case, or any other cases, that may be shown to be affected by this and other demands.

This government commits to no reprisals, including any form of bureaucratic or ministerial infringement, interference or undue inquiry when faced with such moral or ethical questions or challenges. The government will honour this commitment.

This government understands and acknowledges that charity is not, and can never be, a substitute for adequate, robustly funded social programs that meet the needs of the target demographic and should never be used to solicit positive, front page publicity without any real impact on the issue at question, a situation that has of late become intolerable to any thinking citizen.

We hereby demand that the allowable gifts in any given benefit period be raised from $7,000.00 to $10,000.00 immediately.

We hereby demand that the guideline or provision allowing any charitable institution, a church, a charity, a benevolent association, thereby allowing them to give a disabled person one million dollars for any reason whatsoever, without penalty to their benefits, be immediately raised to two million dollars.

We hereby demand that the practice of clawing back benefits from spousal parties or otherwise, who choose to co-habit a domicile, be ended and that neither party shall lose any part of their shelter portion, neither their personal needs portion or any other portion, whatsoever, under any circumstance whatsoever. No more claw-backs.

We hereby demand that the mileage rate for business, employment or medical travel be immediately raised ten percent, from $0.40/k to $0.44/k.

This government will commit in writing to initiatives that will reduce stigma, reduce the role of race, bigotry and prejudice, sexual or otherwise, in any social services delivery, including reducing barriers to proper service for those suffering from mental health and addictions issues. This also includes issues of sexual dysphoria.

This government will commit no future funding to community nutritionists, on the front pages of local media outlets, who just want to help poor people make better nutritional choices, when this government knows very well that clients of ODSP/OW have no money for food anyways. Honestly, it’s not even a dollar a day for either demographic group. So why bother.

This government will negotiate in good faith with the one million citizens of Ontario, through their representatives, duly appointed or selected, by God if necessary, but otherwise by democratic and parliamentary means, who, in the past have always been the last to be consulted in regards to their own hopes, their own dreams and their own aspirations, and whose lives, families and fortunes, their very futures have always been sacrificed in the past in the interest of those who could very well have done without such unfair advantages at the expense of their less fortunate friends, neighbours and fellow citizens, and who undoubtedly would have done something about it, if only they could have found the time.

This government will also acknowledge that it understands that it has been put on notice; and that it indeed understands that it has been put on notice; and that it also understands its responsibility to respond in an ethical manner, and even in a timely manner, that reflects credit upon itself and upon the taxpayers and the interested citizens of this province.

This government will clearly state that it has failed, and that it will endeavour to do better in the future in the best interest of this polity.

This government will reinstitute food safety guidelines for food banks and homeless shelters, with a view to preventing abuses of the food safety network, e.g. Grade C eggs donated to food banks, which are not suitable for human consumption but only for further processing. Even though agricultural corporations receive substantial tax credits for same.

This government commits to a program of defunding the food bank industrial complex and de-emphasizing homeless shelters and initiatives in favour of longer term solutions including a mix of co-op, geared-to-income, independent and dependent senior housing solutions, as well as more autonomous housing solutions in those cases where such may be applicable, in a person-based model, which is arguably better than whichever model may have come before, in the opinion of this writer.

Which model did come before? That is to say, if the government, or perhaps the Minister, doesn’t mind one million citizens asking a pretty reasonable question.

 

END

 

 

 

 

They'd Gut It If They Got the Chance. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Yesterday my teeth were hurting on the left side. That sort of pain will often spread sympathetically to other teeth, two or three of them in this case. Today, I’ve got a full-blown toothache, which two or three Tylenol 3s barely seem to touch, and that’s with 30-mg of codeine per pill. It’s barely lunch time and that’s a lot of dope. (Washed down with beer. – ed.)

In the past we have noted that the Ontario Disability Support Program pension is really only about $13,800.00 per year for a single adult. In the interest of objectivity, the poverty line is roughly $22,000.00 per year here in Ontario, and this writer is presently paying 69.5 % of that pension in rent.

The landlord just sent a tax receipt and it’s like $9,800.00 per year. It’s nothing fancy, but it was nice and clean when I moved in and lately it’s even been quiet.

This is why we work part-time: so that we can eat something once in a while, something that didn’t come from a food bank, so we can have a car to go to work…an endless cycle, once you get into it, one with not very many good outcomes, or ‘miracles’, as people like to call them.

There’s more. Basically, I just picked up the phone and called my dentist. I’ve got an appointment for next week, and it will be covered by the ODSP Dental Benefit. All I have to do is to show the card. If the doc prescribes, same thing again. Just show the card at the pharmacy.

(All I have to do is to make it through the misery until next week.)

There’s even more to it than that. While a neighbour or a friend might also be getting a base pension of $13,800.00 per year, her medical needs are unique, and much different from my own. I basically didn’t go to the doctor’s for something like seven years before my conscience got on me. She’s in there every month, getting her meds, getting a monthly depot injection, and in her case, the social workers actually show up at her door once a day, to ensure she’s taking the pills. I looked up some of her meds and the cost is substantial. The social workers have to be paid as well as the doctors and the nurses.

Yet in terms of base pension, she’s still living thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, just as I am. Since our medical needs are unique, and being adequately covered, this seems fair enough to me. Insofar as that goes...we'll talk about the rates another time.

To put this in perspective, if someone working full time for minimum wage had to pay for this out of their own pocket, it’s an easy six hundred, maybe a thousand a month for all of the medications that she is required to take. This is why the Province of Ontario’s Pharmacare + program is so wonderful. It’s going to help a lot of people.

The fact is, most patients/workers wouldn’t be able to afford anything like it, and therefore, they really couldn’t afford to work. Certainly not at minimum wage. In some odd sense, people on ODSP and even Ontario Works, (welfare), are better off than the lowest-paid workers. The money is not quite so good, but the benefits are a lot better and you don’t have to put in forty hours a week for some scab employer just to survive—in pain, and in some shit-box substandard housing somewhere.

This, I think, is why they raised the minimum wage.

People simply couldn’t afford to work that cheap anymore.

Just for the record, it wasn’t a Progressive Conservative idea to bring this in. It was a Liberal idea—so far the bad guys aren’t saying too much about it.

But I reckon they’d gut it if they had even half a chance.

END

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Some Respectful Suggestions for the Province of Ontario. Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako




Okay. I just sent this email to incomesecurity@ontario.ca 


Hey, guys.


May I respectfully suggest.

This government would do a very great service to Ontario’s 750,000 clients of the ODSP if they were to raise the allowable earnings from business and employment.

This might be to raise the rate for a single person from $200.00 up to $500.00 per month, and something on the order of $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 per month for single adults with a family of four, i.e., three dependents. A second spouse might qualify for another $350.00 in this scheme.

This government might also consider reducing the rate of clawback, say going from fifty cents on the dollar to something more like twenty-five percent.

The mileage rate for business, employment or medical travel should be raised one cent per year for the next fifteen years, reflecting relatively high fuel and transportation costs and the aging of the population, with a view to preventative medicine and quality of life.

This government should consider a Special Housing Benefit for clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program. This would be over and above proposed and pending provincial and federal housing benefits. This is because clients on the base pension are still at thirty-five or forty percent below the poverty line, this at a time when rents are easily running at 70 % of the pension, in this writer’s experience. Clients are still lining up at food banks, scrambling for odd jobs, and trying to avoid making the smallest mistake, which is stressful to say the least.

Certain disincentives to employment should be addressed, not the least of which is certain bogus mathematical processes of the ODSP and Ontario Works.

Consider the following problem, (and I know you will laugh when you read it. Yet you also know it is true.)

A client makes exactly $200.00 over the allowable limit in any given year. Let’s call it 2017. 

This entitles the ODSP to a fifty percent clawback, of $100.00, off of the total yearly pension and an overpayment is assessed.

The next year, the client works exactly the same hours at the same rate of pay. They’re $200.00 over the allowable earnings limit. Again, the ODSP has the right to assess an overpayment of fifty percent. And so, therefore, ergo, they take another $100.00 off of the yearly pension benefit. As we can easily see, a pension, (using nice, simple, round figures), that once stood at $13,500.00 per year is being eroded, at a rate of $100.00 per year, and yet the client is no better off—in fact, in this scenario, the fact that they are working, no more and no less hours, at the same rate of pay, chips away at their eligible benefit.

They’re losing a hundred bucks a year, for the privilege of saying that they’re working.

Of course, most of us aren’t really capable of doing the math, are we?

And we never think to ask the question.

Louis

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