Louis Shalako Poops On Canadian Food Banks.

Louis Shalako

Some commenter on Youtube was all incensed. He told me I was ‘lucky’ to line up at food banks, and he stated that I was ‘lucky’ to be able to go every ten days, and that ‘most places it’s only once a month’. So I decided, in all fairness, to do some fact-checking.

https://www.foodbank.bc.ca/find-help/how-often-you-can-access-food/

“...on average, in Halifax, you can go once a month”.

So, dickweed maybe had a point to make after all—

HOW OFTEN YOU CAN GO AND WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE

Each food bank is a little different, but on average you can go once a month, and you’ll receive 3 to 5 days of food per person in your household.

https://www.feednovascotia.ca/find-food/what-to-expect

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hungercount-quebec-food-bank-demand-increase-1.3851019

“Sun Youth assigns one day per month for food distribution to each group. It is strongly recommended to the people concerned that they pick up the products related to their needs on the scheduled day as the availability of some products is dependent upon the donations Sun Youth receives. Senior Day is the first Monday of the month, Kosher Day (day for seniors requiring kosher food) the first Thursday, the Day for pregnant women is the second Tuesday of the month and Magic Day (day of HIV positives) the second Thursday.”

http://sunyouthorg.com/en/services/emergency/food-assistance/#supplement

Hmn. Another once-a-month food bank. Sure hope you’re not on disability. This is the one where you’re paying 70 % of your income, which is thirty or forty percent below the poverty line, in rent. Assuming you have a phone and wear clothes, this leaves $1.25 per day to ‘budget’ for food, according to certain front-page nutritionists, big girls who just like to cook, on a six-month contract and a government grant.

After that, they’ll be back on welfare, living in no-daddy alley, and having no idea that they were basically just conned into making such statements. Still, if it moved a few rutabagas, some corporation somewhere gets a tax credit for their donation of some rotten old produce.

http://www.thrivecyn.ca/directory-of-services/health/food-banks-st-johns-mt-pearl/

Winnipeg: once every two weeks. Bear in mind, larger cities have more than one food bank. 

Locally, our three major food banks have a computer system, which tracks entries and they know when you’ve been to another food bank. If it’s a long weekend, and if you had to work, you were in dialysis, your kid was hit by a car, whatever you do, don’t show up a day early or they’ll give you shit for something.

http://winnipegharvest.org/need-help/need-food/

No details on how often you can go, but they take special note of the ‘gratitude’ and the ‘hope’ when someone gets a box of food.

http://crs-help.ca/foodbank/programs/foodbank/

Yeah, the cocksuckers are hoping to live another 1-3 days without blowing their brains out.

North Bay, Ontario: 1-3 days worth of food, once a month. If that ain’t a solution to poverty, I’d sure as hell like to know what is.

#Ontario_Chamber_of_Commerce

http://foodbank.sofaproduction.ca/need-help/#foodbank-hours

Kenora and District food banks provide 1-3 days food, once a month to every three months...

#national_disgrace

https://www.northwesthealthline.ca/listServices.aspx?id=10572&region=KenoraDistrict

...wow. That is some solution to poverty, ladies and gentlemen.

#local_radio

I’ve often wondered if these guys are as quite as stupid as they make themselves out to be. If these guys had spent half as much time fighting poverty as they have glorifying food banks, something might have actually been done about it by now.

Another good-news, heartwarming story from Canadian Journalism.

#fuck

Temporary Food Bank still going strong after 25 years.

http://www.simcoereformer.ca/2016/03/09/food-bank-going-strong-after-25-years?utm_source=addThis&utm_medium=addthis_button_facebook&utm_campaign=Food+bank+going+strong+after+25+years+%7C+Simcoe+Reformer#.Wn9m9rs9JIA.facebook

SOME OF THE BEST FOOD BANKS IN THE WORLD ARE IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO!!!

#Ontario_Chamber_of_Commerce

Five fucking stars in the Michelin Review of Canadian Food Banks.

I’m sure.

#Doug_Ford

Yeah, that 1-3 days of food from a Canadian food bank sure makes up for a lot—like the missing $1,000.00/month from your disability pension. You know, considering the poverty line in this country is $20-22,000.00/year and everything.

#fuck_off

Oh, boy, look at all those lovely food banks. This is a good link, I know that because it’s posted by the fucking Health Department.

#Canadian_Journalism

https://www.eriestclairhealthline.ca/listServicesDetailed.aspx?id=10572&region=ChathamKent

...fuck, they’re working their asses off, institutionalizing it...I hear Doug Ford wants to set up a Ministry of Food Security, and rationalize it, perhaps even privatize it. Then some Toronto Sun commenters get to decide who is deserving poor and who isn’t.

#fuck

https://www.thefoodbank.ca/

Yeah...look at all that hope, ladies and gentlemen.

#joy_to_the_fucking_world

No word on how often you can go, but three day’s worth of food from the Salivation Army in Windsor.

#fuck

https://windsoressex.cioc.ca/record/WIN1190


END

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ODSP Guidelines Are Bloody Murder. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

One of the interesting things about the Ontario Disability Support Program, is how the guidelines for income support tend to actually keep people in poverty.

Bear in mind, it was never meant to provide anything more than basic subsistence. When it was instituted, it was ground-breaking stuff and very welcome. That was because there was simply nothing there before.

In previous stories, I have talked about the guidelines for business and employment, where there is limit to how much a person can earn before being hit with a fifty percent claw-back on each and every dollar earned over that limit. The government has never denied that the disabled have the right to work, in fact Dalton McGuinty, former premier, even put it in writing for me: “You have to right to fully participate in the life of this province,” this letter from about 2006.

I really ought to have that framed.

In the case of someone getting into geared-to-income housing, a previous story noted how the rent is pegged at one-third of income, rather than one-third of the shelter portion, based on a client’s monthly benefit.

But ignoring whether someone is in subsidized housing or simply renting, or in the odd case, still owns their own home, there are other ways in which this subtle discrimination works. 

The guidelines were written by some of the best lawyers, incidentally—which is why you have to read it carefully.

If an adult on the ODSP pension enters into a relationship, and if a couple moves in together, then the one on ODSP will have their shelter portion reduced, possibly even eliminated, assuming the partner is making enough money—and it doesn’t have to be much. They might be barely making the poverty line, for a single adult, already. Now their spouse loses the $489.00/month shelter portion of their disability pension. This leaves them $662.00 per month (their personal needs allowance) to contribute to the family’s home accounts. We can see the financial part of this relationship is already off to a bit of a rocky start. People are barely getting by on minimum wage, and now a person is in a relationship with a disabled person, who has just lost a good chunk of their pension.

The same thing is true if two people on ODSP, or Ontario Works, fall in love, decide to start a family together, and to cohabitate. Either one must lose the shelter portion, or both partners lose half of the shelter portion. Boy; that sure sounds nice and logical. Yet there is no way anyone can get even a one-bedroom apartment in the Province of Ontario for $489.00 per month. You can maybe get a room, one room, with shared kitchen and bath facilities, in the typical downtown rooming house. Here in Sarnia, there’s one advertised at $95.00/week. 

How this is going to work for our honeymoon couple is open to some debate…but at least they’d be together, assuming there isn’t a sign on the door saying, ‘limit one occupant per room’, but then, if they were in different rooms, it’s back to the status quo. Both are now entitled to the shelter portion again.

Hey—they can still share a kitchen and a bathroom.

All of this tends to prevent clients of the ODSP from bettering their situation, assuming one believes that two can live as cheaply as one. My old man would have said, “Yeah. As long as one is a horse and the other one is a sparrow.”

A very wise man, my old man—

Okay, so a single adult gets about $13,800.00 per year in pension. Mathematically two such pensions in the same household would add up to $27,400.00 per year, and with some (home) economics of scale, it is arguable that there would be some savings. This could not possibly add up to anything like 12 x $489.00 per year. Which is what they lose by moving in together. 

The funny thing is, marriage, is subsidized in so many ways, at almost any other socio-economic level.

As long as you’re not disabled, as long as you’re not on the ODSP pension or Ontario Works.

If a couple, or the one partner on ODSP, could keep their full pension, this would result in income that had been loosened up. They would be unburdened by the need to pay a substantial portion of rent for a one-bedroom apartment, some of which would always come out of a single client’s personal needs portion—the other part of what is actually one payment, with the division into two categories as it is presently shown on ODSP payment stubs basically bullshit and they all know it. The disabled are the ones who can’t figure it out.

Now, in terms of equity, or as some prefer, inequality, a couple, both of whom are working full-time, minimum-wage jobs, would not be hit with the same penalty—yet the penalty is imposed on Ontario’s disabled, who number among our most vulnerable citizens.

No, we only have the nerve to do that to the disabled.

Anyone else, and they’d be screaming bloody murder.

END

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