All You Have to Do is to Listen. Louis Shalako.

Returned a suit, told a funny little story...#psychology

Louis Shalako

I returned my brother's suit, which I had borrowed.

And I know he’s been kind of suffering lately.

All you have to do is to listen—

I set up a lead-in, asking if the one boy has been laid off...yes. The other one still doesn't have a job, apparently staying up all night on the computer. I told my brother that he was suffering from depression. 

"All the signs are there," I told him. 

I went on to tell him the story. Big Frank was in the union. He knew what a layoff is. Yet when I was laid off from Fibreglas Canada, he was fucking fit to be tied. To him, it was a cop-out of some sort on my part--Frank wasn't a bad father, merely typical. He didn't have a real high opinion of his oldest son, who was, quite frankly, eighteen years old. He'd also co-signed a loan so I could buy an MGB for $1,500.00. That must have been a factor as well. So, after a couple of weeks or so, I started at Holmes Insulation. And it was terrible. It was a thousand times worse than Fibreglas, with the soft, sticky white wool floating in the air. Supposedly a twelve-hour shift, I walked out after four hours, or about the time when, (literally), for break-time, guys walked twenty feet to a picnic table right beside the effing production line. To eat a simple ham sandwich was to crunch on rock wool, ladies and gentlemen.

I cleaned myself up and went downtown to the federal building and talked to a recruiter for the Canadian Armed Forces. I told the man all about Big Frank. I told him the army would teach me some discipline--I told him it would 'make a man out of me', feeding him all the same bullshit that well-meaning folks dish out all the time. I told him I would get my teeth fixed in the army...I told the man they'd buy my clothes, my boots and feed me, give me a bed. Get my Grade 12, all of that sort of thing. The man suggested I come back in a week. If I still felt the same way, they'd sign me up. I got home about two-thirty p.m., within a few minutes, the phone rings. Fibreglas wants me back, for seven a.m. the next day. 

Big Frank usually arrived home a little after three. I played him real good--I told him I had to quit at Holmes, of course his face starts to redden and the mouth starts to open...I told him I had gone down to the recruiter, and they wouldn't have me...some kind of maturity problem, I told Frank frankly...poor old Frank was working himself into a fine lather by this point, and then I told him I was going back to work the next morning. And it was just a routine layoff, Big Frank: get over it, it happens, as he should damned well have known. But my old man was never so scared as when contract time rolled around, there was talk of a strike and he had all those useless mouths and a mortgage to feed. It's not that we didn't understand--it's not like he hadn't lectured us enough on the subject.

When my brother was 17, he and Big Frank were at such loggerheads, he threw a few things into the ’67 VW Beetle and took off for Windsor to live with our mother for a while. Even then, I had patience—I could sort of sit there and take it, (what with having an actual job, not to mention that fucking MGB), but The Duke was cast in a slightly different mold. It’s not like I didn’t leave home a few times—and come back, too. Quite frankly, I didn’t really grow up until some time in my late thirties, possibly early forties. I told him that too—my brother, I mean.

This is about when you look around you and realize that some of your friends aren’t even trying, while you, try as you might, seem to fail miserably about as often as you succeed at anything of any great import. There are clearly some lessons to be learned here. And some of those old friends still haven't really tried, anything at all.

The problem, is that you have three stubborn males, money is tight, and Dad is on a small disability pension. They’re also in affordable, geared-to-income housing, and subject to some rules…no matter where you are, or what you are paying, there’s going to be some rules, but one would think the three of them could figure a way to keep a roof over their heads and quite frankly, no one person has to do all the work and provide all the money for their sustenance. And neither nephew seems to be trying all that hard, but they’re young and they have their whole lives ahead of them.

They will get tired of having the old man all over their back. It's just a question of time.

As for myself, I may be practising psychiatry without a license, but it’s family after all.

Let’s hope we can plant a few seeds here and there.

 

#Louis

END

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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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