A Submission to the Government of Canada on the Subject of Poverty Reduction and Housing. Louis Shalako.

A Submission to the Government of Canada on the Subject of Poverty Reduction and Housing

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2017 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-988621-05-0

The following is a work of non-fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names have been withheld. Facts and incidents are the product of the author’s research.

Table of Contents

Submission

The Food Bank

About Louis Shalako

A Submission to the Government of Canada on the Subject of Poverty Reduction and Housing

Louis Shalako

No one is more qualified than I am to consult with this government on the subject of poverty reduction. A good poverty-reduction plan demands good information.

I’ve been on ODSP, a provincial disability pension, for roughly twenty-two years. Last year, I received $13,332.00 in provincial disability benefits. (T-5007)

According to the landlord’s annual statement, in 2016 I paid $9,441.00 in rent. That is 70.1 % of my disability income, rounded off to the tenth. I do operate a small business, and I do work part-time. This income is minimal, and falls well below the federal basic personal exemption, and social assistance isn’t taxable. In Ontario, if you earn above $200.00 a month, on ODSP, they’re clawing back fifty cents on the dollar. Clients can claim $0.18 per kilometre for mileage/deduction from income when staff are getting more like $0.50 per kilometre. This might be considered a disincentive to work, but it also represents a pretty big unofficial tax rate, one far higher than that paid by many Canadians at much higher income levels. Bear in mind that ODSP guidelines for business and employment don’t necessarily recognize the same business or employment deductions as the Canada Revenue Agency accepts as a matter of course. Simply put, it is difficult to increase one’s income on this particular provincial disability pension.

This government’s own figures and other industry experts would suggest that anyone paying much over one-third or 33 % of their income in housing costs is essentially paying too much for their housing.

I know the members will be reading my submission with great interest, and I’m sure the 12.6 % of Canadians who suffer from some form of disability will thank you for listening.

You have to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that the disabled get a raise of one or one and a half percent a year, and the landlord jacks the rent two percent, which eats into a pension which is steadily being eroded by an inflation rate which is always higher than two percent. 

Official figures for inflation leave out food and fuel, which are considered ‘volatile’. After food and fuel, what do low-income Canadians buy? They pay rent or other housing costs.

This is when a raise is not really a raise, isn’t it. Trust me, we can do the math. At some point, the landlord eats up all your cheque and prices you out of the market, which ultimately is not in their interest either. As long as the landlord is allowed to keep chipping away at those pensions, I reckon they’ll keep doing it. I pay the rent, and line up at food banks. It’s been months since I did a laundry. I cut my own hair—I never go anywhere, but the landlord always gets their money.

The disabled, the mentally ill, retired Canadians, find it difficult to move on short notice, now that the Province of Ontario has done away with the Moving Benefit. We are hostages to the profitability of our landlords and we don’t seem to get much respect for it.

They got us between a rock and a hard place, ladies and gentlemen.

Landlords don’t run for election, but this government has little choice but to do so.

The fact that we have food banks excuses a lot of the sins of the bourgeoisie. Because no one is going to starve to death if we do not act.

(My own personal opinion is that nothing will ever change, and things will only get worse, never better. This is based on experience and not just rhetoric.)

Naturally, I understand that this concept might be of some inconvenience to a few folks who have built fifty million dollar companies on the strength of packing their lower-income level buildings with the disabled, the mentally ill, single moms and the elderly. Anyone with a government cheque rolling in makes a good tenant, and a lot of them really can’t articulate their needs, can they? They’re too shy, too demoralized. They’ve bought into the social stigma. Too many Canadians are prepared to let their betters do all the thinking.

Consider me obtuse if you will.

Hence my present duty.

Stuff like that.

Back to the landlord.

...and consequently, relying on all those government cheques rolling in, to build up their own wealth, each and every month, thereby taking 75 % of the income of a disabled person, for example. So this and the provincial government don’t have a problem helping people build up their wealth—as long as it’s the right sort of people…right?

It’s pretty obvious that my disability pension isn’t going up six or seven hundred dollars a month anytime soon. That is a self-evident truth and there is no disputing it. Is that going to build up my wealth? Probably not, but it might alleviate some fucking suffering.

No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not going to build up my wealth, but every stinking penny would be going straight back into the local economy, where it might generate as much as $1.78 in further economic spin-off benefits. You know, like food stamps (SNAP) south of the border. This has been borne out by study after study. Studies are the most useless, and therefore one of the most lucrative things you can do. Not that anyone ever listens, but the market is apparently insatiable. Too bad no one ever listens, eh. That must be terribly disappointing, but you got your money so oh, well.

There are many middle-class Canadians whose entire working lives will be consumed in the work of studying so very many things, studies which will never be used.

Such futility is not unknown in the lives of the poor, either.

One of my first suggestions in addressing the challenge (or opportunity) of low pensions and high rents would be a five-year moratorium on rent increases. This proposal includes those rent increases that fall below present thresholds, for example here in Ontario, any rent increase below two percent does not require review by any relevant body. The tendency here is for the typical corporate property management company to increase the rent every year, regardless of any true need, and in the absence of any major upgrades outside of regular, routine replacement programs due to wear and tear.

This represents corporate welfare in its most insidious form, for it actually carries out the government’s own program—for a price, namely, relatively affordable housing for great numbers of low-income Canadians. All of this, without the added expense on the part of government of actually building and maintaining significant public housing resources, which have been neglected for decades following the federal government’s ‘downloading’ program. 

The private sector gets the profits, the government of the day gets the social, economic and political liabilities. The very fact that this government is consulting on issues of poverty and housing implies some interest or responsibility in this area.

***

I believe it was a previous government who purchased $250 Million in ‘bad debt’ in order to shore up Canadian banks—who allegedly were never in any real danger of failure. A bad case of too big to fail. Interestingly, that particular web-page of the Bank of Canada is remarkably hard to find these days.

What happened there, eh? You’re pretty good about helping business, right?

Perhaps we are too small to worry about, or even consider.

No one has any real desire or incentive to inquire into the moral implications of this long-standing arrangement. However, the service for regular Canadians might be improved.

If you really wanted to. If there was the will.

What’s really strange here at the provincial level is that my electricity is included in the rent—and for whatever reason, the provincial electricity rebate/subsidy doesn’t apply to me. I don’t fit into any category on the website where one applies for this provincial benefit, which theoretically would provide me with a monthly $30.00 to $50.00 in relief. My big question here, is the landlord getting my electricity rebate, and if so, why? And my second question would be, why no reduction in my rent, in view of this subsidy to the landlord, a man who could afford to give $1.2 Million to the Sarnia Foundation.

(A philanthropist is someone who knows damn well he didn’t pay enough in taxes.)

Perhaps the federal government might discuss this unfortunate situation with the government of the Province of Ontario.

When it comes to disability tax credits at the federal level, and there are all kinds of scab outfits claiming to help people get these benefits, for some kind of fee or percentage, a person can’t take advantage of the benefits if they don’t achieve a taxable income in the first place.

Yet some of these tax credits sound pretty impressive, e.g., fifteen grand here and thirty grand there. Mostly, it’s feel-good propaganda, in other words bullshit. (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/disability/ ) I’m sure this is all very useful for the average rich disabled person.

Them guys are pretty thin on the ground around here, and everywhere else, too. There must be a few people who are born rich and disabled. There’s really not too many other ways to get there, is there? Or even to have a decent life, which is really all most Canadians can 

realistically hope for.

This government might consider a renewed commitment to creating and maintaining, over the longer term, employment incentives for the employment of disabled people (whether in the form of cash or various tax incentives) for employers, (hell, maybe even the disabled employee), as well as for the clients of various federal and provincial social programs.

With all due respect to this government, one more mental health/addictions outreach program, funded for six months and with short-term, contract labour doesn’t do much to address the problem of poverty amongst this segment of the population. When people on ODSP are living 35-40 % below the poverty line and single moms and infants on welfare far below that, there are better ways to address these inequities, and make a real impact on exactly the same issues. 

All it requires is a minor paradigm shift, to another way of thinking about the same problem.

***

Here’s a funny thing.

If a person on fucking disability can pay $9,441.00 dollars in rent in a year, they can afford a small house, (in certain markets). The big hurdle is financing—some kind of credible down payment and then a mortgage, which is problematic when someone’s on ODSP at a rate of about $13,500 a year; including some small business and employment income. At least you’re building equity, and you don’t have someone on the other side of a very thin wall at both ends of the apartment. That’s not to say you won’t have an asshole as a neighbour because that is very likely to be the case. I calculated a $50,000 mortgage with ten percent down at around $228.00/month at the current rate, which is at a historic low. Money is cheap, right now. What we need is a plan, one that is long term and not something to be done on impulse. Once certain resources are in place, it is possible to strike when the iron is hot. 

Otherwise it’s a big scramble, followed by the inevitable disappointment when you couldn’t move fast enough. ODSP clients can have up to $7,000.00 in the bank, which very few of us do. We can also receive gifts, which happens sometimes. Unfortunately, we are not all created equal in terms of our parents, friends and relatives. So, how do you save that seven grand...??? Or earn it.

Or convince someone to give it as a gift. The odds are, I will never own a home again.

Yet I had one at one time.

***

This applies to the smaller markets, where perhaps meaningful stimulus has been neglected due to lack of ideas as much as anything else. The provincial government, incidentally, has been consulting on the subject of rural poverty. The federal government might just want to tuck that into the back of its collective mind as homes in the smaller centres are far more affordable than the Toronto or Ottawa markets.

Here’s another thing. One more nutritionist on the front page of the local paper, a big girl who likes to cook and only recently off of welfare or disability, on a six-month contract and a government grant, telling poor people how to make better nutritional choices when they’re lining up at food banks and taking whatever salt-laden, prepared foods of dubious nutritional value, three years past the expiry date (whatever they can get, in other words), would appear to be a waste of public resources, although it does generate false optimism in the minds of anyone not familiar with the realities on the ground and on the front lines of social policy.

What would happen to the economy if this government simply reduced the HST (Harmonized Sales Tax), the combined rates of seven and eight percent currently running at 13 % here in Ontario? All Canadians, at all income levels, would have a significant increase in discretionary spending dollars. Not everyone has the same need, but it is at least across the board, something which virtually everyone could and would support.

No one likes paying taxes, the funny thing is, the people in the best position to pay hate it the most, perhaps because they aren’t receiving the same perceived value from their contribution.

Poor people understand that taxation is essential, otherwise nothing ever gets done.

There are other considerations.

Increased income means increased demand, which means increased production—which implies that this government would have some control or input into the means of production, one of many sources of economic power, and perhaps the most legitimate.

Going back to the times of the Weimar Republic, it’s pretty obvious that excessive inflation wipes out public and corporate debt, destroys the savings of the middle class, and renders the mass of the people no more desperate than before.

In my opinion, this is an option of last resort as it requires great finesse to offset (in the positive sense), the usual, nominal cost-benefit analyses.

The Food Bank

Anyhow, I was at the food bank again today.

I got to the food bank at about twenty to eight and there were a couple of guys already there. 

One guy was saying his apartment is cold and he had to borrow an electric heater. Every 

device in his apartment is on one circuit. He goes to make toast and the fuse blows, there are sparks everywhere. He calls the landlord and the guy never gets back to him. The other guy was saying the person above him is a noisy, party animal sort of a guy, and the guy next door loses it and goes on some kind of psycho rant pretty often. The two are friends, and between the two of them, living there isn’t very good.

Yeah, I know all about it, Bud.

I just laughed.

By the time they open the doors, the chill has gone right through you, and by that time the lower back was screaming...I fell from a scaffolding and broke my back in three places many years ago. It kind of affects you in some ways…

Guy #2 was on Ontario Works and lives in Geared to Income Housing, which sort of confirms my own fears: the place is a zoo, and once you’re in there, they reduce your benefit and it’s awful hard to ever escape that scene.

(It’s okay, ladies and gentlemen. I’m a highly-trained Canadian journalist and I’ve been embedded in the story for 20 + years.)

Guy # 1 says he heats the apartment with the electric oven, an all too familiar story.

You could learn a lot, hanging out in front of a Canadian food bank.

Other than that, I sure hope the members of this committee have a very nice day.

Thank you for pretending to listen.

End

About Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of twenty-one novels, numerous novellas and other short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over thirty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.

Stuck On a Desert Island With Nothing But Your Own Books. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

I’ve often said that a fate worse than death might be to find yourself marooned on a desert island, with nothing but your own books to read.

There’s a grain of truth there.

But last fall and in the early winter, I went on a binge of throwing out old books. I’d read most of them fifteen or twenty times. Some of them were simply falling apart. I kept a few books, also very much read, but the sort of books I might want to read, one more time. Some of them are falling apart too—a bit of a chore to read when lying in bed, but I couldn’t give them up just yet. Those are mostly art books.

The other night, I was getting a bit desperate. Not quite ready to take up William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, or one or two comparable tomes, I finally did the unthinkable.

I went to the short row of my own proof copies, there in a bookshelf in the hallway, and took out something I wrote a few years ago. It’s under a pen-name, it’s about sixty-five thousand words, and it was my first attempt at a thriller. I don’t even have the full set of my own books.

(Lately, I don’t bother, but I do use various spell check programs to check my proofs, as well as preview on Amazon, Createspace, etc. Also, the damned things cost money, you can’t sell them and they’re full of errors anyways.)

What’s interesting, is that I read sixty pages that first night, before putting it aside and falling asleep.

Three or four years later, I couldn’t really say if this is a good book, or how it might compare to a more traditional product. What I can tell you, (bearing in mind it is a proof copy and that corrections were made), is that it’s okay. There are sections that seem a bit muddled—places with a bit of repetition.

There are typos, missing words, and quite a number of sentences that might have benefited from having that one last clause cut.

The sentence was just too long, and that last bit did nothing to add clarity.

I can also say that the characters are okay, insofar as that goes. The story is pretty good, inspired by Alistair Maclean, Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, and a hundred other thriller writers. There are some long and descriptive passages, ones that could be shorter. There is a long, introspective driving scene, where the thoughts pile up and it is probably, once again, just too long. There are some things, many things, which I would probably tend to avoid, with a few more books under my belt.

There are parts where I laughed out loud, and since it has been a long time since I wrote it, a few surprises as I simply forgot basic bits of the story. The structure seems good.

So. It’s not a perfect book, and the final product probably isn’t perfect either. I think I had to write that book, in order to write the one after that, and the one after that, and so on and so forth. I had to write a few books in order to learn the craft. To develop as a writer.

I had to make a few mistakes. I had to risk embarrassing myself, and trust me, that does happen.

I think there is some sort of learning curve, not the least of which is to learn how to finish what you start, to throw it aside, to begin the next one, and more than anything, not to take it too seriously.

Because if you listen to the critics, or even to your own doubts, we would never do a damned thing, would we?

End

(So, Louis. What book are we talking about. – ed.)

(No comment. But if we’re ever marooned on a desert island, this one wouldn’t be so bad. – Louis.)

Thank you for reading.

Working Part-Time, Operating a Business Under Ontario Disability Support Program Guidelines. Louis Shalako.

Okay, so I have a small publishing business, and I also work for someone else part-time.

I’ve been on the Ontario Disability Support Program for over twenty years.

I called my social worker and asked a few questions.

I asked about the Work-Related Benefit, the Business Start-Up Benefit, and other questions.

But here's an interesting question that I didn't ask. If you can only get the Work-Related Benefit after earning $100 in a month, and if you don't go over the income limit, what effect does it have to have expense deductions...??? If you're below the limit, you don't need the deduction. You need to get up the max level, (which I take to be $200), and only then claim an expense, in order to offset their fifty cents on the dollar claw-back for everything over the limit. Right? And you are allowed deductions, after all.

But. It seems to me, if you don't need the deduction, don't claim it—bearing in mind you might make a lot of money just before the end of the year. This is more of a question than a statement.

I'm being told they go through a year's worth of reports and then adjust the next year's income. And you can only claim an expense during the month you made the purchase. Yet at some point in the process, they must average the total on a monthly basis. If you made more than $2,400 in a year, with no deductions, they want fifty cents on the dollar.

Is it that simple?

If you're on disability, the odds are you aren't sophisticated enough to pick off those sorts of questions. Let alone figure out what's the best thing to do. And sometimes your social worker doesn't know either.

One wonders if they deduct a $100 expense against $50 income in a given month, and then what? Use the negative integer in determining the monthly average of the yearly income...??? In which case you’re a lot less likely to qualify for the $100 Work-Related Benefit.

No one tells you this, they let you flounder around on your own. And it's a lot to remember anyways. We don't even know what questions to ask, sometimes.

Now, a few people over the years have said the ODSP 'helped someone buy a house.'

According to the social worker, they do not. It’s funny how people insist that they are right, to the extent of getting angry if you contradict them—even in the light of facts supplied by ODSP staff.

The only circumstances that they could be talking about would be an inheritance, a big gift, a lottery win, or a big windfall of some sort. Theoretically, you could put a down payment on a house, and they won't hit you with an over-payment by saying that it's income. Theoretically, someone could also give you a house, and it’s not considered, ‘income.’ But that is my interpretation—I didn’t actually ask that question.

As for the Business Start-Up Benefit, that is only if I start up something new—as of now that's not true. I started working for someone else, part-time, last June.

As for the internet, we agree it is vital for the publishing side, and for my labour side one must presume, as I blog and take photos for a customer and all of that. I doubt if the phone will be apportioned, but you never know. Yet some portion of that is definitely used for business. When you consider how few personal calls I get, I would say the majority of it.

You're only going to get so much out of five or six minutes on the phone.

I also think it would be pretty easy to get discouraged, to lose part of your income or other benefits unnecessarily, and ultimately to say, ‘to hell with it—it’s just not worth it.’ And yet the ODSP and the government cheerfully admit that the disabled have the right to work.

In fact, they even encourage it to some extent, judging by the slick radio ads.

***

The ODSP is unlikely to give much more than a one or two percent raise per year, (which is actually below the level of inflation and represents a yearly net loss of income), and nothing if the Conservatives win election, for the duration of their mandate.

In future, it would be beneficial to peg annual increases to the level of inflation, or two or three percent, whichever is more.

Bearing in mind not everyone would be able to benefit from these changes, the best thing the ODSP could do would be to raise the allowable earnings limit, and also raise the mileage rate from $0.18 to something more in line with industry standard. Some of the other guidelines are pretty murky, which must be a pain for staff as much as for the client.

Also, income support decisions can be appealed and must be provided in writing, along with instructions on how to ask for an internal review, and ultimately an appeal. Yet it is unclear whether decisions to withhold some other benefits can be appealed. I couldn't find anything on that on the website, nothing really clear anyways. The thing is, there's not much point in appealing if there's no way to win. Getting in the face of the staff isn't helpful as they're not the ones who wrote the guidelines. They're as hamstrung by guidelines as the client is.

#ODSP

Louis Shalako books and stories are available from Amazon.

Photo Credit.


Thank you for reading.