Reasons to like the 97 Proposal:
- the $850 million of new
money is more than was there before.
- it is designed, and may actually,
extend to the working poor children some of the in-kind benefits that welfare
families now receive.
Reasons to not like the 97 Proposal:
It
leaves in place the basic dishonesty - lack of inflation protection -
de-indexation - which allows governments to creating illusions of increased
assistance for the poor when in fact the opposite is the reality.
- $850
million is not enough.
- $850 million is not as much as it appears (see
below).
- officials are asking for a lot of trust because negotiations are
going on in secret; they don't deserve it.
- we are asked to believe that
provinces will re-invest as promised; some may be disinclined.
- by
ignoring welfare families (see below), it plays into the welfare bashing, a
subspecialty of poor bashing, which is going on in this country.
The $850 million is not as much as it appears.
- most of
the $850 is simply replacing money eroded by inflation since 1993, indeed
since 1984; there's not much new money here.
- an increase in support of
$850 million needs to be placed in context with the cuts to UI, CAP, CHST. The
$850 million is one step forward after many many steps backward.
- much of
the support, an unknown amount, is being funelled through provicial
governments, we do not know, (have not been told), how much will be
re-invested.
Social Assistance families receive no increase in support; in
fact, because they are left in a system which is not indexed to inflation, the
purchasing power of their support will continue to erode.
It leaves aside any low-income family which has limited employment
income.
The most obvious example, are social assistance families, but it
also includes:
- many single-parents, particularly those with pre-school
children who have difficulty arranging employment because of parenting
responsibilities.
- children in families on social assistance because of a
disability.
- children in aboriginal families in isolated communities.
- children in communities suffering severe economic dislocation.
-
communities which traditionally relied on fishing, hunting, trapping.
How could we have configured the $850 million better?
- first,
fully index the benefit, (bingo no losers)
- give the majority of the
assistance to the working poor (2/3 or 3/4 ) but not all.
- use some of
the funds to increase support for welfare and modest income families (don't
help the poor bashers).
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