The Two Year Time Limit for Welfare in BC is a vulgar display of free market economics. But when the Welfare Time Limits are compounded with the other regressive social policies of the Gordon Campbell Liberal government the sum total equals a full scale assault on the most marginalized sectors of society.

THE BROAD SPECTRUM OF THE WAR ON THE POOR: how a housing crisis was born and welfare time limits in British Columbia.

The Two Year Time Limit for Welfare in BC is a vulgar display of free market economics. But when the Welfare Time Limits are compounded with the other regressive social policies of the Gordon Campbell Liberal government the sum total equals a full scale assault on the most marginalized sectors of society.

ONTARIO
The Tenant Protection Act of 1997 was a crucial step in the Ontario Harris Governments pandering to property owners and big business. The TPA allowed landlords to raise a unit’s rent 3% annually, took grievances out of the courts and into a specialized tribunal system that allowed landlords to evict tenants more easily. The gravest feature of the TPA is vacancy decontrol; this allows landlords to raise the rent without limit on vacant units. In downtown Toronto many people are now paying over $1,000 for substandard housing (leaky, mouldy, cockroaches etc). The TPA is ugly by its lonesome but when combined with the full spectrum of the Harris Tory agenda it became a disastrous concoction. These regressive policies led to an average of 2,000 evictions a month in Toronto.

Many people collecting a $521 welfare cheque in Toronto are paying more than $500 for a one room substandard unit. Since the deregulation of Ontario Hydro many peoples bills of tripled, large numbers of Hydro cut-offs followed. When reduced to begging because welfare doesn’t cover the cost of hunger and hydro the Metro Toronto Police could ticket you as an aggressive panhandler under the ‘Safe Streets Act’. If the police reported to welfare that you were earning money you could meet a FRAUD INVESTIGATIONS OFFICER. The penalty for welfare fraud in Ontario was a lifetime ban from welfare but was repealed last month. A lifetime ban meant certain homelessness, and for about 75 people every winter on the streets of Toronto homelessness means hypothermic death. This is how a government creates a disaster; they put insurmountable obstacles in people’s way so that many never overcome their situation. In Toronto there are now over 70,000 homeless people with over 10,000 on the streets. One of the only social programs in Ontario that wasn’t cut was child apprehension; they received a 70% boost in funding in order to take the children impoverished by their cutbacks.

BRITISH COLUMBIA
BC has an unemployment rate of 9.4% and economists predicted that there will not be a recovery of the BC economy until after 2007. Minister of Human Resources Murray Coell insists there are plenty of jobs and that welfare time limits will encourage people to look for them. The obvious results will be a depleted job sector flooded with desperate workers, high competition for low wage work, and extra incentives for employers to hire more workers at the $6 training wage. When 27,000 people receive their last welfare cheque this February 25th many will soon end up on the street. To be eligible for welfare a person has to meet the new ‘2 year independence criteria’, which means a person has to have worked two consecutive years earning $7000 or more. The independence rule has already forced youth into homelessness, selling drugs, prostitution, and other degrading ways of subsisting.

February 25th 2004 looks to be the last welfare Wednesday for many poor people. Whatever the initial number will be is uncertain, but every month there will be people whose time comes up creating a constant flow of distraught welfare recipients. When the Ministry of Human Resources changed the definition of disability in 2002 they re-assessed 14,000 people to see if they met the new criteria. Over 30 people committed suicide believing that they would be cut off disability and forced into the streets, many of them were mental health consumers. A leaked government document had estimated that 9,000 Persons With Disabilities (PWD) would be put down to regular welfare. The numbers were considerably lower in the end due to public action; however the re-assessment process remains. PWD’s will be re-assessed every year or two, many will lose their status and be put down to employable welfare where they too will stand to be cut off after 24 months.

Not everyone will be cut off after 24 months, single mothers will lose $100 a month after their 24 months have passed by and two parent families will lose $200. British Columbia has a remarkable history of violence against women (the worst in Canada) the Liberals have responded to this by gutting all essential support systems for women. Thirty women’s centres have lost funding and have closed; couple that with the welfare cuts and a situation emerges where many women cannot leave a violent partner. MLA Kevin Krueger of Kamloops/North Thompson said recently, ‘there is no such thing as women’s issues.’

On January 1st 2004 the new Residential Tenancy Act came into effect in BC, a programme that mirrored Ontario’s disastrous Tenant Protection Act. The new RTA will allow landlords (at their own discretion of course) to raise the rent without limit on vacant properties, as well as make it easier to evict those who can’t afford a 4.61% increase on rent this year. The delisting of rent controls will push the average price up in the rental market. Should a Vancouver tenant wish to fight their evictions through the legal course of action they will find that the Vancouver Residential Tenancy office has been closed; go to Burnaby. With the 2010 Olympic Games on the horizon Vancouver’s property owners are in a position to make a killing. After the Olympic decision came to Vancouver last July 2nd 2003 four hotels closed to convert to backpacker’s hostels, a more profitable market.

Since the Campbell government came to power in 2001 homelessness has more than doubled in Vancouver, some reports say that over 3,000 people are in the streets now. The Vancouver Police Department responded with the Anti-Squeegee Project which entailed harassing ticketing and jailing poor youth. MLA Lorne Mayencourt has been pushing a private members bill to deal with ‘aggressive panhandlers’ and Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell has been pushing to hire 200 more police officers. In response to the Victory Squat the COPE city government passed a bylaw forbidding camping on city property. These are attempts to deal with the poverty they create through heavy handed legislation.

It is the business community that will benefit from the collective assault on poor people. In the Financial Post, Aug 5th 2000 a headline read: Fewer Working, Unemployment Rise Heart-Warming For Economists. Employers want a pool of ready, cheap and willing labour because it means greater profits for shareholders. Meanwhile the government wants to dramatically cut the wages and jobs of ferry workers, loggers, healthcare providers, teachers, welfare workers and more. They are attempting to undermine the collective bargaining power of the unions by creating a surplus of impoverished workers. Very few of the unions have shown any kind of active resistance while most are being totally unwilling to confront the state as unions traditionally did in favour of an electoral NDP solution. Working people in BC are supposed to forget that it was their NDP who first cut welfare in 1996 mirroring Mike Harris’s 21.6% cut in 1995.

Welfare time limits are not an isolated problem for those who are unemployed, and it is just one element of the violent and ideological assault on the people of BC. Every cutback, privatization and policy change compounds itself into a deadly concoction that will put Vancouver into the same category as cities like Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, where homelessness disasters have become impossible to ignore. The Liberals knew all along that the effects of these cuts would have similar results; in fighting back we must show as much mercy towards them as they have shown to us.

For more information on the Stop Welfare Cuts Coalition please contact Lisa c/o End Legislated Poverty at 604-879-0017 or by e-mail at e...@telus.net. Help save ELP, donations and volunteers needed.
Report produced by Joey Only while volunteering at End Legislated Poverty.

http://www.freewebs.com/joeyonly