On the dole ….on a roll

You know, if you asked the question, “Welfare or a decent job?”, most adults would probably opt for a decent job. The kind of job where you make enough money to have a roof over your head, a job you enjoy and a job which doesn’t make you cringe when the alarm sounds. Most people just want that much, which, when you think about it, isn’t really that much.

In the 50-plus years I’ve been working (after school, part-time, career-wise and otherwise), I’ve had the so-called dream jobs and I’ve had the kind of jobs of which nightmares are made. I have folded sweaters, made popcorn, ushered people to their seats in theatres, cleaned toilets, mopped floors and did home childcare. Even if full-time, some of those jobs wouldn’t have paid-the-piper. You know what I mean. I’ve had jobs that paid so little (one of my dream jobs only paid minimum wage, which at the time was $6.85 per hour), I wouldn’t have been able to live the way I did without some kind of support.

In my case, I’ve had LOML in my world for many of my working years. Don’t get me wrong, there was a time when I was the person who was the chief-cook-andbottle- washer. In the early days of our relationship, I was the principal income earner and by that I mean, “I made enough money to keep us off the street, able to buy groceries, mostly pay the tuition and barely keep the lights on.” We’ve been fortunate, we didn’t feel we had to ask for welfare. Most fortunate. There were days when we weren’t sure if we could actually scrape together enough money to buy those groceries, and we did eat a lot of oatmeal for breakfast, eggs for lunch and hamburger (I am the queen of hamburger recipes) for dinner. We had a lot of family support in the really iffy times and oodles of understanding friends who were in the same boat and didn’t expect gourmet when they dropped by.

I have a point. It’s about welfare/social assistance. I’d like to know, “What’s with all of the derogatory crap, circulating on the internet these days, about welfare recipients?” Many of the posts I’ve read suggest welfare recipients spend “our hard-earned” money on booze, cigarettes and tattoos. And if they aren’t into booze, cigarettes and tattoos, a lot of you think urine/drug testing should be routine for welfare recipients. Really? How is it even possible to indulge your whims when your sole source of support is welfare? The truth of the matter is all social assistance rates in Canada are well below the poverty line—thousands of dollars below what is deemed to be the low income cut off or LICO. When I worked for the federal government, I often collaborated with local social agencies and with people who were looking for work but needed assistance between jobs. I also interacted with the working poor. Working poor people who had full time jobs but didn’t earn enough money to make it from one paycheque to the next. Most of those folks just wanted what you and I want and what many of us have. They wanted a roof over their heads, fresh food on their tables, a decent job and a bit of dignity. So, if your friend’s, friend’s, second cousin’s brother seems to be spending his social assistance on booze, cigarettes and tattoos, I’m guessing he must have an ill-gotten stash of unmarked bills stuffed in his bedroll, a still in his backyard, rolls-hisown smokes and is friends with an artist who does tattoos for the H E double skull and crossbones of it. Of course. Of course, there are people who can navigate a system. And, if your friend’s, friend’s second cousin’s brother is a navigator of the system, statistically he’s part of the less than three percent who take the social assistance police for a ride. The reality is the rate of fraud in the our federal income tax system is twenty percent higher than the fraud rate in the social assistance system. Hard to believe, eh? There are more sweat-of-mybrow, teetotal, smoke-free and tattoo-less folks who work extra, special hard at cheating Revenue Canada than there are shiftless, drunk, smoking, inked-up bums cheating the “money for nothing” system.

Huh and harumph. In a study done by York University, those “job-leaving bums” often cited the most common reason for being without a job was because they’d been laid off or, the employer went out of business, the business closed or the business relocated. Tattoos or not, most folks weren’t/aren’t quitting decent jobs because they want to collect scads of money from the welfare system. As a matter of fact, many welfare recipients are on the rolls because of a lack of work. Keep in mind, workers/recipients don’t get to choose “the reason for leaving,” they just have to deal with it. And sometimes the only way to get by is with some kind of assistance from some level of government.

You know who you are. Knock it off. Our fate isn’t always in our hands. If you are without fault—think about your last income tax return—grab the rock you’ve been living under and toss it.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca