The Great Canadian Delusion. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

To do the same thing over and over again, and to expect to get different results, is a form of madness.

Welcome to the Great Canadian Delusion.

Food drives and food banks are not a solution to poverty. They’re not even a solution to food insecurity. This totally obvious fact has been so studiously overlooked. Locally, the St. Vincent de Paul food bank allows ‘clients’ to come back every six weeks. The same for the Salvation Army. The Inn of the Good Shepherd allows you to come back every three weeks. 

You can go to all three, and answer a few basic questions, ‘needs-based’ questions, and they will give you some food. Sounds like a solution to me, you say. Bear in mind that locally, you cannot access a food bank more than once every ten days. And the truth is, you never get ten days of food. That would be thirty, full and wholesome meals. The truth is, you don’t even get ten. You get maybe five or six meals, none of which are particularly good, and some incidentals. And the landlord is taking seventy percent or more of your disability pension in rent. The same is true for minimum-wage or part-time workers, precarious workers, pensioners and senior citizens.

What is sort of missed here, is that food bank administrators are perfectly aware that their clients will be coming back, again and again and again, on some sort of routine basis…they have been doomed to do that, every ten days or so, for the rest of their natural lives. That doesn’t sound like much of a solution to me.

The implications of that are profound. The people who promote or participate in food drives and volunteer at food banks are deluding themselves. Anyone who donates is deluding themselves, if they honestly believe that this is a solution.

It is a collective delusion if we think that this is ever going to work. For surely, if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. And food banks have been around forever, although the real period of growth stems from 1995, and former Premier Mike Harris’ ‘Common Sense Revolution’. Needless to say, the gentleman was a Progressive Conservative.

His gutting of social services, the 22 % reduction in welfare rates, a freeze on any sort of increase to provincial disability pensions, was purely ideological.

That’s not to say that there weren’t food banks and poverty before, but that one definitely had an impact.

Get a Job.

The idea behind making life tough for those on welfare, was to force them to get out and get a job. The tragedy was that so many of those targeted were vulnerable individuals to begin with, single mothers with infant children, people with mental health issues, disabled or partially-disabled persons who simply failed to qualify for a disability pension, and just when they needed it most. There are also addiction issues. The problem here is one of employability. They may appear to be able-bodied.

I’m always sort of amused when I comment on social issues and someone indignantly tells me to ‘get a job’. One, I have a job, and two, just because I disagree with you doesn’t make me a drooling idiot, a lazy cunt or some guy just out to fuck the system.

That sort of stigma is irritating to say the least. (And you keep spreading it with that big old shit-spatula of yours.) When they say that, I always think of the seventy year-old woman with swollen ankles, the bare feet, wearing Crocs in February, in her sack dress, no coat, no gloves, no hat, and with the rather unprepossessing young man to drive her. I think of my nephew, with Down’s Syndrome, diabetes and on a waiting list somewhere for his third kidney…the guy in the wheelchair with stumps where his feet used to be.

I think of Bill, with his schizophrenia, controlled by medications but he’s still kind of disruptive and totally unemployable because sooner or later he’s going to talk to a customer…Jim Morrison, the name somehow randomly interjected into his sentences, which now make no sense at all.

(I tried that on him once, Jim Morrison, and he looked kind of hurt, ah, I have to admit.)

Getting a job simply isn’t an option for some people, for all kinds of reasons. The thing with the guys who have all the easy answers, is that they have never spent a real minute thinking about the problem. These are the ideologues, and they are completely immune to the facts.

Structural Problems.

In Ontario, if you’re on disability, (ODSP), the maximum monthly benefit would be $1,169.00 per month. That’s about fourteen thousand a year. Only trouble is, the poverty line is more like twenty or even twenty-two thousand a year, and this is a small town.

You would need a lot more than that in Toronto or some other major centres. So, in order to just bring someone up to the poverty line, you need from six to eight thousand a year to do that. At thirty cents a packet, that’s anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four thousand packets of Ramen or Mr. Noodle. And the unfortunate truth is, the people you are trying to help, simply can’t eat that much dried soup. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t eat that shit fast enough…and so, we will always be poor, one must assume.

Here’s another structural problem. The director of the local food bank will never tell you this. 

He can’t. It’s a political statement—and as someone who has the power to write a tax-receipt, he cannot make political statements or risk losing that cherished tax-exempt status.

That fucking charitable status. They give that up, and next thing you know, the church will be paying taxes on income, and we can’t have that now, can we. As for the government and the taxpayers, they’re saving themselves an easy six to eight grand a year, per person, by denying to the most vulnerable of people, that most fundamental of human rights, the right to a home, and the right to a full belly at some regular and sustainable interval. There are a million people in Ontario on ODSP and OW.

Here’s a structural problem, one that few people have considered or understand the implications of: clients of the ODSP and OW, (welfare), receive benefits either by cheque or direct deposit. These are invariably divided into ‘shelter portion’ and ‘personal needs portion’. This is such an effective tactic at perpetuating poverty and homelessness, I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was a sort of universal in terms of state and provincial benefits of this type worldwide. The problem, of course, is that once a person becomes homeless, they are no longer eligible to receive the shelter portion—this is $479.00 per month for ODSP clients. 

The fact that this comes nowhere near the cost of an apartment is not particularly relevant here. But we are asking homeless people, with not even enough money to eat, to somehow save up first and last month’s rent so they can get off the street again. This is especially impossible on welfare, which, in total is a measly seven hundred or so a month—and that’s divided into shelter and personal needs portions as usual. Now, this would always be presented as an act of fairness, to those of us who are still in our homes and still paying the rent faithfully…after all, I don’t get my whole cheque just to blow, just to party with every penny, each and every month. (An example of bourgeois thinking, which is a big contributor to our structural problems.) So, the government is being fair to me, by being totally ignorant to someone else, and of course I should feel just how blessed I am, because after all, that is not me. Although it could be me, easily enough.

It’s not like I haven’t lined up at food banks, every ten days or so, for about the last twenty or thirty years myself. Right? It’s not like I didn’t live in my sister’s basement while waiting to get into this building…right.

The solution is so obvious, that I’m the first person who ever thought of it. If someone becomes homeless, why not give them the personal needs portion, and then hold in trust, in a bank account in their name, the shelter portion of their benefits. It might take a few months, with a client couch-surfing, or living at the homeless shelter, but sooner or later they’d have their first and last month’s rent. You could even start off a brand-new ‘intake’, (that’s social services talk), a homeless person, and after some time, they’d be able to start looking for an apartment. One that is hopefully something other than a flophouse in dope-loser alley somewhere.

There are many structural problems, which not only make it difficult to alleviate poverty, but also cause it in the first place. Low wages, part-time and precarious employment, poor skills development, illiteracy even, simple lack of opportunity, high rents, high-crime environments, mental health or physical health issues. I hate to break it to the bourgeoisie, the suddenly-all-one-word-in-local-media mental health/addictions tag is probably one of the lesser causes of poverty. To you guys, it seems to be the only cause of poverty, which reveals the unenlightened self-interest that pervades much of the thinking on this subject. I may be reading between the lines here, but it is the most sophisticated form of reading after all.

Back to low wages for a moment. When the previous, (Liberal) government raised the minimum wage, retail outlets, including the Tim Horton’s chain of franchised coffee shops, protested that this would drive up costs, and therefore prices, and that they would lose customers and therefore sales would suffer. The new (Conservative) government listened to their cries and put a stop to another wage increase set for January 1 of this year, 2019. They did not raise their prices, or by a nickel maybe. And now, less than fourteen months later, after the first increase had taken effect, going from eleven bucks an hour to over fourteen, (a significant increase one would agree), Tim Horton’s introduces a new customer rewards card. 

For every seven cups of coffee, Tim’s will give you one free cup of coffee or a ‘treat’, a doughnut or a muffin, a cookie, whatever. A medium coffee is a $1.80 value—to the customer, although the retailer pays somewhat less, bearing in mind markup on the product and that fucking taxpayer and donor-subsidized labour.

And here’s the interesting thing. If you can afford to give away every seventh cup of coffee, you could afford to pay each and every one of your employees something on the order of sixteen to seventeen dollars an hour, perhaps more, considering that the average employee serves many more cups of coffee—or treats—than seven measly cups per hour.

Arguably, we could reverse-reason this, or ‘invert it’, where we take it upside down and give it a good shake. See what falls out of the pockets, but the fact is, they could also lower prices—all of their pricing on coffee and donuts and products of that ilk, by one-seventh, and still be profitable.

They would still be profitable.

So, structural problems are not just what the laws say, or how a program is administered, or what is in the guidelines, or why some food bank administrator can’t make relevant comments on social programs. Structural problems also exist in our minds, in how we look at things, and in our unconscious assumptions about this or that or any other problem.

One of the biggest structural problem lies in the area of education. Generations of schoolchildren have cheerfully collected ‘food for the hungry’. They have, essentially, been brainwashed into accepting the necessity of food banks and food drives, and worse, into thinking that it actually accomplishes something. The thought of kids going home and telling their parents they’re collecting food for the hungry, and the parent knows damned well that some of those shit canned goods in the back of the cupboard came from a local food bank…my blood boils sometimes.

And it will never really accomplish anything. Not until we change our thinking about poverty, its causes, and its solutions, of which there can never be one, but only several.

Possibly even many, which sounds daunting but actually gives us plenty of levers—tools, ladies and gentlemen, which we can use to affect some positive outcomes.

When the Canadian journalists don’t even know what questions to ask, because they’ve never experienced it, and when the advertisers and the sponsors don’t want them to talk about it anyways, this is a structural problem.

Local Radio and other media.

Local radio in Canada operates under license from the CRTC. Part of the terms of the license involve a ‘promise of performance’. Ignoring issues of Canadian Content guidelines and profanity on the airwaves, part of that license stipulates that they must do news content. They must do free public service announcements. Predictably, promoting food drives, food banks and homeless shelters, falls right into line with that, and it’s just too easy for them to go along with it, without really thinking about the issues. They’re there to play the music, run the promotions and the games, and to enjoy their day and to have fun. It’s a fun job, after all.

They’re out there, madly signalling their community spirit and their moral values, and they have literally no idea of the harm they have been doing in the long term. While it is surely not some vast global conspiracy, surely it is not complete coincidence either.

These guys are contract employees. They’re not going to buck head office on a point of principle.

It’s not that they’re not nice people. It’s just that they don’t know any better, they’ve never really thought about it, and the real corporate types are not the ones who are going to inform them.

This is about keeping people scared and hungry, and therefore, dependent upon their scab employers, virtually all of whom advertise on local radio. This is the sort of stuff that only gets discussed behind closed doors. There’s a certain eye-to-eye going on here.

Raising Awareness.

Raising awareness has never changed a single thing in this world. A case in point is the opoid crisis. Virtually everyone over the age of seven, certainly in North America, has heard of the opoid crisis. It has what the marketers would call ‘a hundred percent penetration’ rate. My question for the ineffectual do-gooders, standing around on the riverbank holding candles, raising awareness of this or any other issue, is always the same. What single, concrete and specific action, assuming the government or anyone with any power to do anything at all, is listening, what would you recommend? And they never have anything.

They have nothing, ladies and gentlemen, and yet, oddly enough, they always somehow manage to end up on the front page of your local media outlet. But then, the journalists, most of whom stem from the middle class, know very well it’s not going to work.

However, it does help to sell newspapers. It sets a certain tone for the community. More than anything, it goes along very well with the needs of the advertisers and their corporate agenda.

Track ODSP/OW suicide statistics.

Speaking of ineffectual do-gooders raising awareness. This is especially true when the issue of suicide is involved. Too many people line up at city council, or county council, or petition the government for funding. They want to ‘educate’, they want to raise awareness, of issues related to suicide, mental health, or addictions. And yet, in the case of clients of ODSP or OW, (welfare), there is presently no tracking of suicide statistics. 

How in the hell would you ever judge the effectiveness of such programs, when you have no statistics. But they, apparently, don't care about how effective it is.

They just want to be seen to be 'doing' it. When really, they ain't. Oh, we can tell you how many cops commit suicide in any given year, how many firefighters, or doctors, or psychologists. All relatively small, demographic groups. And here's this big old demographic group, over a million people here in Ontario--and you simply can't be bothered. Although you would like some money and possibly to get yourself on the front page.

#fuck_off

For one thing, surely this demographic group is at far higher risk, and everyone ‘knows’ it. But to officially know it, is to be holding a very hot political potato, for surely something would have to be done about it—and that can only mean effective programs, actions, specific and concrete actions in order to positively affect the outcomes. And let’s face it: there’s been plenty of awareness raised. Surely no responsible government or politician could ignore such statistics. It is a known fact or correlation that income levels have an impact on mental health outcomes. This would appear to include suicide, and so, why do we not do this?

Money. That’s why. It’s going to cost them some money and they know it.

That’s just the truth, ladies and gentlemen.

And they don’t want to do it.

You, you don’t want to do it.

In order to hide that fact from yourself, you have to work at it.

To do this is to become delusional.

Jim Morrison.

A Concrete and Specific Suggestion.

Okay, here’s a specific, concrete suggestion on the subject of ending homelessness. My proposal would be to put a cot or a set of bunk-beds in the lobby of every Canadian banking institution that has 24-hour ATMs there, ah, so that the homeless wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.

Does that seem like madness to you? Because it is no more madness than what you are presently doing.

When it comes to poverty and local food banks, it strikes me that anywhere from seventeen hundred to over two thousand people use it in any given month, and this in a city of only 72,000 people. Many of them are elderly, many are women and children.

What is even more striking, and I read this in a fairly recent news story, was that there were something like thirteen or fourteen hundred volunteers going through that place in that year. It is, in fact, an ‘approved’ venue for high school students to do their volunteer component—and you can’t graduate without it. A food bank serves other needs as well—this is where the Kiwanis and the Optimists and the Rotary club oldsters, the church groups, anything up to half a dozen people at a time, go in and make soup for the people.

The fact that community journalists get good copy out of such things is an additional bonus.

The thing has been institutionalized to such an extent, and the bourgeoisie has an awful lot invested in it.

END

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Image. Stolen.

Thank you for reading.