Social Policy Matters. Louis Shalako.

MPP Bob Bailey, Sarnia-Lambton.

Louis Shalako

Social policy matters.

Social policy at federal and provincial levels has a direct effect on the cost of housing and therefore, homelessness and precarious housing. We need to look no farther than the homeless encampment at Rainbow Park here in Sarnia, Ontario, to see this.

The provincial government, faced with the Covid-19 crisis and the fact that a major segment of the working population had been sent home, put a moratorium on evictions.

The federal government, in order to keep Canadians safe, sent workers home and provided those affected with $2,000.00 in monthly CERB benefits.

The CERB benefit was little enough money to begin with. Many workers were living on much more than $2,000.00 per month. Some people are single, some people have families. All of a sudden, things are really tight. They’re still carrying record levels of personal debt. Something has to give. People feed the kids first. They skip the expensive medications.

They cut and snip and pare down as best they can, making whatever sacrifices they must, and sometimes, are just barely holding on.

Housing costs were already climbing. Some people, through no fault of their own, got behind on the rent. Some people just plain abused both CERB and the eviction moratorium.

This resulted in pent-up demand, once the moratorium was lifted, from frustrated landlords anxious to get out from under paying the costs of units which were not returning sufficient cash flow. Did the provincial government not foresee the effect this would have on the rental market? One would think so, with all of the information available to them.

Did the federal government not understand that immigration levels, up to a million new Canadians a year, would affect the housing and rental market? They have all the facts at their disposal. Did they not think it through? It is a fact that this country has not been building affordable, geared-to-income housing for the vast number of Canadians who do not enjoy comfortable, middle-class incomes. This goes back thirty or forty years.

Ontario social policy at work.

Foreign students are short-term renters. In a time of housing inflation, every unit that comes vacant is another chance to jack the rent. Landlords take advantage of such opportunities. The provinces are responsible for rent control, and would kick up a fuss if the federal government overstepped their boundaries.

In terms of immigration, perhaps too much focus was put on professionals—doctors, nurses, medical technicians, software engineers, rather than construction tradespeople.

Do we need more lawyers in this country. The perception is that they are high earners, who should, fairly quickly, at least be able to pay their own way. There are the true refugees, although those numbers are fairly small.

Many foreign students stay in Canada and make a new life. They were going to need housing, relatively affordable, until they really got going and could afford to purchase their own home. First generation immigrants stick to the larger cities, where opportunities abound. This puts more pressure on those housing markets.

Did either level of government, faced with rising housing costs and rising inflation of a general kind, expect that a free market economy, would, all on its own initiative, and out of the goodness of its heart, build low-end rental units, smaller houses even, when they could wring more profit out of the same footprint, and essentially similar units, perhaps with nicer fittings and appointments?

The difference in investment is not that great.

It seems a bit far-fetched. No government is ever perfect. No responsible government is ever right all the time, or wrong all the time, although the true ideologues would have us believe otherwise.

Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey admitted in an interview with a local journal that the provincial government has ‘no plan’ to raise welfare rates. This is a short-sighted policy, it has had its effects over the course of their mandate, not guided by any real and practical considerations. It’s ideologically-driven. The government probably knows better, it mostly panders to their base, who are subject to all the usual prejudices. It is ideology, rather than good common sense. It prevents the provincial government from putting some rational form of rent control on units which become vacant. This policy really hasn’t been of any great stimulus in terms of increasing the number of rental units in the lower price ranges. The opposite would appear to be true.

Welfare for a single adult in this province is still $733.00 per month. This is clearly inadequate. The average one-bedroom apartment here in Sarnia-Lambton is at least double that and more. It doesn’t take into account, food, transportation, clothing, and personal needs.

There are systemic issues, such as the low level of allowable earnings under social services guidelines. It all tends to keep people in poverty. The attitude is, if you are not suffering on social assistance, then we must be paying you too much—

Let us know when our suffering is good enough.

Housing restrictions mean that if two people on social assistance share an apartment, one must lose all or a portion of their ‘housing portion’. At which point, they can’t afford the rent. We must also ask why any form of social assistance must be divided into ‘housing’ and ‘personal needs’ portions to begin with. It’s not progressive, to write every line of social legislation with a view to cutting down on the costs, with provisions that are baked into the guidelines, leaving little to the discretion of front-line social workers.

Chronically underfunding all social programs is hardly progressive.

Former Ontario Finance Minister, the late Jim Flaherty, had an adult disabled child. It was a cognitive disability as this writer recalls.

A fairly prosperous family, in order to simply provide as best he could for his own child, Mr. Flaherty was instrumental in bringing in the Henson Trust provisions to social welfare and disability guidelines in this province.

Whether or not this was due to his own interest in the future of his child, or just a moment of enlightenment, this policy has been of great benefit to the disabled, the mentally-ill, or otherwise permanently unemployable citizens of this province.

Perhaps love trumps ideology after all.

There are lessons to be learned here.

 

#Louis

 

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Louis Shalako has books and stories in ebook and audio format available from Google Play. A Stranger In Paris is the latest in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series.

Note: this story originally appeared somewhere else.

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This sort of thing is hardly helpful, in the print edition of First Monday, Mr. Cooke goes on and on about pimps, pushers, sex workers, drug addicts and criminals. Since he's not naming names, he is immune to legal recourse in terms of suits for libel, slander and defamation of character.

Ontario Works.

The late Jim Flaherty. (Wiki)

 

Thank you for reading.