When You've Been Had. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Do Ontarians know when they've been had? It's awful hard to prove.

But.

But.

I would say no—they don’t know it, but the truth is, they’ve been had.

The previous Liberal provincial government, shortly before losing the last election in 2018, had announced that they were raising allowable earnings for clients of ODSP/OW.

(Why in the hell they didn’t just do it, I will never know. But it was exactly this sort of mucky thinking that lost them the election in the first place.)

As I recall, it was something like going up to $400.00 per month from the present $200.00 per month.

At that time, the rate of claw-back against earnings was fifty percent, and that was to remain unchanged. This would have made some small, incremental progress in addressing the #income_crisis

Having won the election, the Doug Ford Conservative government announced a ‘social services review’ of about three or four months. They actually extended that by another couple of weeks. During this time, the author tweeted the premier virtually every day on this subject.

They finally announced that allowable earnings for ODSP would be going up to $500.00 per month, for clients of Ontario Works (welfare), up to $300.00 per month. Sounds good, but the kicker was that the rate of claw-backs on earnings over and above that amount, would now be seventy-five percent.

There was no date of implementation announced, and perhaps this is a key piece of information. 

It was never meant to happen.

I could never find anything on the date of implementation, ladies and gentlemen. I’m a highly-trained Canadian journalist, and I’ve been all over this story—going back many years.

So, November rolls around and there I was, trying to find out the date of implementation…

And then…and then, I stumbled across a very recent Toronto Star article, where they say the whole thing has been shelved. This is the first I’ve heard of that. Yeah, and I made certain important business decisions too, based on the whole idea that those guidelines would have to take effect at some relatively near date in the future. We’ve been getting our raises in November, for example, and this goes back some years.

So now, everything goes back, or rather, stays the same—nothing changes. While the claw-back stays at fifty percent, the allowable earnings also stay at $200.00 per month, and this when ODSP is about thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, and OW, more like seventy. Oh, and the people who wrote that article are quoting some quite different figures. 

They say that welfare, at $733.00 per month for a single adult, is fifty percent of the poverty line. I’d like to know where they got those figures, as the poverty line has been well defined by any number of sources, and it’s easy enough to look up social assistance rates. Considering the journalists live in Toronto, it’s quite ludicrous, it really is.

Ah. But.

But.

The government has done something interesting here—they’ve put up a trial balloon. One that appears to have been shot down. One, that it seems, may never rise again…not until the government is ready, that is to say. Two or three months for a social assistance review was never going to be enough time…not when it affects a million of our most vulnerable citizens. 

They may have simply figured that out. They may have known it all along, but the first year of this administration had its own style, one that may perhaps be gone now that it has outlived its usefulness.

Their plan to make it more difficult for the mentally-ill to qualify for benefits, would appear to have also gone out the window. The funny thing is, I never had any problem proving I was crazy—it was the three compression-fractured vertebra they were disputing.

They were convinced I was crazy all right, or maybe I was just a little bit assertive.

(Which they don’t like.)

And now—

The government can be said to have listened to the people. They can be said to appear to have listened to their own base, who honestly believe all poverty stems from moral failure, (otherwise, taxes might be going up), and they can even appear to have listened to those across the aisle of a more liberal bent.

Everyone wins, except those who are affected most—our most vulnerable citizens.

Oh, and it sure sounds to me like we won't be getting that 1.5 % raise, either. You remember--he slashed the three percent raise by fifty percent.

Yeah, there must be a shit-load of ineffectual do-gooders, simply reeling in their effectuality this morning, eh.

And here is the really tricky part.

Maybe we won after all—because it would appear that Mr. Ford and his government still haven’t slashed rates by twenty-two and a half percent, as former Premier Mike Harris and his Conservative government did upon gaining power in 1995. From which we have never recovered, and from which we will never recover.

That’s not to say that they won’t—

But—

I would say that this is a pretty good opportunity for them not to do so—

It’s not like anyone with half a brain is even looking, after all.

No, it’s just me—or us.

This is up to you and me, Doug.

We’re the only ones that seem to care.

END

Poor old Louis, eh. He’s been fighting this lonely battle all this time, but, uh…he has a few books and stories on Kobo.

Image. Stolen from the internet.

Thank you for reading and stuff. January 1 is the tenth anniversary of our independent publishing venture and we’ve been putting some thought into that…

One Single, Concrete and Specific Suggestion to Address the Opioid Crisis. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

So, are you having an opioid crisis?

Well, you’re never going to solve it going on the way you are. That’s because you’re a bunch of dipsticks and you don’t have any fucking ideas.

***

Don’t worry, I’m not here to have a candlelight vigil on the riverbank, in the rather vain hopes of affecting the outcome, (in some miracle from heaven, apparently), not to mention signalling our bourgeois virtue, and values, and, not incidentally, getting ourselves on the front page of our local media outlet like so many other God-damned ineffectual do-gooders.

I have one single, concrete and specific suggestion. (You’ll notice they never have anything. Not one fucking thing, ladies and gentlemen.) Bear in mind, this is just one of many tools, many of which will have to be used in order to actually do anything to combat the opioid crisis. 

It’s very simple. 

Re-list chiropractic care under OHIP and the Ontario Disability Support Program. A few years ago, chiropractic care was in fact partially covered under this universal, provincial, health care program, certainly as it pertained to clients of ODSP. Then, the (Liberal) government of the time, in what was obviously a cost-cutting measure, prodded on in no small part by the lobbying efforts of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, de-listed it. So, I went from paying twelve or fifteen dollars for a chiropractic treatment, to paying full price. These days it’s $70.00 for an initial visit, and $40.00 for each treatment after that.

And of course, when you’re on welfare, or ODSP, (the Ontario Disability Support Program), that’s just what you can’t do. Oh, maybe the middle class, working class people with good pay-cheques can do it. It’s a sacrifice, down at the lower end of the income scale, but they can at least do it. But we could no longer do it.

Of course, we’re still in a shit-load of pain, right? It’s not like the fucking assholes didn’t already know that, because they did.

And of course we’re going to continue to seek out some kind of pain relief, wherever we can find it…

Bear in mind, chiropractic care is fundamentally opposed to pain treatment based on heavy drugs. It is in fact completely drug-free treatment, and in my personal experience, it can sometimes be the only thing that works. The experience speaks for itself: one minute you’re popping pain pills, and can barely get out of bed, on and off the toilet, or up and down out of your car seat. Pulling on a pair of pants is sheer agony, and as a male, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the thought of wearing a skirt.

Anyhow.

The doc snaps your back, and the difference is amazing. You walk out of there a new man, or woman, or person, or whatever.

And it didn’t take any pain pills at all. One must wonder, if this wasn’t the basic problem the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons might have had with it—they’re getting all those kickbacks from Big Pharma, and the chiropractors were taking too many of their patients. 

And here’s the thing. Anything that can treat your pain, and maybe you don’t need to get that prescription for narcotic pain pills in the first fucking place, well. Maybe that would be a good thing. There’s nothing there to abuse, there’s nothing there to get addicted to.

There’s nothing there to sell, and this is a population that has been chronically and systematically starved of money, going back for many decades. You would almost think that somebody somewhere somehow benefits from all that petty crime in the community.

But that, I suppose, is just being paranoid—

Ha.

Ha-ha.

Over the course of time, this sort of action—a real, live, actual action—will have some discernable and measurable effect on the opioid crisis. It would take time of course, (because I know you’re going to want to study it for five years first, just like the housing crisis in this here town), and (of course) with everyone looking for the magic bullet that will instantly solve the problem forever and for good, ah, well. They may be a little disappointed, not getting those instantaneous, miraculous results after all, but then they’re the ones wasting their time, and their candles, down on the riverbank.

They’re wasting all of our time too.

Yet the truth is, there are a few tools in the chest that we might try.  

When the ineffectual do-gooders get involved, there’s really nothing to try, is there…??? 

That’s because they don’t have any fucking ideas except thoughts and prayers. 

 

Which are cheap enough, in the end.

END

Thank you for reading.

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Amazon.

Hugs for the Homeless: Fuck Off, This is a Travesty.

Louis Shalako

Hugs for the fucking homeless.

(Make my fucking day. – ed.)

This story really pissed me off, ladies and gentlemen. I will try to be calm and sensible and explain just why that is.

It’s simple, really. The Canadian journalists who report these stories, whether on the radio or in a community newspaper, never seem to ask any questions. They’re more concerned with making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, in the sense that it’s Christmas. They don’t want to bring anybody down.

No, they’re just being good corporate citizens. No, this is a heart-warming, touchy-feelly sort of a story, and how wonderful it is, that the community will find some dried soups in the back of the cupboard and drop that off at the radio station...

They’re virtue signalling like mad, just like the rest of the bourgeoisie. They want that fuzzy, feel-good glow that comes from making some sort of charitable, public-service announcement that, in the case of radio, is in fact part of the license agreement. Just as they have to play X-amount of Canadian Content, which leads to repetition and a certain, inoffensive boredom-ness if nothing else.

The fact is, young people between the ages of 16-18 can apply for OW, (welfare). There are some restrictions. Reading the guidelines, (which you probably won’t), a simple runaway doesn’t really qualify. But here’s the real problem.

Welfare is only $733.00 per month. This Ministry has always divided subsistence (as well as ODSP, the Ontario Disability Support Program), into ‘shelter portion’ and 'subsistence portion'. This is part of the colossal cluster-fuck of a system that this province has just claimed to have solved in their ‘comprehensive’ 100-day review of social services. Never mind the fact that you can’t find too many one-bedroom apartments in this town even for $733.00 per month. The shelter portion is $390.00 per month. If they don’t have a place, an address of record, they are simply not eligible for that $390.00 per month. Simple subtraction shows that the remainder is $343.00 per month to live on.

Bearing in mind the need to contribute, even for a couch surfer, something in terms of food, laundry, transportation, it is virtually impossible for a person in such circumstances to save up the necessary first and last month’s rent to move into virtually any apartment, shared accommodation or rooming house.

They'd better not be sharing or co-habiting with anyone else on OW or ODSP, because one or the other will have to give up that shelter portion, or both will have to give up some of it.

There’s nothing left at the end of the month for them to save, and quite frankly, that’s damned little for a month’s worth of food—especially, as the piece notes, they don’t have cooking facilities to begin with. It will be, out of sheer necessity, fast food. It will be junk food, just exactly the sort of behaviours that make it so easy for the true, knee-jerk Toronto Sun comments section trolls to bite on. And having bit on that, the fuckers will never let it go, either.

I remember that fucking goof St. Myles of Yappi, in a story in the Sarnia Journal, once said, “People aren’t getting the assistance they need.” Even then, he was careful not to mention Ontario Works or ODSP.

He’s too afraid to piss off corporate donors or just the smug, mealy-mouthed hypocrites that like to call themselves Christians but they’re basically just ignorant. They’re ignorant as all hell, when it comes to any knowledge about the people they are ostensibly trying to help, or what resources are (or aren’t) available, or what sort of circumstances or conditions people are operating in.

When they donate a tin of beans or some stale bread, they actually think that it does something--anything, to end poverty. The truth is, that it doesn't because the problem is structural.

They are extremely careful not to know that.

And that’s a damned shame, because this problem, this travesty, really doesn’t have to happen. It is a choice, and a political one.

I say that because if starving, homeless children isn’t a political issue, then I would sure as hell like to know what does qualify.

In other words, fuck off.

Image: Stolen.

Thank you for reading.

END