Change Your Thoughts And You Change the World.

Louis Shalako.

According to the news, clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program will now be able to earn up to $6,000.00 per year without deductions. If true, and if it works as advertised, that would be up from $2,400.00 per year as it currently stands.

What will happen, is that all ODSP (and OW recipients), will get a notice in the mail regarding the changes to the system. There are some less positive changes, including a new definition of disability, which will make it harder for those with mental health issues to qualify for ODSP, as well as injured workers.

Having fallen from a scaffolding and broken my back in three places, I can tell you that getting fucked over by a liar of an employer, and consequently denied WSIB (Workplace Safety and Insurance Board) benefits has had a serious impact on my life and my earning potential.

#ODSP #OW

Here's the thing with ODSP guidelines for business and employment. If I buy work boots, or a computer monitor for business/employment purposes, it must be deducted from income in the month during which the purchase was made.

This is quite typical of the legislation, which was written for the province by some of the most expensive lawyers in the world.

It's not a year-end deduction such as that almost any other company or individual engaged in business might enjoy. In that sense, it was always discriminatory. People on ODSP should be seen to be suffering, or the taxpayers get ornery.

Cynical but true--it is also true that a good chunk of my yearly income is subsidized by the taxpayers.

So, when I totaled up my earnings, mileage, other allowable deductions, and I was still above the former $200.00 per month limit, I had little choice but to invest more into the business. 

Reinvestment is all very well, but as I have stated in the past, I can't eat it. I can't put it on my credit card. Essentially, I can't use it to live on. I had no choice, or I would face the (former) fifty percent claw-back. If the allowable earnings have indeed been raised from $2,400.00 per year to $6,000.00 per year, I have more choices in what I can do with the money.

#social_services_reform

Doug. If I buy a computer for the business, the deduction only applies to the month the purchase was made. This should be a year-end deduction.

#Doug_Ford @FordNation #ODSP #OW #Louis

Ladies and gentlemen, if their plan is a bit short on the details, then we have the opportunity to offer some suggestions. #right

On Ontario Works, (welfare), the system requires that people be looking for work. On ODSP (disability), the system cannot force people to seek employment. Loosening up the ODSP guidelines encourages work for those able to do so to some extent. For example, I work part-time. With maximum benefits still running thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, loosening up the guidelines is one method (among many) to reduce poverty in the Province of Ontario.

#ODSP #OW

Questions remain.

When they say 'without deductions', bear in mind there are few details other than this announcement, and that Canadian journalists, for all of their virtues, have little or no experience in interpreting ODSP/OW guidelines for business and employment.

For the government to say you can earn up to $6,000.00 per year and there are no allowable deductions would be just plain ignorant. 

My interpretation is that clients will still be allowed to deduct reasonable business or employment expenses, including mileage and other costs. In which case, raising the allowable earnings is a progressive step for those able to take advantage of these provisions.

It is also an encouragement for others to do so.

Especially if they see it paying off--

If you have a dedicated business vehicle, you could deduct insurance, fuel, repairs and maintenance, any required upgrades (a trailer hitch for example) against earned income.  

#ODSP #OW #Louis

Unless someone tells me otherwise, the usual provisions apply.

So. Rather than ineffectual do-goodery, all let's-go-down-to-the-riverbank-and-hold-a candlelight-vigil-to-raise-awareness, here is one single, concrete and specific suggestion for reducing poverty and providing employment training for clients of Ontario Works, (welfare):

Provide enhanced benefits as an incentive to go to community college and gain the skills to make good wages in industry and commerce, including service industries. There should be no penalties for otherwise employable persons who go back to school (at any level), with a view to improving their employment potential or entering the marketplace as a business, start-up, or other enterpreneurial venture, i.e., capitalism.

#Doug_Ford @FordNation #ODSP #OW #Louis

Ladies and gentlemen. I have just begun to consult with this government.

#Louis

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A Workable Plan for the Reduction of Poverty In Ontario. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

This is a workable plan for the reduction of poverty in Ontario. Yes, it will cost a little money, which will result in savings elsewhere. Only one example, this would be in hospital admissions for mental health/addictions, which term has had an unfortunate tendency to become all one word in media coverage of issues related to poverty.

It is an unfortunate tendency to lay the problem of poverty on mental illness and addictions, which is an unfair moral judgement as well as a conflation of two separate and distinct issues.

***

The roots of poverty are structural, and therefore the solutions must also be structural.

This program specifically addresses the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works, (welfare). As a highly-trained Canadian journalist, the author has been embedded in this story for 24 years, and he is very familiar with the ODSP program in particular. He is proficient at interpreting guidelines insofar as that relates to his employment and business interests. When the landlord is taking seventy percent of an ODSP pension in rent alone, working means eating. For whatever reason, this writer has become rather fond of eating over the last 59 years or so—

Raise the rates, annually, at greater than the rate of inflation, which currently stands at roughly two percent.

Raise the allowable earnings limit, which currently stands at $200.00 per month for a single adult.

Lower the rate of clawback on earnings over the limit from its current fifty percent to thirty or even twenty-five percent.

Under CPP (D) guidelines, clients can earn up to $5500.00 annually, and they don’t even have to report it. I would recommend the same level for ODSP/OW clients, in order for the province to be more in line with federal policy. This would save much administrative time for Ministry staff, resulting in higher morale, less staff turnover, and real financial savings. 

Presently, with $100.00 in Work-Related benefit and an ‘automatic’ business deduction of another $100.00, it now stands at $2400.00 per year. (That automatic deduction is a trap. Staff would prefer that clients NOT keep track of each and every receipt, each and every kilometre. It is, after all, a real headache to administer such a client, who is perfectly within their rights to pursue employment and business interests.)

Raise the mileage rate for employment/business/medical travel from $0.40 per kilometre to $0.45 or $0.50 per kilometre. Note that medical travel is a cash disbursement, while the rate for employment/business travel is a deduction from gross income. It is interesting that Ministry staff probably receive (in cash disbursements) more like $0.55 per kilometre when traveling on business when using their own vehicle. The per-kilometre costs of operating a vehicle are well-known and have been studied extensively. This government might ask what the Canada Revenue Agency recognizes as a legitimate rate of mileage/reimbursement, and 

model their own program accordingly.

Raise the work-related benefit from $100.00 per month per single adult to $200.00 month per single client. Adults with families should get an additional hundred a month benefit per child.

Keep rent controls in place, as presently constituted, for three to five years, in order for the province’s most vulnerable citizens to have some reasonable time to catch up.

Raise the provincial minimum wage to $20.00 per hour by 2024.

A special housing benefit to augment the federal housing benefit, slated for 2019, although details are presently sketchy.

A dedicated university fund, initially $25-million per year, in order for ODSP/OW clients to get the skills and education required to break the cycle of poverty and to address the skills shortage presently plaguing the province.

There’s more, which I will address in a future post.

END

Please read this additional coverage.

Nuns Back On the Bus.

Food Banks Urge Government to Address Hunger Crisis.

Image. Louis Shalako.

Thank you for reading.

On Anxiety. Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako

Every so often, I get a mild bit of anxiety. I'm not curled up in the fetal position, in a corner behind the bed, or anything like that, but it is a definite physical sensation.

Years ago, I had panic attacks for a period of about nine months, and I really did think I was going crazy. I was losing control, something I had always prided myself on. I was never out of control. Not me. I could handle anything. I was just too cool, which sort of gives away the age bracket I was in.

No, this was something different, something that nothing in the past had really prepared me for.

I was seriously worried that I might end up in a mental hospital for the rest of my life. They would take away all of my rights, my freedom, my dignity, and I would never get out.

The heart races, and palpitates, you're sweating, the walls are closing in and it's hard to breathe kind of anxiety attacks...a person would have taken almost any pill, even committed suicide, if that shit went on long enough.

That thought, that I really was sick, just added fuel to the fire, as much as anything else that was going on. You can't control an anxiety attack, all you can do is ride it out. Just getting up and going outside helped when it got really bad...

I did go to a psychiatrist, and take meds like Paxil and Seroquel, which essentially turn you into a zombie, and I gave that up after a few weeks. It's not what I wanted. I could not live like that. Take the Seroquel, you're unconscious in about five minutes at bedtime. Take a Paxil upon waking up, and you're still sitting in your underwear in front of the Weather Network at three or four in the afternoon. You have no life.

Maybe I just wanted my life back, eh.

And I got it back. I had to work at it, but I got my life back.

Looking back, the turning point was kind of personal, but it did happen, and I got through it. 

Put in general terms, the source of the stress went away, and the panic attacks just ceased.

The thing is, without a car, (I'm using the shop spare van to go back and forth to work), I just haven't been getting out much.When I get the transportation challenge settled, and maybe get out and walk a trail a little more often, the odds are that it will help considerably. What I need, is to sit on a beach, or to ride my bike on some crummy little back street, go and sit down by the river.

Right now, we're still kind of stuck here.

There's all kinds of time to think—and to worry.

I'm spending too much time, alone with my thoughts.

Anyways, thank you for listening.

#anxiety

Image: Anxiety, by Edvard Munch.

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