Thinking about Social Assistance Support in the Age of #COVID19
As of yet, not a single federal dollar of support has been announced by the Government of Canada for people with disabilities or those on social assistance. That's wrong.
I’ve held off on publishing this piece because I had hoped to get some op-ed space in a newspaper, and I would rather it appeared there first. However, that’s been slow in coming, and with even more Canadians receiving supports these days, including students and part-time employees, it’s entirely unconscionable that the very poor and the disabled have not yet been considered. Three weeks into the pandemic, and not a single dollar announced for people on social assistance and the disabled is an absolute travesty!
I’ve spent a little bit of time on social media trying to bring our attention to the reality that there hasn’t been a stitch of federal support offered to individuals on disability or on social assistance. I’m often met with push back of a particular vein, and I thought I would adapt a Facebook comment into a short piece on why individuals and families on disability or social assistance deserve federal aid during this crisis, despite the fact that they will not necessarily have lost a job. The implication, as I understand it, is that because employment wasn’t lost and the usual government cheques continue unabated, that individuals or families on social assistance are less deserving of our support in this time of crisis.
I want to get one thing out of the way first:
Just because a human being doesn’t have employment does not mean that they are less deserving of social supports in times of crisis.
Just because you can't see that they’ve lost something, doesn’t mean that they haven’t lost something; moreover ‘losing something’ simply isn’t comparable between people. Your loss is no less significant than my loss, and vice versa – the fear, insecurity, frustration and anxiety, economic and social, is borne by all of us, not just those with an employment income. So when we think through our responses to this pandemic, it is imperative that we don’t think of loss simply in terms of employment and working ability.
People on disability or on social assistance should have access to economic support:
Just like everybody else, people with disabilities have to purchase more grocery items than they might otherwise have to, especially as demand and prices go up, and supply decreases. Remembering that people on social assistance usually live day to day, things like toiletries, which were previously easily accessible, including toilet paper, have now become premium items. If I’m a person with a physical or mental disability, I'm not going to be able to go to a grocery store and maintain social distancing like others can, so I must hire a delivery service to bring them to me. Those $3 dollar delivery charges, which the rest of us don’t really notice, add up after a while. People with disabilities have to stock up on medications, because here too, many live week to week, day to day.
As one is wont to do these days, I turned to Twitter to see what some folks with disabilities had to say about what kinds of extra costs they might be incurring throughout this pandemic shutdown:
These are just a few of the shocks sitting just below the surface that people who are working are generally able to take care of, while people on social assistance don't even have the resources to prepare for situations like this.
There are a whole lot of other, more significant ways this can impact people on social assistance. Additional mental health supports may be needed to deal with the sudden pressures and changes. But counselors are only doing online appointments, and many folks on social assistance don't have the internet because they can't afford it. Maybe they are a single mom with a child with special needs and who is now not only responsible for her all-day mental health, she’s responsible for that of her children as well. Those same children now have to do school using the internet they don’t have, with no library or community centre open to visit. Medical procedures have all but stopped, meaning that people who are disabled will have to manage them at home; folks who needed beds to help manage their weekly dialysis, now have to use chairs, causing them additional pain throughout the four hour process. If the police encounter an intoxicated homeless person, they can’t take them to the ER anymore, or even to jail for the night, where social distancing is a pipe dream and COVID is spreading at exponential rates.
The point is that just because people on social assistance or disability haven't lost a job doesn't mean they haven't suffered significant extraordinary consequences due to COVID, just like every other Canadian. If we determine that the 'sole point of value in relation to emergency aid' for our communities are employment units, I feel like we've leave a significant chunk of our communities behind. There are millions of us who rely on social assistance across Canada, and by the time this is all done, there may be millions more.
Some have suggested that ‘now isn’t the time’ to talk about Raising The Rates. It’s well known that programs across Canada are massively underfunded. Individuals on Ontario Works receive $721 per month upon which to make due, while individuals on Ontario Disability Support Program receive approximately $1128 per month, which has to cover everything, including housing charges. How many of us can find adequate housing in today's climate with those kinds of dollars? It’s therefore incumbent on us to ensure that folks on social assistance receive support at this difficult time - unlike the rest of us, they start out with the least and are likely to spend more for essentials over the course of this crisis.
It's been suggested that my concerns are misplaced, that the right place to address these concerns is in an assessment of our social assistance system. And while that is true, governments, especially in Ontario and Alberta, are intent on going in the opposite direction of what is needed, providing even less through new social assistance systems centred around the protestant work ethic. That said, I do agree - the long-term solution is found in better policy decisions with respect to supporting people on social assistance and disability. That's why I am hopeful that this crisis might bring discussions of Universal Basic Income back to the forefront. If Doug Ford hadn't cancelled the Basic Income pilot, we would have been able to see how that kind of system responds to the shocks that a global pandemic brings; Spain has already decided that it is successful enough to make permanent. There exists an opportunity to change our economic model, to truly develop a model where no one is left behind. In a world where billionaires have the ability to insulate themselves from the virus by way of their fortune, while folks on disability are forced to take an expensive cab to go to the cornerstore, I’ll say it again - economic redistribution must be part of the solution.
But these are long-term solutions to the broader problem of disaster capitalism. Before we can get to the creation of a UBI system, we still have to remember that we're ALL in an emergency situation. That includes people who are disabled or on social assistance who are in no less an emergency situation than the rest of us are.
It’s past time that Canada’s most vulnerable receive the same treatment as other Canadians. I don’t care if it’s not a full $2000, just throw us a soup bone, at the very least. That way we can make some dinner for the kids tonight.
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That is a really helpful perspective, Peter. Now is absolutely the time to talk about raising the rates, along with the basic/livable income push. The current rates are appallingly low, and now we can contrast those rates with the $2000/month Emergency Benefit. You are right that fundamentally, we need to get out of the political mindset that equates poverty with laziness.