Part of the solution is identifying the source of the problem. Why is poverty increasing. Although activists tend to blame those of us with jobs and homes for "not caring" enough, that is not the cause in truth otherwise one coudl use that excuse for every ill of the world. In ontario, the well intentioned changes to the system brought forth by the Mike Harris bunch lowered welfare rates for recipients which created the quagmire which is best described as "one on teh dole cannot get off of the dole as the only work one can get (minimum wage) combined with new expenses related to being off of the dole (childcare, dental, prescription mets) for a non-degreed individual precludes the taking of such a job"...

If you cannot afford it and if it is uncomfortable, you won't do it, even if the long term end result is beneficial, especially if you are in a depressed if not angry state of mind towards the system, such as are most recipients of social assistance.

Solution: raise rates of assistance with new expectations that persons on the role will be to improve education and in turn availability to work, provide subsidized daycare, provide new subsidies to employers to hire recipients and extend medical benefits to long term benefits to 2 years beyond cesement of receiving such IF they obtain work that does not have a benefit plan.

And yet, Kingston's beloved Mayor has just commissioned a task force to define poverty in Kingston. Things are very different here, aren't they?

Oh, I forgot. Round up and place in internment camps all the naysayer activists who seem to promote that staying on the dole is an acceptable use of government money to stick it to the man.. also roundup the pro-obesity ("we are fine how we are!") activists and pro-smoking ("what about OUR rights?!?") activists. Oh and the dog owners who think they shoudl be able to let their breats run free in child filled parks and defecate where they choose.

I would be a good king.

breats? How about beasts.. damn my frozen fingers.

His proposal is similar to what Covenant House does - the live-in residents pay rent, but then that money is returned to them when they're ready to leave and they can use it to get themselves set up in an apartment of their own.

Thanks for the mention Alan.

My views are formed by knowing, rather too well, what it is like to be very poor and, also, a lot of very poor people who do not have the ability, support or the education to be able to end their own poverty. One of the main effects of poverty is extreme insecurity and an inability to plan much beyond the next meal. Without that capacity life becomes focused on that next meal to the exclusion of any sorts of planning or action which may improve the overall situation. I'd like to see that change.

And, being a good fiscal conservative, I would like to see that change with as little impact on the public purse as possible. Allowing the current pool of welfare recipients retain their benefits for a year once they enter the workforce would cost no more - or not much more - than we are paying now. However, in the medium term, it would be a strategy which could ensure that the welfare rolls were actually reduced.

At this point in my part of the world there is a significant labour shortage. Virtually every shop and all the hotels are looking for staff. But most of those jobs start at minimum wage. Much better than the current welfare rate but a risk. And a risk made all the more significant by the welfare rules in BC which do not allow reapplication for a number of years once a person leaves the system.

Allowing the retention of benefits would reduce that risk and allow poor people to better their condition without having to worry that their initiative might land them in the ranks of the homeless if things don't work out.

And combined with the mention recently of a tax change to further assist it all makes sense.

This makes you a Tory, then, and not a neo-con. Now the world makes sense.

I would be okay with benefit retention if we could be assured that the formerly-poor would actually give up their benefits once suitably employed. Separating men from their entitlements is never easy.

I know of one particular woman who had poor beginnings but now works at King/Bay in great job for a certain chartered bank. Regrettably she has not yet fessed up her true employment status to her landlord, which is social housing. As a result, she lives in nice, clean affordable housing within 3 or 4 blocks of the office and pays something like 200-300 bucks a month for it. To do the same without subsidy puts the rental cost at ten times that.

For the honest, continuing subsidy is great. The problem is that there's no effective deterrent to simply lying your ass off. And when faced with a tenfold jump in housing expenses, lying your ass off starts to look attractive.

P.S. And as a Tory my position is that indigent poor should be impressed into Her Majesty's Canadian Navy for the war against the Habsburgs and French.

<i>Just as we have to admit that the irritation of taxation when kept at a certain level does not inhibit productivity and wealth creation</i>

I'd admit that if I had less of my money taken unwillingly from my cheque, I'd be a lot more productive and wealthy. Darn it all, anyways.

Actually, you are on the wage reduction list if the puritan neo-cons get their hands on the books. Sorry, but plenty would suffer and that would have to include you.

"This makes you a Tory, then, and not a neo-con. Now the world makes sense."

Well it doesn't really. You see I tend to ground my arguments in efficiency considerations rather than a touching concern for the poor. I hate the poor so much that I want to see them eliminated and the only way I know to do that is to make them unpoor. In a growing economy this is a matter of reducing the barriers to employment, throttling back immigration, and easing the transition to employment. At the end of the process the poor, as a class, will have been wiped out and with them the necessity of welfare and the taxes to pay for it.

Now, I realize that this is more than a little unrealistic; however it would likely serve to reduce the rolls fairly radically over a few years.

Chris, you might point out to your friend that Her Majesty takes a dim view of welfare fraud and obtaining social housing under false pretenses. So dim that she bypasses Her Navy and go directly to the clink. Your friend's best move at this point is to find market housing and move. With luck she may get away with it.

More generally, the deterrent lies in T-4s and the great web of computers talking to computers about SIN(s).

gorthos, thank God those were not feminist dog owners.

<i>...I realize that this is more than a little unrealistic...</i><p>This statement alone means you are not a neo-con.

Jay -- she's just a friend of an ex-colleague. I'd be very disappointed if one of my friends was pulling that stunt, and there'd be a lot more going on than just amusing/infuriating blog anecdotes. As you note, the great web of computers talking to computers and cross-referencing SINs has me thinking that no small amount of capital-F fraud is involved. It would be impossible for a singular identity (and bank account) to both maintain the fiscal probity required for a person of that occupation AND to also be habitually bereft of funds in order to satisfy the subsidised housing folks.

The guys at the Firm have to cough up financial records pretty regularly to prove that we are a) maintaining adequate independence from certain clients and b) not freewheeling drunken sailors who may be susceptible to bribes or other fiscal temptations. Certain roles at the banks are no different.

There are always bad apples. But I would think, having worked in both systems, that the high level of intrusiveness in social services records keeping and the requirement to prove certain claims makes for a system in which the vast majority of the good people are acting as good people and the minority who are bad are as often found out at least as often if not more often than in the private sector. Be aware that you do not see the cases of cutting off folk or rejecting applications in the news. You also do not see the cases in the private sector where people are forgiven for what would be a fatal error or judgement in the area of public support.

What I have found illuminating in my travels in the underclass is the sheer entrepreneurial zest the bad people employ to improve their lot. Sure there are the hookers and the small time drug dealers; but the folks running permanent garage sales with stuff bought that morning at the thrifts, running haulage companies with borrowed pick ups, working construction for cash, panhandling for the prime three weeks at Christmas, busking, babysitting, tour guiding, ebaying, grooming pot harvests, gypsy cabbing, dumpster diving, dress making, hair cutting and book scouting is astonishing.

In a sense a lot of the people on welfare or in subsidized housing are the grease which allows the above ground economy to appear frictionless. Cash transactions for prices people can actually afford and which, with a few hundred a month from welfare, allow people to live fairly reasonable lives. Regularizing this world would, I suspect, be an economic positive.