The following is a speech I gave to CAW workers at their Paid Education Leave programme at Port Elgin. While a lot of my story is not news to you, it is news to most ordinary voters. I believe if most regular people knew how horribly we are treated, just because we became sick or lost our job or whatever caused us to need social assistance, they would be appalled.

Although, this is very hard to do, I am quite comfortable public speaking - I have been doing it all my life. So, I am going to keep speaking, to anyone who has a group who will listen to me, and then go out and make the change needed to allow me to live in the dignity I deserve.

I would like to collect more stories of "everyday" treatment at the hands of this horrible system, especially from people on OW. Also, if any service group, union local, community group or otherwise, in your area, would like me to come and speak, I will do so but I need my expenses covered and I get to say what they are.

I am determined to keep speaking until those in Canada who need social assistance are helped not punished.


Joanne Bury
16 Fitzgerald Drive
Redbridge, Ontario
P0H 2A0
705-776-2933
pioneerquest@onlink.net

 

In 1994, I became that most hated of statistics, a single mother on social assistance. The fact that this was never part of my career path was irrelevant. The following year saw me and “my kind” portrayed as the chief cause of all the problems in Ontario. The Common Sense Revolution said that we were to blame and once they gained office, the Harris/Eves Tories were quick to put us in our place, a deep hole from which we have not emerged.

But, perhaps a little background is needed. In 1993, I was a Health Promotion Officer at the Muskoka Parry Sound Health Unit. It was a job I loved and I was very good at it. I separated from my husband in 1991, two months before I got the job. I was paid a good wage, but my girls were only 8 and 10, and the energy needed to take care of them and work at a demanding job full-time was becoming increasingly hard for me.

In September, 1993, I took a short term sick leave because of the fatigue dogging my every step. I thought if I could just spend a week or two sleeping, all would be easier and I could get on with business.

It was not to be.

I have lived with Fibromyalgia Syndrome all my adult life. It was finally diagnosed in 1989, and I had learned how to live with it. However, a bout of viral meningitis in September of 1990, gave the Fibromyalgia a boost from which I have never recovered.

I live with constant fatigue and pain. I wake up in the morning feeling as if I have the flu. I ache, I’m tired and then it gets worse. Doctors are reluctant to prescribe narcotic painkillers but I need them in order to get out of bed in the morning. The fatigue makes me feel as if I am living under mattress. I easily get overwhelmed because it takes so much energy just to get through the day.

But, once I stopped, my body gave out. I was bedridden for months. I had Red Cross Homemakers in twice a week. At the beginning of September, I contracted pneumonia. Sometime in early 1994, a virus attacked and killed my thyroid gland.

I have experienced periods of depression since the age of ten. Now that I was so ill, the depression deepened.

I spent February and March in the Penatang Mental Health Centre. This was not an ideal place for me. But it gave me time away from the girls, so that I could finally accept that I may never be able to work again. That was so hard. But, gradually, I came to realize that I was just going to have to do whatever it would take because my girls needed me.

While in the hospital, I started walking. I walk still because it keeps me out of bed. I went home and did whatever it took to stay their full-time parent, because I had two girls to raise.

Because I had spent as much time at home as possible when they were young until my job at the health unit, I had only worked part-time or on short term contract. My husband kept changing jobs and moving us from house to house. Consequently, we had never purchased a home. When I separated, I was on Unemployment Insurance. We never fought about money because there was none.

My short term disability payments ran out very quickly and I did not qualify for long-term disability. After Unemployment sick benefits ran out, I had to go on welfare. I applied for Canada Pension Disability benefits. The payment was so low, that I had to collect provincial Family Benefits to top up my pension. It also paid for dental care and prescriptions.

When Mike and Ernie were realigning social assistance in Ontario, they froze Family Benefits at the level set in 1993. Then they changed the name to Ontario Disability Support Programme, let go most of the workers and transformed a programme from one that helped disabled people, to one that became punishment for anyone unlucky enough to need it.

60% of people who applied to ODSP were automatically denied benefits. Any parents who were not disabled, or had never applied as disabled, were moved over to welfare.

Mike and Ernie changed welfare to Ontario Works and downloaded its administration to municipalities after implementing a 21% cut in the allowance. Remember, only the most needy of parents would use social assistance and never if they had any other options. We have nothing aside from our income.

They also cut the education provision that allowed mothers on family benefits to take out student loans and attend school. Kimberly Rogers died for what a couple of my friends did in the 80s after their marriages broke down and they needed to get educated so they could earn enough money to work, raise their kids and have something to retire with. They were allowed to do it, but Mike and Ernie stopped the programme and Kimberly Rogers died because she did what had been legal and that the staff in Sudbury thought still was.

A word about housing is appropriate here. In 1990, two liberal opposition, back benchers, researched housing issues looking at the patchwork that existed across Canada. Their work was so complete, that housing advocates are still using their research today.

One of those two opposition MPs was that great socialist Paul Martin. So he knew how precarious housing was across Canada, when in 1993, as finance minister, he cut the federal contributions to social housing. Even supportive provincial governments have not been able to keep up with social housing needs since. When Jack Layton said during the federal campaign that people died because of Paul Martin, he was right. Paul Martin knew the consequences of his actions. And, people keep dieing because of it.

Mike and Ernie, of course, destroyed any new social housing programmes in Ontario so with no federal or provincial help, municipalities can’t build housing. In Ontario, the Tories then cut most tenant protection and rent controls from our rent control system. This has led to many families having to decide whether to pay the rent or feed the kids.

Because, remember, our spending dollars are based on 1993 budgets, and rent is much, much higher, as are utility bills.

Ernie and Mike went back to the disabled and cut the Vocation Rehabilitation Programme - Voc Rehab, which provided equipment, training and accommodation for disabled parents who as their kids got older might have returned to work part or maybe even full-time.

They replaced it with a programme that relies on“private contractors”, rather than Ministry staff, determine what a potential employee needs in order to accommodate his or her disability so they can return to meaningful work.

I am very bitter about this programme. My friend Doreen, who is blind and much less disabled than I, was given a complete new home computer, outfitted with every devise she needed, brailler, voice print recognition, printer, scanner complete workstation with chair.. Then she got a lap top so she could take it to meetings and take notes.

Doreen asked for none of this equipment.

She has recently moved to Muskoka from London, England. Although she is now using this equipment in the part-time job she found, what she needed was someone to help her with the job search.

Because the one person in Parry Sound Muskoka could not see anything of worth in me, she ignored my requests for equipment until I realized that a lot of people were making money off me. And this was so stressful that I realized I was not going to be able to do the exciting job I found with the consultant.

I couldn’t because I could only make $160 per month before they start cutting off benefits and I only got $135 from ODSP, and if I lost that, I would loose my access to drugs and dental work. Not only that, the job was on the other side of Bracebridge. It would have worn out my old car, the traffic in the summer in Muskoka is unreal, and exhausting for me.

This ministry staff person had not seen me as disabled therefore she would not help me with any equipment. I could have done the job mostly from home, but I was poor, I didn’t have a computer that would handle the job. She didn’t think I was smart enough to do it anyway. I know that she wasn’t. She thought I should have taken a job as a salesperson in a store and that I had set my sights too high.

Earlier Mike and Ernie cut drugs and other benefits from OHIP. Any cuts to listed services to OHIP have a huge impact on poor people and their healthThose of us on social assistance, were now required to pay a $2.00 co-payment for each and every prescription. It wouldn’t have been so bad, if our rates had ever gone up, but they were set in 1993, and I desperately needed more money.

I couldn’t even take the time to be outraged, because I had two girls to raise.

The rates for eye glasses that were set in the late 80s, were left in place. I think it is $25 to $30 for a frame and when I needed new glasses in 2002, it took four trips to Bracebridge just to get the right forms so I could order new ones. Very quickly, I was very aware of what I could expect from the Ministry and how very much, I could no longer even consider. Slowly, pieces of Joanne were worn away by the grind of poverty.

In order to survive and cope with the physical pain and exhaustion, I would and still do, lie on my bed, propped up by pillows and I become a blind, paralysed native elder. I would listen to the world, I no longer felt part of, through the eyes of CBC radio. I was always and am very aware of the problems of the world and the cause of those problems, but I could not even solve my own deepening poverty and the horrendous abuses of the system.

My girls understood. We learned how to cope with my illness and our poverty. It is very hard to be so poor in the face of so much consumer wealth. But, they never felt poor because poor means you have no hope and we had to have hope just to get through the day.

I went to bed at 8:00 every night. It was never an issue with the girls. They were typical teenagers, busy, hungry, noisy and sloppy. At 8:00, I would close my door and the girls could take over the computer, the phone the TV and the house.

In a small town, you have to drive your kids everywhere. If the girls were going out at night, I would drive the group, because they always travel in groups one way and I would choose the early drive. They knew that they could always call me if they needed a ride home or if they were delayed, because they knew that I heard them when they came home. If they weren’t home when they said they would be, we would talk the next day. They had a sick Mom, so they always called me if their plans changed.

I must admit that our system worked so well that it was so rare that the girls called me after 8:00, that when Carlye called at 10:30 from her prom, I immediately thought something must have gone wrong and I was in for major teenage angst.

No bless her little pink heart, my Carlye was calling because she couldn’t wait to tell me she had been crowned Prom Queen and couldn’t wait to share it with her Nummy

A Tory party friendly firm, Anderson Consulting now called Accenture was brought in to set up a computer system to keep all of us social assistance people in place. This system took any discretionary powers completely away from the few remaining staff. Clients, like me, could no longer have one consistent worker. Workers became client service representatives who answered questions in rotation or by alphabet. The customers were poor sick people like me and we never got the answers we needed from the people who with a couple of key taps, had in front of them, all our financial and personal information.

You see, ODSP and OW recipients, like me, are controlled by a computer system that makes Hal, the talking computer from 2001 A Space Odyssey look like a pussycat. In the past several years, I have had my benefits suspended and or terminated a total of six times - just for living my life, volunteering in my community whenever I was well enough to do so and raising my girls to be productive, caring adults which I believe is the most important job we do as a society. I twice tried to return to work, once taking a short term contract for part-time hours to organize amongst the disabled in Gravenhurst. I was cut off the day after the contract expired.

The other time the work full-time and much more strenuous and I became so ill that my doctor finally realized I disabled. I was so fatigued and overwhelmed by life and the job that I was unable to function at all. That is why I cannot have a job. I still have to spend long periods of time in bed.

At some point in the about 2001, the government changed the dental benefits from every six months to every nine months. First for the children and then months or a year later for adults. And, I was never informed, nor was the dentist. We found out after an appointment was made and kept, and then payment was refused.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, my ex-husband decided that he missed his family ; so he quit his job and moved back to Manitoba in 1996. While I had always been the custodial parent, he had taken the girls every Thursday and every second weekend. I badly needed these breaks in order to. Had it not been for my friends Sara and Dennis, I don’t know how I would have coped. They stepped in and provided me with parent relief. Remember, I was a very sick Mom. We were barely surviving financially on ODSP. He also stopped paying child support

When the Federal Liberals created the Child Tax Credit and National Child Benefit Supplement, Mike and Ernie decided this was great and began deducting one third of the payment from families on ODSP and OW. This money was supposed to go to the poorest children, but no, my girls were not poor enough … sick, disabled and UNEMPLOYABLE people like me did not have poor enough children. This payment has now been frozen by the Dalton at $62.02, per child, per month.

During the provincial election, McGuinty promised to stop the claw back. Once elected, he told parents on ODSP and OW that our children were not worthy. A Charter Challenge lawsuit was announced last week.

The funds collected go towards programmes geared to children. Parents on ODSP are only allowed $156 per month, per child for everything except housing, if you can find housing at 1993 rates in 2004 and utilities that have not gone through the roof compared to the rates in 1993.

By the way, we have never been told what the programmes are, nor invited to have our children join in. The “programmes” have never been evaluated to see if they are helping the poor children who pay for the programmes.

In 1998, my ex decided he missed his girls and wanted to move back to Ontario. He landed in Orillia, working at Canadian Tire and living in a house with a couple other guys. He wanted to see his girls. So I left my house every second weekend so he could move in. He slept in my bed. He never thought to ask me if I needed gas money to drive out of town to stay with friends or stay with my sister - which I had to do because he was in my home for two days.

Some months later, the office contacted me. They heard he was back and wanted to evaluate him and reinstate child support. He started paying me $150 a month for child support, each dollar of which was deducted from my ODSP.

By the way, at his retirement, Jean Chrétien stated that the National Child Benefit Supplement was the greatest achievement of his long political career. It infuriates me that he deliberately left the door open for the provinces to claw back this badly needed money from their most vulnerable children. Each month, I would receive my statement of benefits from the Ministry and there at the top would be the claw back and it would be like a slap in the face.

The Liberal MP for my riding held town hall meetings across the riding each year. I tried to go to the Gravenhurst ones and each time I would ask him why the feds had set this up so that provinces could claw back funds from parents on social assistance. Each time, he would look in my eyes and tell me that federal provincial relations were really complex and I wouldn’t understand. The last meeting I attended, just before I left Muskoka, I was in so much pain, I had trouble sitting. When I finally got a chance to question Andy, tears ran down my face. My poverty had taken my voice and I had to leave.

Even if I could work, I can only make $160 per month before the computer starts deducting money from my check. Because most of my income is from CPP Disability, I wouldn’t have to earn much before the computer cutting me off from drug and dental benefits. It used to be that the ministry could keep you on the books for a while at $5 benefits just to keep the drug and dental cards. I don’t think the computer system allows this anymore. That means that people on ODSP who probably could work, may not even try because they fear loosing the drug benefits.

Oh and, Chrétien's Millennium Scholarships that were his answer to rising tuition rates? Well, my oldest, now a third year student, whose mother makes $10,896 per year, has yet to see a cent of Millennium Scholarship.

We have had a change in government in Ontario. In the May budget, ODSP and OW recipients were given a 3% raise. It would be laughable if we were not so desperate for the funds. Remember my wage and expense levels were set in 1993. How many other workers are still working at 1993 wage rates? Are you still paying your 1993 rate for housing? For lights? For heating? Because our economy is so screwed up, our food prices have not increased that much. But we still can’t afford to pay the rent and eat.

Then, we discovered that the computer programme we paid millions for, can’t calculate a raise. I have to tell you that it is completely crazy making. If you do not have mental health problems when you go on ODSP, you soon will because nothing makes sense.

Through all of this, my girls never knew the cost to me. I could not let them know. I was also very isolated. I was a public person, a well known writer and Mrs. NDP of Parry Sound Muskoka but no one ever knew how badly treated I was just because I got sick. I don’t think any civilian would have believed me - even I couldn’t let myself look at the true horror I went through. If anyone had ever thought about what it took to keep as active and normal looking as I was, I hope they too would have been horrified.

Honestly, if I ever really thought about how badly I was treated, I think I would have started crying and never stopped. And that was a road I was not prepared to walk on. I had two girls to raise.

After all, when you are sick aren’t people supposed to take care of you and help you and tell you what a great job you are doing, coping with all you have to cope with? But no one was holding a telethon for me.

My girls and I were very lucky … we lived in geared to income housing. My housing allowance covered my rent and utilities. In fact, during a Grade 8 energy project, Kendall discovered that her mother was running an extremely efficient household. So I was saving the government money on my heating, electrical and water costs. I never receive any thanks or recognition from the government or the taxpayers. And, I continued to be nickel and dimed to death.

Once I had regained my health to the point where I could be out of bed for part of the day, I started volunteering in my community. I did this for several reasons. First, many of my friends were now working full-time and someone needed to take up the slack. Second, volunteering made me feel a part of society, as if I had worth. This was very important because the system I was embroiled in, did not regard me as a human being at all. I was recognized by the Muskoka Women’s Advocacy Group who choose me as Muskoka’s Woman of the Year in 1997

Third, I believe that we all have a responsibility to give back to society. Although I receive many fundraising letters, I cannot help financially. I let my work be my donation. And, finally, I volunteered so that I could go to things for free. But, then gas costs rose and I couldn’t afford to go to meetings unless my expenses were paid. That was the hardest cut of all. Some people refused to understand that I didn’t have $10 to drive to Orillia. So my world narrowed again.

By the way, holidays and birthdays are just ordinary days when you are on social assistance. I got over not having any money at all to buy gifts for my family by being the ultimate host/guest. I did all the cleaning and tidying and kept the holiday for my girls, my Mom and my sister and her family because I couldn’t buy anything. It was exhausting.

It has been several years since I have been able really buy gifts for my children. I am very creative and always had gifts for the girls. I can’t do that anymore.

The few clothes I have bought in the past several years are purchased at the Sally Ann or now, this great store in North Bay called Rebuilt Resources or Value Village. It is very hard to live in the consumer driven society we now inhabit without the funds to buy new underwear when you want. I have to smile when I see tips on making your money go further. My spending dollar is so low, all of these things are impossible.

I had to cash in $4000 of CSBs in order to buy a third hand car in 1998, when my old car finally died. The girls were upset because I had been saving those bonds for their schooling. However, we lived in a small town and being without a car with two children, was extremely difficult. My doctor, for example was in Bracebridge and I had to wait until 2002 to get one in Gravenhurst.

In my last year in Gravenhurst, I had to go to the food bank. But, I could never find the kind of food we ate: whole wheat bread, fresh vegetables, fruit or milk. Imagine shopping from the donation basket at your grocery store and you’ll know what I had to choose from.

Despite this, we were able to get by because our housing costs did not overwhelm our budget. I cooked and baked everything, because that is much cheaper than buying prepared meals. My girls also learned how to cook. Had our townhouse had a decent garden, we would have grown vegetables.

As an ODSP recipient, I am required to surrender all my financial information to the ministry staff whenever it is requested. These sessions were supposed to happen yearly, but due to lack of staff they don‘t. At these meetings I have to give the ministry copies of my income tax forms and bank statements and utility bills for the past 12 months. If you don’t have these papers, you are required to get them, even if you are charged huge rates to get them from source.

By the way, housing allowances include rent, hydro, water and sewer and natural gas or oil. It also includes your annual insurance for your contents but you could only afford this is if, like me, you lived in housing that was geared to income - most disabled parents live in the regular, rental market and can‘t afford insurance. I am now in that camp as I am on a waiting list for an apartment.

I had to get my girls bankbooks and take those in to be photocopied and put in a file, along with all my information. Not only do we not have any privacy, our children are not allowed privacy either. Imagine asking you teen to surrender to you all their official financial information. I had to.

And, then I’d be cut off again and have to spend hours on the phone figuring out what happened and fixing it. The excuse was almost always: “failure to provide information.“ What information could they possibly not have, if they had copies of my children’s bank book entries. They had everything on me.

And then, school would be out and I would be up for the girls. Our house was a bit of a drop in - we didn’t have much, but there was always a parent there.

Carlye and I would watch the News from 6:00 to 7:30, when we had cable, and yell at the politicians when they dissed the poor or sick or handicapped or disabled by their thoughts, words or deeds, sort of contact news watching. Then, I would go up to bed and behind my closed door, so I was protected from the everyday noise and mess and dramatics of two teenage sisters, growing up with a sick mom.

I knew how the system worked, very well. When I realized that my bed was contributing to my pain, I was able to get the Ministry to buy me a new one. It was perfect for mother daughter chats, late at night, or mid-day. My girls did the usual teen things and in Gravenhurst, we had to negotiate on everything from going to the show the next town over, or getting home from an evening shift. I would volunteer to drive the group one way and would pick the early trip. Then, I could come home and go to bed, knowing the my girls had a ride home. My girls also knew I was home in bed. If they needed me because a ride fell through - they knew where I was and I could always come and get them.

Then, Carlye left Gravenhurst and started journalism studies at the University of Guelph Humber in Toronto. She applied for a student loan and when ODSP discovered this, she was cut off my benefits. I lost her $156 per month.

That was fine for the months she was in Toronto, but when she came home for her summer job and I found out they would not reinstate those payments because she had applied for a student loan. Not only that, they started deducting $100 per month because now I was expected to charge her room and board. I had worked at the Muskoka Centre with the senior staff person in Parry Sound Muskoka and called her about this. I told her that it was inconceivable that I had to charge Carlye room and board while she was going to school. I asked her if she would do this when her daughter went to university. Margaret agreed that she would not and that I should not have to but that she could do nothing to help me.

At this time, I also discovered that my rent of $200 per month would have gone down to $68 had my income been only from CPP Disability. It’s enough to make you crazy.

The final straw came in the spring of 2003. My hair was falling out, due to the stress of dealing with this system so intent on making things as hard as it could for a poor, defenceless sick mother -

And, I have to tell you, I hate to describe myself in those words. It is really, really hard to admit to you that I am a poor, sick, defenceless mother. But it is the truth.

I just couldn’t go on. I was very ill and getting more so because of this never ending stress. In April of 2003, my ex and his new girlfriend bought a three bedroom house in Gravenhurst.

So, I left Gravenhurst and my two girls moved in with their Dad. Both girls were very upset with me because I was making things hard for them for the first time in their life. Until this moment, they never thought about how hard life was for their mother because I had never have showed them. And if they had realized how hard this was, I would have been shattered.

I just couldn’t take the bureaucratic abuse any longer. I had to get out.

Kendall stayed in high school for an extra year and lived with her dad. It was a very difficult year for her but she survived. They will always have a home in Gravenhurst which is their home town.

I live in Redbridge, Ontario. Well, actually, I live on Talon lake, the lake where my family has cottaged for 40 years. I live in a small, one bedroom cottage that is heated by a gas fireplace, and is somewhat insulated, but with no running water from November to March and here, I am at peace.

I still don’t have any money. I owe Carlye $600 because she used her credit card to do repairs to my car this summer, when she uses it for work. I’m using my expense cheque to pay down that debt.

The girls even had a surprise birthday party for me in August - if you can imagine that, surprising someone who lives, way down a dirt road. I knew they had accepted my decision, when they came north for Thanksgiving last year and started talking about how none of their friends have a mother who ran away from home.

I cannot accept that this is reasonable treatment for someone who would love to work, who could support herself and her children but cannot because of illness.

I do not accept that in becoming too sick to work, I did something wrong and therefore must suffer. I believe that society has a responsibility to care for those who need care and that those who have lots can share a little with those who have nothing.

I also believe, that if most voters realized how badly their governments treat people like me, they would be appalled and would do something to stop it.

But, they don’t hear me and so I’m here talking with you. And, I can assure you, it is all true. To tell you the truth, I hope you don’t like this story and go out and stomp all over whoever is responsible for this story, and make them stop.

And, I’ve got to tell you, even though my girls do not live with me, I am their primary parent. We talk on the phone …. Carlye has unlimited long-distance, partly because she calls me all the time.

We each have a computer. We all have internet access. I cashed in some RRSP money, I had less that $10,000 saved from when I worked at the Health Unit and bought a computer in February. I pay $20 a month for internet access and last month, the payment bounced. The company changed their billing date to the 25th of the month. I get my $930 at the beginning of the month, and the $20 had been spent. This mistake cost me $105. All my income, every penny, goes to feeding and housing me. Banks, if you can get one, are not very friendly towards poor people.

And those money marts that are popping up all over. Their primary customers are poor people, who use them to cash their benefit cheques and are charged usury fees for the privilege.

Talking with you like this is very hard but I am doing it because someone has to realize that a lot of very tired and sick people are being tortured by a system that is supposed to be helping them. This has nothing to do with a hand up, it has to do with a foot on our heads. And I will keep talking this until it stops.

That way all the other Joanne’s out there, won’t have to suffer through the institutional abuse and societal ignorance or apathy that all the other Joanne and John’s go through each and every day in Ontario.

So I urge you to think about my story, as you go about your budget exercises. Realize the impossibility of living on these rates. And, if you are unlucky enough to get the life of someone like me on ODSP or OW, remember all the crap you will encounter thanks to your elected officials. Counter this with your own budgeting problems.

Then, I want you to allow yourselves to get a little pissed off at how unnecessary this all is. Get angry.

And, think of me next time you stop at Tim’s for the daily double double, or take your car in for an oil change, or buy a paper, rent a video or go about your holiday preparations next month.

I want you to get mad and demand real change - federally and provincially. Remember my story - how hard it was to launch my girls out into the world and how unnecessary the challenges were.

And if, after you leave here, if you organize an event back home and you need someone to come and talk about poverty, then call me. Help me get there and I will come and share my story as I have today.

We must stop this unnecessary abuse of those vulnerable families in our society, who have lost their way. Give me some hope for 2005 and I promise you, presents or not, I will have a blessed Christmas and a hopeful New Year.

Talk soon,

Joanne