Social Spending and Crime

September 11, 2005

Diet cash recipients balloon
By SUE-ANN LEVY

The number of Toronto welfare recipients collecting a controversial meal ticket has grown by at least 30% since the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) launched a campaign urging them to flout the rules.

The latest provincial stats show that of the 66,723 Ontario Works cases in Toronto to the end of June, 8,353 were getting the extra $250 monthly special diet allowance.

While the number of OW cases increased a mere 1% from March to June, those who signed up for the special diet jumped 31%. Toronto's Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) cases increased less than 1% from March to June. Those collecting the diet cash, however, grew by 17%.

According to information gleaned from the city website and insiders, a family of eight (single mom and seven kids) all getting the extra diet cash -- plus other shelter, clothing and transportation extras -- will net $63,177 after taxes this year.

Heather MacVicar, the city's general manager of social services, contends the numbers have "levelled off" since June but conceded that's only based on "anecdotal" tracking.

OCAP has promoted what was once an obscure diet benefit -- on its website, at community clinics and through press events -- since its campaign commenced in February.

What's appalling is that Mayor David Miller and the province (which pays 80% of the city's welfare costs and sets the rules) seem to have turned a blind eye to OCAP's antics.

According to the province's own rules, OW and ODSP recipients are only eligible for the special diet allowance if they have a specific medical condition such as diabetes, pregnancy, cystic fibrosis, allergies, Crohn's disease, HIV/AIDS, cancer, hypertension, liver disorders and kidney disease.

Recipients must first get a doctor, registered nurse or dietitian to sign a form specifying the condition and the special foods needed. But at an OCAP event held at City Hall in July, recipients openly boasted about being entitled to the benefit even if they had no such medical condition.

Doctors at clinics like 410 Sherbourne St., an arm of St. Michael's Hospital, signed forms for patients they consider at risk of ill health due to their poverty.

One doctor said at an OCAP event last month he believes to meet his "ethical obligation" as a health care provider, he must treat poverty as a "health condition."

MacVicar said she's "certainly heard about cases like that" but she "can't really challenge" a doctor's medical opinion.

What's more, when her office tried to crack down on the eligibility requirements in July, the mayor's office intervened.

She says the province has to take action. Community and social services minister Sandra Pupatello told me a special working group is now reviewing the welfare policy and they "have to move quickly" but "it won't be as fast as they'd like."

She stressed that OCAP is not helping anyone with its campaign because it may cause the ministry to "clamp down" on those who deserve the benefit.

Provincial Conservative leader John Tory says this issue could be fixed tomorrow if the government just enforced the rules that already exist.

Tory added that this kind of open exploitation just "breeds a cynicism and disrespect" among the public for the social welfare system.

Left Wing Brain Cramp

September 11, 2005

Left-wing brain cramp
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

Have you noticed the simple-minded way in which this summer's outburst of guns and gang violence in Toronto has already been explained away by our liberal intelligentsia?

They've argued, ad nauseam, that this crime wave has nothing at all to do with our ridiculously lax criminal justice system.

Rather, we're assured, it has everything to do with former Ontario premier Mike Harris' cuts to welfare and social programs from 1995 to 2002 -- 2003 if you throw in Ernie Eves.

Really? Okay, if that's true, then why did Statistics Canada just finish reporting in July that the Greater Toronto Area had the lowest crime rate of any major Canadian city in 2004?

Not that I believe those figures, or that they in any way reflect the modern-day reality of Toronto. But I don't have to. It's the liberal intelligentsia -- the same folks now yelling that street crime is all Harris' fault -- who usually wave around these "crime is down" stats whenever Canadians complain about lax laws.

And since they're the ones defending those stats, they should have to account for them. So, c'mon, boys and girls. You know who you are at the Star and the Globe, along with the left-wing academics you're always quoting on this issue. Explain yourselves.

Your theory, which you all seem to have simply pulled out of your collective behinds, is that Harris' cuts to social spending and his Safe Schools Act -- which you argue contributes to violence by expelling troubled students without providing any educational alternatives -- led to this summer's violence in Toronto.

Alrighty. Then why did the Toronto area crime rate, at least according to StatsCan, drop by 8.6% last year, immediately following eight years (1995 to 2003) of Harris' so-called crime-spawning policies? Why did Ontario have the lowest overall crime rate in the country last year (with a 5% reduction) as well as in 2003? Why, in 2003, when Canada's crime rate rose by 6%, was Ontario one of only two places where it remained stable?

Based on these stats, one could more credibly argue that Harris' policies of getting tough on school thugs and pushing people to get off welfare and into the workforce lowered crime.

That said, I'm not arguing poverty doesn't affect the crime rate.

But people can't just make up two-bit theories about this summer's crime wave being Harris' fault while simultaneously ignoring crime stats they play up in any other context. All that reveals is that they didn't like Harris' policies to begin with.

Besides, don't any of these know-it-alls remember Pierre Trudeau's so-called "Just Society," in which social spending exploded as governments across Canada bought into the idea we could solve all of society's ills by throwing tax money at them?

So what happened to the crime rate during all those years -- the 1960s, 70s, 80s? Well, it also exploded (oops), rising steadily until 1991, when it peaked and then began to drop, slowly, until two years ago, when it plateaued. So, did increased social spending, far from lowering the crime rate, actually increase it?

Was it all Trudeau's fault? Or are the real reasons that crime goes up and down more complex than any one policy or person?

Some experts argue, for example, that the crime rate exploded in the '60s mainly due to demographics. That is, as the huge baby boom generation entered its teen years -- especially young males who tend to commit a disproportionate amount of crime.

The danger of the left's glib "it's all Harris' fault" rhetoric is that it will lead to hysterical demands for more indiscriminate "social spending" (just wait until the annual grants circus at Toronto City Hall this year) to "fight crime". The point is not that there should be no social spending to help combat crime. But it has to be effective , not just more of the failed policies of the past.

Sadly, in the current climate, taxpayers will have no way of knowing whether they're getting value for money, or simply being ripped off by professional grant getters and naive bureaucrats eager to grab as much public funding as possible for their pet social programs from politically correct, soft-on-crime politicians. Which these days, pretty much describes everyone in charge at City Hall, Queen's Park and Parliament Hill.