Category: Blog

“And I rememberMisinformation followed us like a plagueNobody knew from time to timeIf the plans where changedOh, if the plans were changed” -Paul Simon, "Peace like a River", 1971 Who is responsible for poverty reduction in Canada? For those interested in poverty in Canada, one of the great trivia questions is the number of Ministers who have been responsible for poverty reduction since the beginning in 2003. The number is 12: 4 Conservative and 8 Liberals. The Minister of Social Development / Families, Children and Social Development portfolio (renamed 6 times) has carried Canada’s poverty reduction mandate in the new millennium including the development of the 2018 Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Post-March 2025, the role has merged into the Minister of Jobs and Families. Liberal 2003-2006 Liza Frulla (Dec 2003 –…

Canada’s Auditor General: meet Duard Weese If you write a letter to Canada’s Auditor General via email, you get an email back that says the following in English and in French:             “We have received your inquiry. Please note: The Office of the Auditor General of Canada does not directly provide programs and services to the public. We respond to questions about what we do. Should your question be relevant to what we do, you can expect a response from us within 20 business days from the date we received your inquiry. We do not respond to inquiries relating to what we don't do. Please direct your inquiries about Government of Canada activities, programs, services, and forms to Service Canada. If you are raising an issue you believe the Auditor General should audit, we…

The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella - the "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886) — is a brilliant psychological study of the dual nature of humanity. Dr. Jekyll is a refined gentleman. Mr. Hyde is a monster. Hyde is purely instinctual, selfish, cruel, and amoral. He acts on impulse and desire without guilt, shame, or concern for others or consequences. He engages without remorse. Hyde himself has no inner conflict — but his increasing dominance becomes a crisis for Jekyll. Jekyll and Hyde are not two separate beings — they are two aspects of the same man. Stevenson’s point: Everyone carries both good and evil inside. The tragedy is that Jekyll thought he could neatly separate them — but…

How income clawbacks work in the real world of social and income assistance Many disability and poverty activists are wondering what provinces and territories will do when it comes to the treatment of the new Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) under social assistance (often called income assistance). Will they exempt it as activists wish? Will they claw it back? Will rent geared to income housing programs include it in income calculations charging rent on it? Will the federal government enact promised legislation at the last minute to make the CDB non-reportable which will therefore exempt it? Life before 2020 Prior to 2020, things seemed easier. If a new federal benefit was a refundable credit, then the credit was exempt and no rent was charged and no refundable credit was reduced. All…

Don’t look for detail from Chatbot GPT or DeepSeek -  especially on the history of Old Age Security (OAS) funding Today, I asked Chatbot GPT and DeepSeek for details on the history of Old Age Security funding in Canada. I tried using various different questions, year prompts, and program distinctions. Here is what I got back time and again: ChatGPT said: “The Old Age Security (OAS) program, introduced in 1952, replaced the Old Age Pensions (OAP) program, which was established in 1927. After the OAP legislation ended, the funding model for senior benefits in Canada shifted with the creation of the OAS program. Here’s how OAS has been funded since 1952: Shift to General Revenue Funding OAP Funding: Under the Old Age Pensions program (1927–1952), the federal government provided a…

Last CBC noontime radio news of the year -2024 In the mid 1960’s, I babysat 2 young boys and a small girl who had been neighbours for many years. On weekends, the parents liked to go out with friends and I would routinely get the call. When the kids had gone to bed, I sometimes looked through the parents’ magazine collection and went through an array of popular magazines. But the father also used to buy a newspaper called ‘Hush!’. ‘Hush!’ is an example of what I came to understand as a ‘police blotter’. It contained lurid descriptions of local crimes – shootings- knifings- break ins and the like. The photos usually showed defiant young men smirking at a camera  while ever-present handcuffs revealed that they had been arrested. Although…

In May 2024, I attended a housing conference where I spoke about low income people and the housing that they are able to secure. I had been thinking a lot about how welfare programs incentivize people to remain single even though they have met another person and wished to live together - but could not afford to. One of the display items featured at the conference was a real fully equipped  but very small Tiny Home[1]. I was eager to have a tour of this innovation in affordable city living. The  absolute first thing that I realized as I walked through the structure was that it seems to  have been built for one person to occupy. Although the Ontario publication referenced here  describes building specifications and zoning in great detail,…

Programs force couples to live apart while worsening the housing crisis Ontario’s welfare system is like a rickety old rust bucket that can no longer keep up with traffic while its brakes are both loud and prone to locking. Recasting this punitive and outdated model would achieve two laudable goals: bestow a kindness on the province’s marginalized people who have suffered for too long, and free up much needed housing.             During the past fourteen years, I was both a paid and a volunteer “facilitator” with a non-profit called Working for Change (defunded in November by the province after decades of support, and I’ll come to that). I met regularly — some fifty to sixty times — with individuals receiving either welfare (Ontario Works, or OW) or a disability pension…

I am not surprised by the mainstream media’s consternation about Trump winning the US election because I understand the nostrum – at some level we all do - that people are often examples of what they criticize. It takes one to know one. People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Mainstream media's blind spot: Blaming government But mainstream media has a blind spot. They simply do not appear to understand their crucial role in electing Trump. So let’s start with some assumptions: Most people don’t understand government and what it does or doesn’t do. Those who do understand government know that governments mostly do their job reasonably well. Media almost exclusively reports on government screwups and bungling. For the past few months, I have studied news reports on governments and just…

“AI is the first tool that is capable of making decisions and generating ideas by itself.” - Yuval Noah Harari Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI This blog will be perhaps the most important entry I write in some time because it exposes an AI algorithm that assesses welfare programs in a way that blames recipients for design flaws. Who knew? Benefit design prevents poor couples from living together I have been engaged now for over a year in writing a paper that demonstrates that welfare programs across Canada incentivize people to live on their own when in real life they have become couples. The programs accomplish this by enforcing unrealistic economies of scale in their rate structures, forcing all forms of income…