Poverty Awareness in York Region

Toronto Star Article March 10, 2006
By Gary Bloch AND Kathy Hardill

Over the past three months we have been witness to the escalation of a health crisis more dramatic than any we have seen in years.

It will have a bigger fallout than tainted water or SARS, a greater impact than obesity or smoking. The evidence for its existence and impact is strong.

The solution is well within reach, but those who can fix it just allow it to get worse.

This crisis is poverty, and the health risks forced on the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who live on social assistance.

In November 2005, the Ontario government placed new restrictions on the "special diet supplement." Since then, we have seen a steady stream of our vulnerable patients reporting their welfare cheques have been cut by as much as half.

This supplement has been available for more than a decade, allowing health providers to prescribe extra money for a healthy diet for those who required it.

The new restrictions make it almost impossible to obtain for most people who would benefit from it.

The diet supplement became an essential lifeline for welfare recipients after the Mike Harris Conservatives cut social assistance rates by 21 per cent in 1995.

Its importance grew with the failure of rates to rise with inflation and ballooned when the Ontario government refused to allow welfare recipients to keep the federal child benefit.

People receiving welfare today must survive with 40 per cent less spending power than they had 11 years ago.

Make no mistake: The new restrictions to the special diet supplement are simply another welfare cut.

A single mother with two children whom we saw last week had her cheque cut by $750, leaving her with no money for food once she paid her rent and bills.

Her children, like all those living in poverty, are more likely to develop a variety of illnesses and mental health problems, to experience hospitalization, to perform worse at school and to leave school early.

A young woman with HIV, who came to Canada 10 years ago as a refugee from Rwanda, saw her income fall by nearly a quarter, leaving her with little more than $750 a month.

Under the new rules, she will only be eligible for special diet funds once she begins wasting away from her disease.

Never before have we been forced to be complicit in an activity that so clearly harms the health of our patients.

Now, the government allows us only to declare whether a patient has one of the few health conditions listed on his form. Further, the amount of money now attached to these conditions is laughable - like the 30 cents a day for a person at risk of heart disease because of high cholesterol.

By requiring us to sign this form, the government is using our positions as health professionals to gain legitimacy for its latest welfare cut.

This cut represents the most recent assault on the incomes of people living on social assistance.

Our patients would love to work, but are inhibited by many factors, from lack of available jobs to physical and mental disability. They do not deserve to be forced into the health consequences of dire poverty, including a higher risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

These conditions are preventable and will cost our health system far more over the long term than this government is saving with these cuts.

We feel it is our duty as health professionals to speak out against this attack on our patients' health.

Poverty needs to be elevated to the level of smoking and smog as a target for our health programs.

Last year, in response to the blatant unwillingness of politicians, bureaucrats, and members of our own professions to combat poverty as the leading preventable cause of illness, we formed Health Providers Against Poverty.

We did so because, in one of Canada's richest provinces, thousands of people are going hungry every day.

This is not because of famine or drought, or for other reasons beyond our control. People are hungry because they are poor, and the so-called social safety net is full of holes.

The provincial Liberal government raised social assistance rates a paltry 3 per cent in 2004, which is so insignificant as to be insulting.

This month, this government is presenting its spring budget. For the sake of our most vulnerable patients, it needs to include a rollback of the restrictions on the special diet supplement and a 40 per cent increase in welfare rates for all recipients of social assistance.

This will allow low-income people to live in dignity, to feed themselves and their families and it will address a strong, reversible risk factor for poor health for hundreds of thousands of Ontarians.

Gary Bloch is a family physician with St. Michael's Hospital, and Kathy Hardill is a nurse practitioner with Regent Park Community Health Centre. They are both members of Health Providers Against Poverty.

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