Feel guilty
Passing panhandlers
At local supermarket.
Telling them
"Sorry can't help you"
Keeping quiet
About own needs.
Cutting corners
When needing something
Can't afford.
Rent subsidy
Almost $1000/month
Tiny 1 bedroom apartment.
More money
Than disability stipend.
Combined - still below
Canada's single person
Poverty line.
Sigh.
Under Premier Ford
Real buying power
Declines through inflation.
People like myself
Viewed financial liability
Not government's
Social responsibility.
Promising tighter definition
For disability assistance
Using federal tax code.
Eliminating
Some future applicants
With physical/mental illnesses
Now covered.
Believing jobs
Society's cure-all.
Short-term focus
Rewarding supporters
With fiscal policies.
Deficit grows.
Crying "poor"
Attack those
With least political power:
The elderly children
And the disabled.
Only stopping
Optics corners government.
Not even
A cabinet shuffle
Can change narrative.
Directionless government
Listing side to side
From self-inflicted wounds.
Voters will remember
Come June 2022
As the budget cuts
Impact them
Directly.
Therisa © 2019
Author’s note: Since March 2008, I have been living on the Ontario Disability
Support Program (ODSP), for my mental illness and PTSD, caused by long term abuse
and bullying that I have endured over the years. Often, repressing it, behind mental walls
that collapsed on August 14, 2007, during a brutal panic attack that lasted 26 hours,
before.I could start my recovery. Sadly, this won’t be the last time, I have suffered from
severe panic attacks that have crippled me, emotionally and physically, as the result of
my PTSD.
Earlier this year, Premier Ford’s government tabled its first provincial budget, after
winning the June 2018 election. In that budget, the government promised to revise the
definition of disability that ODSP operates under, to the federal one that Canada
Revenue Agency uses, for income tax purposes. A more restrictive definition that
eliminates many people who fill for mental illness and some physical illness (IE some
cancers). Reducing the exposure that the provincial government has to pay out. As a
means to balancing its financial books.
During this budget presentation, the government promised that they would “grandfather” people like myself. Who wouldn’t qualify under the promoses new rules for ODSP. Have to wait and see, if Ford and his flunkies keep their word, as I don’t trust them.
