| When Maggie Pompeo looks back on the years she spent living on social assistance with three children she is amazed that the family survived.
"I look back and say how the heck did I do it," she says. "It was a real dog eat dog world."
Pompeo was forced to go on social assistance after fleeing an abusive relationship. She says it wasn’t until she qualified for a student loan and went back to school that she was finally able to move her family beyond subsistence.
She is unsurprised by the latest National Council of Welfare report, which shows that Alberta offered the second lowest social assistance rates in the country in 2005 for a single employable person at $5,050 a year and offered the lowest rates for a single parent with a child at $12,326 a year. The report showed that the social assistance income of a single person fell by almost 50 per cent between 1994 and 2005 and was $15,728 below the Statistics Canada defined Low-Income Cut-off (LICO). Meanwhile, a single parent with one child made $13,451 less than the LICO. The report points out that social assistance rates for all recipients in Alberta have decreased relative to inflation between 1989 and 2005.
Pompeo says welfare rates have to be increased so that people can afford to move forward in their lives.
"If all a person has to focus on is survival how do you rebuild your world? How do you begin? Every day is survival," says Pompeo, explaining that when she was on welfare it was difficult to go anywhere because she didn’t get any financial assistance with transportation.
"If you’ve got your basic necessities covered including food, you can focus on rebuilding your world. Politicians have this biased opinion that once you’re on the system that’s where you want to be. Nobody loves the system because it prevents you from excelling as a human being."
John Murphy, chair of the council that released the report, describes the situation across the country as "deplorable" and added that Alberta "is doing some leading" in low social assistance rates.
"I don’t know how the government of Alberta would understand that somebody could live on $5,000," he says.
Murphy says it’s a "myth" that anyone wants to live on social assistance.
"People are trapped and the Canadian people haven’t risen to this fact," he says.
The council is calling on the federal government to implement a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy to lift people out of impoverishment. He points out that other countries have done so and Quebec and Newfoundland have already created provincial strategies.
"You might be leaders in the country in terms of what can be done in the country," says Murphy of Alberta.
Ruth Ramsden-Wood, president of the United Way of Calgary, says Alberta "needs to do better."
She says people who are on welfare are on it for a reason.
"The question then becomes what should standard of living be? Should they be destitute?"
Ramsden-Wood agrees that a national strategy would be beneficial and says attitudes around social assistance need to change.
"We’ve perpetuated the myth that these are no-good, lazy people and we have not built in the tolerance and understanding, compassion and strategies to help move these people out of poverty. In effect, we’ve written them off and actually what we should be saying is what can we do to get these people to be more productive citizens earning more money, paying more taxes, spending more money in Alberta," she says.
Gwen Vanderdeen-Paschke, spokesperson for Alberta Human Resources and Employment says the government will completely cover the cost of childcare so that a person on social assistance can work. She adds that the government also offers job skills training and academic upgrading for people on social assistance.
"Basically Alberta views income support as a short-term solution," she says. "We help people move to the next step and move to a better place."
She says it’s unfair for the National Council of Welfare just to look at social assistance rates because Alberta pumps most of its investment into employment services and training. |
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