The damage done

Stories from the front expose the real human cost of the BC Liberals service-destruction agenda

by Harry O'Conner

Ms Nguyen does not know her rights or her obligations, beyond those which she understands her worker to be demanding.

Crouching in a heavy oversized winter coat inside her wintry apartment, Ms Nguyen explained why her and her four children have been without heat and hydro for the last two months, the coldest of the year. "Someone told income assistance that I was living together with my ex-husband," she said in Vietnamese through a friend who translated, "but it was not true."

She went on, "My worker told me that I had to supply her the address of my ex-husband in order to prove to her he was living elsewhere, before I could get back on income assistance, but I don't know where he lives." The absurd requirement could make no sense to a sane person.

Ms Nguyen resides with her four children -- two adult children and two younger children -- in a two bedroom apartment. The story becomes more complicated when she says the police are looking for her ex-husband, and she believes this is why her worker made the demand for his address. She then says she was told she needs to go to legal aid to get help getting back on welfare.

Ms Nguyen is completely confused. She has no English language skills. She does not know her rights or her obligations, beyond those which she understands her worker to be demanding. It is not even clear that she was supplied an interpreter when she dealt with the Ministry of Human Resources worker, another right she seems unaware of. In her confusion she weeps.

Ms Wong's is another story. She left her husband after another in a long line of physical assaults. Police attended and they are pressing charges. Ms Wong went to a transition house and unlike past incidents she did not return to her abuser. Now, the government is applying pressure to force her back to her ex-spouse.

How? Ms Wong will also require financial support to allow her to rent a suite and live independently. But, among a huge number of savage new rules introduced by the BC Liberal government, was one which stipulates that no one may collect welfare who owns a car which is worth more than $5,000. The workers consult a car pricing guide and it decides what your car is worth. If it is worth more than $5,000, you must sell it. But that only disqualifies you for a longer period of time while you live off the sale.

Ms Wong needs the car and rather than taking the loss and be disqualified anyway, she gave up her application. She has now been residing with her sister and her large family for two months. The pressure mounts for her to unburden her sister and to go back to the security of her abusive ex-spouse.

These stories coming from the poor of Vancouver -- mothers prostituting to augment their welfare cheques, families couch-surfing or sleeping in cars, young adults denied welfare because they cannot prove two years of independence -- are scenes out of a drama which only a modern Dickens could do justice to.

The fact is that it is the poorest people in this province who are paying the cost of the Liberals' tax cuts. On his first day on the job, Finance Minister Gary Collins announced tax cuts which, according to Vancouver Sun columnist Vaugn Palmer, cost the government $1.2 billion. In a recent column on his strategicthoughts.com website, David Schreck writes that "in the first fiscal year of the Campbell government, actual spending in the Ministry of Human Resources totaled $1.904 billion. The plan called for reducing it to $1.266 billion, by 2005-06. The cut of $638 million does not include other social service cuts for the protection of children ($400 million) or cuts to social services within the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal, and Women's Services."

Add it up. Connect the dots. The poor in BC sit in rooms as cold as meat lockers, sleep on relatives' and friends' couches and weep over their children's lack of a future, so that those earning over $100,000 a year can afford an extra vacation or a larger SUV. It's disgusting. It's the BC Liberals.