Welfare recipients face drug, literacy tests New rules would send addicts to rehab, illiterate to school
From Canadian Press
The addicted will not be helped by the government unless they agree to go to rehab. The illiterate must go to school.
And the number of people on welfare forced to work for their benefits will double.
''Sitting at home and doing nothing is no longer an option,'' Social Services Minister John Baird stressed Thursday.
''Our program will be mandatory and those who refuse treatment will cause themselves to be ineligible for welfare.''
Drug and literacy testing and mandatory treatment was shot down by social and poverty activists when it was first proposed by Ontario's Conservatives last year.
It is viewed by many as an infringement of rights and punitive toward those who are poor.
But Baird says alcoholics and drug addicts cannot ''answer the call of a prospective employer.''
Those who cannot read and write would also have difficulty finding work, or keeping it, he says.
''If a welfare recipient can't pass a basic language and math test, they will be offered help,'' said Baird.
''If they refuse help, they will have made themselves ineligible for welfare in Ontario.''
Chris Higgins, an addictions' specialist who runs the province's Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs, says most addicts cannot be forced to get clean.
Treatment on a voluntary basis gets much better results.
Better, he says, for the government to put the money it would spend forcing the belligerent to get sober on reducing waiting lists for those who do want help.
Just as helpful would be money to pay for job training and caretaking for the children of those on welfare.
''Simply not being addicted does not automatically result in employment,'' said Higgins.
''We will need to have vocational training and education programs that are integrated with addiction supports.''
Guy Ewing, executive director of the Metro Toronto Movement For Literacy, said he was pleased to see the province encourage education, but said making it mandatory will backfire.
''You have to really believe in it and believe in yourself and if you don't it's really a waste of time,'' he said.
The latest rules on who is eligible for welfare in Ontario will be phased in beginning next year. Three to five towns and cities, to be determined in the coming months, will test the strategy before it is expanded across the province over the following four years.
Those who will be responsible for enforcing the measures are already pledging to defy the order.
''We're not going to do this government's dirty work,'' said Brian O'Keefe of CUPE Ontario, which represents the province's 5,000 welfare caseworkers.
''We don't think it's part of our mandate to violate people's human rights and to stereotype the poor.''
Opposition parties, whose derision of Conservative welfare policies did little to fend off the introduction of a mandatory work-for-welfare program in 1996, accused the government of picking on, not helping, the poor.
''It's really nothing more than another attack on the poorest citizens of our province, who've been under attack by this government from the moment (the Tories) came into power,'' said Michael Gravelle, the Liberal social services critic.
New Democrat Shelley Martel called drug testing for those on welfare a ''disgusting'' proposal that brings ''shame'' to all who support it.
Others suggested the government is trying to further cut the welfare rolls, which now support 440,000.
''We don't think that it's appropriate for any group in Ontario to be singled out for compulsory treatment on the basis of where they get their income,'' said Higgins.
Government officials say several American jurisdictions, including Oregon, Maryland, Nevada and North Carolina, have already integrated substance abuse treatment into their welfare systems.
But, last July, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that substance abusers are ''handicapped'' and ''entitled to the protection of the (Human Rights) Code.'