Raise Welfare Rates to $1,300/Month, Says Activist Group

photo: welfare office, Powell St., Jan. 23, 2008

A group calling themselves, "Raise the Rates", wants welfare rates doubled in British Columbia. They want the Campbell government to pony up $1,300 per month for each welfare recipient. That figure is based on the Market Basket Measure, anti-poverty activist Rolph Auer explained in the Jan. 15th Carnegie Newsletter. The MBM calculates the cost of food, shelter, transportation and other commodities a person needs just to get by.

Raise the Rates would also like people on welfare -- Income Assistance is what it is officially called -- to be allowed to earn at least $500 on top of their welfare cheque. On this point, they have something in common with the right-wing Fraser Institute which supports an earning exemption for welfare recipients. The Fraser Institute believes that allowing welfare clients to earn a bit of money keeps them connected to the work force. Oddly, welfare recipients who have "unemployable" status due to either a temporary or longterm disability, are the only ones allowed to earn extra money while on welfare. Employable people are forbidden from taking jobs without having the amount earned deducted from their cheque. If they don't report the earnings and are caught, they will be kicked off the welfare rolls and possibly charged with fraud.

Regardless of the current low welfare rate which, according to Auer is $610 per month for a single person, there is a healthy demand for welfare judging from Wednesday’s line ups. There were two line ups at one Downtown Eastside welfare building at Powell & Main St., one line up along Powell St. and another along Main Street. There are two welfare offices in the same building, one upstairs and one downstairs. Most clients lining up for a welfare cheque are male, and one client pointed out that many in the line ups this month were young. The above photo of a line up was taken around 3:30 p.m. and there was still a line up. It lasted until after 4 p.m.

At least one line up at the welfare office continued all day Thursday. [Update: Again on Friday, there was a line up.]

Clients line up at their welfare office if they have not arranged to have their cheque mailed to their home or directly deposited in their bank account. They also have to line up if they have neglected to sign and turn last month's cheque "stub" -- a short form attached to all welfare cheques -- in to the welfare office. The stub acts as confirmation that you will need assistance again next month (i.e. you haven't found a job.)

Welfare day on Wednesday ended a "five week month." That means welfare recipients had to make their December cheque last five weeks, rather than the usual four weeks. But the amount of the cheque is the same whether it's a four or a five week month. Anti-poverty advocates would like the government to put an end to five week months.

At the end of a five week month, if a person is hungry, they can sometimes get away with hitting a welfare worker up for a $20 food voucher. But welfare workers don't like clients to make a habit of asking for vouchers. If you regularly show that you can't manage your money, the welfare office will manage it for you. The welfare worker may put you on what Downtown Eastsiders refer to as "administered", which means you are issued a small cheque once a week.

The long line ups at the welfare office this month are a mystery as Vancouver’s pre-Olympic economy is going full tilt and employers are begging for workers.

Did Criminal Allegations Contribute to United Way's $3 Million Campaign Shortfall?

At breakfast Thursday, United Way of the Lower Mainland President, Michael McKnight, did not utter a word about criminal allegations swirling around United Way. He was speaking to over 1,000 people on at the United Way breakfast awards ceremony at the Westin Bayshore Hotel. The early morning breakfast was to recognize the 5,000 volunteers, 56,000 donors, and 1,100 workplaces involved in last fall’s United Way fundraising campaign.

Truth is though, United Way fell almost $3 million dollars short of this year’s $34 million goal. They raised $31.2 million.

McKnight may not be solely to blame for the shortfall though. For one thing, he inherited baggage from former United Way CEO, Ron Dumouchelle. Dumouchelle left United Way shortly after a woman surfaced documented evidence of persistent fraud in a police report written when Dumouchelle lodged a complaint against her with the Vancouver Police. Dumouchelle lodged the complaint in an apparent attempt to stop her from making a Report on United Way available to donors. Dumouchelle stated in an internal document that if donors got even “a whiff” of scandal, it could reduce donations.

On the first page of the police report, major United Way donors were named as witnesses in the case: Canada Safeway, Revenue Canada, Canadian Red Cross, Canada Post, Westminster Savings, even the President of the Toronto Dominion Bank. But woman calls this an exercise in “public mischief”, claiming that there was never any evidence of criminal conduct on her part. Indeed Constable St. Amant wrote in his report that he and Dumouchelle agreed that this was “not a criminal matter.”

When having the woman treated like a criminal failed and she invoked her right to remain silent, a new tactic was employed against the woman. She was targeted for a VPD “Car 87” psychiatric visit under what she alleges – and the paper trail lends support to her allegations — were fraudulent pretenses. This tactic led to accusations of “political psychiatry” by Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry. Although Dumouchelle left United Way — no reason given publicly — these allegations didn’t leave with him.

This case of alleged fraudulent evidence and political psychiatry dates back to Dec. 2002 — but what a difference five years makes. Now that anybody can publish on internet news sites, this story finally caught up with United Way during their fall 2007 fund raising campaign.

Another political psychiatry case exposed during this campaign causedembarrassment for United Way. It was a political psychiatry case that Chris Kelly, the United Way Board member who made the speech kicking off the fund raising Campaign, has been sitting on for years in his role as Superintendent of the Vancouver School Board. The School Board had allegedly used political psychiatry to counter criticism of their handling of bullying complaints, and Kelly, upon taking the job as Superintendent, appears to have done diddley squat to resolve one particularly scandalous case. Also Kelly has apparently done nothing to ensure that the evidence of fraud against School Board employees in this political psychiatry case is investigated; he has allowed all staff involved to remain unscathed.

But it gets worse: Kelly has knowingly concealed from parents the fact that the VSB’s failure to take responsibility for it’s employment of political psychiatry has resulted in a global boycott of Vancouver School Board high school diplomas. A victim of VSB political psychiatry caught up with Kelly during the campaign and requested his resignation as a United Way Board member. Not the best guy for United Way to be promoting as a “visionary” on their website.

And then there was the embarrassing interview given to the Vancouver Sun during the United Way Campaign by an earnest middle class man and his equally earnest wife. The man said he used to be a loyal supporter of United Way -- until his mother left United Way some money in her will. When an issue regarding the will came up, he was hurt by how quickly United Way sicced their lawyers on him. He's finished giving to United Way, he said. He and his wife now give only to charities with no paid staff. This is the sort of "whiff" that United Way can't afford to have donors get in the middle of a fund raising Campaign.

The woman who alleges she became the victim of fraud during efforts to stop the dissemination of a Report on United Way, believes $31.2 million is a large enough wad for United Way to take away from their recent Campaign. “They should be able to get by on that", In fact, she believes that setting unrealistically high campaign goals is what got United Way into trouble in her case. In an internal document dated the week police were on her, Dumouchelle revealed that he was under pressure as United Way was $600,000 short of that year’s campaign goal.

McKnight faced an almost $3 million shortfall. Imagine the pressure he felt.

Alberta Human Rights Commission "Applying Saudi Values" in Canada

Last week, Ezra Levant called the Alberta Human Rights Commission every name in the book: a" kangeroo court"; "part Kafka, part Stalin"; a "joke", a "sick joke"; a "pseudo-court like Judge Judy". Levant, publisher of the Western Standard, said it was "perverted" that a so-called human rights commission was violating his human rights. Levant even called one of the human rights officers a "thug", to her face.

More than a few Canadians in the blogosphere have something to say to Levant: "You're right." Truepeers, a blogger at Covenant Zone says the Levant case has left him feeling "ashamed to be Canadian".

"We have a tradition of free speech in Canada," Levant told the Commission, after being hauled in front of it for the "political crime" of publishing cartoons critical of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

The cartoons, originally published in a newspaper in Denmark, became a lightening rod for tension between the Western tradition of free speech and the insistence by Muslim clerics that Islam's prophet Mohammad be protected from criticism. The Western Standard was one of many publications around the world which published the cartoons as a political statement that free speech would not stop for religion.

"It was the proudest moment of my public life," Levant told the Commission.

The complaint against Levant was lodged by a Saudi-trained imam, Syed Soharwardy. Levant told the Commission that Soharwardy is "a radical Muslim imam, who was trained at an officially anti-semitic university in Saudi Arabia who has called for sharia law to govern Canada".

On the Commission's official form, Soharwardy entered "religious beliefs" in the box requiring him to identify the "Grounds" for his complaint. Levant's response to Soharwardy was, "A secular government bureaucracy has essentially been hijacked by a radical Muslim imam. It's being used to further his fatwa against these cartoons."

For a publisher to be called to the Human Rights Commission to be interrogated about political or religious views expressed is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Levant pointed out. "This commission is applying Saudi values, not Canadian values."

Levant reminded the Commission that even Alan Borovoy, the prominent Canadian civil libertarian who helped set up Human Rights Commissions in Canada in the 1960s and 70s, believes that the Commission is overstepping their mandate in acting as a press censor. Borovoy wrote, in regard to the complaint against the Western Standard, that being a censor was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no
question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons."

Human Rights Commissions are quasi-judicial bodies set up to arbitrate rental and employment disputes, where a person believes they had been discriminated against based on race or gender.

Levant videotaped his appearance in front of the Commission as he intends to use it when he takes his battle with the Commission to "real" court. The Commission's "human rights officer" initially objected, then asked that the videotape be kept confidential. Levant later noted on his website that it came as no surprise that a censor would prefer to operate "in the dark." He then put the videotape on YouTube. It's a hit.

And on Levant's comparison of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and a Judge Judy pseudo-court, Judge Judy came out on top. "...Judge Judy actually was a judge whereas none of the commission's panelists are judges, and some aren't even lawyers," Levant said. "And, unlike the commission, Judge Judy believes in freedom of speech."

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Read about another human rights case:
United Way Implicated in Political Psychiatry Comparable to China

Candidates Endorsed by Author of "Poor Bashing" Win Seats on Carnegie Center Board of Directors

The Left got organized to get trusted comrades elected to two vacant positions on the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Center this evening. That’s the same Board that homeless Bill Simpson was elected to in June 2007, only to be banished two weeks later to the sidewalk by the City of Vancouver, denied access to Board meetings as punishment for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

Jean Swanson, author of "Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion" and an organizer with the Carnegie Center Action Project [CCAP] to end homelessness, sent an email about the election to volunteers on the CCAP mailing list. Swanson, an American ex-pat who spoke to a UN representative about the issue of homelessness in Vancouver but apparently found no time to speak up about the "exclusion" of homeless Bill Simpson from the Center from which she organizes, gave recipients of her email not so subtle hints about who to vote for:

”Hey CCAP folks. A Carnegie board election is coming up, for 2 people, and our very own CCAPer, Rolf Auer, the famous letter to the editor and article writer, is running.”

Rolf Auer wrote in "The Long Haul", the now defunct newspaper published by End Legislated Poverty, a Vancouver organization Swanson helped found, and he knows her well. He continues to write letters to the editor of the Carnegie Newsletter, cookie-cutter left-wing letters. It’s doubtful that Auer can be counted on to protect the right of Bill Simpson and other Carnegie members to freedom of expression. Last summer, the Carnegie Newsletter published a letter of support Auer had written for Paul Taylor after a campaign was launched by Carnegie members to curb Taylor's power as editor of the Newsletter when he admitted libeling Bill Simpson. Taylor had written a column claiming that Simpson had written blog material that was “sadistic” and had relied on fraud to get elected to the Board -- the libel was written after Simpson supporters began agitating about his barring from Carnegie for freedom of expression.

Swanson continued in her e-mail:

“Sandra Pronteau is also running. She is active in Raise the Rates and is going to be part of the Poverty Olympics on Feb. 3.”

Pronteau is part of the group of activists Swanson is involved with, activists who have been publicly agitating for higher welfare rates.

At tonight's meeting, Pronteau, an aboriginal woman with long dark hair, in her thirties, with four children, said she wanted to see the "ongoing trafficking" of drugs outside the building addressed. She closed by saying, "Poverty is another issue that I totally support, and homelessness."

Auer, a tall, bald, middle aged caucasion, was nominated by Paul Taylor. In his brief election speech, Auer said he had been an "anti-poverty activist" for over 10 years. He expressed concern about gentrification on the Downtown Eastside: "I want to see the neighborhood saved and do everything in my power to see that that happens."

Neither Auer or Pronteau mentioned the elephant on the table: the barring of duly elected Board member Bill Simpson from the Carnegie building for daring to operate a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which has criticized Carnegie.

Both Auer and Pronteau were elected to the Board.


See related article, "CBC Interviews Bill Simpson", at:
http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2008/01/cbc-radio-interviews-bill-simpson.html

Is Art Bell Hinting at a Come-Back?

When Art Bell, long time host of the “Coast to Coast” radio show which attracts up to ten million listeners a night, announced his retirement on his July 1, 2007 show, he knew that his listeners had heard this before. So he emphasized, “This time it’s for real though. It’s for real.”

But now, six months later, Bell’s retirement is not sounding so permanent.

On the night of Jan 4, 2008, Bell was sitting in for George Noory who was on holidays. Nothing odd about that, as Bell had said when announcing his retirement that he would occasionally fill in or do a special. What was odd was Bell’s response when a caller popped the question: ‘When are you coming back?’ Bell explained that he had done the show for years and was spending time with his family. “I’m in a break here,” he said.

A break? That doesn’t sound like permanent retirement.

The caller told Bell that he didn’t think the hosts who had replaced him were taking the show in the direction he had intended. “If they’re taking it in a direction that listeners don’t want," Bell responded, "they won’t be here because the ratings will fall.” He added calmly, “Time will tell.”

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Related story, "Art Bell Retires from Coast to Coast Radio" at: " at:

Chris Laird Passes Away

Chris Laird, a long time Downtown Eastside resident and former Carnegie Board member, passed away today at St. Paul's hospital.

Laird had suffered from health problems for years after his doctor repeatedly failed to diagnose his diabetes.

He was a nice guy.