🚀 go-pugleaf

dunnett@mala.bc.ca (Malcolm Dunnett) wrote:

>> I don't see how anyone with half a brain can have a problem with it.

>I guess that sums up your opinion of Mr. Axworthy quite handily then. 

In this particular case, yes.

Which is rather too bad because I know him for an otherwise intelligent
man.  It must be something they put in the water in Ottawa.

>    That's my point. Since BC has no control over who is a legitimate
>refugee and who isn't we have no choice but to accept that anyone the
>federal government accepts is indeed legitimate. If we have problems
>with how the feds make this determination we should take it up with them.

Malcolm, it looks like you are trying very hard to pick an argument where
there is not one.

The 3 months residency requirement is not directed against refugees.  All
of the country gets about 35,000 refugees a year and vast amjority of them
end up in Ontario and Quebec.  BC gets influx of some 35,000 Canadian
citizens and landed immigrants a year from Ontario alone.

BC has had a pissing war over welfare with Alberta for over a year now.
With Ontario clamping down on their welfare qualifications you can expect
an exodus for careere welfarists to BC where the grass is greener.  So we
have a choice of becoming a welfare haven fro the entire country and pay it
out of BC pockets, or we can tell the good folks in other provinces, stay
at home and collect welfare there.

Quite frankly, I don't think the BC government had much choice.  The only
beef I have they had not done it 3 years ago.

>      If we don't require private sponsors for welfare clients then why
>should we require it of refugees. By definition a refugee is someone
>whose life/liberty is in danger if we don't let him/her in - isn't it rather
>callous to say that if noone wants to pay their bill they will be sent
>back to suffer their fate?

I guess it would be, but that is not what I have suggested be done.  Let me
rephrase it more clearly:  The federal government controls refugee intake.
Therefore the federal government should carry them for the first three
months. I fthey remain inBC that time, after the three month they willhave
qualified for regular welfare from BC.  Where's the problem?

>[Again, this assumes the feds have done their
>job and only accepted people who really fit this definition - if they
>haven't they should be held accountable for their failing]

That's another subject I'd rather not get into right now.

>      If the feds want to pay these settlement expenses then that's fine, but
>if they aren't then I don't think it's fair for the provincial government
>to penalize the refugees. Is it fair to the refugees to trap them in a
>bureaucratic web like this?

The reason I had suggested the feds start looking for private sponsors is
twofold first of all there are settlement aid societies.  For all we know,
some may be interested in sponsoring refugees from private sources.
Secondly, I believe that government should not be performing any functions
that can be better handled by private enterprise.  These charities have the
volunteers who can provide far more personal assistance to refugees to help
them settle in BC, than any government social worker troop could ever hope
to.

>     (btw. I'm sure if pressed on the issue the feds would argue that
>the transfer payments we receive includes money which is to be used to
>cover the initial settlement expenses of refugees)

But the transfer payments are frozen now, they will start to decline and
they are an unwarranted intrusion into provincial jurisdiction anyway.

>     The basic premise of welfare is to be a "safety net" for people who
>find themselves in dire financial straits. If we have such a rigid set
>of rules that true hardship cases can't always be considered we are failing
>in that mission. 

I don't think so.  The BC welfare system has an obligation to provide that
kind of "refuge of last resort" to BC residents and taxpayers.  The
transfer payments argument fails here miserably, because the money the feds
are dishsing out came in large part out of the pockets of BC taxpayers.

In fact for quie a few years now, BC taxpayers have already been
contributing to welfare benefits in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskabush
etc... because we've been getting back less than we've paid out.  Curiously
enough, it is Alberta and Ontario with whom we are waging this welfare war,
who are also contributing more than they get back.

If you want true portability of benefits, you would have to take welfare
out of provincial hands and establish a national program.  Gawd help us,
every one.

>What do you suggest we should do with a family who 
>spends everything they have to move here for a promised job ( perhaps in
>order to get off welfare in another province ) and then has the job
>disappear? 

I would suggest to them that they sent daddy or mommy ahead to get the job,
find a good place to live, arrange school for the kids, let him/her get
established and then come over too.  In the mean time, they still have
their safety net where they are now.

>Certainly the ajudication process would have to be rigorous enough 
>that scam artists didn't set up fake job offers to circumvent the
>rules, but I think it's heartless to just say "sorry, you don't qualify -
>get lost".

Screw adjudication.  If you don't ahve a job, don't come to BC.  If you do
come and lose your job, use the severance pay for the trip back home.

>    I presume the Premier and/or Minister have done so, apparently he's
>not listening. Perhaps, as fellow Liberals, Mr. Campbell or you have more
>sway with him than these heathen Socialists do ;-)

To tell the truth, I ahve not seen any official reaction from the BC party
to the proposed changes.  I have no idea what the party line is.  Though I
seriously doubt that whatever Gordon Campbell or Val Anderson (Liberal
Social Affairs Critic) would carry much weight in Ottawa.  The relations
between the two parties are not as close as many would have you believe.
Campbell is just another provincial politician out there.

>    Sure, just like Health Care is. But there's that pesky Canada
>Assistance act which pays for a big chunk of the welfare payments
>(a big stick being wielded by the feds). 

Well don't blame the feds for that.  If the provinces had not been so eager
to grab tax money collected by the feds abck in the 60s, Ottawa would still
have no say in the matter.  I think there is a lot of dishonesty in the
province about taxation.  For example, the BC Income Tax rate is expressed
as a percentage of the Federal Tax payable.  So if Ottawa bumps up their
tax rates, Victoria gets a neat little bonus without having to lift a
finger.  Hell of a neat trick, I'd say.  Must have been old Wacky who put
that one in.

>Other than the rather
>disingenious suggestion of telling the feds to keep "their" money
>we have little choice but to accept the reality that they are
>involved in welfare in a big way.

The other side of the argument of course is that if the feds had not jacked
up their tax rate so high, maybe we would not have to spend so much on
welfare in the first place.  Taxes kill jobs.  That has been proven over
and over again, all over the world.

>    I rather doubt this waste can be eliminated at a stroke of a pen
>without causing hardship to the legitimate cases. People will sometimes
>really lose their cheques, or cash them and get robbed. 

When you lose your paycheque or get ripped off, who will give you another?
Of course it would be a hardship, but welfare was never intended to be a
way of life. If you do fall into it, you're supposed to try your damnest to
get off as quickly as possible.  This policy would be just one of the
incentives not to lose your cash and get off welfare the quickest you can.

Come on, Malcolm, the generosity and sympaties of the taxpayers go only so
far.  There is a limit even to how much you can help somebody.  IF there
isn't there damned well should be.

>I agree this is no reason not to come down hard on the cheaters, but the 
>system still has to sometimes give people the benefit of the doubt.

I think you would be amazed what a dramatic decrease in this petty thievery
you'd see if you would announce that no replacements will be given for any
reason.

>    OK, sorry for the misunderstanding - I haven't seen the report but
>was responding to the portion you had excerpted, guess I missed the
>context of the suggestion.

There was no context other than what I quoted.  That's one of the
unfortunate sides of the bureaucratic mind. They get so seeped in their own
terminology most of the time.  Besides, the report was not written for
public consumption, it was an internal audit for "those in the know".

>If this was greatly expanded it could cut
>down on some of the fraud occurring, but would add a fair bit to the
>administration costs (cost of printing extra cheques, cost to verify
>changes of address so that former landlords didn't continue receiving
>payments, etc ).

No.  It would actually cut down considerably on administration. Ministry of
Labour does bulk disbursements in their Orderly Payment of Debt program and
works just fine.  The landlord is issued a code number and all amounts
payable to him are included on one sinbgle cheque disbursed once a month.
So an appartment block manager with 17 welfare recipients in the building
will receive one cheque and a list of tenants with apporpriate amounts who
are covered under that disbursement.  The landlord could even be assessed a
2% levy for administration in return for the assurance of much greater
accuracy of payment.  No collection problems.  The government also gets a
tiny slice of the action in as much that they will disburse that money
about a week later (1st of the month) rather than on Welfare Wednesday.
Consequently, they can collect interest on that money a tad longer (or more
accurately not have to pay interest on that money). The process is
completely automated.

>      So then all he could get robbed of is his food/clothing/etc money.

Not bloody likely.  "tender vittles or your life!" ?  I don't think so

>> Of course there have been "green stamp" scams in the US.

>      That's all I'm trying to say, any system is succeptible to scams. If
>you change one set of rules the con artists will find another avenue.

Ooops sorry, I guess unintentionally, that was a trick question:  Almost
all of the "green stamps" scams in the US were committed by those who
administered the programs, not by the recipients.

> These
>suggestions would change the form of fraud, and may indeed reduce it, but
>I seriously doubt they'd eliminate it.

Nothing will eliminate fraud.  But that does not mean that we give away the
store.  If you can't beat them, join them, does not apply in this case.  If
you can, you should try to make it as hard as possible for thescam artists
to operate.

The Ministry has ran a few "pilot projects" (don't you just love the sound
of it?) where all or selected groups of recipients had to come to the
office to pick up their cheques. If the cheque was not picked up in a few
days, the file was closed.  Many people never piced up their cheques and
raised no stink about their benefits being cut off.

However, where the Ministry made a very serious mistake was that they just
closed the file and did nothing else.  They never bothered to try to figure
out why did these folks all of a sudden not need their welfare.  Nobody in
the whole Ministry wanted to smell a rat.  That would have proved to them
that they got scammed and it would not look too good on the supervisor's or
district manager's record.  So they let bygones be bygones.  In the mean
time, the same scumbags walk into another welfare office and do the same
number on them again.

>     To what do you attribute this unwillingness? Surely the welfare fraud
>artists don't make up enough of a voting constituency to attract the
>governments support.

Poverty IS a big business in our country and in this province particularly.
Don't kid yourself.  You heard all the eulogies for Smallwood when she got
turfed out (good riddance to bad garbage).  It wasn't because she was such
a great Housing minister, it was because she was such a sop of a Welfare
minister. She was then one who raised the exemption for single mothers from
looking for work from (I think it was 6 years) till the youngest child is
19 (yup NINETEEN) years old.  It was later "drastically dropped" down to a
mere 12 years old wher it stands now.

>     One would presume that since this fraud takes money out of the system
>that legitimate welfare clients would support the elimination of fraud. 

Well to you and me it would appear so.  But most of the Poverty groups will
tell you that there is no such thing as welfare fraud or abuse, it is a lie
perpetrated by the Big Business propaganda machine and the capitalist
press. Some have called it hate propaganda against innocent, decent, hard
resting, poor folk.  The rich people like you and me have invented it.

>     Maybe I don't understand your point, but I don't see how one can
>fault the welfare system for this. If the feds are arbitrarily withholding
>UI money isn't it them we should be criticizing.

Yes, there is a great deal of blame to be directed at the feds.  They don't
appear to give a damn how long it takes them to cough up. "You'll get it
eventually and we'll pay you from day one, so you're not missing anything"
of course the fact that you would like to eat in the interim seems to be
lost on them.

My criticism is not that welfare want their money back, but the stupid way
they are enforcing it.

>is a provincial responsibility, and since UI is really just welfare
>disguised as an "insurance program" the most sensible thing might be to
>eliminate UI completely and just have unemployed people collect welfare
>when their personal resources run out.

I would be quite in favour of merging the two systems.  Of course that UI
is a misnomer.  there was an attempt to make it a ral insurance program
where people would pay a premium based on actuarial experience, type of
work etc.  I think it was rejected about 2 years ago by Ottawa, not that I
can blame them.  Can you imagine Ottawa running a monster like that?
Besides, those who have the lousiest jobs and who are out of work most
often would pay such high premiums, they would be better off on welfare to
start with.

>    How would you fix this? If the sums owing are a few hundred dollars
>is it worth the legal costs it would take to get a judgement against
>him? If you've ever had a deadbeat owe you money I'm sure you know that
>you often reach a point where it's just best to write it off, you may get
>some emotional satisfaction by taking him to court but in the end it may
>well cost you more than you will recover.

For one thing, you could take it out at the end of the guy's UI claim, put
the heat on UI to get more reasonable and stick to the agreed rules, or
simply postpone the claim till the guy gets back to work.  SIN matching on
source deductions would easily find him.

>    What is "practically nothing"? What more should they do? How many
>"welfare cops" should they hire to do it? How much extra red tape should
>they put the honest folks through to catch the crooks?

Having been in a similar business in dealing with crooks and scam artists
for some 17 years, I can tell you that no honest folks need to be put
through any indignities at all.  Within a reasonable short period of time
you will develop a profile of the typical scammer.  You learn to smell them
from their application, the red flags just jump out at you.  The it is a
question of making a couple of calls or asking a couple of questions to
firm up your suspicions.  They mostly behave in quite predictable ways and
lie in patterns.  "No, he's not my boyfriend, he's just an old buddy that
crashed here for a few weeks ... sure I had those kids with him, but that
was 5 years ago".

>    (I don't know if they are "doing enough" now, but I'd like to hear
>what lengths you think they should go to stem this sort of abuse.)

The Ministry is adding some Eligibility Officers to check out the
applications in more detail then they have till now.  That's a good start.

>    I don't know about hard, but certainly it would require more staff to
>police all this stuff. What sort of bleating do you think we'd then hear
>about a "bloated civil service"?

None if they show results.  A good damage control officer is liable to
recover 3x his salary.

Karl Pollak
Bottom Line Productions           Canadian Infomaticon BBS,
Richmond, British Columbia        Fido 1:153/965  (604) 275-9579