The Ontario government is cutting the Special Diet program for people on social assistance, which had become a $200 million program thanks to, as John Clarke puts it, “the efforts of many organizations, the support of progressive health professionals and the incredible determination of poor communities to demand and defend this benefit.”
Clarke argues that the “scandalous poverty that people on social assistance experience is frequently viewed, even on the Left, as simply a matter for humanitarian concern. The issue that is often missed, however, is the degree to which an assault on income support systems strengthens the hand of those seeking to weaken unions and increase the employer’s ability of exploit workers.” Read his whole article in the latest issue of The Bullet.