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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Poverty,"Crime" and Punishment - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Poverty,"Crime" and Punishment

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by Stephanie Beaudoin﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1997﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿This is the first installment in a two-part series. Part one examines some of the history and fundamental principles of the Social Welfare system in Canada, leading up to the implementation of workfare programs. Part two will look more closely at the nuts and bolts of Ontario Works: what it is, how it has been implemented and the resistance of anti-poverty activists and labour unions.﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿ 

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Ontario Works, or "workfare" as it is more commonly known, is a major component of the Harris government's attack on the poor in Ontario. However, the idea of having the poor do mandatory labour in exchange for basic needs is nothing new. Poverty is inextricably linked to capitalism; by maintaining a class of people which can barely or not acquire subsistence, capitalists ensure that they have a large pool of unorganized and low wage labour from which to draw in order to extract greater profits.

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However, as a result of the demands of social movements and a desire to maintain a healthy and productive workforce, social welfare is also an inescapable necessity for the capitalist class. James O'Connor, in 1973, succinctly argued that "social programs are used by capitalist governments to legitimize themselves as acting in the best interests of the non-capitalist class, but these programs are delivered in such a fashion that they facilitate the accumulation of capital for the dominant class". In the case of workfare programs, the desired goal is a flexible, low paid workforce which will attract investment, lower costs and increase profits. 

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As early as 1349, a version of workfare was legislated under Edward III's Statute of Labourers. Two thirds of the population had perished as a result of the Black Plague, leading to a shortage of labourers and a rise in wages. The statute required that anyone who was offered a job must accept immediately; people were forbidden to leave their parish for fear they might beg rather than work, and citizens were forbidden to give alms to the poor.

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The British roots of Canada's welfare system date back 400-500 years. Prior to the abolition of feudalism, access to land provided reasonable security for the basic needs of extended families and communities residing on it, but little freedom to move beyond the bounds of the lord to whom a share of their labour went. Subsequent urbanization facilitated mobility, but simultaneously threatened security as communities broke up and dependence on land for subsistence was no longer possible. The Church assumed primary responsibility for charity to the poor until the 16th century, when Henry VIII formalized the break between the Pope and the Church, closed monasteries and confiscated their properties. From then on the State began to provide rudimentary social security through taxation. This evolved into the Elizabethean Poor Laws, which created workhouses, whereby entire families did hard labour under abusive conditions in exchange for room and board. Nova Scotia and Upper Canada adopted these laws in the 1700's. 

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The attitude underlying this approach to welfare, which would provide the blueprint for the British/Canadian/American welfare systems, is based in the convenient notion that people are in need because of some personal failure. As a result, these systems were characterized by stringent eligibility regulations and below-subsistence living standards. The idea behind this was that "assistance provided for people in need must be such as to cause their condition to be less desirable, less satisfactory... less eligible than the condition of the lowest paid labourer who is not in receipt of welfare." Keeping people at this level of poverty ensures that they are ready and willing to work for low wages under highly exploitative conditions. Essentially, the purpose of the system of welfare which was developed in both England and Canada was to negatively reinforce the idea that individuals are responsible for their own welfare.

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The British North America Act assigned responsibility for social programs to the provinces. However, at the provincial level only jails and asylums were considered priorities, being an easy way to deal with vagrancy caused by homelessness due to poverty; as a result, most social assistance fell to the municipalities. Churches and humanitarian groups continued to provide services to the poor, mainly to children, which were considered to be among the "worthy poor". The beginning of the 1900's and especially the depression years brought about a need for stronger central planning on the part of the federal government. Unrest in the relief camps, another version of workfare provided for the unemployed in Canada during the Depression, culminated in the On to Ottawa Trek whereby thousands of people crossed Canada by train to protest the abysmal conditions of the camps and demand subsistence.The result was the Regina Riot, where the protesters were met by state police. Many were injured, and several were killed. However, the message finally got through; in 1935 the first Unemployment Insurance legislation was enacted. 

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The prosperous period between World War II and the 1970's presents an anomaly whereby the welfare state emerged as a strong principle of governance in Western nation-states. Governments distinguished less between the "worthy" and "non-worthy" poor; social programs became a way in which to cover universal risks beyond the control of the average person, especially unemployment. This is the era where human rights, backed by Keynesian economics, emerged as a central issue in the discussion of world politics, and in 1941 the Atlantic Charter spelled out the right of all citizens to social security. 

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By the 1980's, however, the emergence of neo-conservatism under Brian Mulroney began to roll back many of the gains made since the beginning of the century. Neo-conservatives stated their belief that "unemployment is an unavoidable feature of market economies, a price to be paid for freedom of enterprise and growth" and that welfare dependency is a result of the recipient's not wanting to take low wage jobs. In the US, policy analyst Charles Murray published "Losing Ground", making the claim that "social assistance programs are a major cause of chronic poverty, unemployment, female-headed families, falling education, and crime". This played perfectly into the Reagan and Thatcherite model of so-called "trickle-down" economics. Note that "female-headed families" is viewed as a problem unto itself, rather than acknowledging the fact that the problem with female-headed families is that they are kept in a perpetual state of poverty due to the state's assumptions about gender roles in society: that women can depend on men for income, and that women are available to look after the home, family and community members unpaid. 

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In Canada since the 1980's, the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank and political propaganda organ, funded and controlled in 1983 by 22 corporations with assets of $248,740,550,000, has been has been hard at work to promote these ideas. Once looked upon by m﻿ainstream society as "way out there", the Institute has been gaining legitimacy and media attention in times where jobs are scarce, futures are not secure, and deficit hysteria dominates. People look for scapegoats and the poor, the least organized and able to fight back, are perfect for the position. By quoting from the Fraser Institute, one is able to hear the arguments which abound in society and analyze them to reflect what is really happening. Again, one hears the distinction made between "worthy" (unfortunate) and "unworthy" (irresponsible) poor and that "generally speaking, the probability is high that if someone is under 26 and able-bodied, and is collecting welfare, they are in the irresponsible group". Never mind that this generation came of age in an era of double-digit unemployment figures. Or, "poverty is simply a reflection of the fact that sufferers were dealt an unlucky or physical allocation from the genetic wheel of inheritance". As if poverty were a disease which can be cured with some good pharmaceutical research. Better still, "the demand is that other people provide the food, clothing and shelter that is their "right". But this, it should be obvious, is merely a disguised way of demanding the products that other people have earned, produced, and created... an attempt to smuggle compulsory income into the language - under the guise of human rights" 

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Clearly, the Fraser Institute does not support the concept of universal human rights to adequate food, shelter and clothing, but supports the capitalist system to do exactly what they say they condemn - to demand the products earned, produced and created by others, the working class. 

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On an international scale, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development also has reform of social policies at the top of its agenda. Its 1994 report on unemployment states that it is the result of "failure to adapt satisfactorily to change". It supports workfare programs such as Ontario Works as a way to link income support measures and the labour market. It is easy to sell to the public - workfare will reduce the deficit and give the lazy bums a kick in the pants, all while meeting two basic principles of liberal democracies: a minimum income for all, and work as requirement for citizenship. However, despite this idealistic approach to solving social problems, the realities and implications that workfare will have in Ontario, and has had in places where it has been mandated earlier, has led to resistance from anti-poverty groups and unions in Ontario. In the United States, where workfare has been around for many years already, a successful unionizing drive of workfare workers recently occured in addition to the issuing of statements by the White House that workfare workers are entitled to the same rights as other labourers. Next month, we will look more closely at this resistance, and what it means for the future continuing attacks on the poor. 

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