By Cherie Traverse
Cliff Gazee knows all too well what it’s like to live in a time when depending on social assistance means barely surviving.
Gazee lost his job as a CBC radio producer about four years ago.
After that, Gazee’s life began a downward spiral. His children’s mother died in an accident, leaving him to take care of a two-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son alone.
He eventually had to rely solely on family benefits as income and struggle with depression over his poor personal and economic situation.
“It tears you inside, it destroys you,” says Gazee, who lives on Gladstone Avenue, about the economic hardship being experienced by many families living in poverty in the region.
“I see so many families in my community suffering because of the cuts that Harris’s government has made.”
In 1995, the Ontario government cut social assistance by about 20 per cent.
A project called the People’s Hearings was started last spring to get a sense of how people in Ottawa-Carleton are affected by these cuts.
The idea came from a social issues advocacy group called Faith Partners that had been involved in hearings in 11 other Ontario communities.
The hearings allow people struggling with social assistance cuts to tell their stories.
Several local social issues groups sponsored five hearings in which more than 100 people from the area presented their personal struggles with poverty.
The hearings were to get a sense of the needs of those living in poverty and to present them to regional council.
A group of panelists assessed the common needs found in people’s accounts and compiled them into a report called People First.
The report included proposals such as establishing a task force on poverty, subsidizing public transit and Hydro bills, and reforming day care, which the group hopes council will consider when rethinking its social policies.
The People’s Hearings presented its findings at the March 25 council meeting. Following the presentation, councillors passed a motion to formally consider all of the recommendations presented when it reviews its policies on social issues.
“It was our goal, by presenting at the meeting, to have council enter the recommendations into the formal process, and we achieved that,” says Joanne Steven, a social planning and advocacy counsellor who works with the People’s Hearings.
Regional Coun. Diane Holmes says the recommendations are very important and some will be considered by council.
“Services such as supplemental aid, which provides glasses and wheelchairs, have been cut substantially and I think we can look at investing in these services again,” says Holmes.
About 300 people showed up at the council meeting to show their support. However, not everyone was happy with the recommendations.
At the end of the presentation, Jane Scharf, a woman from Shanly, a town south of Ottawa was present at the meeting, jumped up to tell council that the proposals did not reflect the interests of poor people.
“This is a misrepresentation of poor people’s needs and desires. There’s no way anyone came to the People’s Hearings and told them we wanted to work in a low-end job,” Scharf said. ”I’ve been poor and I know the poor and I know what they need.”
Scharf was referring to proposals the group made about employment. She says that People’s Hearings is supporting the controversial Ontario Works project which places people in jobs in return for social assistance.
Joanne Steven says she feels the recommendations do not reflect the Ontario workfare program which she finds “distasteful.”
She says workfare assumes “that people don’t want to work, which from my experience is not the case.”
People’s Hearings is continuing to pressure the regional government by holding meetings and protests.