Editor:
I applaud any increase to the pathetic income assistance rates (frozen for years by the B.C. Liberals). However, though your March 19 editorial (“A milestone in poverty reduction”) does mention the increased cost of living, the emphasis on gains in support allowances and child benefits will make it sound, to some readers, like life is better for welfare recipients now than it was in the “bad old days.”
I came to the Sunshine Coast in 1983, as a single mother on welfare. I was able to rent a small house in Selma Park (close enough to be able to walk to Sechelt for groceries). My shelter allowance easily covered rent and hydro, so there was enough money left to buy other necessities and the occasional small luxury. Those days are gone. I don’t know how single parents – or single people on income assistance, or working poor people – manage these days when rent, alone, of a half decent place, takes all of that $1,270.58 or more. There were no food banks because there was less need for food banks! The Ministry used to give out crisis grants when someone had an unexpected expense that wiped out their food money. Now they are told, “Go to the food bank.” Even people with jobs are having to use the food bank as a regular thing, not just due to an unexpected event. With the housing crisis things have been getting worse.
There was an attack on welfare back in the ’90s, in order to soften people up for neoliberalism. Now welfare is so inhospitable that workers are forced to take precarious jobs with no proper living wage and little protection against exploitation.
The government could have at least left the $300 COVID supplement in people’s pockets.
Anne Miles, Gibsons
