PROVINCE DELIVERS ANOTHER INDIGNITY

Even little children, even the most malevolent of them, usually tire
after a time of plucking the wings off flies, or torturing bullfrogs
with pointed sticks, or teasing younger siblings.

But not the Ontario government. Not when it comes to tormenting social
assistance recipients. Not even after almost six years of it.

The latest indignity was served up this week by Social Services
Minister John Baird in his trumpeting of proposed literacy and
addictions testing for those receiving welfare. And, as always, it is
interesting to note the timing of the government's outbursts of tough
love.

On the education front, there's ongoing turbulence in the schools. On
health care, the Premier has opened the possibility of added upheaval
and instability with recent musings on more private-sector
involvement. On Ipperwash, the killing that just won't go away, Mike
Harris seems to be suffering from an acute case of StockDay Syndrome -
an inability to recall what he was up to at critical moments in his
duties.

Beyond question, his is a government that no longer enjoys so firm a
hold as once it did on either the agenda or public affection.

But, as always, nothing so picks up the spirits and restores the faith
of waverers during moments of crisis - not to mention occupying the
attention of newshounds - as a sound thrashing of the poor.

Perhaps the only thing more nauseating than Baird's initiative itself
is the minister's unctuous assurance that the government has only the
best interests of social assistance recipients at heart.

"We want to break down the barriers to employment," he purred.
"Whatever stands in their way - whether it's a lack of experience,
poor reading skills or an addiction to alcohol or drugs - we think our
government should help."

It is difficult to imagine the government's campaign of stigmatization
could have been escalated. But it has. Now, social assistance
recipients are not just lazy. They're junkies (even though there is no
evidence rates of addiction are higher than in other groups). And
they're illiterates, too.

It's noteworthy that as the minister itemized the barriers to
employment he did not mention acute shortages of child care, a rental
crisis worsened by the lifting of rent controls, the near-absence of
social housing programs, welfare rates that haven't risen for six
years even as the cost of living has.

He did not mention an economy that's relentlessly divided society into
haves and have-nots. Just this week, the Toronto Community Foundation
released its Vital Signs report and noted - as other organizations
have before - that income is becoming ever more polarized, that
homelessness, the use of shelters and food banks has risen sharply
over the last decade.

It is such an antediluvian view, this idea that the down on their luck
are by definition drunk or dopey (in all senses of that word).

For we have had social assistance recipients so literate, the
wonderful Pat Capponi comes to mind, that they became celebrated
authors. We have had Ontario cabinet ministers so tested by the
language, and Lorne Henderson was just one example, that they could
tell assembled multitudes that "me and the Premier brung ya this cheque."

Even if problems of illiteracy and addiction among social assistance
recipients were as critical as Baird suggests, even if his motives are
as noble and compassionate as he purports, anything paying more than
lip service to the idea of training and treatment for those needing it
would involve huge investment. Something none but a fool would expect
from this government on this constituency.

The lack of sincerity is probably best evidenced by the remarkable
ignorance of the government on the nature of addiction. If ever there
was an area that did not lend itself - other than for the purposes of
propaganda - to the simple nostrums of the Harris government, this is
it. Neuroscience is making advances in understanding the how and why
of the complex world of addiction. But we are a long way from triumph.

"Never ask me why," the alcoholic writer William Faulkner once told
those inquiring as to the reasons behind his prodigious drinking. "I
don't know the answer. If I did, I wouldn't do it."

Half a century on, the progress is modest indeed. The success rate of
even the best of treatment centres remains woefully low. Most medical
schools still provide only minimal training in addiction. Many doctors
are baffled by it.

Yet that which has bedevilled families and befuddled medical science
is somehow simply to be solved through the tender mercies of the minister.

Specialized staff are to be set up in welfare offices. They will
screen welfare recipients suspected of addiction. They will administer
a written or oral test to confirm their suspicions.

They will whisk them off to rehab. They will cut the benefits of those
who decline.

As public policy, it is laughable. Repugnant to those in the
addictions field. Offensive to those concerned with privacy or civil
liberties.

But the "treatment," so to speak, of social assistance recipients was
never really intended to cure them of anything. It was always about
making the government's supporters feel better.